Supergirl, She-Ra, and Raphael Save the Day

“I found it!” came mom’s triumphant voice from the rear of her closet where they stored boxes full of old stuff. She’d been rustling around back there for what had felt like at least two lifetimes.

“Yaaayyyy!” Katriche cried, jumping on one foot and then switching to the other. “I want to go~o~o~o!”

“Me too, me too!” Katie’s twin Ambrosya dashed in and joined Katie in hopping around. She already wore her complete costume, and as she reached Katie she drew her cardboard sword and started making knighting motions toward her sister’s shoulders.

“Did you help Teyshawn with his costume?” mom asked as she stumbled from the closet, pulling her foot awkwardly from a box she’d accidentally stepped in.

“My hair!” Katie shrieked, jumping to seize the wig in her mother’s hand and thwarted by mom’s quick movement.

Using a second hand to repel Katie’s attempts at climbing her, mom said sternly, “Amber, did you help your brother with his costume?”

“Ye~es, mom,” said Amber, rolling her eyes. “Now can we go trick-or-treating?”

“You both need to be patient,” was mom’s admonishment. “Katie, stop that. Amber, it’s not even 5:30 yet.”

Amber protested, “Yeah, but you found Katie’s white-girl hair, so we’re ready now, right?”

“Not ’til I get it on her head,” said mom, then called over her shoulder, “Tey! Teyshawn! Come in here, please!”

At the same moment, Katie took issue with her sister’s description. “It’s not white-girl hair!”

“Did you ever see a Black Supergirl?”

“Supergirl can be Black!”

“Sit down, baby,” mom urged, leading Katie to her bed, ignoring the argument much as Katie ignored her words and obeyed by muscle memory alone.

Amber retorted, “Yeah, but she’s not.”

“Neither is She-Ra, booger-face!”

“There are a bunch of She-Ras,” said Amber in a superior tone. “Every time she’s different, so there could be a Black She-Ra.”

Katie was about to protest that the same logic applied to Supergirl, because, though white in each, the cartoon heroine differed significantly from the real-people one, but at that moment mom, who’d finished brushing out the wig, plopped it onto her head.

Notwithstanding the weird feeling she got the very instant her costume was complete, Katie jumped up and ran to the mirror, shouting, “I wanna see!”

“I told you to be patient!” mom reminded her. “Get your butt back over here and let me fix that!” And again she called, “Teyshawn!” out to the rest of the house.

But Katie had already caught sight of herself in mom’s mirror. The wig had fallen immediately askew, but she reached up to steady it and grinned at her reflection. She didn’t care what Amber said; she looked like a hero. She felt like a hero, too, what with the strange tingling that ran through her once she’d righted the wig. She was ready to save everyone and punch bad guys in the face!

“We~e~ell….” Amber tilted her winged head to one side. “I mean, I guess it looks OK.”

“It’ll look better if your sister will hold still and let me get this wig on.”

Katie tried to hold very still for this process, but in the midst of it Teyshawn wandered in, half-clothed and with a face covered in chocolate.

“I thought you said you helped him, Amber,” mom said in exasperation, abandoning the wig with only one of its sharp little interior combs in place and moving toward her son.

Amber seemed discontented with her mother’s tone, for defensively she said, “I did! He must’ve took it off!”

As mom attacked Tey’s face with a wet washcloth and sent Amber in search of the missing pieces of his costume, Katie tried by herself to get her wig to stay on. It was funny; every time she pressed down on it, that buzzing sensation returned. She kinda liked it, and kept smashing the blonde hair against her head so it would come back. This didn’t help with the second comb, but mom had evidently lost track of that.

Even as they were getting Tey back into his fuzzy leopard outfit and tying the hat onto his head, the doorbell rang. “See?” Amber cried. “Other people are trick-or-treating already!”

“No, I turned the porch light off,” said mom. “That’s the Keenes.”

“Do we have to go with them?” Amber looked disgusted. “They’re too young for us!”

Firmly mom replied, “Yes. We’re going to go together because it’s safer with more adults.”

“It’s safer with me!” Katie punched the air in an upward leap, and thought she felt even her feet tingle a little. “I’m Supergirl!” She stumbled as she hit the carpet, and giggled wildly.

“I can protect people just as good,” Amber shouted. “I’m She-Ra!”

“That means you have a crush on Huntara!”

“Ew! No, I don’t, pooper! I’m a different She-Ra!”

Nevertheless, Katie began a chant about Amber and Huntara sitting in a tree.

