Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was a regular day in the treehouse. Well, as ordinary as it could ever be with a superhero housed in it.

Captain Underpants was engrossed with the first few comic pages they managed to finish so far. Harold was waiting. And George scribbled out one of his many, many ideas for the issue with a furious passion. It was one of those days where he could figure out the basic set-up, but nothing past that.

“Whoa, you’re gonna tear a hole through your notebook at that rate,” Harold gave a sympathetic wince before giving a gentle punch on the shoulder. “Don’t think about it so hard, we have plenty of time, so don’t stress yourself out.”

“Correct!” the hero stood up suddenly and made his way over to them. “I’m sure that whatever you come up with will be splendid.”

“Thanks, guys,” George gave a small smile. He turned his attention to Captain, gears turning in his head. “Hm... what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Do you have any ideas for the new issue?” he clarified.

“Ooh, ideas straight from the man himself!” Harold chimed in. “Why haven’t we thought of this before?”

The Waistband Warrior’s smile faltered. “I’m not, uh-- I’m afraid I don’t have either of your gifts, with…” He waved his hand around. “Story-making?”

Harold let out a playful scoff. “Not yet!” He took Captain’s hand and placed a pencil in it before sliding a fresh sheet of paper in his direction.

“No pressure, though--” George offered. “It can even be a little idea to jump off from.”

“That’s how some of our issues were made, like The Horrible Harm of the Hideous Hair-Razer!”

“-- and The Maelstrom from Mess-opotamia!”

As the boys continued to list off comic issues, Captain Underpants stared at the blank page so intensely that, well, it was a good thing he didn’t have laser vision. For something that was no pressure, it sure was a whole lot of yes pressure. He placed the pencil down, pushing at it as he made miniscule scratches over and over and over and over--

The lead hit a deep groove of the plank underneath. The pencil immediately sunk at the pressure and ripped a small hole. Captain jolted up and dropped the pencil like it had turned into a snake. The boys flinched back in kind at the sudden movement.

“Apologies, sidekicks.” He scratched at the back of his head. “I’m afraid I got a-- what do you call it-- a brain fart?”

Silence.

And then the boys erupted in laughter so loud that it shook the treehouse. 

“What are you talking about, that’s great!” George said between wheezy giggles. He turned the page to a clean sheet and began to write.

“See, you’re a natural,” Harold grinned before leaning over the other boy’s shoulder. “Alright, alright, so… fart-propelled brains--”

“-- that creates a literal brainstorm from their farts! Oh, how about…”

The boys continued their figurative brainstorm, making comic page after comic page at a breakneck pace. Occasionally, Captain would chip in with a nod or shake of his head or strike a quick pose if they asked, but it was clear that he was engrossed in his own work. And by work, the boys meant that Thing you do when you pencil over a textured surface and get a vague tracing out of that.

In the haze of late afternoon-slash-nearly-sunset, George and Harold held up the newly-stapled issue of Captain Underpants and the Boorish Flurry of Brain Farts in one hand each. You could practically hear the disembodied choir voices as a beam of sunlight hit the comic just right.

The Waistband Warrior looked up from his own page-- now he had taken to drawing tight loops-- with a small gasp.

“Our finest work yet,” Harold wiped a tear from his eye.

“I couldn’t have said it any better myself,” George nodded. “-- And we couldn't have done it without your help, Captain!”

Said Captain waved his hand, looking away bashfully. “Oh, stop.”

The boys set it down and slid it over to the hero. Captain’s expression was blank for a few moments before he connected the dots. “Oh--” He picked up the comic, idly leafing through the pages quickly. “Y-- you want me to read this?”

That gave Harold some pause. “You always read our issues anyway.”

“I mean-- never before anyone else! What an honor!” Captain Underpants added before quickly opening the issue and putting it up to his face. His brow furrowed, lips pursed comically in contemplation like some snooty art critic. He pored over each page and panel with the same intensity as earlier. Once in a while, he would nod gravely. 

It was so strange seeing the hero look so serious-- or at least, playacting what a serious expression was supposed to be without being disguised as Krupp.

“Sidekicks?” He shut the comic gently and placed it aside. “That. Was. Amazing! Better than that! Super-Amazing, I daresay!”

The boys beamed at the praise and then let out another round of laughs as the hero noogied them both. For quite a while, actually. Like, a few moments too long that it now seemed kind of awkward. 

But before either of them could say anything, two voices rang out:

“George, dinner!”

“Harold, it’s dinnertime!”

Captain froze, giving the boys an opportunity to escape his grasp. 

“Whoa, already?” Harold un-mussed his hair.

“I know, right?” George began packing up his things, the new issue in hand. “Same time tomorrow?”

“Do you have to ask?”

“Um, sidekicks?” Captain piped up.

Both boys froze in mid-exit. 

“Is there any way that I could… bunk in either of your houses for the night?” He twiddled his thumbs anxiously.

The both of them glanced to each other before looking back to the Waistband Warrior with varying degrees of worry. “Why?” George ventured.

Captain’s face scrunched up like he ate a lemon. He opened his mouth. Closed it. “The other guy’s house is soooooo lonely and boring,” he whined. “It’s all so… drab. No bright colors! No fun! No underwear decor!”

Oh, right.

Before, they could have just led him to the house and trick him to splash himself. But they can’t really do that anymore. The boys gave each other an uncomfortable Look, silently gesturing their head Captain-ward to say something.

“I, uh, don’t think that’s such a good idea.” George scratched the back of his head. Having Krupp and Captain Underpants know about each other was a big enough headache-- who knows what would happen when they threw in their parents into that. It would just be a Mess With a Capital M waiting to happen.

“Sorry, mom’s a real stickler for no shirt, no service,” Harold added sadly. 

“I see.” Captain’s expression fell. “Do you mind if I stay here in the treehouse a little longer, then?”

The boys shared another set of Looks as they weighed their options.

“Harold!”

Said Harold nearly jumped out of his skin. “Oh boy, that’s mom’s Serious Voice--”

“George!”

“You know what? OK, yeah that’s fine,” George said hurriedly. “We really gotta go, I’ll try to see if I can sneak out to check on you later but no promises--”

“Thank you, sidekicks--”

“OK bye see you later!”

And just like that, both boys scrambled out and down the treehouse and into their respective houses, leaving the Waistband Warrior alone in the treehouse. 

Once in a while, the boys would glance out the window as they ate their dinner in case of… something. Dread welled up in Harold’s gut as he poked around his vegetables when he realized, oh he could accidentally destroy a part of the treehouse by being his usual self. Besides, he seemed weirdly distracted-- super strength was no laughing matter if he tripped on something.

George glanced at the window anxiously as he watched the vague egg-shaped silhouette bumble around the treehouse. And by the end of the day, he didn’t even need to sneak out-- Captain Underpants just flew out once the sky was getting dark. 

And in between then and school the next day, he’s back to being Krupp, and of course they don’t question it.

If the boys had one word to describe the following weeks that followed Krupp and Captain Underpants’ discovery of each other, it would be complicated. If it wasn’t Krupp leveraging the potential punishment on the horizon if they couldn’t reverse the hypnosis, then it was Captain Underpants acting weird.

Now, it wasn’t like the routine they had before was normal, but at least they developed a system for that brand of weird. At least they knew what to do when Melvin’s new invention made a bunch of brains in a jar into farting brains in a jar. At least they had an inkling of an idea on how to counter that smelly storm. 

And while Krupp was cagey and tried to cover his ears whenever they tried to snap his fingers around him, hey, it would have been just as difficult if he didn’t know. The only difference was that they would’ve gotten detention for turning him into Captain Underpants and not something else.

But-- and this was a pretty big but -- they’re not prepared for this new brand of weird. 

Captain stumbled back into the door leading into the teacher’s lounge, leaving a perfect cutout silhouette of him as he did so. 

George and Harold peered into the Captain-shaped cutout-hole, and their faces fell as they saw the hero’s face: it was the same ate-a-lemon scrunch from the other day. His chest was heaving. His fists were clenched tight. And as much as the Waistband Warrior had made his disdain for clothes clear, the way he threw his clothes off was less I feel uncomfortable and more, these clothes feel like they’re made of sandpaper.

“...Captain Underpants?”

And then his eyes snap open.

There was a distant look to them, but it wasn’t a vacant sort of distant. The exact opposite, really, which was the strangest part.

“Are you OK?” George’s brows pinched with worry. “Did you hit your head weird?”

They could practically hear Captain’s train of thought screech and try to backtrack. He shut his eyes tight as he nursed the back of his head. When he opened them again, it was like nothing happened and he was smiling again. “Right on the money sidekick!” He pulled a nearby curtain down and tied it around his neck. “Got me thinking total gonneldyggok!”

“You mean ‘gobbledygook’?”

“That, too!” He stepped out of the him-shaped hole with his chest puffed out and hands on his hips. “Now, let’s brawn some brains, sidekicks! TRA-LA-LAAA!”

Before they could ask, the Waistband Warrior flew off to face the monster of the week… before being propelled back into the wall. There was no time to pick at the hero’s brain when they had to pick him off the wall. There were still craniums to collapse and flatulence to fan away.

But, that near-trainwreck stayed at the forefront of their mind.

“George--” Harold’s voice crackled through the walkie-talkie on his nightstand. “George, you up?”

The boy let out a tired groan as he stared up at the ceiling. In the gloom of-- what time even was it? Nine, ten at night?-- he could see the barely-glow-in-the-dark gel dinosaur stickers he managed to place on the ceiling. George began to blindly grab and poke around at the nightstand at his side before getting a firm grasp of what he was sure was the antenna end of the walkie talkie.

“Am now,” he yawned, sitting up into a more comfortable position. “What’s up? Got a nightmare?”

There was silence on the other end for a moment. “Have you noticed anything… weird with Captain Underpants lately?”

“Besides the usual?” 

“Yeah, like--” Harold let out a small gasp. There was a moment of silence that stretched on for minutes, and then, “-- Sorry, I heard Mom walking around and I didn’t want her hearing. Just like… I dunno, he doesn’t seem like… himself? You noticed it too, right?”

“Notice what?”

“You know when you asked if he was alright? He was clearly lying.”

George’s eyes slowly adjusted to the dark, his gaze lingered on his backpack that had all his stuff, the latest issue included. “I know,” he said. “Maybe the whole... thing with him knowing Krupp is getting to him-- I’d act weird too if I learned I turned into the worst person in the world.”

There was a moment of silence. The quiet hum from the vents kept it from being too quiet. 

"I can’t imagine what it’s like for him back there,” Harold mumbled after a moment. “Krupp probably set up, like, some sort of water system that’ll splash him every time he switches.”

George let out a little snort at that. “Probably put a parental lock on all the cartoon channels, too. Like, a literal one.”

“Exactly! There has to be something we could do to help him out.”

“Like what?”

“I dunno, he did say how bored he was over there.”

“We do have some leftover confetti...” George mused out loud. Before he could continue his train of thought, a yawn punctuated his words. “Tell ya what, we’ll fine-tune this idea tomorrow.”

“That’s a plan.”

And with that, the walkie-talkie on the other side clicked off.

George and Harold weren’t sure what they were expecting when they made their way to the lonely house at the end of Curmudgeon Boulevard. They were only here for reconnaissance for now, trying to piece together if there was anything specific they could do to help the hero’s plight. At best, Krupp would be out, and at worst they’d be caught and suspended if they didn’t spin a good enough lie as to why they were there.

So, the usual odds. 

But as they peered in through the sliver of window uncovered by a curtain-- singular, that was important-- they weren’t expecting whatever this was.

Captain Underpants paced around the living room. Once again, there was the scrunched look that they now recognized was him overthinking. He was talking out loud, speaking to a cassette player propped up on the coffee table.

“What do you think he’s saying?”

“Hold on, I think I can read his lips--” Harold squinted, clearing his throat as he tried to mimic the hero’s baritone. “Why, your ruse is blown wide open! Caboose the turkey baster.”

George gave him a deadpan gaze.

“Hey, I’d like to see you do better,” he whispered loudly.

“Something’s happening."

Their eyes were glued back to the glass. Captain stopped recording, and surprisingly enough, took the glass of water right next to the cassette player and dunked its contents on his head. Krupp began to splutter and cough, untied the cape around his shoulders and threw it to the ground. He exited the room for a bit before returning with a fresh set of clothes, picked up the cassette player and played it back.

Played Captain’s message back.

The principal’s expression was hard to see, but they’d recognize that scowl in their sleep, let alone faced mostly away. He placed the cassette down roughly and took out a small packet of sticky notes and began to write.

George squinted. “‘Was pouring the entire thing necessary?’” he read aloud, before his mouth went agape at what he just said.

Krupp shuffled over to the coffee table and slapped the sticky note on top of the cassette. The force had caused a flutter of more sticky notes to fly off the table and onto the floor.

“They’re talking to each other,” Harold said, voice as shocked as the other boy looked. And with the amount of sticky notes sent flying, they’ve been talking for quite a while.

