:Connor:

Of course, it wasn't the best battle cry in history, but it served its purpose.

 We charged at the mayor and The Manipulator at top speed. But right before we got close enough to do any real damage, Golden Eagle came swooping down from the roof of City Hall followed by three dozen robots.

 Being Golden Eagle's sidekick for a while turned out to be of some use in the end. Ricky and I had some on hand experience with dealing with the ravenous diva that is Golden Eagle.

 "Hey, I heard that MTV said Justin Bieber was hotter than you!" Ricky yelled as he blasted a robot to ashes.

 Cassie dodged a punch from Golden Eagle and joined in. "I read that People's magazine declared The Marvel as the hottest masked man in the world, not you. In fact, they never even mentioned you."

"Yeah," I pushed a robot straight into an arrow shot by Chase, "I even heard E! news saying that you were getting too old for your fan base!"

 That seemed to knock him out of his current hypnosis, even for a second. His eyes went back to normal and he stopped trying to throw poorly aimed punches at Cassie.

"Wait a second, are you calling me old? I'm the best super there is! I'm the most-"

. . . And that's when Cassie round house kicked him in the head and knocked the world's best hero to the ground, unconscious.

While we'd been distracting Golden Eagle, the rest of the league was fighting off the robots.

Archer was a raving tornado . . . literally. Any robot in a five foot radius was scooped up and then shot fifty feet into the air by the power of Archer's wind. When they landed on the ground they would twitch and give off short electrical bursts until they finally short circuited.

Chase had finally found an advantage of Archer's superpowers. Instead of aiming as far away from the tornado as he could, he would do the exact opposite. Arrows flew into Archer's tornado and were shot back out into un-expecting robots' necks and heads.

I looked back up at the steps of City Hall. Reporters and pedestrians were still attempting to scatter, but they seemed momentarily confused.

The Manipulator stood at the top of the steps, his hands out and his head dipped in concentration. It didn't look like he was going to wait to turn all the previously kidnapped supers against their cities.

 "Umm . . . guys?" Lacey's concerned voice reached us through our earpieces. "The international news stations are getting reports of super attacks all over the world by the good supers. It's all over social media too."

 "And," Peter jumped in, "it would be nice if you could take down the bad guy before he ruins your reputation forever."

 "Thanks for the lovely suggestion." Archer grunted.

 Ricky looked at me and tilted his head to the top of City Hall as if to say, "You're the veteran super, you get to take on the Big Bad Wolf."

(Sometimes I really hated how right that kid was.)

 Cassie and he raced off to fight the robots that were currently raging through Main Street. Though there were many of them, but we were determined to win.

They quickly fell in line with Archer and Chase.

After all our pent up feelings about each other had been pushed out into the open and mostly resolved, we looked to be getting along a lot better. It showed itself in our fighting.

 Instead of being his normally clumsy self, Ricky was flying around in his suit of armor picking off robots left and right. He didn't even accidently shoot Archer in the butt like the last time we'd fought together.

Cassie was slashing and clawing at the robots like there was no tomorrow. She judo-flipped one robot and then sent him into Tornado Archer and slashed one into so many pieces that it looked like a smashed up TV on the side of the road.

I rushed up the steps, ready to shoot a car at The Manipulator's head, when I saw Arabella crumpled at the base of the steps. And, of course, my body ran to her instead of the bad guy.

"Arabella, are you all right?"

She looked up at me, but her eyes were unfocused. Her irises were lined with such a bright red that I had trouble staring at her eyes without feeling nauseous myself.

"I'm fine."

Had that not been such a teenage girl response, I wouldn't have taken such a long time to reply.

 "Let me get you somewhere-"

 "No," she croaked, "Daddy says that I can't trust you. I – I need to help him." She struggled as she tried to stand back up. "This is what I'm meant to – ahh!" she yelped in pain as the red rimming her irises grew not only brighter, but larger. It had grown inward, slowly taking over half of her irises.

 She collapsed into me and I lifted her face up to mine. "Arabella, he's using you. He doesn't love you. Why would he do this to you if he did?"

 She seemed to consider my question for a moment before her face contorted in pain again. "No, you are a liar."

 And then I probably did the stupidest thing in the world. In fact, I'm sure I was on some sort of drugs (Which was strange since I'd never done drugs in my life). Maybe The Manipulator was influencing me.

Who knew?

All I knew was that, at that exact moment, I kissed Arabella Jones.

:Arabella:

I was brought back to consciousness by Connor Collins kissing me.

Of course, it wasn't only that.

The memories came flooding back all at once. Everything that The Manipulator had suppressed inside my head hit me like a wrecking ball.

And then I realized that Connor was kissing me for the first time ever.

 Now, some of you may be thinking, "Didn't you kiss him in the musical?" and the answer would be no.

 You see, in Beauty and the Beast, Belle is supposed to kiss the Beast. Except, that never happened for us. Every time that Mrs. Cunningham wanted us to rehearse that particular scene with the kissing part he would make up excuses.

(I now know that half of the time he was off saving the city, but not every time.)

I for one had thought that Connor was so grossed out by the fact that he had to kiss me that he didn't want to do it more than he had to. But then I discovered what a nice person he was and I thought of a different theory.

