A cold, unfortunate chill ran up my spine as I watched the local news showing footage of the disaster. Soon Laurel and Crank Boy came in from the kitchen, and saw the footage as well: Capitol Hill destroyed, Denny Way destroyed, and occasional short glimpses of his ugliness that managed to get broadcast before the cameras destroyed themselves.

"Oh my God," Laurel whispered, "is that…."

I nodded slowly.

"How did he get out?" Crank Boy exclaimed.

"I don't know," I said, "but he must be stopped."

We all nodded in agreement. Then we sort of just sat there, eyeing each other nervously. There seemed no way I could just casually excuse myself to go fight Dr. Ugly without letting on that I was, in fact,

A SUPER HERO!

"Well, uh…" I said, "I think I'm going to, uh… go into my bedroom, and uh… listen to music."

"Right," Crank Boy said. "And, uh… I think I'm going to go… take a long shower."

"Cool," Laurel said. "I think I'm going to, uh… hang out in the, uh, backyard and like, look at nature and stuff."

With an air of amazingly forced nonchalance, we each split to our separate destinations. Once safely within my bedroom, I changed out of my street clothes and into the spandex suit. Now, I was no longer simply Scotto. Now, I was Captain Scotto! I posed in the mirror for a moment, admiring the way the suit lent definition to my slender, athletic frame. Then I climbed out the window and headed toward the front lawn.

And that was where I bumped into Crank Boy, who had climbed out the bathroom window. He'd changed into some kind of yellow and blue spandex thingie, not nearly as attractive as the beautiful red spandex thingie I was wearing.

"Crank Boy?" I asked incredulously.

"Scotto?" Crank Boy replied.

"That's Captain Scotto," I corrected him.

"Oh really."

Suddenly Laurel emerged from one of the bushes, and stumbled right into us. She was wearing this weird red and blue spandex thingie with spider webs all over it.

"Laurel?" I asked incredulously.

"Scotto?" she replied.

"That's Captain Scotto," Crank Boy corrected her derisively.

"What the hell are you talking about?" she sputtered.

"I guess I may as well confess," I said. "I'm actually a super hero named Captain Scotto."

"Oh, no fookin way, that is just not possible," she exclaimed.

My feelings hurt, I shot back, "Well, just who the hell are you supposed to be?"

"I'm Captain Laurel!" she snapped.

"What!" Crank Boy exclaimed. "But… but I'm Captain Crank Boy!"

We stared at each other for a very long, uncomfortable moment, out there on my front lawn in our spandex. I had never, ever wanted to see Crank Boy in skin tight spandex, and I was having to adjust to the sight as rapidly as I could manage.

"So… just what exactly are your super powers, Laurel?" I finally asked her.

"I am a wall-crawling web-slinger," she said.

"I see, so… shouldn't you be, like, Spider-Girl or Spider-Gal or Spider-Lass or something?"

"Oh please," she said, "that is such a cliché." She gave me a condescending look, and asked, "What are your powers?"

"I can fly, and I'm impervious," I said. I stuck my nose up at her for emphasis.

"Impervious?" she replied.

"Well… the suit's impervious, and I'm impervious when I'm in the suit. But still."

"I see," Crank Boy said, "so you don't even really have ‘powers' per se, you just have a neat prop."

"It's not a prop, it's a super hero costume, and I'm wearing it, so I am, by definition, a super hero!" I shouted. My logic was impeccable and unassailable, as usual.

"Well, I can do shit like this," Crank Boy said, and with a loud SNIKT (or maybe it was more like a "snihcht" or even kind of a "snakt," I don't really know), giant metal claws popped out of his hands. "Plus, I have rapid healing, and my bones are indestructible." The claws retracted with a little TKINS, and then he said, "So clearly I am the badass here."

"All right, look," said Laurel, ever the voice of reason among our otherwise thoroughly unreasonable crew, "clearly we can't all be Captain. That is just not going to work from a marketing and PR perspective."

"Well, I don't think the public is ready for a girl captain," Crank Boy said off-handedly. She didn't like that at all, and punched him in the arm, which she immediately regretted.

"Join the 20th century, you big dummyhead," she said. "Women can too be captains. The simple fact that I can't think of a single example from popular media in no way undermines my assertion that there are dozens, nay, hundreds of women captains out there, and I am one of them!"

"Right, but see, you guys may be captains when it's just you, but when I'm around, I have to be the captain," I said.

"And just why the hell is that?" Laurel asked.

"Because," I replied, "I am the only one with a dashing cape to go with my costume."

They pondered my once again impeccable and unassailable logic, but for some ungodly reason, their acid-addled brains failed to accept the reality of the situation.

"Well, clearly we need to figure this out before we go stop Dr. Ugly," Laurel said.

"Why don't we go inside," Crank Boy said. "I've got some Mad Dog we can nurse, and we can just kind of talk this out."

"Yeah, I suppose we should come down a little bit from the acid anyway before we go off fighting Dr. Ugly," I said as I started up the front stairs.

"Oh, and I still wanted you guys to see that copy of The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show that I picked up recently," Laurel said.

"Ah, right, you know I hear that has some really choice moments," I said as we went back inside and closed the front door, leaving Dr. Ugly to his devices.