Upon finishing my smoke, I told Villain that my water had just broken and I needed to get home. However, my real intention was to get to my secret lair and analyze my findings. My mission was not over. As soon as I had encountered the individual in the alley, I knew I had the wrong guy. Villain attempted to throw me off the scent by hiring a vagrant to wear his discarded black jumpsuit. A clever ruse, yes, but I saw through the disguised impostor. The charlatan smelled of booze, whereas Villain smelled of distilled, pure evil. Anyone with nostrils knows the difference. His plan to temporarily throw me off the trail only played into my hand. The adrenaline had nearly depleted my sugar reserves and I was in dire need of replenishing. I used his gambit against him and refueled my sugar reservoir with the licorice so that I could combat evil with full vitality. I also wanted to see if I could glean anything from the shoddily costumed drifter. I learned nothing of substance other than how to make a killer hobo martini. It’s so simple, all you have to do is smear some shoe polish on a piece of bread and then strain some alcohol-free vodka through it, add a green olive and viola. It tastes like birthdays. This could come in handy. I thanked him and went about my way. I reached my lair, a seemingly dilapidated abandoned tree house in my parent’s back yard but a fully operational command center that resembles NASA’s. I dismounted my pink Huffy outfitted with banana seat and pink handle bar frills while going 100 miles an hour, did a somersault, a round off and leaped 200 feet in the air and landed gracefully at the entrance of my secret lair. I cannot fully reveal how you enter my secret lair although most of it is pretty standard. After completing the required motions, bird calls, actor impersonations, waiting for underwriting to approve my entrance, I was in. A new record, 2 weeks. It seemed like 2 seconds. Analysis of the licorice from the bench press bar yielded less than I had hoped for. Examination of Villain’s saliva acquired from the licorice specimen told me he had been recently been in Japan and had consumed some mercury laden sushi. Nothing I didn’t already innately know. Most humans have 5 senses. I have 17. I would go into detail about them but you just wouldn’t understand. It’d be like telling one of our southern neighbors to follow the legal process in which to inhabit the United States, they wouldn’t know what you were talking about. I felt the anger envelop me again but promptly cast it aside. I couldn’t have it exhaust my sugar reservoirs. I needed them for the battle I knew would soon ensue. Where to go now? The trail had gone cold. Villain probably used a few tree branches to sweep away any traces he left behind. Why didn’t I just follow the brush marks that would lead me straight to Villain you ask? Apparently you know nothing of tracking and even less of the craftiness of Villain. He would have positioned several traps down along the way in hopes of ensnaring me. The traps would have never worked but I had to let him think he had the upper hand. With this synthetic sense of advantage he would slip up and get casual and then just like gravity, he goes down. It’s all too easy. I determined to place cameras in the vicinity of where the crime had been completed. I had a strong suspicion he might return to the scene of the crime, perhaps to see if there were any other goodies to confiscate. Call it a hunch, call it woman’s intuition. Seemingly a shot in the dark to most I know, but hunches pay off. Like this one time when it was 4:25 in the afternoon I had a hunch that in five minutes it would be 4:30. And what do you know? Five minutes later to the second the clock registered 4:30. It was uncanny. Meanwhile returning to the regularly scheduled program, I decided I might give Villain a taste of his own medicine and devised a trap for him. I broke out my loom and began weaving an intricate tapestry that I would later tailor using my Singer sewing machine. Having abandoned his black jumpsuit, I knew he would be longing for a new form fitting jumpsuit in which to traipse the streets. I would quench that thirst and capture him in the meantime. Intricate planning, split-second maneuvering, and the spirit of the bear were all going to be required of me. I couldn’t mess up even the slightest degree. Everything had to be planned down to the last nanosecond. If it wasn’t, failure, and that wasn’t an option being offered this semester. I pictured him laughing manically as he inaccurately thought he had outsmarted me. I had allowed Villain to elevate himself onto a lofty pedestal only to witness him fall further then he would have without his self appointed promotion. The only thing sweeter is alum. Actually alum is not very sweet. It is the thing they use to dry out pickles. I promise to work on my metaphors and similes. With my cameras ready to detect any movement around Rebecca’s desk, I also set up an elaborate, complex and a multifaceted high-tech trap to catch Villain. My trap consisted of a big metal box upside down with one of the sides elevated at an angle by a stick with a rope attached to the stick. When Villain would enter the trap underneath the box, I would pull the stick and enclose him within the box. I don’t expect you to understand the complexities of the trap but wanted to give you a mental picture of what it looked like. I had to take into account geometry, the angle of the moon in relation to the North Star, the outside wind velocity (even though the trap is inside, it plays such a huge variable that the trap would be useless without factoring it in), also how fast the cars were moving on Bangerter Highway, the planes flying overhead and many other components required for a successful trap. Under the box I put the new modified black jumpsuit on a mannequin with the same measurements as Villain and placed the display on a rotating circular floor with lights illuminating it from the bottom. Villain would be unable to resist the urge to strip the costume from the model and slip into it and feel it against his skin. The uniform had been so expertly customized that he would feel less restricted and more able to move than if he were naked. He would feel as though he were gliding when he walked. I had set up my temporary command post at my desk and cleverly camouflaged it to appear as though the desk were vacant. It was just after midnight when my ears perceived a slight noise inconsistent with the normal sounds of an unoccupied building. Villain. No question. It was his time to go down. My careful planning and infallible trap would ensure success. Failure would not be obtained because the vending machine was all out of failure. There he was, slowly creeping into my well laid trap. Just a few millimeters more. NOW! Got him! I sprung from my veiled hideout and leaped over the divider. “Mike, Batman or what ever your name is, is that you?” “Yes,” came his reply. “Just what the heck do you think you’re doing here?” “Well I had noticed an almost empty bag of licorice on Rebecca’s desk and, being the good samaritan that I am, I took the liberty to take the nearly empty bag and replace it with a full bag. Is that a crime to do something nice for one of my coworkers?” He wasn’t lying. I would be able to tell if he was. “You mean you don’t endeavor to do evil?” I asked inquisitively. “No,” he replied, “I look for opportunities to enhance people’s lives.” Man I felt like a fool. My overactive imagination had gotten the best of me. The whole elaborate scheme was a sham. “I apologize,” escaped my lips. Slowly, begrudgingly I lifted up the box with one hand only to discover Villain was adorned in the jumpsuit. “Wow this is amazing,” he said, “It’s like I am gliding when I walk.” “Yea, I know,” I said, “Let me buy you a crème soda.” He agreed and as we were walking toward the exit he said, “By the way my name is Fred, what’s yours?”