Though mom let the Keenes in, and everyone’s costume seemed about ready, it yet took them at least fifteen more minutes to get out of the house. For all her impatience, Katie didn’t really mind this, because the sky had darkened significantly and the street lights had come on by the time they got outside — and trick-or-treating should happen in the dark. She skipped along, bickering amicably with her sister and trying to keep ahead of the two Keene kids while mom and Mrs. Keene followed behind with Teyshawn.

A gradual diminution of spirits accompanied them from house to house, however. Katie had been ecstatic about Halloween, thrilled at how her costume looked, excited for candy, and even OK with having a couple of boring little kids as company since at least they were all out here. But at one door after another, she heard some variation on the same thing, and it got more annoying every time. Beyond that, it made her sad for some reason, in a weird kind of way.

“Oh, look, it’s Black Supergirl!”

Not everyone said this, but enough of them did for it to grate on her. Finally, after about a million people had, she shouted at the next one. “It’s just Supergirl! My name’s not ‘Black Supergirl;’ it’s just Supergirl!”

“Told you so,” Amber said.

The woman at the door looked taken aback, and all of a sudden mom was running up the porch steps to apologize and hasten her girls away while the younger kids got candy from the nonplused stranger.

“Katie,” she hissed, “you are going to be polite, or I am marching your butt straight home.”

“But they keep calling me ‘Black Supergirl!”

“Well, that’s what you’re dressed like, isn’t it?”

“But it’s not her name! Nobody puts the color they are in their name!”

“Black Panther,” Amber pointed out.

“But I mean, like, she’s not called ‘White Supergirl’ so you have to change it if she’s Black!”

Mom looked up at the sky, breathing in through her nose and letting it out again as a sigh. “I know, baby,” she said in a gentler tone. “You’re right. But it’s just something you have to get used to. It’s annoying, but you still have to be polite to people.”

“It’s stupid,” Katie grumbled. “Why do I have to be polite when they keep saying stupid stuff to me?”

“Because,” said mom firmly, “it doesn’t matter what other people do; it matters what we do. And in this family, we are polite to people.”

“Even if they call us bad words?” Amber wondered.

“Well…” It looked like this was one of those things mom had a hard time explaining. “When your sister called you ‘booger-face’ earlier, did it make you feel bad?”

“No. It’s just Katie.”

“And sometimes you two aren’t very polite to each other, but it’s all just joking, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“But what if Katriche called you a really bad word?”

“I wouldn’t!” Katie broke in.

“I’d punch her!” Amber lifted her chin. “But I know she wouldn’t, ’cause she knows I’d punch her.”

Mom looked simultaneously amused and at a loss, and the Keenes were catching up. Briefly she said, “Don’t punch people unless they’re going to physically hurt you, OK? But you don’t have to keep talking to someone who calls you bad words. Most people won’t, though, so be polite.”

“Everything OK?” Mrs. Keene asked.

Mom replied that it was and took Tey’s hand again, and they all moved on.

This time, the twins lagged behind. Katie could see Amber wasn’t entirely satisfied with what mom had told them — possibly because it had been cut short by circumstance — and Amber remained unusually quiet for the next few houses. Eventually, though, she grabbed Katie’s arm and said all of a sudden, “How do we know which words are bad enough to stop talking to someone?”

“Well, obviously, the s-word and the n-word and the f-word,” Katie replied. But something bothered her about that assessment; it didn’t really satisfy her.

Obviously it didn’t satisfy Amber either. “But what if… you know how they make fun of Rachel Hunter at school because she has two moms? It’s not bad words, but it’s… What if I really did have a crush on Huntara, and they made fun of me too?”

Eyes wide, Katie demanded, “Girl, do you really have a crush on Huntara?”

Amber’s eyes opened just as far, and she began shaking and tussling with her sister. “Don’t you dare tell anyone that! Not even mom, you hear?”

Fending off Amber and giggling uncontrollably took first place in Katie’s priorities, and they swerved all over the sidewalk for a few moments. Mom looked back, but, marking the ostensible good nature of their activities, merely smiled at them. Finally, getting her breath back, Katie managed, “I don’t think you have to keep talking to anyone who’s a jerk to you about that. Except me!” And she began for the second time that evening a chant involving spelling out words in a tree. And as Amber protested, the giggling and wrestling continued.

Presently even their noise was drowned out by a sudden excited gabbling up ahead. The party had begun passing by the neighborhood convenience store, and Tey had stopped short right in front of the building and was pointing at the door and shouting. “Urms! Urms! Pace ere mama get urms!”