The principal raised his hand up, thumb and middle finger pinched together. And for the longest time, he hesitated. He shut his eyes tight and snap! Captain Underpants was back and immediately began to wrestle out of Krupp’s clothes.

George and Harold ducked down as the balled-up shirt hit the window. They didn’t dare look back up. 

Or stay. 

In fact, they’ve already left the neighborhood as fast as their legs could take them. They weren’t even sure why they were running; it wasn’t like Krupp-- or Captain Underpants for that matter-- had spotted them.

Once they felt like they put enough distance between them and the house, the boys stopped to catch their breath. George leaned on a nearby signpost. “Well, I guess that answers that question.” 

“...What do you think they were talking about?” Harold wondered aloud, wiping the sweat off his brow with the back of his fist. “Captain Underpants looked really worried.”

“Probably something bad.” His fingers began tapping on the post.

“What if Krupp’s blackmailing him?”

“Wait, hold on: what’s he supposed to blackmail him with--” George reasoned, despite worry creeping in his tone, too.

Oh, Harold held on, alright-- his hands flew up to George’s shoulders. “I don’t know, but he could be fooled to spill stuff--” His voice began to rise as he began to shake him. “Like any of our prank plans Captain overhears.”

“…Or how his superpowers work,” George mumbled.

“Or how--” the other boy’s face fell. “Oh, that is so much worse than what I was gonna say! If Krupp ever figures it out--”

“I know.” George could feel how clammy the other boy’s hands were, even through the fabric. And if he had to be honest, he was sweating bullets at the thought. 

If Krupp knowing about Captain Underpants was complicated, then Krupp being able to use Captain’s powers and be a superpowered tyrant was a nightmare. Specifically, the Nightmare. 

Harold broke the silence. “What are we gonna do?”

George’s brow creased into something determined. “We’re gonna figure out what’s wrong with Captain Underpants, fix it somehow, and make a new plan,” he replied. “Not necessarily in that order.”

If future versions of themselves told past George and Harold of a few months ago that they’d spend this particular Saturday renovating Krupp’s house, they’d laugh in their faces.

Sure, it was more of a prankovation (Prank Renovation, trademark) with ulterior motives, but still. The shadow of the lonely house loomed over the both of them. Harold adjusted the strap on his backpack, the weight of its contents weighing heavy. He nodded to George before the both of them approached Captain Underpants, and said--

“-- We know what’s wrong.”

That made the hero tense up. His mouth moved for a moment, but no sound came out. Another attempt. “…You do?”

Harold held his tongue as he looked over to George. They’ve been in this game for too long, seen that face before, usually on each other’s faces whenever they got called out by their parents. His brow pinched together-- yeesh, it felt weird to be on this end of this particular discussion.

George came to his side and patted the hero on the arm. “Yeah, I mean you said so yourself-- Mr. Krupp’s house is super boring.”

“So we thought that maybe, we could help make living there bearable for you!” he finished.

“Oh,” Captain mumbled, surprised and letting out a small sigh of relief. “Oh! Yes, that is exactly what’s wrong.”

“Thought so!” Harold beamed as he shrugged off his backpack and opened it--

-- showing its contents: old prank supplies they never used, streamers, party balloons, toilet paper, and other odds and ends. “Take your pick!” He made a grand gesture bag-wards.

Captain Underpants let out a small gasp. He fished out the roll of toilet paper with a fervent glee and began to float up to the roof’s edge. He tapped a finger on his chin before deciding to string it along the roof’s edge like it were decorative banners. The boys let out a small snicker before letting out a full-belly laugh, holding onto each other as support.

“Ah-- artisanal TP’ing,” George said, wiping a tear from his eyes.

“Hey, Captain!” Harold yelled up once he got over his giggles. “Are you good out here? We’re-- uh-- Gonna do some stuff inside.” 

And then said Captain inexplicably got tangled up in his own TP. “Absolutely, sidekicks! I--” he let out a little grunt of effort as he tried to worm his way out of it. “I’m doing better than fine! I’ll be right with you once I’m finished with this.”

“Great!” And the both of them immediately scurried into the house, its door wide open thanks to Captain. It was the exact same as it was the first time they snuck in.

Well, same for the most part, George thought.

They tiptoed to the coffee table until they realized, oh, right they were literally the only people in here, and just walked normally the rest of the way.

The table was strangely scarce of the sticky notes from the day before. 

“Hold on, I stepped in something,” Harold mumbled.

George made a disgusted face.

“No, not like that--” and he picked up a sticky note that got stuck to his shoe. This is pathetic, the note said in neat script, its heart dots criss-crossed out. His gaze shifted to the floor, to a few sticky notes that were jutting out awkwardly from under the TV stand.

George knelt down and squinted. Besides the sticky notes, there was a suspiciously boxy thing under all that clutter. He glanced up to the ceiling and the muffled sound of Captain still struggling. He took the poker from the fireplace and began to fish out both cassette and sticky notes that happened to be in its way when it was pulled out.

There were so many sticky notes that it looked like the makings of a classic sticky notes prank, where you’d cover every surface with the thing. The other messages were more of the same derision. For goodness sake, put on some pants, one said. Sure, real heroic, leaving behind construction bill a mile wide, another needled.

One was ripped up, its top half gone to who-knows-where. Must be nice, not having to care about real world consequences.

“Yeesh,” Harold winced. “No wonder Captain Underpants wanted to bunk with us.”

“Krupp must’ve hid all this,” George mumbled, picking up the cassette. He blew off the dust. Said cassette was a clunky thing, with a handle at the end. Half-ripped congratulatory stickers-- the same kind Melvin sometimes had on his tests when they were handed back-- were scattered across its surface. 

And on its side, in big, bold permanent marker-- CAPTAIN. It was clearly scrubbed and re-applied and scrubbed again, leaving a cloudy blur behind the name.

It was clear who was, quite literally, trying to scrub Captain Underpants’ personal touches from this. His brow creased as he continued to flip the cassette in his hands.

“Hey, are you OK?” Harold asked, noticing the other boy’s contemplative expression.

“No, yeah-- I’m good,” George answered. “Just… surprised, I guess, that Krupp didn't just throw all this out, you know?”

“I guess figuring out he’s also Captain Underpants is taking a toll on him, too?”

“Hm,” George hm’ed. He looked out the window, and once he was content that Captain was still preoccupied with his own project, quickly stuffed it into his bag under his other books. Well, at least the hard part was done.

They looked at each other and smirked. Harold held up a set of party poppers with a mischievous grin. George held up a laundry line lined with underwear.

“Well, we might as well do what we came to do,” George said with a matching grin.

One prankovation, complete with Tasteful Underwear Decor and Strategically Placed Party Poppers later, and the boys shuffled back into the treehouse in the late afternoon. George slid his bag off, and slid it forward like a curling rock. Its contents slipped out, supplies and all… including the cassette. 

It now sat at the center of Treehouse Comix Inc. like a cursed artifact. All it needed was a platform with a trap to set the scene. The shaft of sunlight that filtered through the windows will have to do. George pressed the rewind button. The box whirred as the tape began its loop back. Time felt it was being pulled and dragged at the same pace the bit of tape made its way backwards. All that was left to do was wait until it was done.

Maybe it was because neither of them had ever been keen on sitting still and waiting, or maybe it was guilt, or both, but the boys felt a wave of unease. 

“How long do you think they’ve been talking to each other?” Harold piped up. “There were a lot of sticky notes under there. Like, a lot-a lot.”

“A few days?” George surmised. On the one hand, there were literally a bajillion sticky notes. On the other, each sticky note had a few sentences at most, and considering how often they’d have to switch back and forth to just have a regular conversation... “Maybe they started as soon as they found out about each other, I dunno.”

Harold scratched the back of his head. “But then wouldn’t Captain Underpants tell us about that right at the start?”

“Would he?”

Harold frowned, unsure of how to answer. His now-clammy hands wrung at the end of his shirt. They should be making comics right now, or-- or something that wasn’t going behind Captain Underpants’ back like this. His gaze shifted to the now-quiet cassette player. 

“You wanna press play together?” George asked.

Harold nodded.

The boys picked up the cassette together, a finger hovered on the play button each.

Click.

And there was another click sound, from the recording. “--Principal, your attempts to convince me are bad and terrible--”  Captain then proceeded to blow an absurdly long raspberry before it was cut off by the recording's click. The boys couldn’t help but snicker.

“Maybe we should skip forward a bit?” Harold suggested.

George was already pressing fast-forward. “Way ahead of you.” 

“-- Yes, fabric softener is important!--”

Fast forward.

“--Principal, your hostile scrawlings are not appreciated,” the recording of Captain said.

Harold was about to press the fast forward button again, but George grabbed his wrist and shook his head. 

The tape stopped abruptly and started back up as the hero continued his half. “Our body,” he corrected. “And it’s not like I like… leaving, and then have you terrorize my sidekicks like a second-rate villain!”

They were working with a blind spot and trying to piece together a conversation they only knew a part of, but the picture it did leave them with was… unsettling.

Stop. Another conversation fragment. “I’ll have you know, as a hero, I’ve done more for this fair city than you ever will.”

Harold held onto his half tighter.

“Of course I care. It’s part and parcel of being a hero, Principal.”

Stop. Another conversation fragment--

“Sidekicks, have you seen...” 

There were two voices now: one from the cassette, and one...

They whirled around with wide dinner-plate eyes to find the Waistband Warrior himself looking at them with a stricken expression.

Thinking was never Captain Underpants’ strong suit. Suits weren’t his strong suit either-- they should really change that expression. Unless you counted birthday suits, in which case, yes, it was his strong suit.

Wait, he lost his point. Let’s try this again.

He mostly went with his gut in most cases, and he had plenty of it to spare anyway. So when he got chewed out by the other guy through strongly worded sticky notes about-- and he’ll stand by this-- improvements he and his sidekicks made to the house, and couldn’t find his usual method to reply he did what any good hero would do.

He naturally went to his sidekicks. Maybe they had thrown it out, or put it somewhere else. 

Well, the Waistband Warrior wasn’t wrong, per se. Something cold settled in his gut as he heard his own voice crackle from within the treehouse, from behind his sidekicks.

“Sidekicks,” he said again.

There was an emotion that the hero instinctively wanted to grab, but it felt wrong. Out-of-character. Sharp taste, throat-burning, heat rising to his face ready for that energy to be released somehow. So Captain super-stomped it down in the deepest part of his mind or heart or gut or wherever the other guy goes. 

And now his sidekicks were looking up at him with dinner plate eyes and the cassette was still playing.

“I-- I see you’ve found… that.” Captain’s voice isn’t quite at his usual brassy timbre-- it’s too forced, too tight, and the more he tries not to, the more his voice veers too close to the other guy’s voice for anyone’s comfort-- “It’s quite an amazing contraption, is it not? A machine that records voices--”

“We already know you talk to Krupp.”

“Haha, what?”

The boys only gave him a Look. Captain shrank down.

“I’m sure there’s some sort of misunderstanding at play here,” he tried to explain himself. “Taking things without permission-- from a hero no less!-- is not sidekick-ly behaviour.”

“Neither is keeping things from your sidekicks,” Harold shot back, his guilt apparent on his face. His fingers gripped onto the cassette tighter as it continued its background noise of incoherent babbles.

“What he means to say is, we were worried,” George offered. 

“You could have asked,” the hero mumbled. 

“Could we?” Harold interjected. His fingers were getting so clammy it was getting more difficult to hold his side of the cassette.

The whimpers from the cassette continued.

“Yes, because I would have reassured you that nothing is wrong.” He struck a Classic Superhero Stance-- hands on hips, shoulders leaned back, reassuring smile that was all teeth. “See? I’m still the same ol’ Captain Underpants!”

“M-- my backstory is real,” his own voice warbled from the cassette. It almost felt mocking, considering the timing of it. “ And-- and the things I do are too, s-- so stop saying they aren’t.”

One of the boys, thankfully, pressed stop. All three of them stewed in the silence uncomfortably. Harold’s hands fidgeted. George had taken the cassette in his hands fully, a thumb grazing over one of the half-ripped stickers.

Captain’s smile shifted to a wince. He glanced away for a moment, but his body was still in that Stance stubbornly. “Ah. That.”

“Yeah, that,” Harold echoed.

The branches shuddered in the wind. Captain was shuddering in the same way. The boys looked on, unsure of what to make of the expression on the hero’s face. It felt… strange, to see his eyes look so… sad? But that wasn’t the right word, was it?

“Y-- you know how it is in each issue-- of course you do, you’ve made it!” He gestured to the cassette. “The foe appears, I defeat it, we move on to the next story without a second thought.”

George and Harold gave each other worried glances.

“I miss what it was like before all…” His hands gestured wildly to the air around him. “...this. I know you do, too.” Captain shut his eyes tight, into that familiar scrunched-up expression. “But at the same time I don’t?”

