(Bad[sorta] end) Half a year later, the League gets a call from a villainess who took away a souvenir from her visit to the League...

Some weeks later, in a haphazard improvised laboratory filled with strung-together protein folding machines, beakers, centrifuges, microscopes and other implements of sinister science, Bella Donna is coming back in from the bathroom, yawning. She is wearing a lab coat, but it's unbuttoned, showing off her same sultry outfit from before underneath.

"Well, I guess it's a good thing those yuppie office worker motherfuckers figured out they should stay away after I moved in a couple weeks ago, for keepin' the heat off at least. But damn, where am I supposed to get more test subjects? Ain't anybody in this run down strip mall except a dentist office that brings in nothing but stupid little brats." She yawns again and checks a coffee pot. "Shit, out already? Those realtors or whatever the fuck they were couldn't keep more than a week's supply on hand?"

Bella Donna sighs. "Ain't like it's doin' me any good anyway, I'm still tired all the time, constant headaches, and it's just making me have to go pee every 20 minutes..." She suddenly stops and gasps, blinking a few times and resting a hand on her stomach where her skimpy costume leaves it exposed. "It... it really has been three weeks or something, hasn't it? I'm definitely late. I'd almost forgot about that gullible dumb-ass with the big dick. Wasn't that a safe day?" she counts off on her fingers, thinking back. "Oh... maybe it wasn't. Ah... well, I've always been irregular, I'm sure it's coming... Mm... well, it couldn't hurt to go get a test from the convenience store."

She snorts to herself as she pulls her labcoat closed and fixes her hair and earrings. "Hmph. All that stuff is so damn overpriced, they're ripping me off. I absolutely got to find a way to get some cash-flow in here. If it wasn't for that food pantry down the street I'd probably starve before I can make even one replacement monster. Those convenience store assholes are going to rue the day they overcharged Bella Donna, Queen of the Cyber-werewolves. Soon to be queen of... something else nasty. Once I've taken over this part of the city, I'm gonna have sone fun with them..."

A few hours later she's back in the bathroom again, her thong down around her ankles as her curvaceous bottom rests on the toilet seat. She holds up a small white stick and shakes it clean of urine, holding it up with a plastic glove to see. When she looks at it closely, her eyes snap wide open and her breath catches in her throat. Her hand begins shaking and the pregnancy test falls from her fingers. She puts a hand on her chest, breathing quickly, and then buries her face in her hands. "Ajax... you son of a bitch..." she sobs.

Half a year later, Andrew Dembski, janitor for the League of Propriety and very briefly known as 'Ajax the Great' for one wild afternoon, had been just finishing his morning shift when a buzzer went off. He sighs. "Communications room. Goodness sake... they have got to stop putting Mood Ring on routine duties like that."

When he goes into the room up ahead with a large viewscreen dominating the center, there are five female League technicians wearing orange minidresses and headsets all looking very embarrassed and refusing to meet his eyes. The reason isn't hard to see: there are five puddles of vomit on the floor near the workstations.

At the center of the room is the cause for those girls' gastric distress: the superheroine Mood Ring. The 21 year old recipient of a mystical and powerful artifact stands out against her peers: her full-body jumpsuit isn't revealing at all, and her figure is more stocky than sexy by conventional standards. A couple years ago when she joined, she had the reputation of being one of the most idealistic and beloved new heroes. However, some have said her sudden success is going to her head.

Right now, Mood Ring is fiddling with her eponymous ring, trying to get her color to shift away from bright green. That would've been what sickened all of the technician girls. Andrew sighs. "Well... better than her turned red with anger and starting a fire..."

"Hi, hi, uh," Mood Ring squints down at his nametag, "'Andrew'. Sorry about the mess. To catch up on the meaning of this latest issue I was checking news footage from an incident earlier in the year." she points to the viewscreen, which is showing horrible cybernetic, part-animal monsters tearing apart a couple of old men in business suits. "It's not pleasant viewing so I got stuck in the 'nausea' spectrum." Mood Ring explains as she returns her color to silver, which is the 'neutral, rational' one she tries to maintain most times. She fast forwards past the carnage. During it, Andrew's eyebrows raise as he recognizes Thunderbird, who he briefly knew as a friend when she'd been demoted to serving as a security guard some time ago. Ever since then he'd been unable to face her, and lost track of her entirely. "What ever did happen to her and that 'Weather' team of hers, anyway? I kept waiting and waiting for her to find me and say something, but she never came..." he sighs with guilt as he gets out his mop and bucket.