Katriche and Ambrosya knew exactly what that meant, and exchanged exasperated big-sister looks. They drew up to the others in time to hear mom say to Mrs. Keene, “I’m sorry; we always get him gummy worms here. Obviously he doesn’t understand trick-or-treating yet.”

“That’s OK,” Mrs. Keene said. “I could go for a bottled water.”

“We’ll stay out here,” Amber announced.

Mom said, “Fine, but don’t go running around. Stay on the sidewalk.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” said Gregory, the younger of the Keene kids.

“Honey, it’s going to take forever to get you in and out of your costume. Can’t you wait until we get home?”

Gregory pondered for a moment, then said firmly, “No.”

His sister Kimberly looked torn, but eventually seemed to decide she might increase her haul of snacks if she accompanied them inside. Soon Katie and Amber were alone in front of the store.

Loud voices had been this entire time coming from around the corner, the side of the building where stood machines for filling up tires and vacuuming out your car and stuff, and the two girls immediately moved to peek around and see who it might be. Three white boys — big boys, obviously old enough to know how to drive — didn’t seem to be doing anything except talking and laughing and leaning against their parked car with energy drinks and a bad smell. Maybe they enjoyed that, but they must have been bored anyway, because the moment one of them caught sight of the sisters looking at them, he jumped up from where he’d been sitting on the curb and came over.

“Lemme see your costumes!” he demanded in a monkeyish way: jovial but with the potential to become troublesome at any moment. Somewhat reluctantly, the girls stepped out past the corner of the building, and the boy began to laugh. “You guys, check this out: it’s Black Supergirl.”

Katie made a frustrated sound. It wasn’t just that people kept calling her that; it was this guy’s mocking tone.

“And who are you supposed to be?” he demanded of Amber.

“I’m She-Ra,” she replied defiantly.

Now another boy laughed and approached. “My little brother–” and he called his brother something mean– “watches that show, and it’s the gayest show in the world. Guess you’re a little lesbo, right?”

For this Amber had no retort. She appeared simultaneously angry and embarrassed, and Katie hated these boys. “So what?!” she shouted. She didn’t shout in anger much, but she also hated that look on Amber’s face. “You’re dressed up as a big fat jerk!”

This made the boys laugh even harder. One reached out and patted them each hard on the head, then made a grab for Katie’s pillowcase. He referenced something Katie didn’t understand, but which involved a couple of words mom didn’t like.

But the moment his heavy, stupid hand had made contact with her wig, scratching her scalp with the metal fastening combs inside, she’d experienced that same weird tingling as earlier — but much more intensely now than when she’d been unable to get the second comb properly into place — and she felt all of a sudden powerful, strong, and invincible, though unsure how she knew what that felt like. Retaining her bag of candy and even jerking it free of the jerk’s hand proved ridiculously simple.

“We don’t have to talk to you anymore,” she declared. And she knew it was true. Just as Amber had suggested, people probably didn’t need to call you bad words, exactly, for the rule to still apply.

Not that it mattered in this situation, for now the boys all started swearing at them. They grabbed at the girls, trying to seize their candy, get hold of them and squeeze, push them down, or whatever other mischief they could think of. It crossed Katie’s mind that this was one of those times mom had said she could punch someone, but she dodged and repelled the seemingly clumsy attacks with such ease that it seemed unnecessary.

And just at that moment, there came a cry from behind them — more a high-pitched shriek, really — of, unexpectedly enough, “Cowabunga!!” A ninja turtle — Raphael by color, though in the show he’d gotten on Michelangelo’s case for saying that word — burst onto the scene and threw itself at the teenagers. “You — don’t — hurt — people — while — I’m–” she shouted, punching the nearest boy with all her might.

So surprised was he by this that he took a moment (and a few blows!) to react, but then he pushed the new costumed kid backward roughly. The turtle stumbled and would have fallen if Amber hadn’t caught her. And Amber would have fallen under her weight in normal circumstances. Instead, she steadied the newcomer and stood firm. And the turtle, instead of crying or something, said, “Whoa.” She straightened, shaking her masked head — her ears and neck were the only indications she was white — and said, “Weird.” Maybe she’d felt the tingling too? Then she seemed to rally, clenching green-gloved fists and assuming a new combative pose. “You stupid muttonchops!”

