Chewing on a very stale McHeroes burger, Martin walked behind Alexa. On one hand he needed to get home right away, on the other Alexa was getting into some sort of deep trouble once again. Contrary to her confession of knowing everything and keeping enemies close, he felt that leaving her alone was not a decision he could live with. Now that he was fully awake, he understood why she didn’t trust authority, after all her biggest authority figure in her life - her dad, had thrown her into the death-grinder of humanity’s dark future.

“So, um, no future jumps while I slept?” He asked tentatively.

“Nah. It’s nice enough to give me a break when I’m passed out, plus a random length of time after, for breakfast. Daddums wouldn't want me to fight monsters on an empty stomach.”

“Well that’s nice. Where are we going?”

“To the school bus, of course!” Alexa said.

“School buses don’t run at 8pm. Also, they don’t park at the school.”

“Well, that’s a big inconvenience. I require transit. We are on a tight deadline.”

“A deadline, for?”

“I’m operating on a hunch.”

“A hunch, being?” Martin inquired as Alexa scoped out potential methods of transit.

“Missing skinwalker, missing teacher. I think the two are related.”

“Aha!” She spied an ice cream truck parked in the fenced-off lot behind the school, heading towards it.

“I thought you don’t steal things from town.” Martin muttered in disapproval, watching her lockpick the truck door with a hairpin that she pulled out of her hair.

“This is an emergency, M. The teacher’s apartment ain’t close and every minute counts. We’ve already wasted precious hours sleeping!” Alexa, having defeated the door lock, jumped into the truck.

Martin stood outside the truck contemplating whether he was doing the right thing. Was he abetting car theft? How would she even -

The truck came to life, headlights igniting. Ice cream truck music filled the air with repeating twinkles. The truck's window rolled down and Alexa's grinning face emerged from within. She was eating a striped popsicle. Right. He completely forgot that she was boasting about her car jump-starting skills earlier.

"Get in. We're going skinwalker-baby hunting!" She said between bites.

Martin sighed, walked around the truck and climbed into the side seat.

“Lead the way, spiderbro-gps!” Alexa placed the bottled skinwalker into the space under the windshield. The black spider-thing glared at her from within, silver eyes flashing as it angrily tapped against the glass.

“How intelligent are these things?” Martin asked nervously.

"I dunno. It’s a very small bit of the big thing and the big things mostly murder me, which doesn’t say a whole lot about skinwalker high society or cultural institutions. Want an ice cream?" Alexa offered.

Martin shook his head.

"Come on, it's a strawberry." Alexa wiggled an ice cream package in front of his face.

"No! I'm not adding ice cream theft to potential charges of carjacking!" He ground out, tempted by the strawberry wrapper art.

"It's nice to know where you draw the line." She giggled, dropping the ice cream into his lap.

Martin stared at the chilly popsicle in his lap. If he took it back to the freezer his fingerprints would be all over it as evidence. He was trapped. Alexa grinned from her seat at him, pressing on the gas.

The song of the ice cream truck wafted through the quiet evening streets of Saint Mary as the sun was setting, painting the world in orange tints. The girl supervillain recklessly drove the truck forward, not even slowing down at stop signs.

“Come on, stop signs exist for a reason!” Martin obsessed about traffic safety.

“Other drivers can afford to stop. We can’t!” Alexa pointed out.

“What if someone hits us?!” Martin twitched as she blew through another stop sign.

“Eh, this truck is far heavier than the average car, we’ll just plow right through them.”

“I don’t want to plow through anyone, damn it! Would you at least turn off the music?”

“No time to search for the off button,” she shot back, clearly enjoying this far too much. “Besides, a stolen ice cream truck wouldn't be playing music. It’d be suspicious without it, if anything, you dig?”

Martin gave up, chewing his strawberry popsicle in resignation, wondering how he got to where he was. It all started out so simple. Making friends with a villain was his first mistake, he supposed. He only hoped that if they were caught his dad would -

His family’s car passed besides the ice cream truck, heading in the opposite direction, his dad’s worried face visible through the windshield. Ember sat on the seat next to his dad. Time slowed down as Martin froze, exposed by the vibrant sunset rays, his popsicle dripping. Ember was looking quite bored - but she was undoubtedly using her power of bending probabilities to find him. Her arm was up in the air, an accusing finger pointing straight at Martin. His dad saw him.

“Martin?! MARTIN!” He yelled, pushing on the breaks. Alexa pressed harder on the gas, the ice cream truck rushing straight through a red light.

“No no no no no.” Martin sunk into the seat. He was deeply regretting opening the ice cream.

“You’ll never catch us, coppers!” Alexa yelled, adding to his internal anguish.

Martin thumped his head against the back of the seat.

Alexa drove on, laughing wildly and praising her own “incredibly-amazing evasion skills” and how Martin is “forever blessed by this highly educational experience in getaway driving”. Martin looked at the back mirror. He didn’t know how, but she managed to elude his dad in the bulky ice cream truck. Perhaps it was her skinwalker-trained reaction skills or blatant disregard for traffic laws or perhaps it was because his dad didn’t have a siren on top of his car like a proper policeman. Either way, Martin’s heart was running a million miles a minute as he spent the entirety of the drive thinking of reasonable excuses to explain the situation to his dad.

“Here we are. You may shower me in praises and tips for my fantastic taxi prowesses.” Alexa parked the truck in front of the 1024 Grimmins Drive apartment complex.