George tilted his head. “But, Krupp’s been nothing but mean to you.”

Captain’s hands stop. They clench and unclench, as if that would give form, give words to his thoughts he wasn’t used to thinking. He wasn’t built for something this… continuity-heavy. For such dour a tone. He was vaguely aware of that much, at least. 

Funny how much he could do that when his time in the sun wasn’t interrupted by monsters terrorizing the city or an errant water droplet, in the safety of a sad house.

“I know, but--” Captain can’t really blame him, can he? He was lodged into a story that was never his, but he didn’t have the words to voice everything. It would be difficult to describe, he thought, even if he did have all the words. His sidekicks were still boys, but more importantly, would probably never be able to understand on his level, what this was like.

All he had were symbols and grawlixes and so he settled on, “It’s--”

“Complicated,” the boys chorused.

“I was gonna say weird, but that works too.” His hands began to pull at the cape tassels around his neck, his head bowed down. “Lying may be unbecoming of a hero, but know that I did it for you two. I didn’t want to hurt you or make you sad, but… well, I still did, and I’m so sorry.” 

Two pairs of arms encircled him. His Stance wavered. His shoulders loosened. And then his knees buckled and sent him kneeling down to take the hug in proper. His sidekicks buried their faces into each shoulder.

Thank goodness they can’t see his face right now. Thank goodness he can’t see his own. The hero could feel heat rising to his face and his eyes getting watery.

“We were telling the truth about wanting to help you,” Harold insisted.

Captain’s arms hesitantly circle them back-- one hand gingerly placed on each boys’ shoulder. It was good-familiar-grounding.

“And I do not doubt that, sidekicks,” he said finally. 

“You know you’re real to us, to everyone you’ve saved, right?” George said.

A lump formed in the hero’s throat. He held them tighter before letting himself nod. As much as he wanted to stay in this moment for longer, it was clear it was overstaying its welcome. He took a deep breath, before pulling away. 

“One question.” Captain hazarded to crack a smile, and this time it reached his eyes.

“Yeah?” Harold perked up.

“Does this mean I have to call you something else besides sidekicks?”  he asked. “Since you, um. You know.”

The boys let out a little laugh.

“Don’t think about it so hard,” George said. “Besides, I think calling us your creators would feel really weird and hokey.”

“Besides, we like being your sidekicks,” Harold added.

“And, um,” George held out the cassette player. “Sorry again.”

Captain took it back and put it by his side. There were things he didn’t want to touch on yet, things he wanted to leave dog-eared and in a box, but this was enough. More than enough to feel a little bit lighter. “Now, I think we’ve had our fair share of sorries for today. I think it’s time for me to head out.”

The boys chorused their respective noise of agreeance as they waved Captain Underpants off. As soon as he was just a speck in the sky, George and Harold gave each other a knowing Look.

They didn’t know what they were going to do, but one thing was for sure: this was going to be one of those long-term plans, wasn’t it?

Chapter Text

By the time Captain Underpants reached the man in his head’s house, the fuzzy feeling in his chest had fizzled out. The issue is done. A resolution was reached. They’ve all said their nice words, and it’s fine now. 

The house was silent, save for the TV that he had left on. The living room was still littered in what remained of the prankovation (trademark). He paid no heed to the grown up talk on air as his own words from earlier kept rattling around his head.

I miss what it was like before all this. I know you do, too.

He circled his way around the table before plopping on the chair. The light from the TV practically bleached out the scattered notes on the table, leaving the other man’s words impossible to read. Right now, he really didn’t want to read them. With everything that’s happened, he had almost forgotten that he had just been talking about how annoyed he was at the prank earlier.

He’d have to reply, eventually, but at this moment, he feels…

He feels.

He doubled over and clutched the cassette recorder against his chest. It reminded him of the moment he had recorded– what his sidekicks listened to – and his body seized up even further. He was fine earlier, so why was he acting like this? He had even thought, for a moment, that it was a latent effect from a monster. 

Captain knew it wasn’t. A part of him wished it was, like how he wished things were before.

He glanced back to the cassette in his hands. It was too dark to see through the plastic door that showed the cassette tape, but he knew it was equal on both ends of the spooling parts of it, paused right after that moment. A moment he didn’t want to share like that.

But they were his sidekicks. He supposed that they had the right to know, so it was fine. It was fine.

Captain’s hands shook in the dark. From the edge of his vision, he saw the light that lit up the chair and the living room change. Pale blue, to darkness, to red from a commercial.

His words rattled in his head, both what was recorded and what was said. The letters snare the other ones like they were static clung together– at the same time I don't.  

His mind felt like it was racing, but the only thing on the tracks was grawlixes ensnared in agitrons. He could feel it make a one-way trip to his chest, where it sat heavily.

After what felt like an eternity of being curled up, the feeling managed to fade, Captain quietly peeled himself off the seat. He turned on the light.

“Well–” He floundered for a moment, trying to recall where they left off. It felt like years since he spoke to him. Play it cool. “I think the prankovation, trademark, is an improvement.”

He dipped a few fingers in a nearby glass and flicked the drops in his face. 

Snap. He let the uncomfortable tenseness in his limbs wash over him before it dissipated.

What were you doing for an hour?!

“I was…” He looked back down at the cassette player. “Looking for the cassette. It, uh, got misplaced in the shuffle.”

Splash, snap. The fact he couldn’t feel much from the man felt worse than feeling a dissipating sweep of emotion. At least then, he could try and guess where this was going– as terrible as it felt. 

Awfully convenient timing, the note remarked vaguely.

Captain could practically feel the accusation curdling under the ink. He knew his voice would have too much ache in it to rebuke the statement. He cannot lie. 

In a smaller voice: “My sidekicks found it.”

The ache twisted. He nearly spilled the cup he was using as he put his hand in it and wiped his face. 

Snap. 

The twisting feeling mingled with the prickling hot emotion of the man in his head.

Those brats know?

“They’re not brats!” he defended. “They’re… they’re just looking out for me.”

Splash, snap. No prickling hot this time, just something he could only describe as slimy.

Behind your back? Sounds about right.

“I– I trust them,” he said out loud, though he made no effort to record it. His voice was too shaky for that– he repeated the words until they came out smoother and only then did he record.

Splash, snap. I mean, you didn’t know you weren’t real until now. Who knows what else they’re hiding.

Captain shook his head. This shouldn’t be affecting him this badly– any hero worth their salt knows how villains will do anything to get a rise out of you for any sort of footing. This was no different. He knew this was no different.

Captain grounded his teeth until he swore he heard it crack under the pressure. 

“Even– even if they were hiding something, I still trust them.” A pause. “That was just a hiccup, and minor conflicts are bound to happen. They’ll do the right thing in the end, usually.”

The Waistband Warrior listened through the recording again. The response felt foolproof!

Splash. Snap.

He was hit by the caramel onion emotion again. Sweet and good feeling at first until you got into the acidic onion-y part. It was the exact same feeling that lingered in his chest when the man in his head told him he wasn’t real.

They’ll do the right thing in the end “usually”? the note said. Honestly, you should keep better track of your little “sidekicks” and what they do– ten year olds don’t exactly have the best judgment.

In smaller print in brackets: (eg. Stealing that cassette. You know that counts as breaking and entering, right?)

Something hot flared in his gut seeing the last statement. “They are not thieves!”  

Captain immediately clamped his mouth shut with a hand. He gave a quick glance to the recorder, relieved that he hadn’t pressed the record button yet. 

He brought himself to stand on solid ground. Made his way to close the suddenly too loud TV. Was this how he ran the school? Is this how he thought of the children? His sidekicks?

He swallowed. Forced the heat in his gut to cool. Pressed record. Paused.

“We are a team.”

Splash, snap.

Are you, the note retorted. Because from my end, it looks like you're their personal idiot that’s part of a months long gag. One that may be going stale.

Captain elected not to give a response to that. Saying nothing was not a lie. Plus, the man in his head was ruthless, combed at every dip and rise in his voice and managed to figure him out. If his sidekicks had anything else to hide, then there had to be a good reason.

There had to be.

Captain looked at the sticky note one more time and placed it on the far end of the table. He needed… alone time. Or at least, alone time without seeing all those little notes.

He decided to follow his gut feeling, and his gut led him to the Closet At The End Of The Hallway, cassette player in hand. As he opened the door, his sights were set on a box in the lower shelf. With a quick press to the cassette door, he pulled the tape out, placed it in a box of other tapes he used, and pulled out a fresh– and most importantly, empty– one. 

The lights from the living room didn’t quite reach his little corner of the hallway, leaving him half-shadowed. He was still expecting something to pop out of a dark corner, or for the flowers on the wallpaper to twist to vines. But, the more he was out here, the house felt less lonely. 

Alone, maybe. But in the same way he was alone– with another presence looming around him.

(Or, within him, he guessed?)

Haunted, then? No, that word rattled in his brain like a rock you wanted out of a shoe. Apparently, that sort of thing was pretty uncomfortable.

Captain scratched at his chest with a frown, trying to will the ache to lessen. He sighed. Rocks.

He thought back to the papers scattered across the living room. To the confused looks on his sidekicks’ face. To the scattered remnants of the man’s backstory he could find in this closet. These moments were not fights, but there was a strange weight to these quiet and small moments he never had a chance to parse before. It wasn’t like his usual fare, but it wasn’t not, in some ways.

He’s still trying to untangle this specific subplot.

Captain finally placed the cassette in the player. The Man In His Head would not notice the change. The action wouldn’t matter much to anyone except him. 

Maybe that was the point. 

He made his way back to the living room. Nothing changed from when he left, and yet he was still… expectant.

Captain had contemplated staying for longer– how could he not, with the amount of plot threads he needed to untangle? But the time that stretched out before him was much more daunting than any villain, and he wouldn’t know where to start.

He thought back to the Man In His Head. If he was out, the other was not. Being out meant there was one less evil in the world. But he was a superhero, not a jailer with a key. It wasn’t his nature.

He splashed water on his face.

Snap.

Cuts from one scene to the next was a familiar thing to him. Much more than the endless stretches of time he was allotted in the house. So when one blink later he was somewhere that wasn’t in that lonely house, Captain sat up quickly. He was already getting out of the man’s clothes to get into something more heroic.

“Sidekicks?” 

George gave him a look. “Uh, Captain Underpants–”

“How’re you feeling?” Harold added.

In record time, he was out of the clothes the man in his head insisted on and had grabbed a picnic blanket-cape conveniently on the ground. 

“Well, I don’t feel like I was smashed to the ground, so… pretty good! Now where’s that monst– ack!”

Four hands grabbed at his cape before he could properly fly up. The momentum left him upside-down. 

From his point of view, Harold’s mouth curled up– that is to say it curled down, if he were right side up. “There’s no monster.”

“There’s always a monster.”

Now both of them were right side up-grimacing. 

Captain tilted his head, his entire body flipping right-side up at the motion, and amended with, “Or, uh, at least a conflict.”

“In that case…”

“Krupp’s cracked down on a lot of the school rules,” George explained. “And I figure that this would be a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.”

Captain gulped, trying to will away the words exchanged in the previous scene. “M– metaphorically, right?”

“It’s for all of us!” Harold picked up where the other left off. “Even you, after what Krupp must’ve put you through.”

“Now–” George waved a hand. “We were thinking that we could do a rehash of the prankovation, but–”

“We thought he might expect that! So then I thought you could help us out in the ideas department, like you did with the whole Brain Farts issue. Whaddya say?”

Captain stopped hovering. He could feel the stuck rock feeling again, rolling around in his chest.

“Listen, we get it– I know the last time you helped, it was… well, never mind about that,” Harold winced. “Nothing like that’s going to happen this time, we promise. And you won’t get caught. Plus, you’re the only one who can help us.”

“Promise?” Captain echoed, testing out the word like one would test the weight of a projectile before throwing it. 

“Yeah, for sure.” George said quickly, like throwing a hot potato before moving on. He looked up from what he was doing and handed him a plastic bag of supplies. “Think of this as… Free The Children, Part Two.” 

Captain gave a look inside. He wasn’t sure how the supplies connected to each other– he was never a planning sort of guy.

“Ah, to make school fun again, right?” 

“Yeah!”

His shoulders untensed. That was a good thing, he reassured himself. “Well, when you put it like that– what do you need me to do?”

But before I tell you the rest of this story, I have to tell you this one.

Sunlight skirted off the remaining leaves around Treehouse Comix Inc. The wind was quickly snapping them up and off towards other autumn-y pastures. They had to bust out some of the blankets they kept up there, but eventually their parents were going to start telling them they’re not allowed up as George’s dad fortified it for winter.

The key word was eventually. There were more pressing matters at stake than getting a little cold.

Harold frowned at the page he was working on. The content was fine, but something about the way he was drawing it was frustrating him and he didn’t know why. He set it aside next to the other pages. 

“Ugh,” he let himself splay on the ground dejectedly, face planting into the wood floor.

