I live with two friends who are also superheroes. Big Red and Aranae are their names. We call ourselves ATHENA(tm), and devote most of our lives to saving you thankless sheep. Our headquarters is some house we're renting that's filled with all kinds of shit we took from aliens and supervillains. We don't know what a lot of it is, but it's been my experience that most of it is explosive. After I destroyed most of our kitchen, we all agreed to not mess with the equipment too much. But I get bored and you can expect a decent sized explosion at least once a week.

Besides all of the high tech alien artifacts, super villain trophies, and demolished furniture, our base is also home to my unrivalled comic book collection. Being a super hero, I consider reading comic books, "training." Most people call it, "An immature escape and a desperate attempt to retain my youth." But it's pretty hard to take psychological shit like that seriously when you know you could tear the arms off the person who said it. Oh, and psychology is kind of a joke to begin with. A joke that is easily put to rest with a good beating. The after school specials were wrong, kids. Violence is a great solution to most of your problems.

Not that I wouldn't like to talk about beating people up for "no good reason," I do have a real story to tell. Okay, stop. Go back and read that sentence out loud, only this time make the quotation marks with your hands. The cutesy little double finger flicks. And make sure to really place a strong inflection on the words, "no good reason," and get a dumb look on your face. Now you're talking like a geek.

Sorry, I just have a lot of time to think about things like that while I'm waiting for the computer to catch up with my typing. That happens a lot with me. You know, the sitting around and waiting thing. I can finish a crossword puzzle while I'm waiting for toast to cook. I redecorate my living room while I wait for a glass of water to fill up.

About me and my friends at ATHENA, we don't have any government funding, and we like it that way. Sure, we don't have any walls that flip around to secret super computer rooms like in Spider Man and his Amazing Friends, but we'd rather be poor superhero white trash than be employed by the govern ment. It's too bad meta human vigilantism doesn't pay better. It's not like we can open a super hero shop or say, "I just saved your planet, could you buy the pizza tonight?" We get by, though. We have the money we keep from foiled super villain bank robberies and things like that. I'm just kidding. We never foil bank robberies, and if we did, we would never actually use the word "foil." We probably would keep most of the money, though. I've really had my eye on a WWF Superstars arcade machine.

We do have money to make some cool stuff, though. Big Red is our team scientist and cyborg, and he fixed up a satellite dish to run on a delay and then play back the images at ten times the normal speed. This was my birthday present since he knew how bored I got waiting TV at two frames per second. He also fixed my video game systems to run at hyper speed. This morning, I beat Mega Man one through eight. I also built a sand castle, read 93 comic books, took a 400 mile jog, and painted the house. But tonight, I decided to just watch some TV. I was bored, and I'd already read all of my comics at least five times each.

I turned it to one of those cable network channels that always have the old action shows. You know, like the A-Team and that one with the guy... shit... never mind. It's not important. Wheelchair Warrior was on. Nothing else is important when this show comes on. It's some fucked up syndicated thing that was a bi-product of that "handicapped people can do anything" advertising campaign from the eighties. Yeah, the one with Tony Danza.

Wheelchair Warrior is about this guy with no legs that cruises around in a wheelchair that shoots rockets and oil slicks and shit. And it goes like 300 miles per hour and talks to him like Night Rider. Every week, he ends up blowing up a bunch of bad guys who make fun of handicapped people. And they're like the cool eighties bad guys that wear the mirrored glasses and jean jackets. Then he'll get in trouble and have to be rescued by one of his disabled friends. Like the time he was tied up and lowered into a big snake pit when Ricardo, the one legged skiier, came bursting in and calmed the snakes down with an inspirational speech about the world being only limitted by our own imaginations. Or that time Emmanuelle Lewis and Gary Coleman saved him from a gorilla in that trampoline warehouse. I'll never forget those midgets jumping from one trampoline to another screaming, "We can do anything big people can do!" with the Wheelchair Warrior theme music going to whole time.

I don't know the damn words. I'm always laughing too hard. But not as hard as my friends do when they come in and see it on my super speed TV. Because there is nothing funnier than a wheelchair shooting rockets and zipping around the screen with midgets on trampolines. And on my TV, the theme music sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks in a blender. I'm not saying it's nice to laugh at handicapped people, but when I see a guy in a wheelchair teaming up with siamese twins to take out drug dealers, I'm going to laugh. If I laughed at people just because of their disabilities, I would be laughing at everybody. Did you forget how slow you people move?

But earlier tonight, while I was watching this beautfiful show of positive thinking propaganda, I was interrupted by the Trouble Alert. That's the alarm we installed, kind of as a joke, whenever we have knowledge of super villain or alien activity. It has a cool "Beep! Beep!" annoying sound effect and it flashes "Trouble Alert!" on the living room wall. We figured if the Super Friends9 had a Trouble Alert, we should too. But the Super Friends emulation stops there. We are not going to have an Aqua Man on our team. Jesus, I still can't believe Aqua Man.