The incredulous laugh from one of the teenagers confirmed Katie’s suspicion that this wasn’t something people really called each other, but the sound cut off abruptly as the unknown girl threw herself at the boys again. Her fighting appeared far more effective this time, and the ensuing remarks from her three opponents were limited now to, “Whoa, hey!” and, “What the–” and, “Oof!” Katie had never seen someone do a flying kick like that in real life.

Neither had the boys, evidently. With startled, almost panicked looks at each other, they came to a unanimous decision about scrambling into their car and retreating. The vehicle backed so precipitously that its rear end headed directly for Amber, and Katie’s heart suddenly raced with panic of her own. But Amber put out a hand against the oncoming car, which crunched into the arm that did not falter and came away, as it turned and sped forward, with a huge dent and a completely mutilated tail light.

“Awesome!” cried the anonymous girl.

Amber, mouth agape, hand still outstretched, turned slowly to face her sister, and then she too gave a cry. “Katie! You’re–”

“You’re flying!!” The turtle girl ran right up to Katie, and couldn’t have appeared more astonished if her face had been visible.

Katie looked down and realized with a jolt that, indeed, several inches stretched between her feet and the dirty sidewalk. In her momentary terror for Amber’s safety, she must have…

“We all have powers!!” The ninja started doing effortless backflips. “Look at me!!”

Reaching up and taking the arms of Katie (who was trying to figure out how to get back down), Amber began an agitated dance as she said, “We do, Katie, we do! We have powers! You’re Supergirl and I’m She-Ra, and she’s–”

“I’m Raphael!!”

They both turned toward the stranger, who was now spinning on her shell.

“So you’re–” said Katie.

“But there aren’t–” said Amber.

The second half of their statements — “a girl Raphael” and “any girl turtles,” respectively — died on their lips as they looked at each other and recognized with a shock that Katie’s earlier distress might afflict others as well.

“You’re just like Raphael,” Katie said instead. “You like to run in and fight people!”

The turtle ceased spinning, jumped to her feet, and came over. “Those guys were trying to steal your candy!” She sounded defensive.

Katie and Amber glanced down at their pillowcases, which slumped, pathetic and forgotten, on the ground. Candy suddenly didn’t seem to mean as much as it had. “We~ell…” Amber said at last. “Thanks for helping us, I guess…”

“My name’s Stephanie Lisa Larretson. I live on Pitcheresque, and I go to Voyager School.”

As Amber began to introduce herself and her sister, Katie felt she could wait no longer. “I’m going to fly really high,” she said, and it came out in something like a whisper as if it were a big secret. And the other two girls fell silent as Katie ascended.

Never in her life had she felt anything like this. Listening to Amber and Stephanie burst into a flood of encouragement and admiration below, she considered how right they were — and also that they couldn’t have any idea how amazing and cool this really was. She thought she could get through people calling her Black Supergirl with no problem now, and for the rest of her life, because she would always know that at least once, she had flown.

More and more of the neighborhood became visible as she rose; she could make out street lights and stop lights and cars and trick-or-treaters and angles on things most people never got to see. A big, happy excitement bubbled up inside her, rising as she did. Thus, when something out of place caught her eye, it was in a shriek that she announced it: “I see a fire!”

The girls on the sidewalk shouted up that they couldn’t hear her and she should come down, though Katie had no problem hearing them. She floated to where they still stood — jumped around, rather — so quickly that she felt her cape and wig flutter. “There’s a fire!” she told them breathlessly, overriding whatever each had begun to say.

The conversation turned to chaos, what with questions and urgings and further expressions of astonishment that simply couldn’t be repressed, but it all added up to, “We have to help!”

“I’ll fly us all over there,” Katie declared as soon as she had the chance.

“Yeah!” Stephanie punched the air, then stood at Katie’s side in anticipation.

“Girl, if you drop me, I really will punch you,” Amber warned as she took a similar position opposite Stephanie.

Katie put an arm around each of them, somewhat surprised to find that, though Stephanie had been grinding her shell against the pavement just recently, it still felt like nothing but a costume made of cloth and padding. Then she took off, holding tight to her sister and her new acquaintance and listening to their shrill sounds of delight close to her ears. By the time they got high enough for Katie to see the fire again, they almost seemed to have forgotten about it, screaming as they were like people on a roller coaster; but they recognized it as Katie began flying in that direction, and their clamor ceased.

