She gets through easily, but steps right into a trap

Cakewalk didn't begin to describe it.

Wherever "Doctor Villainous" was hiring these goons, he was getting ripped off. Helen slipped past a patrol with ease and approached the front gate with a calm confidence that she thought she had lost. She hadn't been this in her element since her honeymoon. A decade of crime-fighting experience came rushing back in the form of the limber flick of the wrist and the quick jab. A goon on his own wasn't a challenge, a squad of them would probably be more fun than anything. All it took was incapacitating one and she could lever him back into the treeline, slowly building a pile. It was no wonder Bob had struggled, he was a wonderful man, but subterfuge wasn't his game.

Helen swiped the highest security keycard she could find; these guys weren't even pro enough to shuffle from the standard villain handbook color scheme she'd been seeing since her first major gig. Whoever ran "Goons R' Us" needed to get with the times. Security badges and keycards were child's play. She let herself into the facility, keeping herself thin and tensed like a spring. She only made one mistake, and it was the kind of rookie mistake you learn not to do before you even get out into the field.

She let herself think "This is _too _easy." She let her guard down even the slightest amount.

The floor opened beneath her into a pit that seemed dark enough to drop into the center of the Earth. She was too slow to extend and grab herself. A stupid mistake. She was fast, but she wasn't faster than gravity. She dropped for several seconds, long arms grabbing at the featureless sides of the pit for a handhold. When she finally saw the ground coming up to meet her, she stretched out into a parachute to slow her fall. One of the first stretches she had ever done had saved her life yet again. She landed softly on the floor at the bottom, springing into a combat-ready position. The room around her was white, bare to the point of being featureless. That is until a television slid from the wall and a shadow-cloaked figure appeared on the screen.

"We meet again, Elastigirl!" The voice exclaimed through masking filters.

Helen groaned a deep, frustrated groan. Even through the disguise and the filters, she recognized the voice instantly.

"Hi, Kevin." She sighed.

She heard the mic on the other end go muted as the shadowy figure shouted at somebody out of frame, he came back doing his best "villain" voice.

"You should watch your tone around DOCTOR VILLAINOUS."

"Is that what you're calling yourself now?"

Kevin Friedberg, too many aliases to name. The kind of mostly harmless dweeb who watched too many cartoons and fancied himself a comic book villain. He was a pimply-faced joke if you didn't play by his rules. The only problem was that she had played right into his hands. Even a complete buffoon like Friedberg could be dangerous on the offensive. He had a lot of money and a boner for "outsmarting" his idols. He wouldn't kill her, but losing to him would probably be pretty embarrassing. If he thought he'd outsmarted you in any way, you could bet there would be pictures posted online. Those were most of the villains you saw in this line of work. Like Bomb Voyage or the one who dressed like a butterfly, Helen always forgot his name.

"I do not know of this KEVIN of whom you speak, I am DOCTOR VILLAINOUS."

"Do you still live with your mom? Isn't it past your bedtime?" Helen teased, subtly scanning her surroundings as she did. Get him talking, they loved to talk.

"The FLY speaks very boldly despite having fallen into the SPIDER'S nest!"

"I thought spiders made webs?"

"SILENCE, WENCH!"

The pit over her head slammed shut a few inches shy of giving her a new bald spot. She could hear gas being released, but she couldn't see gas.

"So what's your plan?" Helen asked before holding her breath. She could hold her breath for a few minutes at least, plenty of time to get him monologuing and work out an escape plan for this over-expensive role-playing session.

"Foolish hero! Like your husband before you, you fell right into my trap! Those brainless goons outside were merely decoys for the real lab full of horrors I have set aside for you! You will face the struggle of a lifetime when you- wait, where are you going?"

The panel on the wall popped out easily and she slipped through. She easily slipped out of the boxy little trap room and into the shaft she had uncovered, quickly sliding like a snake through the grimy bowels of the facility. She finally managed to break through to the outside and she let out a long-held exhale. She tried to catch her breath and...

The air smelled funny.

She looked back at the wall behind her, it didn't lead up to the roof of a building's exterior. It scaled all the way up to the same kind of ceiling the previous room had had. She choked as her vision blurred. Her legs wobbled and she had to brace herself to stand. It wasn't killing her, yet, but the situation had gone bad fast. That had been her second mistake, she'd underestimated an idiot.

"Bumbling fool! There is no escape from the LABYRINTH OF DOCTOR VILLAINOUS."

A foreign substance in her lungs making it hard to stand up straight? Check. A power-tripping dweeb intent on subjecting her to droning monologues and a bunch of trials? Check. She hadn't missed this part of the job.

"Listen here, you twerp." She managed to **** out.

"The GAS which you have so graciously inhaled is a special concoction of my own creation. It will CLOUD your MIND and IMPAIR your JUDGEMENT. It also SMELLS like GYM SOCKS."

He was right about most of that, but she'd compare it more to a cum sock. It was hard enough to stand and think at the same time, stringing sentences together was hard. It was like a mixture of a bad hangover and dizzy nausea.

"In less than a minute's time, one of my most FEARSOME creations will be released into the LABYRINTH with you. Every TEN MINUTES after that, I will release ANOTHER. There is only ONE PATH that leads to your husband and the antidote. Every other path will lead to GREAT HUMILIATION. Choose wisely."

Helen could hear the grinding of a heavy door opening from the room below the pit. One door opened on each of the four walls in her current room. If she went south, she could try to take on whatever Kevin's creation was. How bad could it be? Otherwise, she would have to brave the maze.