Challenge's Journal - Season 3

Back to Challenge.

## April 13, 2019 - The First Challenge

If a super villain killed 3 people they’d be one of our arch rivals and stopping them would be a top priority.  If a super villain killed 30 people we’d all join forces with anyone that we needed to to make sure that they were stopped.  Reckless driving kills 30,000 people every year and we high five our driver and call me a bitch when I don’t want to tip them.  I worry about us some times.  I worry that the masks cloud our judgement of what the right thing to do is.  We think about what a superhero would do rather than how we can amplify our own sense of right.

The resort has been quite nice, though, and it’s good that Big Team membership has its occasional perks.  I mean, we’re obviously getting treat better since the stuff with Gazhal and the tree and the giant ant thing.  And now that the League of Heroes is adopting us or whatever.  Although, I’m still very hesitant about that.  Sure the League can provide us with more resources and a lot more muscle, but what good are either of those if we have no idea what we’re doing with them?  Are we going to use them to help our community or are we just going to get called on more crazy mole adventures?

We get faced with practical problems every day.  Crime, poverty, injustice, ignorance.  Bathing a twelve foot tall raccoon certainly is a challenge, but I’m not sure it’s the challenge the team needs to be focusing on.  But, I guess it’s the one that we had in front of us today.  And loving all of God’s creatures is part of our job regardless of the costume.  I’m glad we could help, I just wish that we felt more like heroes and less like adventurers.  People keep on calling me one of the “older” members of the team.  Maybe it’s time that I spoke up and tried to lead from the front because Mr. Crisp seems hesitant to tell us what we should be doing and I’m afraid that the League of Heroes wants us to be super first and heroes second.

Holochrome and Wren are both so passionate and excitable.  It’s refreshing because a lot of the people on the team (and our age in general) seem to be in a competition over who can give the least of a shit.  I think they both bring a lot of potential to the team, I just want us to but that potential towards meaningful goals.  Cyclone thinks about family.  Gwen thinks about tactics.  The League thinks about epic scale.  I just want to feel like there’s someone here who is thinking about values.

Maybe it will be good to have Sledge as a part of the League?  She seems good?

I don’t think I’m going to go back in the hot springs for the rest of our time here after what I saw today.  But oh well, at least the food is good and we have our own hot tub now.  Although, quite honestly, I’m not sure that we can go back to the restaurant either with whatever it was Holochrome and Wren were doing.  Mini and I were having a perfectly nice time together carboloading and wondering if Cyclone has any damn idea what he’s doing when they got all nervous because there were Fae and Imps or whatever eating off of the buffet.  It’s like, I’m sorry, you were the ones getting elbow-deep in mysterious monster sludge earlier, and now you don’t want to share in on a buffet with magic people?

So, that perfectly nice time that Mini and I were having… it might have been something more than that?  I mean, I think that she might think it was something more than that.  See, we nearly Lady and the Tramped and I think she thinks it was something about us and about the ambiance of the Hot Springs.  I swear I was just trying to get some pasta in me.  Honest.

It was kind of uncomfortable being around the Team for this long.  It’s hard to stick to the Challenge identity full time and, even though half the team and the entire fucking Mole City know who I am now, I’m just not ready to let everyone in on my secrets.  I barely want the Big Team to know how I eat, let alone have the entire League of Heroes know my home address and blood type.

But it seems like word is getting out more and more.  Mini asked me to sign a copy of Hero Beat with me on the cover for myself.  She didn’t come out and say that she knows, but someone on the team must have told her.  Probably Rescue.  Still it was a sweet thing for her to do.

Senior member of the team?  God, how did I end up here?  I guess I’m in a new role now and everyone else knew it before me.  They got the cover story wrong, though.

The next Cyclone?  Fuck that.  The first Challenge.