They’d come far enough that none of them knew exactly where they were, but that didn’t matter. As they touched down in front of the house and took in the situation, Katie figured this place might as well have been in their neighborhood, for jerk teenagers had obviously been at work here — maybe because the porch light was off? The overgrown trees sagged under an unbelievable amount of toilet paper, and the front of the building dripped with eggs.

These details hardly comprised the most important aspects of the scene. One of the trees, or at least the toilet paper bedecking it, had been set alight, and its drying autumn leaves had been eager to share in the heat. A roof gutter clogged with a crackly mass of red and brown now crackled orange and deadly, and the curtains of an ajar upstairs window evidently hadn’t taken long to join in the fun. The whole thing was getting along like… well, like a house on fire.

“You can put it out with your cold breathing!” Amber suggested.

“OK!” Katie nodded emphatically, and, releasing her passengers, flew up to try. It took a minute to get the hang of it, and then another minute to realize that putting out the fire at the top did no good; she had to start at the bottom. It felt funny flying around blowing on a tree and a house, but pretty great to see the flames retreat against her freezing breath. When she couldn’t see any more fire, and when the air she flew through had cooled considerably, she landed again next to the others.

Stephanie appeared impatient. “We have to check inside!” And she waited not a moment longer to start running across the lawn.

Amber and Katie followed to where Stephanie was already sandwiched between screen and front door, alternately rattling and pounding on the latter and getting egg on her costume. “It’s locked!” she shouted. “Let me in!”

Katie’s eyes widened as her ears caught, beyond the entrance and Stephanie’s noise, the sound of someone feebly calling out for help.

“Move!” Amber commanded, ready to wrench the door open.

“Wait! The house is already burned; don’t break it too! Stephanie, you’re a ninja! Can’t you get into places?”

“Of course!” Stephanie slapped her forehead, setting her mask askew. After righting it, she looked around. “I’ll unlock the door for you guys!” And she jumped off the porch, ran right up the adjacent wall, and disappeared from sight. Less than a minute later, they heard the deadbolt grind open.

“How’d you do that?” Amber demanded as she crossed the threshold.

“Secrets of the ninja,” replied Stephanie proudly. “But hurry! The old guy’s hurt!”

So it appeared. The staircase of the smoke-filled house had a kind of chair-elevator-thing equipped, undoubtedly to help the man between wheelchairs, but the seat remained at the top. No wonder he hadn’t been handing out candy! What an awful thing to do, targeting him with eggs and toilet paper just because he was old and handicapped! He’d probably been headed to the ground floor to call the firemen with that really old-school phone on the wall nearby, and had fallen down the stairs in his haste. He lay on the rug at the bottom in his pajamas, evidently in significant pain, while his downstairs wheelchair had rolled a few steps away from his outstretched hand.

Amber was at his side in an instant. “I’m gonna take you outside, mister.” And she scooped him up effortlessly and turned toward the front door. It looked really weird to see a little girl carrying a big man as if he weighed nothing.

He groaned, and Amber froze. She glanced at the others desperately, but they didn’t know what to do either. If it hurt the old man too much to be lifted, they couldn’t get him out of all this smoke! But then he forced himself to speak, in a quavering, gasping tone: “My cat… upstairs bathroom… locked in…”

Stephanie cried, “I’ll get him!” and took the stairs in two jumps. The old man broke out coughing, and Amber hurried toward the exit. Katie was about to follow when Stephanie shouted from above, “Supergirl! There’s more fire up here!”

Zooming through the air to the second level, Katie saw it: smoke billowed from the open door of what seemed like the old man’s bedroom, and through the murk she could make out flickering flames. She took a deep breath, glad the smoke didn’t bother her as it did the old man, and blew freezing air into the overheated space. Soon the fire had gone out, and she retreated down the hall to find Stephanie struggling with another locked door.

“This time can you just break it open?” Regretting it, Katie did it anyway, and the ninja turtle dashed inside. “Kitty! Kitty, where are you!”

They found it curled up in terror behind the toilet, trembling, eyes wide. As Stephanie lost track of the mission for a moment in her delight over how cute it was, Katie looked around frantically. “There’s nothing to put it in! If we carry it out, it’ll probably run away!”

This snapped Stephanie out of her transport. “Don’t worry!” she said. Picking up the animal, she added, “Oof!” and in some surprise, “This cat is so heavy!” Then she tucked it away inside her shell.

Katie blinked. “Wow.”

“He’ll be safe in there for now!” Stephanie patted her chest with the shell’s underside on it. “I’m gonna take him outside!”

“I’ll try and find a box or something,” said Katie.

