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The pulsing neon lights that glowed from the Galacticus's control panels set a fittingly spooky atmosphere for their monster movie marathon. The four young heroes, all bundled in their warmest pajamas and blankets, huddled together on the couch. Despite the occasionally spotty signal -- a satellite dish attached to the roof of a spaceship with floss, silly putty, and luck was hardly a reliable receiver -- all of their gazes were glued to the TV they'd pestered Rob and Bob into buying.
Except for Tyler.
Normally, Tyler was all about the goofy old monster movies. That Thing? Swamp Creaturez III? Godzilla vs. the Loch Ness Mobster? Count him in. But none of the Supernoobs had gotten enough sleep the night before because of a virus attack, and then he'd fallen asleep in class because of that, and then when he'd finally got out of detention, there was another virus monster that they'd missed, and they had to take care of that, and he'd accidentally teleported all the way back to detention, which was hard to explain, and then they'd missed dinner and the first half of their movie and gotten yelled at by Zenblock. So it wasn't like he'd had a great day. None of them had -- he wondered how the rest of them could concentrate on the screen at all.
The only break in his internal monologue of failures was when Kevin whooped at an explosion or cackled at the special effects. Even then, he was sucked right back into the swirling drain of his emotions within moments, helpless but to watch his subconscious poke at his mistakes like bruises.
After an eternity, the movie ended. On either side of him, Roach and Kevin freed themselves from the blanket snare, yawned, stretched. On Kevin's other side, Shope squinted at the TV guide. "Okay, we have a five minute break, so everyone get moving!"
"I call bathroom!" Kevin said, scrambling off of the couch.
"No hogging!" she shouted after him.
She flopped back on the couch with a long-suffering sigh. Tyler reached out and stole Kevin's blanket, wrapping it around his head in the hope it would obscure his face. It did not.
"Woah, dude, you do not look good," Shope said, leaning forward on the couch to poke at his cheek. "What's going on with you?"
On his other side, Roach leaned forward and (presumably) peered at him through his hair.
"He looks like he's about to cry," Roach said.
"No I'm not," Tyler said, wrapping his head blanket tighter.
"Yes you are."
"No I'm not."
"Yes you are!"
And the worst part was that the more that he insisted otherwise, the more upset he got. As they went back and forth, his voice grew higher, tighter, and his hands fisted in the sheets more and more.
"Enough!" Shope said. "C'mon Tyler, out with it. Do you want to ask Amy out on another date?"
"No!" Tyler said, turning pink. "It's not that! I just had a bad day."
"Oh, and we haven't?" Shope said. "Open your eyes, Tyler, we all had to fight the giant virus-infected goldfish after school. Again."
"I think the plural is goldfishes," Roach said.
"Of course you do."
"Yeah, okay, so we all fought the giant goldfishes-" Tyler paused as Shope groaned, "-but you guys didn't teleport away for half the fight and end up being no help at all." He crossed his arms over the blankets, bunching them up around his face. He tried to will away the tears gathering in his eyes.
"You were pretty helpful when you extracted the virus from the goldfishes," Roach said, patting Tyler's shoulder.
"We all have blasters," Tyler said, pouting. "Any of you guys could've done it too." His will was clearly not strong enough. One tear escaped, but he refused to brush it away and draw attention.
The TV screen switched from the dim buzz of commercials to an old, dramatic orchestral piece, and flashed the title card in black and white. Tyler hoped this meant they'd leave him alone to wallow in his terribleness, but no such luck. Shope scrounged the remote out of the couch cushions and pressed mute as she continued.
"I don't know if you noticed," Shope said, "but we were all also busy getting our butts kicked."
"I spent most of the fight stuck in a tree," said Roach. "It was pretty safe up there. Goldfishes can't jump that high."
Shope threw her hands in the air. "And Kevin turned into a bug! If you want to talk about messing up, his going rate for turning into what he actually means to is only fifty-four percent."
"Ooh, fifty-four? He's improving!" said Roach. "That's great."
"You keep track?" Tyler said.
"Duh. I like to rub his failures in his face with cold, hard data." She ground her fist into her hand as a visual demonstration.
Tyler sniffed. "You... scare me."
Kevin's voice rang out from across the Galacticus. "Ooh, are we talking about how terrible we are? My turn!" He hurdled the couch and cannonballed onto the cushions, knocking Tyler and Shope to either side. "Last week, I saw Shope practicing in her backyard, and she accidentally hit a telephone pole with her lightning powers and caused a power outage down the whole street."
Shope stammered. "It wasn't- I- At least I'm practicing!"
"The power was out for three days," Kevin said, elbowing Tyler. He frowned when he met his eyes, but his grin returned again in moments, this time wider and brighter than before.
Tyler cracked a smile. "Okay, I guess we're all pretty bad." He rubbed his tears away with the heel of his hand.
"Exactly! We're all Super-terrible-noobs." said Kevin, slinging his arm over Tyler's shoulders.
Roach stood up on the couch. "Super-terrible-noob group hug mode activate!" he declared, then flopped down on top of Tyler and Kevin.
Laughing, Shope joined the hug too, though with a little more panache.
From the other room came Mem's voice. "Is that a group hug I hear?"
All Tyler could make out through Roach's curls was a quick flash of green, and then the lot of them were squished together and lifted off the couch into Mem's grip, blankets and all. "Ooh, I love Earth group hugs," Mem said.
"Put... us... down," Kevin wheezed.
"Oh, sorry!" He dropped them back down. "I forget how small and squishy you little guys are."
"This might be a little hypocritical of me to say, but you don't have to rub it in," grumbled Shope.
"Don't worry," Mem said, patting her head, "you're all very strong and capable little noobs. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go laugh hysterically in the other room."
Kevin leaned over the back of the couch and stuck his tongue out at Mem as he left.
Shope pulled Kevin back onto the couch. "Well, now that we've all decided we suck, I think we should watch five more hours of monster movies instead of practicing."
"Sounds good to me!" said Roach.
Kevin cheered as Shope unmuted the TV at the exact moment the monster showed up onscreen with a roar.
Tyler sat up and finally focused on the TV. Exhaustion still tugged on the edges of his consciousness, but now -- thankfully -- he found himself swept up in the energy of his friends, cheering as the movie monster left carnage in its wake. They could practice with their battle balls tomorrow.