While Andrew gets to work, Mood Ring presses a button on the console. The thing appearing on it causes Andrew the janitor to freeze in his tracks and adopt a white-knuckled grip on his cleaning implement.

There on the screen is none other than the gorgeous young amateur mad scientist, Bella Donna. Behind her are a pair of giant, snarling quadrupedal wolves with robotic joints around their legs and glowing cybernetic eyes. Bella Donna is wearing the same provocative outfit as before: black pleather bikini and thigh-high boots, leaving most of her smooth cocoa skin exposed.

But there is definitely something different: Bella Donna is leaning back and using one of her hands to support a round, swollen tummy the side of a basketball jutting out in front of her. The firm fullness of that fleshy hemisphere makes it very obvious that it's more than a matter of her having developed a junk food habit in the intervening time. "She... got pregnant?" he asks numbly.

One of the female technicians glares at him and clears her throat. At first, Andrew jumps as if he's been caught out. But then, the technician girl points back down to the mess on the floor, and he nods awkwardly, starting to mop it up.

If Bella Donna recognizes him without his costume and hood on, she doesn't show any sign of it. The gravid novice villainess is staring straight at Mood Ring. "'Bout time! How dare you make the great Bella Donna wait around like that? Can't you see what a serious issue this is?"

Mood Ring folds her hands calmly in front of her. "I'm not sure what the purpose of this call is, 'Bella Donna'. Are you calling to threaten us with your latest scheme, or discuss terms of surrender, or...?"

"What?!" Bella Donna pouts and points down at the generous brown swell of her pregnancy. "Isn't it obvious? I'm telling you that you had better call your pet bitches off and tell them to stop chasing me. I can't move my lab again like this. And my new pets ain't so good at helping me carry things, see all the tooth marks on the drill press? Hmph... Some dirty pervert at your clubhouse took advantage of me while I was in handcuffs, and now I'm carrying his baby."

The technician girls start laughing and snickering. That really makes Bella mad, and she twists her face into a sneer of rage. "Just you wait, I'm going to..." then she shakes her head and goes back to pouting. "I mean... haven't you done enough harm? If Ajax is going to be a worthless deadbeat about this and keep hiding, the least you can do is let me live out my life. Do you want me to have to go into labor alone, in hiding like a rat, with no-one around to help me? Do you want that on your conscience?" she says, putting a hand on her forehead tragically. "Whatever I did, hasn't the, you know, statute of limitations passed?"

Having stopped mopping, slowly, Andrew was raising his hand. However, Mood Ring takes no notice of him.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Donna, but there's no statute of limitations for ****. Or for **** with injury, disfigurement, grand theft, et cetera. But more to the point, there is no hero called 'Ajax the Great' in the League of Propriety, and there never has been."

Bella on the screen gasps, and her eyes quaver. "Wh-what? No, you're lying..."

"Never lying in an official capacity is one of the League's foundational principles. Not to say that we can't withhold information. But I promise you, I'm not. Either you're just making all this up, or somebody tricked you. Probably some rioter in a home-made villain costume who slipped in in the confusion to cause trouble. If you want to help us find him and give him a prison sentence just as long as yours, by all means, come right down and give us all the details." Mood Ring says in a very stern, mature voice for her seeming age and inexperience. "Oh, and could you please send those poor mutilated things next to you out of the room? Looks like we can add animal cruelty to your rap sheet, too." she cringes. "At least, I hope... the point is, they are absolutely terrifying the poor janitor." she points with her thumb back to Andrew, who jumps and drops his mop when she does... having forgotten that Mood Ring could sense the emotional state of people nearby, it was a damn lucky thing that there was a more obvious explanation for the man's fear response that Mood Ring could latch onto.