Anyway, I love that alarm. Sure, it interrupts Wheelchair Warrior sometimes, and the beeping really grates on my ears, but it means we get to go pound some bad guy ass. When it went off today, I was so excited, I jumped up and changed into my gold spandex by the time the third beep was done. I waited in the living room for Big Red and Aranae to get into their combat gear. This normally takes awhile, so I started a game of Street Fighter. I beat it about four times before they were finally ready.

They came in at the same time, and damn they looked cool. Big Red had both his baseball bats strapped to his back, and it looked like he had just polished his metal arms. He was wearing pants held together by a bunch of multicolored patches, and a white shirt that looked like it would tear apart as soon as he flexed that super human chest of his. He had his hair in long red braids, and a slight grin on his face while he waited for my approval on how awesome his war paint looked. I said something along the lines of, "Shit! Your war paint kicks ass!" I'm articulate like that. In retrospective, perhaps I should have said something about how the blue paint completemented the orange and red colors in his beard well and brought out his natural highlights.

Aranae was next to him, and he was wearing glasses, a loose black jumpsuit, and cape. You can't go wrong with a cape. He was going barefoot as usual, and had a wet towel tucked into his belt. Let me explain that. See, he has these prehensile feet that look like monkey feet, so he hardly ever wears shoes. And the towel is what he uses as a weapon. He fights with a style that involves focusing mystic energy stuff into a towel. It's called Karache.

I just told Big Red how cool his war paint looked, so I thought it would be rude not to give Aranae a complement.

"Nice cape." Like I said, I'm articulate.

Big Red started explaining why the alarm went off. He said something about how the Trans-Temporal Modulation Detector picked up ... something. I quit listening after the first few syllables. Wheelchair Warrior was still going on the TV behind him. It was really hard to listen to someone talk during the TNT Wheelchair Warrior Wild Weekend Marathon. I kind of caught part of his explanation, but didn't really start paying attention until he mentioned the Lords of Terror.

The Lords of Terror are this unfortunately named group of super powered terrorists, and probably the most powerful collection of meta humans in the world. Their leader, Absolute Zero, is a megalomaniacal powerhouse with the ability to create ice structures. I fought him once before, and he's one of those arrogant guys that make even me look humble. I kicked his ass, by the way.
Other super villains in the Lords of Terror are Spectrum, Hyperblitz, Cobar, Hermoso, Darkwynd, and Plague. Spectrum is probably the biggest idiot on the face of the planet, but he can control light in any form. He's made out of armored plastic and he can shoot lasers, fly, turn invisible, and probably do a million other things. If that guy was smart enough to tie his shoes, he would be scary. His brother, Hyperblitz, controls electricity. He's got the same crazy limitless power as his brother, but he's even stupider than Spectrum. Hyperblitz can't control his powers at all. Last I heard, he was stuck in some huge insulated room so he wouldn't screw up the magnetic poles of the Earth on accident. He's that tough.

Cobar is the most advanced cyborg on the face of the planet, and a member of Delta Iota Kappa fraternity. Or something like that. I think he's the only super villain I can think of that chews tobacco and wears a hat that says, "Beer." He's taught us that when you make advanced cyborgs out of frat boys, they have some very interesting battle cries. Once I heard he yelled, "Fuck yeah! DIK House rules!!!" before launching a bunch of missiles out of his chest. None of us have fought this guy before, but last week Big Red hacked into some CIA files, and we all read about him.

Hermoso is probably the most annoying though. He is this prissy Spanish guy who shoots trick arrows with his bow. He usually wears nasty gawdy outfits with frilly sleeves and a mask to protect his precious face while he attacks you with ballerina kicks. The only thing more obnoxious than his fighting style and wardrobe is the fact that he spends most of his time in battle hitting on his male opponents. And seeing as I'm the world's prettiest super hero, I've had to listen to remedial gay Spanish pick up lines from this guy everytime I knock his teeth out. I don't know if he's trying to psych people out, or if he's just painfully lonely. Either way, it's kind of pathetic.

Darkwynd is like the team's obligatory vampire chick. I guess no super villain team is complete without the undead sex appeal. I've never fought her before, but Aranae says she's pretty tough. But Aranae is always so polite, that could mean anything. Even if he tore her apart, he would probably tell us that it was "a very hard fought victory" or something like that.

The only guy on their team I worry about is Plague. He's this psychopathic killer who's as strong as Big Red, but with a much more antisocial attitude. The guy is like an evil Batman in an armored skull mask. He never makes mistakes, he never speaks, he can knock a train over with a punch, and he scares the shit out of me. Big Red and he once fought for hours and destroyed most of a parking garage. I don't know how it ended, but Big Red hardly ever talks about it, and he gets really quiet whenever somebody mentions Plague.