Martin glared at her, nervously chewing his popsicle stick.

“You’re welcome for that refreshing ice cream, by the way.” She said, disembarking from the vehicle. “Oh don’t look at me like that, M. You’re going to need the sugar soon, I reckon.”

She chucked the blue nail gun at him. “Be ready for anything.”

He wasn’t even sure when she managed to pick the gun up from the skinwalker puddle. It wasn’t that well wiped, he noted, as it was still a bit splattered with dry, black streaks.

The lobby entrance of Grimmins Drive, secured by a password entry did not delay Alexa for long. She dialed random apartment numbers, cheerfully yelling “Delivery!”, until an old lady was nice or perhaps clueless enough to unlock the door.

Martin observed Alexa in the elevator. She looked visibly nervous and impatient. It was understandable - a skinwalker in the present would make her vulnerable, she wasn’t death-proof here.

“Look,” He started off. “I think we should let the authorities handle this. We’re just two teenagers…”

“I think you should shush. I know what I’m doing, M. I’ve been dealing with skinwalkers longer than anyone here.” She agitatedly stared daggers at the blinking light of the floor numbers, pulling out her sledgehammer and swinging it dangerously. Martin saw her take up position, compressing her body like a taut spring, ready to pounce.

The elevator doors dinged open and Alexa flew out, bouncing across the hallway with increasing speed. Flying through the air she smashed the sledgehammer against door number 1006. The wood cracked, the door opening. Alexa rolled into the apartment, lighter already in hand and a chemical bomb in another. Martin arrived several seconds later, to find her standing still in a completely empty, dark apartment.

“Well? Now what?” He looked at her. She was panting with visible irritation.

“Too late. I’m too friggin late. Argh!” She growled, reattaching the sledgehammer to her belt.

“Please, we can let the SCA…”

“No. No. NO! I friggin got this, darn it!” She snapped back at him, searching through the apartment.

“AHA!” She picked up a paper from the coffee table, flapping it in front of Martin’s face.

“What?” He blanched.

“It’s a banking notice! Don’t you see? He must have gone to the bank! Hurry!” She bounced out of the apartment into the hallway.

“Wait! Alexa, please!” Martin rushed after the girl, increasingly stressed that he wasn’t being listened to.

His arguments in the elevator and in the car while they drove to the bank were seemingly falling on deaf ears. Alexa was determined to catch the skinwalker herself.

“Alexa! Listen! Why would he be in the bank?!” He yelled, as ice cream truck tires squealed in front of the Superstate Bank, nearly crashing into the closed, 1 storey building.

The girl villain wasn’t listening. She bounced up and down and up again, jumping onto the hood of the truck and then onto its roof. Martin watched as she took a run from the truck’s roof, leaping onto the roof of the bank building. Surely, she wasn’t planning to break into a -

“Just give me a minute! There’s a nice, poorly secured vent up here!” Alexa yelled from the roof. She was indeed planning to break into a bank. Martin began to sweat as he heard her smashing through something on the roof with her sledgehammer. He heard her panting grow distant as she descended into the vent. He couldn't believe it. This wasn’t happening. He wasn’t being an accessory to a spontaneous bank robbery!

He looked through the thick glass doors of the bank building noticing that one of the vents was wiggling. With a loud crack, the vent door swung open and Alexa jumped down, bouncing towards Martin. She unlocked the door from the inside.

“Alexa! What are you doing?!” He yelled. “There’s cameras everywhere! You can’t do this!”

The teenage villain pulled Martin into the bank, closing the door shut behind them.

“He’s here. I know he’s here. The vault. The vault, M! The safest place in town! He’s gotta be in the vault!” she ranted, turning away from Martin. This was now or never. She’d clearly gone insane. Martin pointed his blue nail gun down, aiming at her blanket cape. He had no choice but to stop her, before the crazy girl got both of them sent into juvie. He pressed the trigger and Alexa fell on her face as her cape became trapped to the floor with a single nail shot.

“Frghhh?!” She yelled, as he pushed her down, covering her with the cape and nailing her to the floor.

“This is for your own good!” Martin yelled.

“What are you doing, M?” The girl struggled to move as more nails went into her cape, binding her to the floor.

“We are not breaking into the vault! You are not robbing a bank!” Martin continued to secure the villain. He knew that he was doing the right thing. Nobody could die a thousand times and stay sane. She’d been driven mad by the skinwalkers. Martin had to stop her, had to call his dad for help.

“Mutiny! This is mutiny!” She hissed.

“I’m saving you from a life of crime.” Martin reassured her, making sure that she wasn’t getting away. His hands were shaking from the rush of adrenaline.

The locks on the vault door began to spin. Martin lifted his eyes to it in surprise. What was happening?

The enormous, steel door of the vault swung open. Mr. Canard stood inside it, an alien structure of white bone pulsating with black organelles behind him. The ordinarily white scleras of his eyes were pitch black, while his pupils were silver and glowed with a pale blue light from within. Martin gasped. The gym teacher looked, bloated, pregnant. He took a step forward, limbs flapping unnaturally as if he was just a puppet held up by invisible strings. His mouth snapped open with a crack, jaws sliding far wider than should have been possible. Black, glistening spiders with far too many joints began to pour from the teacher’s mouth. Martin screamed.

“What's happening? What are we yelling about?” Alexa muttered from beneath her blanket prison.