 My boyfriend at the time, Archer, was always in the room.

Maybe he was afraid that Archer would kick his butt or something for kissing his girlfriend, I don't know.

 Once, out of curiosity, I remember making Mrs. Cunningham rehearse our scene on a night that Archer was out sick. We were almost at the kissing part when Connor claimed that he had caught Archer's stomach bug and ran home sick.

 I had come back to the conclusion that he just didn't want to kiss me.

 Even our opening night of the musical we never kissed. Archer kidnapped me before we could finish the scene. (Long story)

 I hadn't known what was wrong with him. We were actors playing a character. It wasn't like I had actually wanted to kiss him that bad.

 But after all the drama with him being The Marvel and me becoming a super, I forgot about all of that. That is, I forgot about it all until now.

And as soon as all those memories came flooding back, I knew one thing as sure as anything else in the world:

I really wanted to kiss Connor Collins back.

 So, I did.

 It was about thirty seconds until he finally pulled away. From the look in his eyes I knew that I was back to normal. I felt like my normal, stubborn self.

I heard a frustrated yell from behind me. The Manipulator just lost his main power source.

 "I'll be right back, I have a villain to punch in the face." He smiled like a giddy third grader who just got a peck on the cheek from the pretty girl in his class.

 He flew over my head and took a car with him. The car was floating above his head, obviously.

 I turned my attention back to the battle ahead of me. We were still outnumbered three to one by robots, but I was going to change those odds.

 I got up on shaky legs and wobbly arms. The Manipulator had taken almost all of my energy. I could barely take a step without almost passing out.

 I also still couldn't believe the fact that my father was willing to let me die so that The Manipulator could control all those supers into destroying their names. Connor had been right, my father didn't love me. He was too consumed by grief and psychotic thoughts to ever love again.

 And then I felt a surge of power go through me. I remembered the kiss, the way it felt. Now, I don't want to sound like some hormonal teenager in a crappy fan fiction, but every time I thought about it again my chest fluttered.

I could do this. Sure, we were against the odds, but I was too stubborn not to at least try and fight.

 I got in a running stance and ran straight for the nearest robot. In seconds I had ripped out the control panels of at least half of the robots.

I stopped speeding when I reach where the others were and almost collapsed in Cassie's arms. "Why do I feel like I just ran a marathon with shin splints?"

 Cassie laughed and did something very un-Cassie-like. She hugged me.

"I'm glad that you're back on our side, Speedy, but we have some robots to destroy before we can even think of a reunion."

Cassie then tilted her head to the side, no doubt listening to Lacey or Peter on the other end. She reached into her back pocket and took out an earpiece. Apparently Lacey needed to give me some pretty important information if she was making Cassie give me an earpiece in the middle of a raging battle.

 ". . . She have it on yet?" Peter's voice came on through the newly attached earpiece.

 I heard shuffling through the piece and a high pitched voice filled my ear. "I KNEW IT!"

 "Ahh!" I flinched. Lacey could be painfully loud when she needed to be.

 "That was just so romantic! You were all red eyes and weak and then Connor comes sweeping in with a kiss and you go back to normal! It was like the thought of his kiss brought you back. So romantic if you asked me. I just knew that you two liked each other! Peter, you owe me ten bucks. I told you they'd eventually get together."

 I was in so much shock that I almost let a robot vaporize me. I used my speed and ripped off his head before he could, thankfully recovering quick enough.

I saw Chase smirk as he launched another arrow off into Archer's tornado and I thought of something. Everyone had just heard Lacey's speech and now knew why I wasn't on the wrong side anymore.

 (It was more embarrassing than the second grade talent show when I peed my pants in front of the whole school.)

"How did you even see that?!" I exclaimed whilst taking down another robot, even though I could feel my strength getting weaker.

Lacey huffed. "You know, I'm not just good for shopping. I have other talents like, I don't know, hacking! How else am I supposed to keep tabs on y'all?"

She did have a point there.

 I got ready to speed over to the next robot when I realized that they were all either short circuiting in the ground or ripped into millions of little pieces (*cough* Cassie).

Archer flew back to the ground and stopped his tornado. He almost crumbled to the ground in exhaustion before Chase caught him. We all gathered at the steps of City Hall, Archer leaning on Chase for support. I myself had to use Cassie for a bit of support.

 While we'd been fighting robots, Connor had been fighting off a mind controlling super villain.

"Your days of villain work are over, Manipulator." Connor was breathing heavily, standing over The Manipulator.

"Try me," he spat out, literally.

 I could see the anger on Connor's face, even from here and with half of his face covered by a red spandex mask. But he clenched his fists and didn't burst out in rage. Instead, Connor flagged down two police officers who'd been hiding inside City Hall.

"Arrest this man for his crimes. I'm sure he knows his rights by now."

 Being addressed by a super, especially The Marvel, must've been a new experience for these officers. They were in shock for a second before completely registering what he'd said and rushing to cuff The Manipulator with Merlonium cuffs.

 When Connor got back to our level, it was hugs and slaps on the back for everyone.

We'd done it. We'd defeated a super villain and, judging by Lacey's ranting on the other side of our ear pieces, the released supers were no longer attacking their cities. Everything was fine again.

 We were victorious.