Glass had difficulty shaking off her scowl as she went back to the group. That girl had been presumptuous, and irritating, and— Glass realized suddenly— not her problem. When she got back to the pub, her colleagues had left. She regretted, briefly, not having a phone. But then she remembered the conspiracies that raged within the governments and corporations of the world, and relaxed. She didn’t need to hang out with her coworkers. She started walking back to the hotel, slipping into invisibility. The feeling enveloped her comfortingly.

On her way back she saw another shadow slipping along the street. It was larger than Spicy had been, and humming loudly.

Glass resisted the urge to follow it, and went back to her room to finish her book.

Tree Boy was slipping along the street in the shadows. He was being as sneaky as could be, which would have been really sneaky if he weren’t humming his own theme song.

He turned a corner. It fulfilled some urge in his bones to sneak around in the dead of night. Besides, he was Tree Boy. He had to keep his villainy up to date somehow.

He stopped at an abandoned warehouse that he had come across many times on his villainous stalks so many times before. He stopped and stared up at it, smiling. He had plans for this warehouse. It would become his base once he had the equipment for a lair. He would actually have it very soon, as he had stolen his mother’s credit card and purchased computers, a custom motorcycle, and other villainous wares. Unable to contain his excitement over this prospect, he pushed the doors open and entered his soon-to-be hideout. To his astonishment, there were already things there. Things or— it was a group of what appeared to be… dead human bodies? How shocking, the tongue in cheek flavor of this comedic story broken by— no wait, they weren’t human at all. He was Tree Boy, after all. One of his many (few) skills was telling whether something was organic or not (instant ramen was not on that list).

They were robots! Robot-y robots! Robotic robot-y— this was getting redundant.

Then he realized something. These were robots. He could use them for villainous reasons!

Villainy. He had turned to it after reading The Leviathan by Hobbes. He’d read it because he’d thought it was written by Hobbes from Calvin and Hobbes, and was surprised the small tiger was so political. The villainy also might have had something to do with his rich parents never paying any attention to him. They had lots of things to attend to, although he’d never quite understood exactly what they were, but he told himself that had nothing to do with anything he did.

Zestfully, he ran to a robot and looked for the ‘on’ switch. It took him a while, but he eventually found a big red switch on its shoulder. Wondering how it took him forever to see that, he flipped the switch into the ‘on’ position.

Then he raised his hands in the air and ran around, sporadically switching on the rest of the robots, whooping loudly all the while. They twitched, moaning.

One of them sat up. “Ugh. I think I have a hangover,” the robot said. Then he paused. “Oh, yeah. I’m not organic.”

“You got that right, buddy,” Tree Boy replied. “I could already tell that. You’re on the list with ramen and styrofoam, pal.”

The robot looked at him sideways, raising one expressive eyebrow.

“Who is this idiot?” another robot said, rubbing his head. This one had toilet cleaner blue eyes.

“I don’t know,” the eyebrow raiser replied.

If these hadn’t been robots, Tree Boy would have been convinced they were socially shunning him. He drew himself up, confident in the next step of his nefarious plan.

“I am the villainous Tree Boy!” he declared, voice cracking, “And you will now serve me as a robot army!”

“Ah,” the eyebrow-raiser said, half-smirking.

“Your first task,” he continued, “is to become familiar with my philosophy. Read this book!” He pulled his copy of The Leviathan from his pocket and thrust it at the nearest robot, who read it obediently in about twelve minutes and forty seconds.

While he read, there was awkward silence.

The eyebrow-raiser coughed. “Look, kid, I hate to break it to you, but we——”

“This is brilliant!” The-Levithan-reader cried, finishing the book. “We need to adopt this philosophy immediately.”

“Wait— what?” Toilet-cleaner-eyes said.

“I said—”

“Hold on, we’re not working for this kid——” Eyebrow-raiser said.

“Yeah,” said another with twitchy pinkies. “He’s clearly a brainwashed moron. With serious psychological issues.”

“I am very mentally healthy,” Tree Boy assured him.

“But— this Hobbes fellow— he’s brilliant! Such thorough analysis, such realistic observations!” The-Levithan-reader responded, ignoring Tree Boy. “Look, I’ll download it into your minds— you’ll see.” Out of his fingers shot goose-necked USB cords, which attached to ports on the side of each of his companions’ heads. After a few seconds, the cords retracted, and the others began nodding appreciatively.

“I see what you mean,” Eyebrow-raiser said. “I’ve always thought life was destined to be solitary, poor, nasty, and brutish.”

“And short,” The-Levithan-reader added enthusiastically. “Don’t forget short, the inevitability of death has always bothered me. And inspired me. There’s something comforting, and disturbing, and wonderful about people dying.”

“But most importantly, there needs to be someone to rule this frail world— for the best of everyone,” Twitchy-pinkies said.

“Yeah,” Toilet-cleaner-eyes mused.

“That’s me!” Tree Boy declared. “That’s why I have awakened you, and you will now do my bidding!”

“Wrong,” Eyebrow-raiser said.

Tree Boy blinked. He had not expected defiance. “What do you mean, wrong?”

“I think it’s going to be us,” Toilet-cleaner-eyes said. “Our council starts now. How do we rule the world?”

Tree Boy’s face twisted in confusion. “If you mean ruling beside me… well yeah.”

“No, foolish child,” Eyebrow-raiser said. “You may be our first tool for rising to power.” He looked Tree Boy up and down, then said to the others, “We’re going to need some more tools.”

Spicy entered the assembly hall to find it filled to capacity with every single junior agent in the agency. She had never truly realized how many of them there were. This must be a very extreme situation. Another agent leaned over to her.

“Hey. Do you know what this assembly is about?” he whispered.

Spicy leaned over too and whispered back, “Yeah.” She didn’t tell him, though. She straightened back up.

After a minute, the boy whispered again. “What’s it about?”

Spicy looked at him and said, without whispering, “Bubbles.” Spicy didn’t actually know what the assembly was for. Maybe the suspicious invisible person from last night had something to do with it. The dog eater. After a few minutes of thinking and waiting, the agency directors walked out onto the stage. The room quieted as the man spoke into a microphone.

“Thank you for coming here today on such short notice, but something terrible has happened.” A picture of a Boy popped up on a screen behind them, and Spicy gasped. She knew that Boy. “This is a very important Boy, and he’s gone missing. We need each and every one of you to look for him. He was last seen in his bed, wearing yellow duckie pajamas. We have received a ransom note, so please bear in mind that this is a delicate situation. We know this is rather short, but time is of the essence. Go!”

The rest of the agents geared up, but Spicy was still in shock. The Boy— it was Tree Boy!

Glass finished the book, feet up on the chair opposite hers. She kept her mind firmly focused on the characters in the book, the setting, etcetera… and not on the suspicious looking shadow she’d seen after leaving the weird girl last night. After all, it was the weird girl’s problem, not hers.

She was on vacation.

Getting up, she paced the kitchen. Ate an apple.

She was on vacation.

Sitting back down, she searched for local bookstores on her laptop.

Vacation.

Sighing, she stood up.

Goodbye, vacation.

She went out to investigate.

Spicy wandered around the streets, thinking. The ghost-spider-stevette girl. The yellow ducky pajamas. Tree Boy. It was all too much.

But she had to do something.

Getting out her bubbles, she watched them drift upwards philosophically.

The appearance of Ghost Spider and the disappearance of Tree Boy could be connected. With both happening on the same night, their timing was too eerie to be coincidental. I need to find that Ghost Spider in order to find Tree Boy, Spicy thought.

Armed with this hunch, she set out into the muggy afternoon.