“Is that an ugh for Krupp suddenly going crazy mode with his rules or an ugh for the Cass-Incident?” George asked, leafing through his notebook and crossing out some of the more half-baked ideas.

“Uuugh,” Harold ugh’ed, which roughly translated to both.

He made his own noise of agreement as he crossed out another idea.

In one corner: the entire fourth grade had been blindsided by the sudden announcement of a whole gauntlet of assessments. Essays in English class, timed tests in math, horrible running tests in gym, but the real kicker was what was in store for science– a fair with mandatory participation. Even the weekend Invention Convention didn’t have that!

In the other: the Cassette Incident (Cass-Incedent, for short). It didn’t weigh in their minds so much as it squatted in the corner of it. It was just one of those things that was looming like a principal-and-or-superhero-shaped elephant in the room.

Harold slammed a fist down to the floor and pushed the sketchbook away. Instead of walking over, he just rolled beside the beanbag the other boy was sitting on. 

“This is too much.”

“I know.” He set his own notepad to the side. “It took a long time to figure out how to make comics at the same speed we did before we were in separate classes, now I’m not even sure we can keep up the same release schedule with everything else now.”

A pause. “Do you think this has to do with the Cass-Incident? The timing is too convenient.”

“What else could it be? It’s mostly affecting our grade.” Then, in a frustrated grumble he added: “Everything lately feels like it leads back to them.” 

Harold said a soft hm, before picking up the recently abandoned sketchbook. Turning to a new page, he started to draw.

“What did he mean by that he didn’t want it to change?” he asked. The doodle was Captain Underpants standing around with the same confused hurt they saw on his face as he found out that they found out. “Like you said, Krupp’s been nothing but mean to him.”

George thought for a moment. “Maybe he’s afraid of things getting worse if they did change. And, well–” He gestured vaguely.

“The sudden rules right after we found out.” Harold stared at the page intently. He started placing more lines; a panel around the Captain doodle, lighter lines radiating behind him. Shadows at his feet. “Poor Captain Underpants. At least he doesn’t have to deal with school.”

“Small victory that is.”

Harold continued scratching out more shadows. “What are we going to do?”

George put a hand to his chin. If he was right about the rule changes connecting to the Cass-Incident– and let's be real, he had a high chance of it on account of Krupp being predictable– then they had to deal with it and the source in one fell swoop. An inkling of a plan was forming in the back of his mind. 

And they could mesh it into the as-of-now half-baked idea they had shortly after said Cass-Incident. 

He stood up and made his way over to the Treehouse compartment where they kept stuff for their pranks. He began pulling everything out and dumped it on the ground.

“We’re going to need supplies. I don’t think the stuff we got is enough.”

The other boy sat up and dusted himself off. Confusion gave way to a determined look; he didn’t need to hear the plan– he knew this was going to be good. “What do we need?”

Chapter Text

Back in the present day, the boys snuck into the art room. Even now, there wasn’t a proper class for it in Jerome Horwitz, despite The Prank For Good. But because of it, Krupp never had the thought to put it under lock and key again. The doors still remained unlocked for any kid that needed it. And George and Harold had a big need. In fact, they had been caching away supplies when no one was looking.

Captain Underpants trailed behind them; he looked at the room and gave a small nod, murmuring something about being “back at the start”.

“What will we be doing this time, sidekicks?” He clapped his hands together. “Oh! I could try and ask for a carnival again–”

“NO!” both of them shouted. The hero jumped up in surprise and stayed in a low hover.

George was the quicker of the two to regain composure. “No, no– we’re doing something different.”

“Oh.”

Harold unpacked the contents of his bag. There was a ridiculous amount of flour and bottles around them, along with other plastic pails and shovels.

“Ooh, are we making a cake? Can I decorate it?” Captain asked.

George sighed. “It’s not for a cake.”

“Well, what is it for?” 

Harold dumped a bunch of flour and oil into the largest bucket with the glee reserved for children about to make a huge mixture of stuff. “Sand!”

When the hero continued to look baffled, George cut in. “With Krupp instating the grade-wide assignment gauntlet, we have to retaliate with the exact opposite of that.”

“…Recess?”

“Close!” Harold began to mix the concoction with a plastic shovel. “Summer vacation!”

“And we need to make a lot to really sell the beach vibe.”

“Oh…” Captain nodded with the confidence of someone who had no idea what that meant. He knelt down and gave a curious sniff at the flour sand, catching the faint whiff of some sort of cooking oil and began to mix his own bucket the other boy handed to him.

To make a long story short, they managed to create enough of it to create a sizable layer in at least two classrooms. They hauled the first half of it to Guided’s classroom–or rather, Captain flew it over in record time. He began to push all the desks back and started to stack them high up against the edges of the wall. It reminded Harold of that one time he showed George a boardwalk on a faded postcard, tall buildings looming over sandy beaches.

“Why only two?” Captain asked as he stacked some of the desks on the teacher’s desk. “Why not make the whole school a beach?”

The boys perked up from their efforts to place the sand evenly across the classroom floor.

“‘Cause the first big tests are in Ms. Guided and Ribble’s classrooms,” Harold said.

“We’d have loved to do something big," George explained as he scattered the beach toys. "Really put the last big prank that happened here to shame–”

“But we had to improvise. Go for lots of smaller ones for the first part of this plan, you know?”

“First part?” Captain echoed. 

“Yeah!” Harold continued, ushering them all out of the room. Captain followed in a low hover, and George swept over the remaining footprints with a hand. Looking back at their work, it looked like no one was ever in the room.

“The first bit is to wear all the teachers and Krupp down. And then–”

“Bam.” he punched into his own open palm. “That’s where you come in!”

Captain tilted his head. “I thought this was where I came in?”

“What? No– I mean, we appreciate your help, but you have a bigger part to play here.”

“I do?” he asked.

“We figured you’d want to get back at Krupp, right?” George said. 

Captain was silent, his expression dumbfounded. 

“With enough pressure, he’ll back off from you and he’ll back off with all the sudden assignments!” Harold clarified. “It’ll be great.”

“We’re not sure how long he’s planning on making everyone miserable, but we’re planning for the long game.”

That seemed to make things more murky for him but the curiosity still remained. He tilted his head with furrowed brows, as if trying to figure out the connection between the two facts. “…How long, exactly?” 

“As long as it takes.” Harold gave him a good natured punch to the side. “Now come on, let’s get the other classroom set up.”

The boys grabbed his hands and led him back to the art room, chatting about what else they could do.

The school didn’t know what hit them. 

Later that day, the fourth graders enjoyed the slices of beaches in the pair of classrooms. They made their sandcastles and moats as the teachers tried– and failed– to get their papers from their desks buried under their own students’ desks. 

And on the day after that, there was the petting zoo in the math classrooms on the same day a calculator-less test on long division was meant to happen. It was no tiger, but the kids enjoyed petting the sheep. For extra salt in the wound, there were numbers drawn in bright colors on their wool. 

Corralling the animals out was one thing. Finding out they were only Sheeps #1-6 and 8 was another, leaving all the teachers to scramble to find the last sheep of the set for the past few hours.

Apparently, the third time wasn’t the charm as George and Harold were called into the principal’s office. When they walked in, he had never bothered to close one of the desk drawers, clearly embroiled in whatever work principals do. Krupp was faced away from them, yelling into the phone.

“How many times do I have to explain it to you, there probably isn’t a Sheep #7– are you falling asleep counting them?” He turned to face them and grimaced. “I’ll get back to you.” 

He hung up the phone, glaring at them as they took their respective seats. 

“Care to explain the last few days?”

Harold shifted in his seat as he gave a glance to the other boy. “We have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“We were a bit too busy dealing with the sudden wave of assignments and tests to try anything,” George added with a shrug.

“Don’t play innocent with me. The gaps in my memory are extremely obvious.” He waggled an accusatory finger at them.

“Like we said, we were busy–”

“What– watching him get bit by sheep yesterday?!” He held up his other arm filled with band aids of various sizes.

George leaned over to the other boy and whispered, “Man, they can be really vicious, huh?” 

Krupp slammed his fists onto his desk. He opened his hands. Closed them. Before pushing himself off his seat to look down at them. “Whether you’ll actually admit it, I’ll cut to the chase. Stop whatever you’re trying to do.”

“If it was us, why would we? You started it.”

“Oh, hah–” He let out an incredulous, breathless laugh at that. “I started it? You’re one to talk after all you’ve done to me. You should be grateful I don’t just hold you back right now for that comment!”

Harold was unmoved. “Man, you got so much worse– I didn’t think that was possible.”

“Oh, I can do so much worse after your little breaking and entering stunt,” he shot back. “Invading my privacy, looking into things you shouldn’t–”

“So you admit you were talking to him.”

“Now I never said anything about talking, have I?”

George and Harold leveled a glare at him, refusing to give him any confirmation or satisfaction that he was right. “So that is why you cracked down on the entire fourth grade, huh?”

“Or maybe it has to do with the fact that I’m losing sleep over mysterious injuries!” The boys wanted to speak up, but he refused to give them that. “And– and, seeing the school be nearly destroyed multiple times a week.”

“Not like you really cared about the school before,” George grumbled.

Krupp spluttered furiously, turning a new shade of red in the process. “Says the children who keep on endangering it and wasting its resources!"

“We’re saving the school!”

“From problems you made up.” He slowly made his way around his desk to them. “Is that why you made me your little stooge? Were you just tired and wanted to feel important in your little superhero fantasy? Or was getting rid of me the main motivation here?”

George stood up from his chair. “Oh, if we could have, we would have!”

As soon as the words left his mouth, it suddenly felt like the office had turned somewhat askew. Gone was the red in Krupp’s face and gone was the anger– if anything, he looked like he had been slapped in the face. His mouth opened. Closed. Nothing.

The boys were suddenly aware of the clock ticking, now that it was completely silent. George couldn’t help but be reminded of the time he said something that crossed some unseen line with his mom.

And just as quickly as the conversation was fishtailing out of what any of them were used to, the principal clambered for any sense of control.

“I’ll deal with the both of you later.” He put up a hand to rub his temples– and conveniently hid his eyes. “Get out.”

Harold blinked. “What–”

“NOW!” He whipped his arm to point at the door.

They stumbled out of their seats and ran without a second thought.

For the rest of the last class of the school day, Harold was sitting on pins and needles as he looked at the clock. While most kids looked at it expectantly for the final bell to ring, right now he was dreading it.  He figured George was doing the same.

Krupp getting the jump on them was a matter of when today , not if, especially when he was as mad as he was earlier.

Five minutes. He glanced to the front of the class. Even Rected was struggling with the new mandate to increase kids’ work. Which, he guessed, made sense– more work for them meant more stuff the teachers had to look at.

Two minutes.

Speaking of work, he was quickly scribbling out some ideas for the next issues. Though he couldn’t help but let his mind wander off to the other prank plans they had– he figured by the way Rected was pulling at his hair, they can bring Captain in for the cherry on top by the end of next week–

The speakers screeched to life. There was a beat of silence long enough for someone to ask if Krupp called an announcement on accident, until–

“Pop science fair, end of this week,” he said tersely. “Hope you can wow the teachers, since this is now a good chunk of your mark. How much? That’s the ‘pop’ part of that.”

The kids began to groan and slam their heads on their desks. Even more heads fell on their desks as another screech echoed through the school.

“You have George Beard and Harold Hutchins to thank for that. That will be all.”

The bell rang. One by one, everyone turned his direction, some shocked, others confused, many furious. Even Mr. Rected gave a baffled look.

After dodging the onslaught of kids ready to hound him or worse due to the announcement, he found George running down the hallway for similar reasons. At some point along the way, the other boy got their skateboards and helmets. With a frantic throw, they skateboarded out of the front yard and down the quickest route to their house.

“George?” Harold said, once they turned to their street. He had been eerily silent the whole time.

The other boy jumped off his own board and pulled his helmet off. He could see how much sweat was on his forehead now.

“Change of plans–” He stomped the end of the skateboard to make it stand before quickly grabbing it. “We’re taking stock of everything tonight.”

Harold stared at him. He knew why– he could still feel a flare of indignation from that announcement.

It was like George read his mind. “What Krupp said– those were fighting words. We’re going to move the Captain Plan up next.”

He gave a curt nod.

Chapter Text

With the final bell rung, Benjamin made quick work of packing his suitcase. Considering how fast the kids ran out of the school, the halls should be quiet now. The last thing he needed was noise and talking. And so, he stepped out into a reception room filled with faculty. 

Not just talking– yelling. At him.

He glanced over to Anthrope, who should have shooed them all away. Her now-empty seat was still swivelling. 

“Of course,” he grumbled.

“Whadd'ya mean 'of course'?” Rected griped.

“We’re up to our eyelids in marking these brats’ worksheets!” Ribble waved a stack of papers at his face– all from the impromptu beach day, if he read the date right. “And you expect us to mark an entire grade’s worth of volcano projects?!”

