The answer just raises further questions...

After looking back from the mystery man, you give Jane - sitting alongside you inside the Justicemobile - which had pulled up of its own volition, driven by Morte's complex crypto-technology, struggling to clean herself up with the inadequate amenities on offer - you notice that the tall, muscular-yet-enviably-well-endowed woman is glaring at you with such ire that you almost expect the close-cropped brown stubble of her military haircut to ignite like a match head.

"Uh..." you begin hesitantly. "C-can you believe that those guys thought they could get away with-"

Before you get any further, Jane's hand lashes out and clamps itself over your mouth. It's so sudden and startling that you don't even move an inch to defend yourself.

"Not one more word, birdshit-for-brains." she says through clenched teeth. Her voice is a terse, raspy contralto at the best of times - right now, it's downright intimidating. "I can't figure out if you're a manipulative back-stabbing whore or just another nymphomaniac idiot. But what I do know for abso-god-damn-lutely certain is that I want you to shut your fucking mouth and stop having clever ideas. Can you do that for me 'Drakeson'?"

Numbly, you whimper and nod. The surprisingly-strong washout hero releases you and aggressively hurls herself into the drivers seat. "Now go get that Looney Tunes bitch you were SUPPOSED to keep control of and let's get back to the headquarters before things somehow get worse."

"Missed your true calling as a drill instructor..." you mutter as you get out, slinking away from her presence. But you say it so quietly that even if she somehow had your powerset, she'd still have a hell of a time making it out.

Although the bulk of the media attention was being directed at the humiliated members of Alpha squad, Beast Beauty is being questioned by a lone, mousy female reporter and getting visibly agitated, handling the questions with all of the grace of a bull in a china shop (darn it, you think to yourself - her constant insertion of lame puns into everything is starting to rub off on you).

"No!" Beauty shouts. "That's a ridiculous question! Of course I am not 'on'," she makes dramatic air quotes with her fingers, "anything. And besides, I did NOT inhale!" Remembering that there was, in fact, a sighting of a villain here, you make a visual sweep over the dispersing, departing crowd as well as the gawkers clustering around her and Alpha Squad.

"...absolutely not. I did NOT have sex with any of those police officers in the cruiser, I promise I have no idea what happened there. Those semen stains on my leotard are from an entirely different cop in an entirely different location!" She notices you approaching and starts hastily backpedaling in your direction. "Oh, hey, my ride is here! Thankyouverymuch, I hope you enjoyed the festvial, peace out!" Hunched over slightly, Beauty goes right past you. "C'mon Rikki! The Fake News is after me, we need to get out of here! Oooh, I could REALLY go for a banana smoothie from the recreation lounge right about now..."

"Hold on just a second, 'Boss'." You put a hand to her chest. Undeterred, she keeps trying to slip past you even as you continue speaking. "I saw a dangerous looking weirdo in the crowd. Hawaiian shirt, wearing a camera on a strap, bomb-shaped face mask... I think you should get on the Justicemobile's radio and call it in."

"Ah?" Beauty makes a little chirrup of surprise, stopping when she finally processes what you've said. "Really? You saw HIM? Awwwww, no! And don't tell me - you didn't even think to try and get a pic? You gotta be faster on the draw, Rikki!"

"Hold on!" you put both your hands up, exasperated by her sudden verbal gallop (ack - there you went doing it again - was forcing you to think in animal puns an undocumented superpower of hers?). "Slow down a second. Who is 'him'?"

"That's Photobomber." Beauty says matter-of-factly, as if that should be obvious, twitching her little brown button nose. "He's a weirdo with time travel powers. Uh... I guess you'd call him a vigilante? Or maybe he counts as a villain? You'd have to ask Maiden A about our stance, I guess - kinda moot point since we have as little chance of catching him as an adorable kitty has of catching a laser dot, since he's only ever seen for a few seconds at a time. He has a real specific game that he always plays - he shows up for just a few seconds at a time next to some straight-up heinous villains right when they're doing the important bits of their evil schemes, especially when they're trying to do it secret-like. Sometimes, but not always, he'll press a detonator and whatever the villains were working on will explode. I wouldn't exactly call him a stand-up dude, he, like, doesn't even care if innocent people get caught in the blast radius or stuff."

