The Unfortunates

Chapter Six

The day had come.

"I don't wanna do this." Anna paced around my room. "This is so stupid. So stupid. We're so stupid, Leah!" She stopped pacing and grabbed my hands from where I sat, bleary-eyed, on my bed.

"Whoah, girl," I said, prying one hand away to cover a yawn. "Don't worry about that yet, we still have hours until the mission."

"We're literal idiots." Anna shook her head in wonder. "We're going to fight a mother-freaking superhero."

My dad knocked on the door and poked his head in. He looked a bit startled to see Anna wide awake, holding one of my hands by my bed, but opted not to say anything about it. "You up, girls?"

"Somewhat," I answered with another yawn. "Can we have waffles for breakfast?"

"Sure," he said with a sneaky smile. "If you make them yourself!"

Anna and I groaned, and he laughed. "I'll get the ingredients out for you, okay?"

"Fine," I grumbled, then made a shooing motion with my hand. "We're going to change, so go away!"

"I'm going, I'm going," my dad said, holding his hands up in defeat and closing the door behind him.

I shook my head affectionately.

Then I looked up at Anna, who still looked terrified. "For real, Anna. It's okay. Let's enjoy the rest of this sleepover, even if we did put it together for practical mission purposes."

"Okay," Anna sighed, finally letting go of my hand. "Guess we can start by making those waffles."

They were the best waffles I'd ever tasted.

But they sat sour in my stomach five hours later, when even the butterflies in my belly had started to churn.

We were in Anna's backyard shed again. She'd managed to get another beanbag on sale at the discount store, so now it was a fight to get to meetings early to make sure that you weren't the unlucky one to have to sit in the cold, metal folding chair.

This time, the occupant of the metal chair was Zenna. She grumbled something about having to leave something important to be here as she walked in ten minutes late, but nobody moved to give up their beanbag chair.

"Okay, people," I said, shifting in my beanbag. Zenna gave me a death glare and I smiled uncomfortably back. "Sorry we're still one beanbag short—we'll work on that before our next meeting. But today, we have much more important business."

"Swift." It wasn't a question, but a proclamation. Chase looked surprised at himself.

I nodded once. "Swift. We're getting him out of our city. But guys..." I looked around at The Unfortunates. "If this goes wrong, we're getting the heck out of there as fast as we can. Splitting up in all directions. Doing whatever it takes to make sure we stay okay, because that's the most important thing. Alright?"

Everyone reluctantly gave an affirmative.

"Now that that's out of the way, we need to get our masks and suits on!"

They perked up. Anna looked excited—she'd designed and sewed them together, and she spoke up. "They're not perfect, sorry, but I worked hard on them, I think they'll work great for our first time!"

She pulled a suit out of the bag. It was olive green and had eyeholes with what looked like eyeliner on the outside. There were light green vein-looking designs all over the suit for detailing. "For Zenna—otherwise known as L' Esprit!" She took in our confused expressions. "It's French for mind."

"Sounds cool!" Mason said, and we all murmured agreement.

"And the suit looks amazing, Anna," I said. "You knocked it out of the park!"