“Clearly it's not just the students that need to apply themselves.” 

The rest of the teachers froze.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” He narrowed his eyes, his tone still as clipped from the announcements. “Aren’t you the one always complaining about their marks?”

“Well, yes, but–”

“But nothing, you're the one who insisted on teaching three subjects.” He moved on to other teachers. “Meaner, you’re only doing the running tests– I don’t see why you’re complaining. The most you have to do is make sure they don’t trip over their own shoelaces.”

“The papers–”

“Because its so hard keeping track of when kids stop running.” He turned to Guided. “And you– all the tests are based on stuff your class should have covered by now.”

Guided grumbled something about how the topics were from the start of the semester, no one remembers that.

“Dayken–” Said teacher jolted up from the back. “What are you even doing here? You're a kindergarten teacher.”

“I wanted to feel included–”

“In any case, all I’m hearing–” He pointed an accusatory finger at all of them. “Is that all of you are mad that you need to actually do your job.”

“Excuse you?!” Ribble shot back. No other teachers spoke up.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do before you barged in here.” He pointed at Rected and Ribble. “You have until the end of the week to make it work.”

He could feel something tighten in his chest flare as he saw the teachers back off. It wasn’t relief, but it was a near thing. At least he wasn’t on the back foot. 

“Dismissed.” The tone broached no argument.

The impromptu staff meeting ended– not with a bang, but a whimper. More accurately, it was a grumble of swears that cannot be recounted in a fanwork made for general audiences. He watched all the teachers skulk out of the room with a leveled glare. 

None of them dared to look back.

If we could have, we would have. Who else would agree?

He stood there until he was absolutely sure he couldn’t hear anyone nearby. After that, it was just a matter of going down the steps. Of making it through the hallway. 

Ignoring how unmoored he felt. He looked to his feet– left, right, left, right. Repeat until he was at the door.

It wasn’t the first time anyone would have thought that about him. Heck, it wasn’t the first time the quiet part was said out loud. It was, however, the first time it was actually doable.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, Ben?”

“Guh–” He whirled around. “Edith!”

She blinked. He stared. The silence lingered a bit too long for his liking, though it was clear she wanted to say something. 

“Do you need anything?” he managed.

“Are you alright?” When no answer came, she continued to trail off. “I mean, I– I saw everyone goin’ up to your office. And then there was the announcement earlier, so–”

“Of course I am.”

Another blink. “O– oh, uh, ok, then…”

“OK, then.” 

Edith persisted. She trailed behind him closely as he came closer to the door. Most days he’d be a little endeared to it, but right now, right now–

“So, where are you going to set up this whole ‘science fair’? You, uh. Forgot to mention it.”

Of course he did. “The cafeteria. It has the space for it.”

He held a hand up to the door. 

“I guess the floors have to be cleaned early…” she mumbled. “Uh, hey– wait!”

He had barely half-opened it.

“If you need anything, just ask, OK?” Then, in a lower voice, she added: “I don’t know why you’re actually doin’ this, but–”

His hand was gone as he whipped back to look at her. “Actually?” he snapped back. 

“I– I know you, and you wouldn’t be doin’ this without a reason.”

“Know me?”

His rage was already so spent– from the boys, the teachers, the other guy, it can only persist for so long. It doesn’t billow out so much as burn him out from the inside. And when pushed that far, something had to give.

“It took you a month to realize I wasn’t being an idiot on purpose,” he said. “The real question is why didn't I do it sooner.” 

Edith’s eyes widened and her shoulders shrank at the remark. Guilt curdled in him, but it was a distant thing. He wanted to leave. He wanted to reach out and take it back. His body chose the worst compromise between the two and made him stand there like an idiot.

“OK then.” She looked away. “Um, I guess I’ll prep the cafeteria for it then.”

“OK then,” was all Benjamin could manage before she left to do just that. Which was fine. That’s what he wanted, right? He needed to get going too.

Left, right, left, right. Car. Drive. He forced himself to focus on the road completely. To hold onto the wheel like a lifeline. And it worked. At least until he hit the first red light– and then the thoughts crept in.

He should have said something different. He should have said it differently. What kind of answer was I should have done it sooner, anyway? 

His knuckles turned bone-white at his grip. 

Still, he felt unmoored– like a sharp turn would make him leap out of his own body, and– If we could have, we would have, George’s voice rattled in his head. They had the motive, and they had shown time and time again they had the means. 

And yet here he still was: sweating in sixty-degree weather.

He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it was yet another thing to mull over and hang over the other guy.

For the next two days, the elementary school was a minefield for George and Harold. Which was why they found themselves stumbling around a corner and quickly entering the nearest empty classroom. The small mob ran past the corner none the wiser.

Harold gave a forlorn look to the stack of comics in his arms. “I don’t know how much of the sales can take this.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it.” George placed a hand to the other boy’s shoulder. “We’ll figure it out. Together.” 

A pause. The other boy gave a cautious look around, now that they had a moment to breathe.

“Well, maybe put that on hold for five minutes, what the heck is up with this classroom?”

The classroom looked normal for the most part– if you ignored the absurd number of desks. There had to be triple the amount– several stacked up on each other like a fortress or maze walls. One precarious tower looked further away than it should be possible in a room this size, but it could easily be tiny desks.

“What the…”

“You two!” a voice cried.

“Ah!” Harold yelled.

“Ah!” George yelled with a little jump.

‘Ah,’ Melvin did not yell. Instead, he said: “I’m surprised you two aren’t out for recess.”

They were still standing by the door so there was no chance of him sneaking past them, and his shock of ginger hair would have stood out if he had decided to stay in. 

“Yeah, well, I’m surprised you, uh… you…” George said, letting the statement hang. “-- That you’re not working on something for that pop science fair.”

Melvin didn't react. He didn’t know whether it was better or worse– especially after Krupp made that dreaded announcement.

“What is it this time?” he continued, gesturing to the desks. “Something that increases the amount of class per classroom?"

"A scale model of the school’s pop science fair-- with additional statistics?” Harold added.

“Something to make people remember why they went into a room!” George added with a laugh, before snapping to a more contemplative look. “No wait, that’d actually be… not half-bad.”

“Hm. I’ll make a note of those,” Melvin said as he continued to stand there and not do that. The conversation lulled into silence a beat longer than comfortable. Before they could speak up, he added: “And for your information, I am working on it. Hold on.”

The both of them gave another cautious once-over to the room. The room– outside of the weird amount of desks– looked normal. It looked free of any invention, save for the muffled rattling noise. George had even peeked behind the teacher’s desk on the off chance it was hidden. 

“What do you mean hold on? There isn’t anything here.”

Melvin didn’t answer. 

Instead, the walls and some of the surrounding fixtures started shimmering different colors before settling on the color of error bars you see on TV.

Harold jumped away from a nearby desk he was leaning on as he felt it shift and become less sturdy, wobbling like heat hazes. As they lifted up to the ceiling, the whir had become a fraction louder.

“What’s going on?” he turned around. “Melv– ah!”

George let out a yell, seeing Melvin’s shape shimmer until he was a mass of red and greens. He ran to him, and his first instinct was to try and grab where his shoulder was. All his fingers met was air. Then thin strands as his hand sailed past where his shoulders would be and into the now-clump of what was the tattletale.

“Melvin!”

The strands rose up and darted away like all the other ones until they were standing in a regular classroom with its usual amount of desks and a third smaller than it looked before.

“He was too young!” George said.

“It should have been me!” Harold threw himself to the ground, bashed a fist against it, and stopped. He thought for a moment before continuing in the same dramatic cadence: “OK, I take it back, that’s a bit too much, but you get it!”

“Are you two done yet?” 

“I swear I can still hear his voice, even now–” the boy whipped his head around so fast his tie went askew. “Melvin!”

He got out of his overdramatic kowtow. “What the heck?!”

“Like I said, I’m working on the Warp-Weft-O-Tron 2000,” he said like it would explain everything. “Stress-testing it, to be more accurate.”

“The wh–” Before George could finish his sentence, the other boy stood up and pointed at the whirring thing behind Melvin.

In the corner of the classroom, around some tools and papers was something that took the space of two desks. Upon closer inspection, it looked like a sewing machine grafted beside a blocky computer . The needle continued its work and its now-unobscured rattling.

They all followed the threads converged to the machine, now completely colorless. They could just barely see the shiny thread zip through it and up the machine until even that thread dissipated. And once it did, the needle made its final whirring before powering down.

The adrenaline of seeing a kid disintegrate, like the strings a few seconds ago, dissipated to incredulity. 

“What kind of science is that thing for–” Harold pointed an accusatory finger at the machine. “Freak-People-Out-ology?!”

“It's built on the principles of techno-textiles and a bit of virtual simulation.” Melvin clicked his pen a few times before pointing it at them. “How about you two?”

“Huh?”

That was apparently the wrong answer as he put a finger to his temple. “I’m merely curious what you’re working on, seeing as Krupp’s announcement said you two suggested the pop science fair.”

And you believe him? George wanted to say, before answering his own question– of course he’d believe that.

Or at the very least, he wouldn’t cast further doubt. Doubting Krupp would mean doubting The Man. Plus, grades were on the line, and that was top priority to the tattletale than trying to think through whether they would ever suggest that.

It had only occurred now to George that that was the reason why Melvin wasn’t automatically on the defensive.

“We’re, uh– keeping it under wraps,” Harold said, realizing the other boy was taking too long to reply.

“Of course.” Melvin nodded in understanding as he made his way to the Warp-Weft-O-Tron and pulled out a spool the size of a lava lamp sitting on top of the sewing machine half. Its threads were soot grey and frayed. He placed it to the side and put an empty spool in its place, but not without grumbling about the material being insufficient.

“I will admit, the sudden nature of this assessment adds a wrench to everything, but– nothing like the stress of an unforeseen deadline to get everything in gear.”

Harold stared at the machine, and then to the boy still engrossed in fixing… whatever. In gear was an understatement if he made a simulation machine on a time crunch.

“You were really holding out on us all these years,” George said, eyeing the computer.

Rows of code scrolled up its screen. Most of it was gibberish, but there were parts he could understand. A record of previous commands and whether it was typed out or recorded through audio. S., MELVIN x1, DESK x15, and more distressingly, a MATERIAL PROCESS WARNING, whatever that was.

“How’d a sock sorter beat this out when you were picking out stuff for the Invention Convention?”

He poked around a nearby toolbox– which was more of a folder of assorted squares of materials. Many of them looked like normal threads, but a good chunk of them weren’t, from how the light bounced off them. 

“Firstly: it's a sock matcher. Secondly: Krupp only accepts the ‘practical’ ones–” He pulled out a square of the latter and placed it in an adjacent slot. Something between contemplation and annoyance edged into his tone. “The Turbo Toilet was pushing it. But, the pop science fair has no such restrictions!” 

“...It doesn’t?”

A thread the same color as the square spat out of some unseen cavity and began wrapping itself around the spool.

“I asked Ms. Ribble about the specificities for this assignment, and she said, and I quote: ‘sure, do what you need to do’.”

George and Harold both sucked a breath through their teeth. Unlike the tattletale, they knew that wasn’t full permission, so much as the classic grown-up tactic of dismissing a kid by giving them a vague answer to sate them.

“Guess not even tattling can get you all the perks you want,” Harold said carefully.

Melvin stopped typing on the computer part of the machine for a moment. With him faced away, they weren’t sure what expression was on his face, but they could feel a shift. Nothing as drastic as what happened in the principal’s office, but it was there.

“You should go.” It wasn’t a suggestion. “I need to troubleshoot.” 

Harold looked to the clock. Recess was almost over, which meant their opportunities to prepare were dwindling.

“Right,” George said.

And they slipped back into an empty hallway. They looked back, and through the window-sliver on the door, they could see the threads shoot up and around the room. The classroom became a black void, though it slowly made its way along the color spectrum.

“What do you think?” Harold asked.

“That our playground street cred is in the gutter at this rate,” George replied.

He gave him a light punch on the arm. Despite everything they couldn’t help but laugh, the sound echoing through the hall. 

“We could use it in the Captain Plan,” Harold replied. “It might be a little difficult to, ah–”

“Turbo Toilet it?” George finished, thinking back to the Invention Convention. He watched as Melvin tried to recalibrate it. “It’s a pretty big wildcard.”

As if on cue, after a few basic prisms popped into existence in the classroom, a rough approximation of a cat did. That, apparently, was too much as the simulation spooled itself back up like before. 

“But I think we do need a wildcard. It'd drive Krupp up the wall.”

Harold winced. “Well, I mean it can’t make anything worse.”

The both of them walked off to the abandoned art room. Harold shuffled his backpack to the front of him as he counted up the supplies he pilfered. To name a few: flour and water to make glue on the fly. Baking soda and vinegar, because those were Classics. Toilet paper– ‘nuff said.

He stared at a box labelled Office Supplies. In it were huge packs of sticky notes, for irony.

