The Undoing of Sidekicks | ✓

nineteen

nineteen

THE FACT THAT two people genetically endowed with superhuman powers were stupid enough to let someone like Maddy Bryant actually 'help' them was .... laughable. Very laughable. The type of laughable quality that'd keep a sitcom running for ten plus years. That laughable. 

You are a grade A idiot. First-class ticket to Stupidville. 

I really did agree with the condescending voices in my head at precisely this moment. It was an uncomfortable truth, a predicament caused due to the folly of the human condition. I was quickly spiraling into madness, really. 

It had been an awful, stiff and disgusting moment after Maddy's declaration of whatever where we had all been ... civil to each other. It felt very much like three kids had been shoved into a playroom by their respective parents, urged to socialize. 

"Where do we go from here?" Maddy had asked, eyes plastered to Josh. 

To hell, probably, I had thought, eyes burrowing holes into the sides of Maddy's head. I already had four kids' lives to worry about, and now I had added another one. 

If it isn't obvious already, I'm not on board with this plan. 

"Mistress wants the change agent to, presumably, create more assholes like her," I started, having decided to be at least slightly helpful, " — to keep her from using this, we'll have to track down her stash of bad drugs and destroy them." 

Maddy nodded. 

Haven't we already gone over this?

I suppressed a sigh. The heavy kind, too, so it was a real struggle.

"We'll have to find wherever she's stashing it, somehow. It's probably in an industrial area, somewhere on the outskirts of San Helios, but it's a big city." Josh said as he leaned back against a pillar, shirt stretched over taut shoulders. Maddy was intently watching that, while I rolled my eyes at her side profile. 

"Well, can't we just track its ingredients?" asked Maddy, and I wanted to roll my eyes again but instead, found myself faced with the uncomfortable truth of realizing she had an actual, logical point. 

"We don't have a sample," said Josh, eyes flickering from Maddy to me, " — if we had, we could've used Hyde's lab to track it." 

I remained quiet, because a disgusting, terrible idea had started forming in my mind. Maddy fired off another question, not as logical as the last one, but Josh was forced to respond either way. I remained quiet, thinking hard. 

"What're you thinking about, Leo?" Josh was the one to voice the question, dark eyes resting on my face.

"She wants me to track it. Zazu and I already found it once, which means she believes we can find it once again. I don't think she can manufacture it herself — I think she's stolen shipments of it, probably attempting to recreate it." I spoke slowly, the piecing twisting and turning in my mind, " — if she didn't think I could find it, I don't think she'd have bothered with threatening my family. She would've killed them, then and there, in that case."

I said it with indifference, but a stake drove itself through my heart at the thought of it. Pain blossomed through my chest, but I shoved it aside and continued.