A Little Less Talk ...
#TQC-0104 (Mini-Episode)
By Miss Ang

We coulda been anything that we wanted to be
But don't it make your heart glad?
That we decided - a fact we take pride in
We became the best at being bad!
~ Bugsy Malone, "Bad Guys"

"Hey, boys."

Megavolt and Quackerjack looked up from the poker game - a grave mistake, since Liquidator proceeded to swiftly rake all their money into a bag under the table. True, it was only three dollars, twenty-seven cents, a gumball, and a clump of potting soil, but in the Fearsome Five, you took what you could.

"Jeanie!" Megavolt's face lit up as she strode into the hideout, a tiny red charm dangling from a silver chain around her finger. "You're BACK!"

"Of course I'm back," she smirked. "What, did you expect me to be front?" Spinning the chain around her finger nonchalantly, she slid into a chair at the table. "Who's winning?"

"I was," Quackerjack beamed. "Five bucks and ... " His voice trailed off. "Twenty-seven ... HEY!"

The Liquidator shrugged, grinning. "You snooze, you lose! Act five minutes ago, that was a limited time offer."

"VERY funny," Quackerjack snorted, dumping the bag of potato chips over Liquidator's head.

"Hey, my CHIPS," Megavolt whined, throwing a handful of pretzels at his cohort disdainfully.

"Boys, boys," Jeanie cooed. "I don't want a food fight, not on my first day back!"

"... So what happened? Where did you GO?" Quackerjack asked, plucking a pretzel from the ruffles of his collar and stuffing it in his mouth.

"FOWL," Jeanie snorted. "Stupid place, really. Too many rules."

Megavolt wrinkled his nose. "I never liked FOWL either. That Steelbeak ..." He shook his head. "Nope. I just don't like it!"

"Any particular reason?"

Megavolt blinked. "Uh .... um.... "

Jeanie rolled her eyes. "I'll get back to you on that." She kicked her feet up on the poker table, slipping the chain around her neck with a smile before stretching and folding her arms behind her head. "So where's your illustrious leader, Mr. Manners?"

"Negaduck? Jail. I think. He might have broken out. I'm not sure." Quackerjack shrugged. "But while the cat's away ... it's PLAAAAAYYYYTIIIIME!" He threw a handful of cards into the air to accentuate his point. "We've been having LOTS of fun!"

"Finally standing on your own feet, are you?"

Megavolt inspected the soles of his boots. "Well, duh."

"That's not what I mean."

"Fully independant contractors!" The Liquidator informed her, pointing to a large sack of money in the corner.

"That's all yours?"

"Lucky jerk swindled a whole bunch of people into buying faulty mini-fans during last week's heat wave," Quackerjack sulked. "And he won't share."

Jeanie giggled. "What about you?"

"I've been building ... STUFF." Quackerjack grinned. "Got me a Baby Belulah doll that spits fire and throws cherries!"

"Cherry bombs?"

"Nooo," Quackerjack said, as if cherry bombs were the stupidest thing ever to pair with fire-spitting. "CHERRIES."

She nibbled on a fingernail and tried to look enlightened. "I see..."

"JEANIE???"

Arcing her neck, Jeanie turned to see Bushroot standing in the doorway, a large sack of fertilizer slung over his shoulder. "Hey! Greenbean! How ya been?"

"Not bad..." He set down the bag of fertilizer and ran up to her, arms open for a hug.

"Uh, no thanks, maybe after you have a date with the garden hose." She wrinkled her beak, then shook her head. "What's your angle lately?"

"Boring," Megavolt piped up. "He's just been growing stuff out behind the hideout."

"Ambiance," Jeanie shrugged.

Bushroot beamed, then his eyes widened as he caught sight of the necklace around Jeanie's throat. "Hey, that's a rare Quackahula Crimson Flame orchid," he gawked, pointing to the charm. "NEAT!"

"Thanks," she smiled. "Rarer than you think, you wouldn't BELIEVE what I had to go through to keep this in my deserving little hands."

"Tell us," Megavolt begged. "Tell us tell us tell us pleeeease?" He glanced over at Bushroot and clarified. "Jeanie was at FOWL," he said with a sort of mix of disgust and awe.

"Oooooo!" Bushroot immediately flopped down on the floor, legs crossed.

"Story time!" Quackerjack whooped, grabbing another handful of pretzels. The Liquidator merely kept at the diligent task of picking soggy bits of potato chip out of his ears.

Jeanie merely settled down further into her chair and picked the Queen of Diamonds up from the table, flipping it back and forth between her fingers.

"Aw come on, Jeanie, TELL!" Megavolt whined. "We told you what we were up to!"

"Nope, no big story." She shrugged.

"Nothing to tell?" Bushroot guessed, raising an eyebrow and picking a Japanese beetle out of his hair.

"Oh, there's plenty to tell," Jeanie corrected him. "There was the thing with the girl that couldn't get over her friend... the whole fiasco with High Command and the sub-subfiles, and how the guy on the left turned out to be some big power-mongering vulture hell-bent on ruling the world ... some junk about a magic family living in Duckburg... one agent's family has major ties to the Mafia ... oh, there's a LOT of stories, boys."

The Fearsome Four's eyes practically sparkled with excitement.

"And???" Quackerjack urged her.

"And?" Jeanie gave another shrug, putting her feet back down and picking up some more of the cards. "I just don't care about any of them, anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"You spend even a week in FOWL with those angst-ridden head cases, and it gives you mental disorders," Jeanie griped. "I had to get out of there before I ended up like them - all melodramatic and 'poor me'. Everything is so complicated there. Subplots on subplots, little tiny intrigues woven in everywhere, stuff that doesn't make any sense. People get so that they don't even seem like themselves anymore. It's sad. I mean, the pathetic kind of sad." She wrinkled her beak. "I'm anything but complicated, boys. I've got no big sad Why I'm Evil story, no big tragic history, no severed ties to languish over, no horrible disfiguring injury."

"Lucky you," Bushroot blinked.

"Yeah. I mean, I'm just me. I love trouble. I love having fun making it." She grinned. "And I figured I'd come back and party down with my boys."

"And that's all there is?" Megavolt blinked in disbelief. "That's it?"

Jeanie nodded, shuffling the cards. "That's all there is to it, boys, and that's all I ever think there should be. Just a little, silly, evil, fun." With that, she started snapping cards down on the table.

"... So who's in?"

Four supervillains and one femme fatale pulled their chairs up to the table and threw in their chips.