I went over their roster in my head in between the syllables of Big Red's speech. The Trouble Alert really was because they're in town. That was cool, but what the hell were the Lords of Terror doing in Moscow, Idaho? I started to get really impatient with his explanation and began to quietly sing the theme song to Wheelchair Warrior while I changed the lyrics to include us and the Lords of Terror.

"ATHENA Warriors! We've got Big Red!"

"Lords of Terror! You're so dead!"

I'm not the best songwriter, but the dance I did to go along with it was very impressive. Aranae noticed that I was getting bored, and interrupted Big Red to ask me what I thought we should do. I stopped dancing and gave him my that-was-a-stupid-question look and said, "Is this a filibuster meeting? We're super heroes, and they're bad guys. We're going to jump in the fucking ATHENAmobile and bring home some severed super villain body parts. Then we're going to build a fort out of these cushions and watch Bloodsport five times."

They both laughed, but I think most of it was out of nervousness at us going up against the most powerful assemblage of bad guys in the world, outnumbered, and with no battle plan. They obviously didn't share my confidence, but agreed that the Lords of Terror were probably destroying our city and killing people while we were chatting. Big Red told me their position was in East City Park. That's a four minute drive in the ATHENAmobile. Note: the ATHENAmobile is a copyright of ATHENA Inc, and is really just Aranae's Ford Bronco with fake nitro rockets welded onto the back.

As soon as I heard their position, I said, "I'mgoingI'llseewhat'sgoingonyouguystaketheATHENAmobileandmeetmethere," and I took off at about two hundred miles an hour for East City Park. I pretended to ignore them when they yelled for me to wait.

I was there in about six seconds, and saw the Lords of Terror. They were all surrounding some kind of weird machine they had set up in the middle of the park. I'm not sure what it did, but you can bet it was for something no doubt diabolical! I'm sorry, sometimes I just like to speak like an episode of Space Ghost. Anyway, they were all there except for Hyperblitz. He must still be in the big rubber room trying to figure out how to work his powers.

I waited behind a tree while I watched Absolute Zero bark orders at Cobar, Spectrum, and Hermoso. Darkwynd and Plague each stood away from the group. Well, Darkwynd was kind of hovering. I couldn't tell if they were standing guard, or if they were just refusing to help with whatever the hell the rest of them were doing. The park was completely empty, which was kind of weird that early at night. It's possible that they killed everybody in the area, but I didn't see any dead bodies. The thought did enter my head to go ahead and start fighting these guys without Big Red and Aranae, but I decided to wait for them. Partly out of politeness and partly out of realistic thinking. Sure I'm bad, but that's six super villains. So I waited. It seemed like hours before Big Red and Aranae finally showed up. They parked down the block and did their best ninja stealth manuevers to get to the nearest cover. I couldn't see Aranae after he ducked into the shadows, but Big Red was not as inconspicuous. It took a bout two seeconds before Plague and Darkwynd spotted him. I heard Darkwynd's voice shout, "There! By the southern entrance!" in some heavy accent. Vampire accent, I guess.

"Seize him!" commanded Absolute Zero. I giggled. I just think it's funny when people talk like Emporer Ming. The entire team started rushing at Big Red's location except for Absolute Zero. He was busy with whatever that stupid machine was.

Big Red yelled, "Shit!" which was very appropriate. I ran over to meet him, and someone must have seen a streak of gold. One of them yelled something about Glitter Boy. At least now they knew who they were dealing with. They were probably shaking in their little super villain panties as soon as they knew it was me, baby.

I had trouble talking slowly enough for Aranae and Big Red to understand me. I mean, I was only 100 yards away from a huge battle royal! "Okay. AranaeyoutakeDarkwynd. BigRedtakeCobar. I'lltake-HermosoandSpectrum. ThenweworryaboutPlague. Okay?"

I'm not team leader or anything like that, but they both nodded. By the time their heads were done moving, I was already 50 yards from them with clenched fists and a grin on my face. The plan seemed great. I could take out Hermoso before any of these people could blink. He's just a little gay Spanish guy with a bow. Then I pound on Spectrum's armored ass until he's down while Aranae gets rid of Darkwynd, and Big Red knocks out that frat boy cyborg, Cobar. Then we all gang up on Plague. If Napolean were alive today, he would come to me for military advice. And I would tell him to stop eating all of my pie.

It started out just like I planned. I was running right at Hermoso while he fired some silly cylinder-tipped arrow at me. An arrow. At someone with super speed. There have probably been smarter decisions. I caught it with a fake yawn and looked down at it while I kept running.

"EXPLOSIVA."

