An XX symbol illuminates the night sky. The whole team will come for me. In the morning when I don’t answer my apartment door, they enter by any means necessary: one disassembles my skylight, one crawls through an air vent, and one crashes through the bedroom window while I’m scrolling YouTube. 

“Get dressed. It’s now or never.” They speak in cliches, and I’m sick of the inauthenticity.

“Can someone please be real with me?” I scream at them, aware it’s ironic as they literally wear masks. They pull an outfit out of my disheveled closet. But it’s summer, and a heatwave, so I’d rather die before squeezing into a pleather catsuit and high-heeled boots. I say I’ll go with them, but I’m wearing my Crocs. Compromise: Active Crocs with the strap up.

“It’s bad this time, really bad,” they say. “We wouldn’t come for you if we didn’t need you.” 

There’s always another bad guy. I explain about the emotional weight of constantly being asked to fight. In the past decade alone, we’ve taken down a zombie king, a lecherous leprechaun, a steroid-infused cult leader, gods from the planets Otium and Ichatur, a clown, and two alien invasions. The number of bad guys is overwhelming, a hopeless game of Whack-a-Mole I’m not interested in playing anymore. 

They tell me the mission anyway.

“Listen, I don’t need all the ins and outs,” I say. “Just get me back to watching cat videos.” 

“It’s a time like no other,” they say. One presents a slideshow of the world transforming into fire. “We’re scared.” 

I tell myself I’ve seen it all before on Twitter. But, it’s too late. My third eye starts to twitch, releasing the hope and empathy for humanity into my veins.

On the private jet, they press an iced cappuccino into my hands for energy. I’ve been open about my depression, and how draining it is to be the only one to feel such deep pain. Each mission we accomplish ends up launching a domino effect of tragedy: sacred architecture blown away, animals forced to graze on scorched land, and plant life ruined by chemical spills. No one is interested in my taking a mental health day. The last few years’ events won’t come to a crushing end by sinking our current nemesis into a toxic stew and blasting him into space. (Nevermind the number of innocent bystanders and space pollution the plan will inevitably generate.) 

The AppleMonitor lights up and XX’s face fills the screen. I wince because I’m sick of Zoom calls. 

XX starts off by advising me I’d feel better if I applied makeup. 

“Go ahead, say that again.” I flicker my third eye. The iris turns violet when I wrinkle my forehead with menace, proving if he was in front of me, he’d be dead already. I’m too furious to listen to the mission and instead, spend the entire warp-speed flight remembering how much I hate XX, and how terribly he treats women. 

After arrival at the Top Secret Destination, an underground lair, a spaceship lands carrying XX, who pulls me aside to apologize and reveals he’s been in love with me since the day they found me comatose under a pile of garbage. That day my third eye blinked like a crab looking for water. 

“Gross,” I say. “You have one seriously creepy Sleeping Beauty complex. Not to mention, it goes against HR protocol.” 

XX backs off and says he understands, but when the score’s sweeping music begins, he attempts to pull me in for a kiss. What a dick.  

The team requires me to crack the Classified Code. I flicker my eye and sense the human mind who built the subterranean bunker and unscramble the numbers. It’s easier this way, to go along with the mission. The team throws me the latest in firearms, though I’ve repeatedly expressed my belief in gun control. 

“How many school shootings need to happen before you guys realize guns are dangerous?” The poison darts and hand grenades clatter to the floor around me since I refuse to touch them. 

“We’ve prepared our whole lives for this moment,” XX says to the team. 

Third eye roll. He believes we’re returning life to justice and liberty for all, but our track record isn’t great. I run with the team (slowly in my Crocs yet faster than when I wore stilettos) to the Final Battle Scene in the bunker. Each “final battle” resembles the last, but this one does feel different, somehow more tense.  

We pry open the unlocked steel door, and it’s a hellscape of horror, much more dangerous than anyone thought. I shrink as my third eye zig-zags over the sea of approaching enemies. They proceed en masse: scared white men with endless amounts of resources, a mutating contagion that sickens all it touches, unrelenting systemic racism, lost and troubled children of war, an entire supreme court filled with misogyny, inflation, corruption in the governments, a supply chain of fentanyl, an irreversible climate crisis and a clock counting down the days to global decimation. 

My team gets into formation, and I freeze, lagging behind. But, my eye twitches, and I’m flooded with my real superpower, the one the team relies on, the one upon which the entire world’s safety rests: the unwavering belief that one woman can make a difference. Full of renewed hope, I sprint forward.