As wrong as Melvin was about whose idea the pop science fair was, he was right, frustratingly, about one thing: nothing like the stress of a deadline to get everything in gear.

The Captain Plan was one of their simpler plans, in theory. 

It was simple in the sense that it was meant to only target Krupp. The hard part, for obvious reasons, was that Captain Underpants was integral to said plan.

It amounted to swapping them out at strategic places they set up. Things he can’t stand. Things that he’d be afraid of. Long enough for the experience to stick. Then they’d swap him back to Captain and slowly amp it up. Rinse and repeat.

They’d keep doing this until he took everything back– the whole assignment gauntlet, the whole thing with the science fair–

The whole capital T Thing with Captain. 

And if he refused, well– there wasn’t anything else for it except to rinse and repeat until he did. They’ve got almost half a decades’ worth of grievances to pull back up. 

(“Krupp won’t– can’t expel us for this,” George said the night before, his form backlit by a jumbo flashlight. “I mean, he’ll need us to ‘deal’ with Captain.”

The Treehouse’s windows were boarded up to get ready for the colder weather. They should be prepping it for winter, putting stuff away so it won’t get messed up, since they insisted they didn’t need George’s parents’ help, but here they were– 

“I mean, he could hold us back now.”

“But would he really want to keep us there if we keep doing this?”

Harold shivered. “Point taken.”)

The walkie-talkie in Harold’s pocket made a noise. 

“Yyyello’.”

“How’s it going?”

Right now, the ‘it’ in question was scoping out the cafeteria. The tables were all neatly arranged in rows and ready for whatever project the fourth graders will put on them later. There was no one here save for Edith, who was deep in the kitchen.

“Melvin’s stuff is here.” 

He made his way over to the Warp-Weft-shaped tarp. After double checking for any Tattle-Turtles, he was disappointed to find no obvious screws to loosen at the access hatch.

Harold began pulling at the spool on top, unsure of how exactly to mess it up outside of tying the thread in knots. One end of the thread snaked its way to the needle, while the other end–

The other end came out of a small hole, which in turn was connected to the strange hatch Melvin put in that material square that one time. He pulled out a pair of undies, courtesy of Captain himself, and stuffed it into the slot.

The sewing machine whirred, clearly having difficulty with processing a non-square material. The thread didn’t move to spool itself, but it must have processed it by the way the underpants were disappearing in the slot.

As for the computer: it reminded him more of the school printer. There were menus upon menus of settings. In any case, Harold set out to randomly poking at them all. Some he understood– audio commands on, because that may be useful for their plan since it would be easier than trying to get close to type anything out. Everything else?

“...What the heck is a Young’s Module?” Harold asked, less out of curiosity and more to commentate for George’s benefit. “What do you think? Max or minimum?”

“I mean, Krupp’s pretty old…” his voice crackled through the walkie talkie.

“High it is!” And with that, he quickly swiped it as far to the right as he could before quickly closing everything out to the first screen. “OK, I’ll get back to y–”

“Ben!” Edith’s voice called out from across the cafeteria.

Harold ducked under the tarp before either of them could see him.

“We got a situation. Krupp’s here,” he whispered loudly.

“What? Why?!”

Harold hazarded to peek at the small gap between the tarp and the floor. He had been expecting like-liking goo-goo talk. If he had to be honest, he would have preferred that to whatever angry inspector routine Krupp was doing.

“Checking, I think.” 

He tilted his head at the principal running a finger over a table for dust. The action was clearly more for acting out… whatever this was, than any actual concern for cleanliness. The lunch lady continued to trail behind him, trying– and failing– to start a conversation.

There was a quick inhaling noise through the speakers. “OK, give me a minute. Move when I give the signal.”

Harold didn’t reply, mostly because they were close enough that he could hear them. Even from this distance, he could see how heavy the bags under his eyes were. How his posture was more hunched than usual.

Krupp sighed deeply, and his shoulders sagged even further. “I’ve been through worse. Trust me.” It almost sounded like a plea.

The lunch lady had no time to dwell on a response as the intercom screeched to life.

“Principal Krupp, please report to your office immediately,” George’s voice crackled through the intercom with a mock-smug air.

“Oh, for–” Said principal ran past her brusquely that the pin that was keeping her bangs up over her face had jostled to cover half her eye.

The signal!

“Good talk!” she called after him belatedly, but made no move to go after him. Then with a big sigh, she mumbled, “I’m blowin’ this.”

And with that, she made her way back to the kitchen and finally gave Harold an opening to get out of there. He made a mad dash to the doors, making sure to not slam it as he trailed him. Now that he was in the hallway, the faint sound of crackling and shuffling echoed throughout.

“Hey, how far is he from the office?” George asked, his voice crackling from both walkie talkie and still-active intercom.

“He’s making his way up as we speak.” 

“Cool.”

Krupp was up the first half of the stairs when he turned around. He was breathing heavily, and it was definitely not just because he was speed-walking up the stairs.

“You two have got a lot of nerve disrupting everything–”

“You’re one to talk,” Harold replied, thinking about the pop science fair coming up in a few hours. To all their years in school. To the capital T Thing with Captain.

The principal halfway down a step to approaching him until–

SNAP. The sound reverberated through the school intercoms. For a split second he saw something cross his face. Wide eyes. Furrowed brows.

And then Captain Underpants fell on said face.

He snapped back up, the toupee sitting lopsided on his head. “Sidekick! Where’s–”

Harold held up the walkie talkie. 

“Up here,” George replied.

He gave an unsure look as he tried to find where up was in relation to a walkie talkie.

“In the office,” Harold clarified. He walked past him and up the stairs, motioning him to follow.

Captain stood up, wiping the grit from his cheek. It might be because he took a heck of a tumble, but there wasn’t the typical shock of liveliness he expected when he swapped in. All things considered, he was… well, maybe not calm, but expectant.

George was standing at the receptionist half of the office, one of the curtains tucked under his arm. 

“You ready?” Then, in a stage whisper to Harold: “Anthrope’s gone off because of… ‘printer repairs’.”

Harold stared at the empty corner of the room. There was a smattering of printer ink at the walls, outlining the office printer that was not there anymore. They couldn’t help but snicker conspiratorially.

“Er,” Captain leaned over to look at what had got their attention. “What’s the plan to Free The Children now, sidekicks?” 

“We’re putting Krupp through his own personal gauntlet.”

“I don’t think it’ll take long for him to crack.” Harold gave him a reassuring pat on the arm. “We’ll make sure of it. Everything’ll be back to the way it was faster than–”

“A speeding waistband?” the superhero offered. He was definitely hiding it as he shimmied out of the principal’s clothes and put on his cape, but that same look was back on his face. 

“Exactly.”

“Where do we start?” He approached the ink stains on the wall, as if expecting the answer to pop out of the mess.

“Uh, Captain?” George pulled his attention back to the door of the principal’s office. He opened it with an overdramatic flourish. “Just step into our office for this first bit.”

Harold let out a low whistle at the sight. Every surface of the room was covered in sticky notes, leaving the room in an unsightly pale yellow that made the room look flat. Between the writing and the shadows, it did little to help figure out where everything was as Captain nearly tripped on a chair.

“What do you think of our Prankovation 2– trademark?”

Captain took to floating, mindful not to touch anything. He looked confused– he probably didn’t get things like irony yet. “…How long did this even take you?”

“Prankster’s trade secret.”

“This looks done, though,” he hedged. “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to help you here– especially with this–”

He gestured to his wrists, now tied together by jump rope courtesy of Harold. The boy went over to the sticky notes-engulfed water cooler and poured out a thimble’s amount into an open hand.

“For this one, we need to swap you back over to Krupp,” George explained. Seeing the superhero's disappointed look, he quickly continued: “This part's quick-- we're going to bring you back right after for the next bit.” 

“O– OK, then sidekicks. I trust you.” Captain twisted around so his face was in patting distance. This close, he could see the expression for what it was– hesitation.

And Captain was gone, leaving Krupp to fall on the floor, a flutter of pale yellow in his wake.

Chapter Text

Benjamin Krupp let out a choking noise as he hit the ground. Feeling his own heart in the middle of a quickened beat was bad enough, but it was narrowly beaten out by the pain of impact. It felt like skipping a step on the stairs.

Speaking of– he had been at the center stairs of the school, and now–

He had almost thought he was back in his own house, because where else would he be lying face down in sticky notes? But, no– that was wrong.  Most of them were blank, and those that weren’t were written in a hand that was neither his or the other guy’s chicken scratch. Stranger than that, they were deliberately attached to the floor in a way they never were in his house.

He tried getting up. Or rather, thrashed, as his arms couldn’t support him on account of being tied up. All he accomplished was crumpling the sticky notes under him. Between the strain and embarrassment, his face must be as red as the stupid curtain the other guy insisted on wearing.

“Did you–” His jaw clenched harder than it already was. He was breathing heavily. “Did you skip class for this?!”

Every surface of his office was covered in sticky notes. The walls, the ceilings, the lights. 

George shrugged. “Hey now, anyone could have done this– this is a classic prank. Plenty of kids are mad at you.”

He let out a deep huff. Another sticky note fluttered away from him. He glanced towards his desk– even from this angle, he could see even the underside was covered in the thing.

They were thorough, he’d give them that.

“You think plausible deniability is going to save you?” He shook his still-bound arms to emphasize his point. “What’s this really about?”

Harold shot an incredulous look. “Take a wild guess.”

“I’ll show you a– a wild guess!–” 

He started flailing again towards the direction of the door. He could barely see the light coming through the glass. He wasn’t even sure what he was going to do next, only that he needed to get out of here now, now, now. 

Shouldn’t Anthrope have come in? Surely she should have heard this. Then again knowing her, she ‘stepped out’ again–

The room was dimmer than it should be, making it look more unnerving– more flatter, more vast than it should be. It was hard to tell where the edges of the floor and wall met. It was all that same pale yellow. 

Meanwhile, the boys made no real effort to stop him. He didn’t know whether that was better or worse.

“Ugh, can you stop freaking out?” George said in a bland tone. It was reminiscent of the kind of voice kids had whenever they were bargaining to have five more minutes. “All of this can go away if you take everything back.”

That stopped his mad crawl to the door. “What.” 

It made him think of how ridiculous the past month has been. 

“All of us had enough of you!” Harold said. “So consider this a taste of your own medicine.”

How everything he had worked towards had been uprooted with the carelessness of– of– two brats who didn’t know when enough was enough–

“Are you kidding me?!” He slammed his body against– it must be the cabinet, from the handle now poking him at his side– and forced himself to stand with the help of extra support. “You hogtie me and you think you have the right to demand anything from me, you little–”

Snap.

Coming back mid-yell was always strange for Captain. He could feel the word in his mouth, could vaguely remember the vague shape and meaning of the word if he were fast enough. But the thing about that was that it was like dreaming: it faded and you were wondering why you woke up scared in the first place. 

It may be the closest thing to direct contact he’d ever have with Principal.

More than that, he felt off. Like when the ink on the page is slightly misaligned, leaving everything to look shakier than it should be.

“Oh! Did it work?” he said, perhaps a bit too quickly. “Did we Free The Children?”

His sidekicks, still crouched back from fear, looked up at him with disappointed expressions.

His smile strained at the edges. “…Is that a maybe?”

George shook his head. 

“Oh.” 

He kicked his feet and peeled a few sticky notes off the ground in the process. The blue-grey tiles underneath felt like a breath of fresh air after seeing all this yellow.

“Hey, hey, don’t worry– we got plenty of ideas,” he reassured.

They left the room behind. His sidekicks led the way down the still-empty hallway, with the superhero following in a low hover.

“Everyone’s still in class,” George said.

Captain looked through the glass of one of the doors. It was a class for littler kids, and all of them were bored out of their minds. 

One of them looked at… something above the door before their gaze locked on him. They gave a shy wave. He waved back– or, tried to, considering his tied-up arms. 

This made the kid frown.

He jolted back slightly before Harold dragged him from the window by the cape. He gave a similar sort of frown at the jump rope he had tied to him.

“You could just rip it apart if you wanted,” he said.

“I could, but it’d be rude.” He wiggled his arms some more and just barely made the loops of rope loosen. 

After the third attempt, Harold pulled at one end of the rope and all of it fell to the ground with little fanfare. Captain nursed one of his wrists in his other hand, as the rope feeling gave way to a pokey feeling. Super strength can get you pretty far, but it couldn’t save you from pins-and-needles.

They turned a corner and were met with a hallway-turned-obstacle course. Part of one, anyway.  

“What do you think, Captain?”

He lit up, the brief moment from before put aside for now. “It reminds me of something I saw while channel surfing. Though, it was more jungle-y.”

“Well, consider this the concrete jungle,” George quipped before cracking open a nearby storage room. “Now, come on– we gotta do the finishing touches.”

He poked his head in. The room was filled with old unused or broken supplies. Blackboards on wheels, excess desks and chairs, broken rulers– the works. It almost reminded him of the Closet back at Principal’s Lair. 