"Holy cow!" You exclaim, too alarmed to hate yourself for saying something so corny. "Does that mean there might be an explosive package in the rally?! Damn it, why didn't you say so sooner? We need to call-"

"Whoah, hold the phone, babe," Beauty says, recovering her usual dopey savoir-faire now that she's away from the reporter. "It's cool, if it was one of the actual bomb-y appearances, then something would've already gone 'boom'! Chillax, Rikki. He's one of the ones it's not really worth worrying about. If something bad happens, it happens, and why drive yourself nuts trying to prevent what you can't stop? Just like in the van! Good job entertaining Alpha squad by the way, sorry I goofed up and got them, uh, and myself, in trouble!"

"But, you were saying I'm supposed to take a picture of him...?" You ask, genuinely baffled and unable to sustain your righteous indignation at Beauty's antics.

"Oh, well yeah - a couple of times we've managed to stop some real big baddies early because somebody just so happened to get a photo of Photobomber standing around being his cryptic self, and then investigating the people he was standing next to. Hmmm... I think the only one to have ever gotten a picture of him more than once is Mood Ring, which makes sense. I think she was training to be a professional photographer when she got the - Um, oops! Sorry, you didn't hear that from me."

"So there was a big villain at the rally?" You ask, voice still sharp with concern. "Don't we need to follow up on THAT?"

"Rikki, have you ever heard that in a city you're never more than 10 feet away from a rat? It's true as shit. And thank goodness for that, too! Rats are cute, and also delicious! Oh - don't tell Vermina that I said that. Anyway, in Acropolis city it's totes like that with supervillains. There's always somebody doing deals and weaving schemes. If we go and start digging into it now, we're just gonna forget all about it anyway when the next immediate crisis jumps on us."

You huff, puffing out your chest. "So which is it? Am I supposed to keep a watch for this guy, try and get pictures of him somehow, and investigate like you said 5 minutes ago? Or 'just not worry about it'?"

"Well, you know... Now that you mention it, you really DO need to work on your image some more. I can tell you're still learning the ropes - you always wanna have a video camera with you, just in case you spot something like Photobomber OR, you have some real profound shit to say about modern society!" Beauty opens one of the few pouches her skimpy outfit has and produces a portable, adhesive camera resembling a small, pink hippopotamus with the camera lens inside the mouth.

"Like I was saying," Beauty says proudly, putting it away, "I've been coming up with a lot of ideas about how I could help you, in particular, Rikki! I know we've gotten off to a rough start, but I really do think you're the puma's pajamas, and I'd LOVE to have you be my sidekick for a while! There aren't enough heroes who take their inspiration from the animal kingdom, if you ask me. Or, heck - to help make up for the mess today, how about I make you a full-on duo with me?"

Although you start to protest you're already in a dynamic duo, you purse your lips sadly and look down at the concrete - technically, you aren't, not at the moment, no matter how much Doc Rainbow is still carrying a torch for you. And besides, it's too cruel to shoot down someone's offer of a duo-ship offhandedly. "Could you, uh, make a video compilation of some of them for me? I really need to get home and take a shower - and read up a little more on this Photobomber character."

"Could I make a video compliation? COULD I? Awwwww, you're in the queen's jungle now, Rikki!" Beauty bares her teeth excitably. As you pile into the 'mobile with her and Jane stomps on the gas pedal, you decide it was a good way to swing the conversation, as it keeps Beast Beauty mostly quiet on the way back.