And now, the technicians are giggling at Andrew, too. Mood Ring whirls on them and snaps her fingers. "Zip it, you five! Phobias are nothing to joke about."

"Is that why you your aura went yellow when your girlfriend asked you to move in with her last week?" One of the technicians whispers to the one next to her, who smirks and nods.

Mood Ring looks back to Bella Donna, who looks so stunned she may be about to faint. The heavily pregnant villainess slumps into the chair behind her. "No way... no fuckin' way... Thunderbird, Snowflake, Balloon, you're gonna pay for this!" she sniffles and draws a hand over her face. "And that son of a bitch, he really..."

As she stands there, Mood Ring wrings her hands, and her silver-colored jumpsuit begins to shift, gradually moving to a pink hue; the color of compassion. "Well... Okay, listen, Bella. I normally wouldn't do this. But... just so that you don't get **** and cause more havoc, I'll put out a directive suggesting our heroes and the cops put a temporary halt to any ongoing searches for you. When the time comes, get yourself to a hospital, I'll see to it they're reimbursed. But! Remember, this is temporary, just for the next six to twelve months, and only if you don't commit any crimes during that time. I would still implore you to surrender and face justice now, but I don't want to cause any unnecessary suffering, not even to someone like you... much less an innocent newborn." Her suit then turns gray. "But do go ahead and give us the description of that guy if you don't mind, we would like to find him. Springing a wanted super-criminal from custody is... well, I'm not a lawyer, but I wouldn't want to be that guy when the long arm of justice finally reaches him."

..........

Stumbling out into the hallway, Andrew took off his cap and fanned himself from the sweat. "How... how could I let this happen?" he whispers to himself. "I should go there for her. But I can't tell anyone, and if the heroes find out..." he gulps. He walks to his closet and closes himself in it so he can vocalize to himself in privacy. "So. Scenario one. Mood Ring is already suspicious of me and she follows me there. Bella Donna tries to kill me and either way both of us go to jail. Unless she, uh, succeeds."

"But..." he says. "If I go to her first, maybe she'll forgive me. 'Oh'," he imitates a high pitched voice, "'I still really like you, Ajax, and I can't believe you gave up your career and risked everything to help me! I'm going to give up being a criminal and start a new life with you together as a family, even if we don't have any money, we'll find a way to make it work!'"

For a second, Andrew allows himself to smile. But then, his smile fades. "Or..." he mimes drawing a pistol from his belt. "'Bang!' This is your fault, die!'' he loosens his shirt collar nervously. "Or just... 'Bang!' I wonder who that guy was, trying to get in to talk to me? Oh well, he's dead now'." He looks down at his feet. "And also I have no idea where she actually is. That's kind of the biggest problem." He swallows. "Well, I guess I may have to, y'know, call a mulligan on this one. I mean, if she hadn't been going on a rampage, and hadn't gone out of her way to seduce me like that, she wouldn't be pregnant. Guess my misfortune of not having what it takes to be a real hero, or even a villain, isn't just 'my' misfortune anymore..."

Weeks later, back in her latest hidden lair, Bella Donna stands looking in her dusty mirror, hands wrapped around the great swollen bulge of her midsection. Her sultry, seductive villainess outfit is hanging on a rack in a closet, and the young woman has exchanged them for a tacky green-with-white-polka-dots maternity dress that seems insidiously designed to make her once-slender, now-bloated figure look even bigger. Underneath that is the special bra she's had to get to help support her uncomfortably swollen breasts. The price she paid for a few minutes of naughty fun and a convenient escape from the hands of the law doesn't seem so small anymore, not now that she can feel it kicking inside her every time she tries to sleep.

"God damn it..." she sighs, turning away from the mirror. "Here I am, about to pop, and I still don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do..." She swallows heavily. "How can I get my **** if I'm... ugh. I wonder... I wonder if Dr. Demise's 'Lethal Legion' has any open slots. And if they offer babysitting." She snorts with indignation. "If they don't, they fucking should. Ain't like I'm the first one this has happened to..."