I didn't really have to consult my memories from Spanish class to translate that. "Whoa!" I eloquently commented. "That might have hurt if it hit me." There weren't any instructions on the arrow, so I decided to get rid of it before it as soon as I could in case it decided to detonate. So while I was charging towards its owner, I jammed it into the face of the nearest bad guy and yelled something like, "Una arrow explosiva! Que fantastico!" It doesn't sound as funny now as it did then. Anyway, I heard a really satisfying explosion while I was running past whosever head was the recipient of that bomb. I look back and see Plague. It didn't even look like he noticed. Jesus, what kind of person takes an explosive to the head and ignores it? I had better things to think about though, like the clothesline I was about to give Hermoso at 250 miles per hour. I rocketted past him with my arm out, and after snapping his little bow in two, my forearm caught him right below his neck. He couldn't even manage a choking sound while he flipped backwards through the air. I'd be amazed if he survived the first hit, but just to make sure, I stopped running to kick his airborne body a couple of times. I didn't ever get to see him hit the ground. I was already going for Spectrum.

Big Red was fighting with Cobar, and from what I saw, Cobar was losing. Badly. He's a more advanced cyborg, but Big Red was proving that a good baseball bat swing is more powerful than science. I heard Big Red scream, "You like it, you bitch!" We were having a great time. But with their metal bodies clanging against each other, and me jamming grenades in people's faces, the cops should have been there any minute. This is where you giggle at the sarcasm.

I looked over to see Aranae and Plague going at it. Aranae was doing really well until he wrapped his towel around Plague's arm and tried to throw him. Plague just flung Aranae at a tree like he was a Beanie Baby. Aranae did a front flip and kicked off the tree to fly towards Darkwynd. I didn't see how it turned out since I was already starting to pound of Spectrum.

I caught him just as he was about to fire a laser at Big Red. I hammered his arms down and made him fire his blast into the ground in front of him. It made a really cool "Zrapp!" sound effect and dirt and rocks flew everywhere. I yelled out, "Ultra Fierce 74 hit-combo!!!!" as I hit him approximately 74 times in the face and gut. This guy was made out of some weird plastic stuff, and my knuckles were getting sore even through my padded gloves. He would not fall down. But I don't think he was very happy.

I paused to cheer on Aranae as he jammed one of Hermoso's arrows through Darkwynd's vampire heart. We were kicking ass. That was two down and four more to go.

I started to resume my attack on Spectrum when I heard Absolute Zero screaming, "Fly! Fly, you imbecile!" Almost immediately, Spectrum started floating upwards like an obedient dog. Good. I was glad he wasn't talking to me. I hate getting called names, and I can't fly.

Spectrum looked half dead as he started to fly. I knocked any kind of coherentness out of him. He was just trying to shake some sense back into his head. Like he ever had any.

"Ow! Damn it!" I heard Big Red say. I ignored Spectrum's groggy flying to turn to see what happened. His legs were stuck toghether at the ankles by a huge block of Absolute Zero's ice while Cobar pounded his face with phaser blasts and punches. I was just about to run over and help him when I saw him get pissed off and break a leg free of it. He let out some primal scream and kicked his right leg out of the huge ice block and pounded half of it into Cobar's face. Ice shrapnel and sparks went flying everywhere as he shattered Cobar's half-robot head with the three foot ice cube. I completely forgot we were in a fight for a second when I did an Arnold Schwarzenegger pose and said, "He had to split." Yeah, it wasn't very funny during the fight, either. But sometimes one feels obligated to say shitty lines during combat. It's like an American tradition.

After my ode to Running Man, I remembered Spectrum. By now, he was hovering thirty feet off the ground and starting to regain his composure. I could have used a big beefy ray gun or something to get at him, but I used the next best thing. I yanked a chunk of rebar out of a horseshoe pit and started running towards the nearest tree. I took four good strides straight up the side and leapt out at that retarded plastic laser guy. That bar made the coolest sound when I bent it over the back of his head.

While we were both falling to the ground, I looked over at Aranae. He was lying unconscious next to Darkwynd's body. Who the hell took out Aranae? It was right then that I realized I didn't know where Plague was. I found out soon. He was right below me. Fuck.

Super speed doesn't do you a whole lot of good when you're falling. I was going right at the guy who can kick a hole in a tank, and there was nothing I could do about it. I remember watching his fist slowly come at me, and all I could do was block. I remember getting hit twice, I assume the second one was my body flying into a tree or something.

I tried my best not to black out, but I think I was out for a couple of minutes. I was crouched next to a merry go round and it felt like most of my ribs were broken. My leg looked pretty nasty too. I wasn't going to fight anymore tonight unless I hopped around on one foot. I shook some of the stars out of my eyes and saw Absolute Zero's bloody body halfway embedded into the ground about twenty feet from me. After my eyes started to focus better, I could see Big Red and Plague standing opposite each other like some western showdown. The final two survivors. I heard Big Red's voice right before I blacked out. He said, "Come get some." That's a super hero, baby.