“Catch!” George yelled.

The thing in question flew into Captain’s face before falling into his hands.

“Chalk?” He blinked the dust out of his eyes.

“Yeah!” Harold wheeled out one of the chalkboards. “Now come on, we gotta place ‘em before we start drawing all over them.”

Preparing the hallway was easy work when you had a superhero on your side. The hallway looked like a makeshift obstacle course. The boys explained how it would have three distinct areas: the winding blackboard path, the slippery middle, and the maze with Mystery Cups.

“It’ll be a laugh riot seeing Krupp navigate this–”

“It’ll be like the ones on TV!” Captain marvelled at their handiwork, putting the last touches on his drawing. “I’ve even decorated like you said to. I’ve drawn something to scare the pants off him!”

The boys looked at the drawing in question. It was supposed to be the Thing he remembered from the first time he slept, since he was sure that it was a nightmare.

“Uh– is this like… abstract art?” Harold asked, tilting his head. “The– what even are these scribbles and squares?”

“How many blackboards have you drawn this on?” George questioned, his expression unsure.

“Abs-what?” The Waistband Warrior tilted his head in kind. “No, no. It’s like… I guess you had to be there. It's scary!”

“If you say so.” George replied. “Maybe we should lean more into stuff that’d get under his nerves, instead of stuff that makes him nervous.”

Captain nodded slowly and took their lead as they went further in to decorate.

“What–” 

Krupp let go of the chalk he was holding in both hands and the clench in his jaw, feeling immediately drained. 

He was stuck in the middle of a tight square of rolling chalkboards. On it was a familiar chicken scratch. Scribbles and spirals and squares of different sizes were on most of the makeshift walls.

The last one had a crude drawing of himself sitting on the toilet. 

He rolled his eyes. “Couldn’t get any new material, huh?”

A squirt gun retreated from underneath the rolling chalkboard in front of him and started laughing in a Harold-like way before it too disappeared.

Have it their way then. 

He shoved the blackboard in front of him aside, only to be met with more blackboard walls funneling him through a winding path. All of them had similarly insipid chalk drawings, some more coherent than others.

Crude drawing, squares.

Some even had words. It looked like an attempt at mocking him or the concept of writing lines on blackboards. It would have been effective, had the sentences not awkwardly wrap at the edge because they ran out of room.

Crude drawing, scribble, ‘I will not write to–’, spiral, spiral, spiral–

The path opened up at a relatively unpartitioned part of the hallway. The path of blackboards forked into two narrower paths.

He stepped forward… only for his feet to slip out from under him. He fell on his back, his breath knocked out of him on impact. Now that he was closer to the floor, he could smell the scent of vaguely floral soap around him.

This day could not get any worse.

With the strength of a newborn calf, he managed to get himself upright with minimal faceplants. A part of him hoped that the soap he could feel cooling off the back of his head counted as water.

With as much force as he could muster without falling over, he shoved one of the blackboards in front of him down the hall. It started a chain reaction causing the rest of the maze blackboards to topple like dominoes. A cloud of chalk dust billowed in its wake.

“Oh, come on, that took like a million years to set up!” George yelled incredulously.

The day proceeded to get worse as several of the classrooms’ doors opened. Kids slowly peeked out into the hallway. He instinctively held the curtain up to hide himself.

“C– Captain Underpants–” a kid stuttered. “Are you alright–”

“Get back!”

The kids startled and stepped back. That, at least he was familiar with. He averted his eyes from their concerned expressions; he didn’t know if he hated the fact that they saw him like this or hated seeing how they looked at the other guy.

The boys were running away. Everyone continued to look at him. Even the teachers, in the middle of bringing the kids back in line, were looking at him. He knew he was heaving too loudly. The fluorescent lights were too bright in this hallway.

The bell rang, and no force on earth could keep a kid in a classroom for any longer than they needed to.

“I– ugh!” 

Not the time, he forced himself to repeat. The school board would have his head if they heard about the whole thing with the soapy hallway. 

Step, step, left, right, stop– he was at the nearest supply closet. He pulled out a WET FLOOR sign, and stomped onto the pile of fallen blackboards. 

Krupp refused to make eye contact with the other kids.

He could barely see whatever thing with cups they planned for the last third of the hallway maze, now demolished under the blackboards he was using as a bridge.

Left, right, left, right. Turn. George and Harold were there, waiting for him. 

“We can do this all day,” George said.

“Every day, actually, until you take everything back,” Harold added.

There were more kids in this part of the hallway now. They began murmuring, and he could vaguely hear the words ‘fight’ and ‘promotional stunt’ and ‘next issue’ in confused whispers. 

He hastily took the curtain off and put it around himself like a towel. That elicited a smattering of laughs. But most of it was still murmuring. ‘Promotional stunt’ was slowly being overpowered by concerned whispers of ‘forreal’.

In lieu of a response, he narrowed his eyes at the both of them. 

Snap.

(The singular sticky note placed at eye level felt like a challenge. He never put up that kind of effort before. It reminded him of a narration bubble, panelled against the wall.

Revenge? How unbecoming of a hero.

“It’s not revenge.” Captain shook his head. “Excessive, maybe.”

Hate is a strong word for what he was feeling, but Captain did not enjoy being questioned by this man. And while he knows he shouldn’t listen, Principal had a way of picking apart his genre that made him pause. It would be one thing if he was using Principal Logic, but this– right now– nearly makes sense. And he didn’t like it.

“I’m a superhero, helping those who can’t help themselves is what I do. That’s just how these plots work,” he continued. 

Speaking of plots, this plot– the one he’s been in– had long spiraled out of control. He had wanted to stop Principal from terrorizing his sidekicks and the local children, but at this point he was no closer to his goal after everything he had gone through. 

He pointed a glance in the general direction of The Closet At The End Of The Hallway. It added a snag to everything, adding a backstory to this whole mess. And not even a complete one.

Splash. Snap.

The note was in his hand. He waved his hand quickly like a bee had landed on it. They were both yellow with black inky stripes.

Then what do you call whatever the boys are doing? the note said. You said so yourself. It's excessive.

“I did say that,” he mumbled to himself. The foreign feeling of irritation gave way to another feeling just as foreign, but at least Captain knew it was coming from himself.

Caution was not an innate skill to him. These conversations had forced him to learn. It felt like how a robotic ruffian from issues ago pulled his arm and twisted it behind his back; when it finally let go, he could feel the fading strain where back and shoulder met. But now, he was both himself and the robot– he could feel himself strain against something deeply ingrained in him.

More often than not, it led to him tripping on the execution. Not that he was aware of it, or doing it on purpose. But it was simply How Things Were Meant To Be. Like how a fight must happen before a defeat. Or how a set-up must include a punchline.

It took a lot of work not to invoke a punchline.

“They don’t even have powers,” he said finally. “And they’re doing it to help free the children, you– you… villain.”

Captain winced. Splash.)

It would be approximately ten minutes until Ms. Ribble and Mr. Rected would walk around and mark everyone’s projects in alphabetical order by surname. For this impromptu assessment, both teachers have agreed to combine the class times together to maximize efficiency with marking the students. The cafeteria was abuzz with the sound of chatter, and in some cases, panicked murmuring at their malfunctioning projects. 

Melvin expected there to be a high frequency of certain science projects: 

1. Demonstrations with static electricity. These were the easiest to implement with limited supplies and time, though half the projects he saw picked out materials that wouldn’t be conducive to demonstrating the point of the experiment.
2. Model solar systems. This had a bit more production, with having to paint ping pong balls or whatever material was accessible. In many cases, they looked more like baby mobiles than any proper scientific model– with just as much scientific content, to boot.
3. Baking soda volcanoes. The actual creation of the volcano itself statistically took the most time, which was ultimately the undoing for some students. Several projects started and ended with the spectacle, and was left floundering on trying to explain what it was meant to demonstrate– plate tectonics or chemistry. 

As he made his way to the Warp-Weft-O-Tron 2000, he saw a taller figure hovering near the controls. His brain immediately panicked, as that meant that it was an adult, which meant it was a teacher, and he dashed off. As he came closer, he sped up despite his lung’s protests– he’d rather not have the lunch lady mess with it before the teachers had a chance to see the demonstration.

“Don’t–” It took everything in him to not double over. Once he caught his breath, he caught his own words; he was still talking to school staff, even if said school staff wasn't a teacher who could impact his grade. “Please refrain from touching it.”

Ms. Edith Schunn blinked– and thankfully took a step back. Her gloved hands were up. There was no noticeable grease or any evidence of her tampering. 

“Oh, of course, I just–” She looked around the table. “What’s this doohickey plugged up to? I don’t see any wires.”

Strange. He was expecting a question of what it is before specific particulars. 

“The Warp-Weft-O-Tron 2000 has its own power supply,” he explained, knocking on the side of its chassis as he opened it. “The demonstration won’t be too long, so I doubt that it would deplete in any significant percentage.”

He scanned the hardware and took out a screwdriver. He had thought about using leftovers again– whether through the generator or infused in the fibres it used– but even he had to admit it would be overkill. He didn’t need the textile simulations to last.

Ms. Schunn was still there, from the sound of her contemplative hum. “What’s this stuff scrolling up on screen?” she asked.

“Programming code.”

“I figured as much but–” A pause. “It just seems like a lot of code for just– I dunno, picking out the stitch you wanna use.”

Under the cover of his head still buried in machinery checking the motherboards, Melvin couldn’t help but roll his eyes. It wasn’t just simple coding for a basic sewing machine. It had to process different kinds of input, have an internal database of objects, and each object had to have its own internal programming to act–

He twisted a pair of connecting wires with a bit more force than necessary. 

He poked his head back out and closed the port. “This should be a conversation I should be having with the teachers who are supposed to be marking this assessment.”

“Oh.” After a long pause, she seemed to realize something. “Oh, of– of course. Uh– I guess I’ll be goin’.”

Melvin didn’t respond.

“Good luck! Seems like they’re startin’ their rounds.” And the lunch lady was gone.

True enough, both teachers were already at the far side of the cafeteria and quickly zipping through the redundant projects. He couldn’t help but let out a groan. Even with a conservative estimate, he’d only have enough time to do a check of either the sewing machine or program modules– not both. And even then, it wouldn’t be as thorough as he’d like.

The conversation, however brief, threw him off from his planned maintenance. 

Speaking of plans: he gave a brief scan to the swaths of students. None of them met his gaze, but that was fine. They weren’t the ones he was looking for. 

While he wasn’t expecting much from George and Harold, he was still… curious about what they had in store, considering they suggested this whole assessment in the first place. Why they haven’t showed up yet didn’t make sense, with that in mind.

It would be easy enough to translate a few of their little pranks to something more scientifically minded. Paper airplane tests, egg drop experiments, slime– if they used about a third of their creativity in this project, they’d certainly scrape by with a passing grade, that he was sure of. 

At the very least, it would have been different. This was something he was just as sure of.

Krupp was upside down. That’s different.

The novelty quickly wore out as he realized what was close to his head. If soap didn’t count as water, then he doubted slime was any different.

He unclenched his jaw. This may literally be the dumbest thing he had to think about.

Speaking of which: with the way they were ramping things up, the amount of prep time they needed only grew. It was… difficult, trying to grasp how long this prank-torture marathon was supposed to be. It could be anywhere from five minutes to five hours, and he’d be none the wiser. Between certain parts needing to have been planned in advance and the other guy helping them, it only muddied the waters.

It may as well be a few seconds ago these two miscreants were at least making an attempt to sound justified. It might be the fatigue or the blood rushing to his head, but he couldn’t help but let out a sharp cackle. 

“Are you two having fun?” When their expressions grew more guarded, he couldn’t help but lean back into old lecture standby phrases. “I’m expecting an answer from you two.”

Harold looked him dead in the eye. “By the time this is done, Captain’s got no reason to be scared of you and whatever stuff you’re making him go through.”

He blinked. He had to look up at them at this angle, and this close he was reminded of the fact that these were just ten year olds. Ones that ruined his life on a whim, but ten year olds all the same. It was difficult to be fully cowed by what they’re saying.

Krupp couldn’t help but let out a sharp cackle. And another. His chest tightened. A wave of unpleasant heat flushed through his body and nearly made his eyes water.

“He’s finally snapped,” George mumbled in disbelief.

“Is that what he told you?” The words come out more choked than he’d like.

“He doesn’t need to–” Harold narrowed his eyes. “We’ve heard that recording, making him feel like he’s– he’s not a real person.”

“So you think this will help him?”

“He’ll be happier.”

He narrowed his eyes in kind. “You don’t sound sure.”

The feeling of joy was few and far between in his line of work, but even he knew what the other guy felt wasn’t that. It was moreso a ragged sort of energy to move forward than anything else, and it had the familiar undercurrent of something else. 

Something that made the other guy clench his jaw for most of this.

“W– well, how would you know?” Harold shot back.