A couple of uncomfortable hours of silence with your co-workers later, you're pushing open your own front door and groaning in exhaustion, still feeling a bit overwhelmed. "Julia, I don't mean to seem bossy, but I'm going to NEED another coffee... oh, and to take a close look into both the 'spinoff' program that the League has authorized, and a villainous vigilante called Photobomber. If you need me to-" suddenly feeling quite silly, you halt in mid-sentence and bury your face in your hands. Julia was on vacation. After Baconator... 'got to' her, you'd insisted on it. You are going to be on your own for at least another week.

Your sigh is joined by a wince as you realize that because the Justicemobile dropped you off at your apartment complex, you've left your motorcycle in the garage at League HQ. You're going to have to take the subway to get to work tomorrow morning. Ugh... the subway. The only time a superhero should be on one of those is if a masked megalomaniac is holding a carload of passengers hostage.

It's now 8:20. The first 10 minutes of your subway ride have been perfectly uneventful. Normally you'd consider that a downside, but right now, you don't want anything getting in the way of you collecting the files on the Full House siblings and the 'Spinoff' program that you'd requested by virtue of being involved in the incident. Since you always ended up feeling guilty if you ended up sitting down - inevitably there'd be some old man with a cane, or child, or pregnant woman coming along who looked like they needed it more, and giving up your seat was undignified - it just made you look like you were showing off.

Considering that you were dressed in a black button-up coat that was so tight it almost required a corset... a matching microskirt that would make it impossible for you to bend over more than two feet without flashing whoever was standing behind you... and thigh-high leather stiletto boots, you already had enough to worry about being stared at. The fact that this was the uniform of all female security guards at the League of Propriety only increased the amount of crude attention you got. On the one hand, having strangers loudly drooling over your appearance was kind of flattering (even if said strangers weren't exactly appealing themselves - and usually, they weren't). But on the other hand, it was tiring having to constantly fend them off - and that was just the "innocent" flirting and demands for your attention. It was more than once that you'd had to sharply slap a hand away.

There were a whole gaggle of high school students on board the train with you. A catholic school with uniforms, by the looks of it - and unsurprisingly, the blouses were a little too tight and the skirts a little too short, but what did you expect from the kind of school that would operate in THIS city? Apparently aware of the dangers (or just lazy), all of the girls were in the seats along the sides, doing their makeup or looking at their phones. Groups of male students were clustered around each row of schoolgirls, chatting to them and occasionally trying to get their attention. That leaves you standing in the bustling crowd near the middle among a bunch of older professionals.

Subways and trains in Acropolis city are always crowded. The reason oughtn't to surprise you, but you still got a good giggle when Julia explained it to you in conjunction with the motorcycle - auto insurance companies charge a whopping 300% addition to their premiums for any automobile owners who live in or commute to the city. That was why there was such a booming business in stolen and otherwise black market cars... but even more than the rampant rate of thefts, the cost was a reflection of just how frequently they got destroyed. There was something in the psychology of supervillains (of the more rampage-y sort) and monsters that made them just LOVE smashing, throwing, blasting, burning and sometimes even eating vehicles. For their part, the heroes were almost as bad, often using them as baseball bats just to show off.

And so, here you were on the subway. Which brought dangers all its own. The kind of criminals who lurked in dark alleys and might menace a lone citizen walking the streets at night, for all of their well-deserved reputation as creeps and assailants, really just wanted the victim's money 99% of the time, even if their target happened to be an attractive woman. But on public transportation there was another, even-more ubiquitous form of petty villain - the molester. Unlike certain countries in other cultures, Acropolis was an American city, so girls and women didn't feel like they had to stay quiet and take it when someone started getting handsy with them on a crowded platform or train car. Most of the time, the offender got a swift, painful kick, or arrested, or both. Yet, just like the saps who thought it was a good idea to pull out a .38 caliber revolver and start shooting at Maiden America when she coincidentally showed up to stop them knocking over a gas station, the train gropers were never deterred. Especially since, all too often, they had some kind of trick up their sleeve to better their odds of 'success', however such perverts defined it.

