JJ mused that there is something seriously off about the idea of celebrating your own birth by wearing the kind of suit that you’d be buried in. At least he’d talked his mother out of the bow tie. Vic and Bart were also in their ‘you’re going to look good for the pictures’ suits, but they didn’t have to stand on the reception line. Asha was slightly overdressed with her usual frills and bows overload, and still somehow managed to make it work. Viv was on the first of the 15 outfits that she’d brought; she was bound and determined to make a killer impression, no matter what!

How did Splash-a-rama manage to keep their production levels and employee salaries high, while keeping their price low? Simple: they were a front for supervillains.

JJ had been right- the warehouse was a rat’s nest. Mara looked at the layout of the storage area and saw three of the banes of modern Academia at work: Tight Budgets, Interdepartmental Rivalry, and Issue Faddism. First Nations issues tended to fade in and out of fashion, as the question of whether Anthropologists were exalting or exploiting the cultures they studied waxed and waned. The warehouse smelled of dust, paper, mold and apathy.

At Gran’Pere’s estate at dinner that night, Nick explained, “When the Magnificent Five learned that ‘Captain Ransack’ was going to raid the Yerunkle, Golden Eagle stepped in and had the exhibit replaced with facsimiles, and the real treasures stored. I was expecting him to place them all in the Yerunkle’s vault, but that was already full with another exhibit, so Yerunkle security put it all in an unmarked semi-trailer, figuring that no one would notice it!” Nick finished with a snicker.

Part 1 JJ looked around the huddled crowd for his two younger brothers. This wasn’t easy: Vic and Bart were much shorter than the rest of the crowd, being ages 11 and 9 respectively, and they had that very dangerous combination of curiosity, fearlessness, adventurousness and functional psychopathy of boys that age.