“And see if there’s any more fire!”

This took less time than expected. The three upstairs rooms were clear of fire, and in a hall closet Katie found something better than a box: an actual cat carrier. She flew back downstairs and, without pausing, out of the house to where Amber had laid the old man down on an egg-free spot in the grass. Sirens sounded in the distance, and over on the sidewalk at the corners of the property, people were beginning to gather.

“We’ve gotta go,” Stephanie hissed, “or they’ll find out your secret identities!” She extracted the cat from her shell — Katie still couldn’t quite see how she did it — and encouraged it into its carrier. The old man made a sound of relief mingled with continued pain.

“Just one thing real quick,” said Amber. She placed both hands on his chest and whispered, “For the honor of Grayskull, heal up, OK?”

The old man started at the glow that grew over the spot, and his mouth trembled. A feeling of serenity and warmth, of deep magic, swirled briefly around them all, and then dissipated with the light. Even the cat, who’d been crying inside the carrier, quieted and seemed to settle down peacefully.

The old man sat up, an expression of wonder on his face. “Young ladies…” His voice sounded much stronger now.

“We gotta go!” Stephanie said again.

The old man reached out and gripped Amber’s arm. “Come visit me. In a couple of months. You can each have one of Ladybug’s kittens.”

“Kittens?!” squealed Stephanie. Now she appeared torn between agitation concerning the approaching strangers and firefighters, and pure ecstasy and excitement. She kept squeaking all the way up into the air and back to the convenience store parking lot.

The instant they touched down, all three began jumping, hugging and gripping each other, giggling and shouting. “We flew so high!” “You got into that house like magic!” “You put out all the fires with your mouth!” “How did you get that cat into your shell?” “I can’t believe you totally healed that guy!” “Did you see me carry him?” “Did you see me run up that wall?” “Did you see me fly to the top of that tree?” “I can’t believe it!”

The tingling sensation had departed, and Katie’s powers with it, but she didn’t mind. Super-awesome as it would have been to keep them, the adventure they’d had made up for the transitory nature of her ability to fly. They’d rescued an old man and his cat and saved his house from more damage. They’d been real heroes. And that old man hadn’t said anything about Supergirl not being Black or Raphael not being a girl, and he probably wouldn’t care if She-Ra maybe had a crush on Huntara — and he was way more important than whatever poop-faces had been the ones to get him into that mess in the first place. And he’d promised kittens!!

“Well, you’re all having fun out here!” said mom’s voice. She and the others had emerged from the convenience store and followed the girls’ noise around the corner.

“Mom! Mom!” Katie and Amber ran to her and grabbed on, barely avoiding Tey and his gummy worms in her arms, pointing back at the ninja turtle in their wake. “This is our friend Stephanie can she trick-or-treat with us?!”

“It’s nice to meet you, Stephanie,” said mom, laughing at her daughters’ exuberance. “Are you out trick-or-treating all alone?”

“Yeah,” Stephanie replied awkwardly. “My friends said I couldn’t come with them because I dressed up as a boy.”

Amber was outraged. “See? She has to come with us!”

“Of course she can, baby,” mom said. “You guys ready to go?”

Mrs. Keene and her kids indicated that they were.

“Stephanie, these are Mrs. Keene and Gregory Keene and Kimberly Keene.” Katie pointed them out, then added to the kids, “Do you guys want to hear a story about Supergirl and She-Ra and Raphael?”

Gregory considered for a moment. “Yeah,” he said.

Katriche took his hand while Ambrosya took Kimberly’s. “We’ll all three tell you while we walk, OK?”

“OK,” said Kimberly. Katie thought she saw mom and Mrs. Keene look at each other with their eyebrows up.

“So this one time,” Amber began, “She-Ra accidentally got sent all the way from Etheria to Earth…”

“To a parking lot!” Stephanie jumped in and took Kimberly’s other hand.

“And Raphael was already there,” said Katie, “because he…”

“Because he was going to buy a pizza!” Amber finished.

The Keene kids giggled. As they moved on toward the neighborhood houses, Stephanie said, “But they didn’t know that Supergirl seen a fire far away, and she came down and said, ‘I need you guys’s help!'”

“And…”

“And…”

“And……”

For November Quick Fics 2019, my mother gave me the prompt, Someone’s Halloween costume comes to life and gives them the powers of the character they’re dressed as. Course then I had to make it about other stuff too, and we never actually get to find out how/why the whole thing happened XD

The old man is played by Stan Lee.