"That Raven Woman gives me the creeps..." you were muttering quietly to yourself, looking down at the screen of your smartwatch (phones were too bourgeois, you felt) and browsing some news articles about the likes of her and Beast Beauty. Most of the stuff about Raven Woman was surprisingly dry and uninformative, by heroine standards. It almost felt censored - or maybe she really was straight-laced, as far as the heroine community goes? Her outfit isn't even all that sexy. "Ugh... there goes ANOTHER update from Beast Beauty. How much time does that girl spend on social media every day, anyway? What's this one called? 'Putting Alpha bitches in their place'. Aaaaand there's a thumbnail of her bent over on all fours wearing a dog muzzle and nothing else, in human form. Oh, and her fans have already started an angry petition to get her returned to A-rank." You sigh. Mother always said that jealousy gives you wrinkles, and as wrong-headed as she was about so many things, she was right that it was an unhealthy emotion.

"Well... good for her." you murmur. "I do wonder why she wanted me to-"

Your monologue and train of thought are interrupted by an extremely high-pitched girlish squeal. Whipping your head to the side, you see that a freckled, strawberry blonde young woman in big, round 'nerd glasses' (which, most of her peers would probably agree, enhanced rather than detracted from the appeal of her long legs and the pair of DD breasts just barely stuffed into her white button-up blouse) was writhing in her seat and blushing furiously. The girls near her - a clique of seniors, by the looks of them - had leapt to their feet in concern and were throwing accusing questions at the boys who'd been conversing with them from their 'chivalrous' standing positions (allowing these chivalrous young men to, of course, look down the fronts of the girls' blouses while speaking with them).

You started to snort disdainfully. But then, as the busty blonde squealed even louder and suddenly crossed her legs sharply, you hear the girls around her gasp in astonishment and take a step back. Looking more closely, your eyebrows shoot up as you see what they were noticing:

As she gasps and brings a hand over her mouth, turning her head aside as if trying to hide from the many eyeballs now focused on her, the sitting schoolgirl's breasts seem to bounce up and down vigorously all on their own. When the schoolgirl gasps even louder, you can't help but fix your eyes on those enviable mounds... Oh, to hell with what mom said; it was downright unfair that this girl was at least 25% younger than you yet already had you beat in the curves department - which was no easy feat to begin with! And how very soft they looked... you swallowed dryly. But before you could think too much about how God had seen fit to give this schoolgirl twice as many letter Ds as you, you see indentations unnaturally develop on each of her mysteriously bouncy tits. Five on each... and a **** squishing them down in the middle... that was a human handprint! But with no visible hand responsible for it!

A split second after those disappeared, her skirt flipped up and her pink cotton panties started slithering down, drawn onward by the same invisible ****. You watch for a few more seconds, mildly shocked, before you move to put a stop to this. Well... this is an obnoxious distraction, but not exactly the most surprising thing that could be happening. Unlike Diamond-10, the first supervillain that you fought, this wasn't the cheap, technological, only-when-standing-perfectly-still kind of invisibility - this was the genuine article. Unfortunately, as proud as you were of your sonic control superpowers, one thing they DIDN'T actually do was give you any kind of sonar. Oh, you could bounce a soundwave off of something - but like a normal human, the spatial reasoning part of your brain isn't naturally connected to the parts that interpret sound. When presented with a big target like Diamond in a mostly still and empty room, you could reason your way through it and estimate an invisible person's location by the sound of them moving. On a train car with 60 other people, all agitated, and moving, and talking - your superpower wasn't going to do you a lick of good.

No, that wasn't quite right - it does let you hear something you don't expect. A delighted laugh, just barely stifled by someone through pursed lips... coming from right among that crowd of schoolgirls. And that wasn't all - it was a high-pitched, distinctively *female* laugh.