George, quicker on the draw, blurted out: “He’s still talking to you isn’t he? Willingly?”

“He’s a grown man-child,” he said derisively. It was a small relief that they didn’t know about the emotional bleedover. “He can make his own decisions.”

“Clearly not, if he keeps talking to you.”

He blinked. 

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s just that he says it's to ‘Free The Children’.” His voice went up a mocking octave at the term.

George looked shocked for a moment. “Which it is.”

“No, what you said now was that this may be for the other guy.”

“First of all: it is. Second: it's both,” Harold cut in.

“At this rate, I think it’s neither.”

“O– oh yeah? Who cares what you think?” The words come out of Harold’s mouth unpracticed. From the kids that had the gall to say that they wanted him gone, it was pitiful seeing him fumble the most mundane jabs.

“You do, clearly.” His chest was tight. “I think you’re just mad your favorite plaything isn’t working like he’s supposed to.”

“Stop it!” he yelled. “Or we’ll– we’ll keep doing this!”

“You have to explain a bit better than that.” His grimace turned to something more smug. “Clearly, you needed those extra English assignments–”

Snap.

George pulled the superhero into an unused classroom. When the superhero peered out to wave at whoever he waved to earlier, Harold pulled down the hand in question.

“Oh! Is this the next prank a– a quiet one?” He looked around, trying to find where the preemptive punchline was. “I’m afraid I don’t understand this one.”

“No, no–” George shook his head. “Just… sit tight, alright? We need to take five before the next wave of pranks.”

Captain let out a loud exhale before kicking himself up into a floating position. It looked like he was reclining on an invisible beach chair. Meanwhile, Harold was further in the classroom, pacing between the desks.

“What do you think?” George said quietly.

The other boy gave a strained smile… before dropping his face in his hands and letting out the most exasperated sigh. He gave a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.

“Yeah.”

Between being accused of suggesting the fourth grade pop science fair and being seen ‘fighting’ ‘Captain Underpants’ earlier, the other kids were getting uneasy.

“What do we do?” he shook his head. “If we don’t run out of pranks, we'll definitely run out of supplies eventually. And what if Krupp doesn’t back down by then? What if he just keeps saying that we gave the suggestions to make the school worse for kids and adding onto it? What if–”

“Harold–” George began shaking him by the shoulders gently. When he was just as frazzled as the other boy, it was still rapid. “That won’t happen. Between me and you and Captain, we’re going to ride this out and beat him at his own game.”

The other boy stared at him before slowly nodding. “Yeah– yeah, OK. But–”

The both of them took a quick glance towards Captain. Neither of them exchanged a word. The fact that not only was he still talking to the principal– he talked about their plans with him, it was the nightmare scenario. One of them, anyway.

“I don’t think he knows too much, but–” George gave one shake of his head. 

Harold nodded in response.

“Sidekicks, um–”

The Waistband Warrior floated over to them. He still had the same look as before everything started. If anything, the frown deepened.

“What is it, Captain?”

“Are you… alright?” It looked like he was struggling to find the right words. “You don’t seem to be having fun these last few pranks.”

“Whaaaat?” Harold drawled out, propping an arm onto a nearby desk to lean on it. “Of course we’re having fun!”

“Oh! OK, then. I was just… checking.” He flipped himself into an upside-down floating position. “I thought– well, the other kids have a similar–” He waved a hand in their direction, circling their heads. “– So does that mean they’re also having fun?”

The room was silent. In the distance, they could hear the quiet din of kids outside. But here they were: in a little classroom, wiling away the hours trying to escalate the bit. 

“After these next few pranks… yeah, definitely.”

“And if nothing else, the school’s going to get better.”

“Well, there’s nowhere to go but up.”

The boys laughed. Their fit of giggles were dampened as Captain glanced back to the sliver of glass looking out into the hallway. 

“That’s good,” he replied. He was distant and contemplative again. It was still weird that it was happening.  “Then, it’ll be worth it, if the school becomes more fun for everyone.”

Harold made a big show of stretching his arms to break the silence, as abrupt as it was. The silence, he decided, was overstaying its welcome. It reminded him of not-so-great days. Of the reason why he drew up the first iteration of Captain.

“Well! I think I’m fully rested. How about you?”

“Harold,” George gave him an uneasy glance. If you’re sure, the Look appended at the end.

In return, he gave the equally stubborn, yes I’m sure Look. The other boy nodded and matched it in kind.

“Come on, Captain,” George ushered them out the door.

(He knew how to get down to someone’s level. Explain concepts in smaller chunks. Use simpler words. Use something they were familiar with to help. It was something he was taught how to do back when he was a teacher. That being said, he also knew that stooping down to someone’s level wasn’t ideal. He had a reputation to uphold, after all.

And as much as Benjamin hated to do it, leaning into comic logic was the most efficient way to get that idiot to listen to him. 

Would you hesitate taking a villain out? He wrote, resisting the urge to cross it out immediately. If you had the opportunity to get rid of me and never use it, what would that mean?

Snap. Splash. His furrowed brows relaxed.

“You didn’t deny being the villain that time,” the cassette player crackled.

Benjamin let out a soft exhale. He took the last note and circled the second half. The underlying message was unmistakable: answer the question.

Snap. Splash. The headache in his temples slowly dissipated.

“‘Get rid of’ sounds so… dastardly,” the other guy hedged. “I stop villains. There is a difference.”

I doubt it, he goaded, appending the comment on the original note.

Benjamin shouldn’t care about the semantics, but he could still feel the headache in his temple. A cynical part of him thought the other guy had thought himself into short circuiting their temporarily shared brain. That was the troublesome part about feeling the other guy’s emotions, even if it eventually faded. 

He was stupidly larger than life that way.

Snap. Splash. Benjamin couldn’t help but touch his own throat, feeling the dwindling strain left there.

“Villains are– they stay only for a span of an issue. Two, if it's a big event. I stop them. And then they’re gone.”

He was expecting more, but there was something uncomfortable in how final it was. He allowed himself to think back to previous issues he definitely never read, and the other guy had a point. It was either jail, or ‘defeat’ with all its nebulous sidestepping. 

But there were no loose ends. At most, a cliffhanger those two never bothered to follow up on.

“But you–” The so-called superhero made an uncanny-sounding noise. “You’re… recurring. You keep doing things I've never seen any other villain do, and these long-form plots are beyond me. B– but my sidekicks know this! They have to!”

He sucked a breath through his teeth. 

“And I need to trust them.”

Click.

He shouldn’t care. He didn’t. Still though. There was something there. The headache, the frenzied feeling the other guy put under his skin, heck, even the specific word choice–

Desperate, Benjamin thought to himself, ignoring how achingly similar the other guy dug his heels. He’s desperate. 

‘Truth, justice, and all things pre-shrunk and cottony’ was a half-baked parody. Anyone could tell it was a half-baked reference. But to the other guy, it must be everything. Something foundational, maybe. And here were his 'dearest sidekicks', shaking at its foundations.

Then, in writing: You still haven’t answered the question. If you had the power to get rid of– scratch the last three words– If you had the power to do it, would you? What kind of hero would you be if you didn’t?

Scratch the last sentence. Too much.

Benjamin’s hand shook. His fingers were ready to snap, but he had never switched over to ask properly. He wasn’t sure what would be worse to hear.)

He came back to his heart thrumming so so fast. And left just as quickly. He wanted to ask his sidekicks what was happening. Their answers were shorter now. His help became less and less.–

– The sensation made his skin prickle. He wanted to twist himself away from what was coming, he–

– could feel it, the colors misaligning in him, he could feel it–

– spiral and on and on–

– it goes, until–

Captain Underpants came back to a cold feeling in his chest and a burning feeling everywhere else. If he was steaming, he wouldn’t be surprised.

“Sidekicks–” He stopped; he wasn’t expecting his voice to come out so gravelly. Whatever burning thing that was in his throat fizzled to ashes and choked him. “What did you do?”

“Don’t worry about it!” George chirped, pulling him up to his feet. “Now come on.”

Captain brought himself up to a low hover. He had been through enough to know that the latest ones needed papers to keep track of. He had also been through enough of them to realize that his sidekicks were not telling him their plans anymore.

“What, um–” A cough. “Is it this time, sidekicks?”

“Well let’s just say, the next few will be a super-hot streak of pranks,” George replied.

On cue, Harold pulled out a tubberware and opened it. In it were spicy red peppers and onions. He could feel his throat close up at the mere sight of them.

“I think we’re getting close, though, I can feel it!”

Captain glanced away. The actual feeling from The Man In His Head was… messy. It was like someone printed every page of a comic on one page– it was unreadable and so full of ink it would tear apart at the slightest pressure.

He must have made a face, because both of them frowned. They pushed the cases of veggies off to the side.

“Captain, we gotta ask–”

“Not to worry, I’m still in well enough shape for the next few pranks.” He gave a little wave. It was not a lie. Unless the next few pranks involved him speaking a lot, in which case it was inconvenient.

“No, it's…” Harold hedged.

“...What did you tell Krupp?” George narrowed his eyes.

A pause. 

“What?” 

“We know you told him about Free The Children,” Harold looked stricken. “What else did you talk about?”

His mouth moved, but no sound came out. Another attempt. Finally, he settled on: “It's not something I feel… OK telling.” 

Not a lie. He felt like jumping out of his own skin.

“And why’s that?” George’s face scrunched up.

“I don’t know.” Also not a lie. He knows telling them should be alright, but something stopped him.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?!” Harold yelled.

“Because it's not my story to tell.” Captain began to shake his head. 

“This is–” George sighed. His next words come out slower. “You know how important this is, right?”

Captain nodded.

“Which is why we need to know what you said to him.”

He thought back to previous conversations. The swaths of little papers surrounding him like hard borders, or gutters. To the Closet At The End Of The Hallway. To the quick flashes of bleedover whenever he came in.

And at the center of all these disparate panels was a specific scene: his sidekicks holding the cassette player.

“Don’t…” He hesitated for a moment. “Please don’t make me tell.”

He felt close to… something, but he didn’t have the exact words for it. 

The closest he could come to was that he did not like this scene. It felt wrong. Superheroes did not argue with their sidekicks. And even if they did, it was always for the greater good. 

And this? It–

“Are you still mad about the whole thing with the cassette?”

The careless tone made something terrible in him flare up. He must have landed at some point because he could feel something crunch under his heel. 

“Yes!” His face was hot. He was– this was just so–

“What does this have to do with Free The Children, anyway? Who is this even for?”

“It's for all of us,” George hedged.

“Then where’s everyone else?” He spread his arms so wide he could feel the strain on his shoulders. “We’ve barely seen any kids all day. We ran from the ones we did.”

“You don’t get it–”

“Of course I don’t!” He could feel a headache pulse behind his eyes, in time to his heartbeat. “Nothing about anything makes sense, and I have to stop and think about–”

“That’s the problem!” Harold yelled. “You keep thinking too hard!” 

Everything stopped. It felt like time stretched on so far he could see the panel in his mind’s eye taking up pages worth of silence. 

His voice felt small in that expanse. A single word on a splash page. A single sticky note on a blue wall.

“What?”

“You keep thinking and thinking and– changing,” Harold managed. “Things used to be so much easier when you weren’t so miserable all the time! Superheroes have to– you're supposed to be there when we need you, and you can’t even give us this one small thing! What kind of superhero are you? You’re not supposed to be like this!”

This world didn’t seem to get something Important was going on here. There was still the sound of distant footfalls of other kids thundering in the hallways.

“Oh.” 

This feeling was worse than wearing Principal’s dreaded clothes. It was the latest in a long string of Bad Feelings that he didn’t know where it started or ended. It just was, all squished in grawlixes so dense it may as well be solid rock.

(Haha, rocks, his mind not-so-helpfully added as a horrid little brick joke.)

He tried taking a deep breath. The grawlixes stopped him. His chest hurt. “I– I’m sorry.”

The word felt off. It seemed right in his head, but it felt like raw onions sitting in his mouth. He didn’t even know what he was apologizing for. But a small part felt like he should be.

(The large part, however– never mind that one.)

His sidekicks stepped back.

“Captain–”

“I’m–” He turned away, trying to grasp at the right words. And failed. “I will fix this. I promise.”

Not a lie. He knew what was wrong. His sidekicks told him that much. He just didn’t know how to fix it. 

The entire school shook. Kids screamed. 

“Whoa, what was that?!” 

Finally, something he can grasp. And maybe throw it to the wall, exploding into smithereens.

“I will fix it after this,” he amended.

He came up to a proper hover and zoomed off. Faster than a speeding waistband was still faster than either of their legs could take them at a full sprint. 

His sidekicks’ cries became a distant thing. The world was a waterlogged blur as he went to the source of the chaos. 

There was a nagging part of his brain that wanted him to stop. To wait. To joke. To make himself a punchline. But before anything else, he was a superhero.

And what kind of superhero was he if he couldn’t fix this?