In the past, a young Carly shows Vicki a hat that she made, while Vicki shows Carly a sculpture she created. Vicki notes that she gets good grades in science but really wants to be an artist. However, at a parent-teacher conference that evening, Wormwood dismisses her aptitude in art and pushes her to take extra science classes. She says that Vicki would reinforce archaic gender roles if she pursued an artistic career, but would be a good example to other girls if she went into a STEM field. Vicki’s father tells Vicki that she can do both, but Wormwood continues to push, eventually telling Vicki that if she likes making clay sculptures she should instead go into geology so she can still work with clay and mud. Vicki accepts Wormwood’s advice.
Back in the present, Vicki wakes up to the sound of her phone ringing. Carly has been leaving her messages saying that she and the rest of the Kamen Corps can’t hide Vicki’s identity from the government forever, and also begging Vicki to let them help her. Vicki also gets a message from Lansky threatening to sue her for revealing that he had backed her terrorist attacks, as well as one from her boss Kristen who instructs her to attend a geology conference that weekend since a project needs to be done and everyone else in the department has plans. Vicki ignores all of this and takes her glasses out of a dresser which is overflowing with the money she got from her work as the supervillain Vermillion Masquerade, but she doesn’t even seem to notice the money as she looks at her own reflection. After a moment, she smashes her mirror.
Siggy drives the Kamen Corps to a warehouse being used by the terrorist group Cryptiq to run bioweapons. In the van, Misha tells Carly that they’ve let Vicki escape before but will need to actually defeat and capture her if she attacks again. Carly acknowledges this but says she still wants to help Vicki. They arrive and transform before storming the warehouse and run into the terrorist and trafficker Bandit Okami. Okami makes a few comments in Japanese before siccing the bioweapons, bizarre cryptid-esque monsters, on the heroes. The heroes slaughter the monsters, and even though Okami escapes in the confusion, Carly leads the team in telling local citizens that the day has been saved. They meet back up with Siggy (who used his van to run down and crush a monster that went after civilians) and prepare to head home as Carly calls Vicki again.
One year prior, while Carly was in her coma, Vicki finds she can’t contact her friend and then gripes about how her life is terrible. She’s sent to remote locations to do scientific work she doesn’t particularly enjoy and her boss doesn’t really care about, and since her per diems don’t even cover her bills, she has to use some of her own money just to do her job. A mysterious entity appears before her and says that Vicki is about to obtain a great deal of power, then offers Vicki even more power than that if Vicki takes the entity’s hand. Vicki does so, the entity vanishes, and Vicki is struck by debris from the falling NASA probe which also gave Carly, Misha, and Kimiko their powers. When Vicki awakens, she realizes she can control earth.
Back in the present, Lansky hides out in his office and whines that the federal government will get through his lawyers sooner or later. His partner Schultz shreds documents while Lansky blames his problems on Carly, saying she was ungrateful for his work and backstabbed him. After some thought, he begins to blame Vicki as well, and a flashback shows that he dropped by Carly’s house while she was comatose to fire her for being late on some designs. Vicki caught him and begged him to give Carly another chance, and when Lansky asked what she has to offer, Vicki summoned a couple of mud monsters. Back in the present, Lansky threatens that he’ll blame Schultz for everything if Schultz tries to abandon him, but ‘Schultz’ drops his illusion and reveals himself to be a toku-esque figure with a ‘Z’ on his uniform. The figure threatens Lansky but says the agent still has something to offer while they tie up loose ends.
The Kamen Corps and Siggy arrive home to find muddy footprints; Carly concludes that Vicki is around. They prepare to storm the home while Sylvia muses that Badger is very old for a capybara, then wonders if the lightning bolt which gave Carly her powers may have also infused Badger with some of her chimeraton radiation and thus stunted his aging. Carly takes a suitcase from the van and goes inside to find Vicki feeding Badger, and Vicki says that she feels Carly took advantage of her, making her do petty chores while barely acknowledging her existence. She notes that she never gave up on her dreams and even left a ‘surprise’ for Carly in some of the mud test results but Carly never bothered to actually look at Vicki’s work. Next, she compares the way Carly neglected her to the way Sylvia once overlooked Carly, but when Carly pushes back, Vicki reveals that she couldn’t take how everyone loved Carly but overlooked her. Enraged, Vicki draws on her mud powers and begins to destroy the house.
Ranting that she’s tired of being a hanger-on and fashion accessory for the more popular Carly, Vicki smashes other members of the Kamen Corps aside. She screams that Carly got to go into the world and show everyone how creative and beautiful she was while Vicki had to remain the invisible, unrecognized sidekick. She also says that she gave up her own aspirations just to help Carly, and a flashback reveals that Vicki had originally wanted to use her powers to act the superhero while fighting her own mud monsters, but Lansky told her that Carly had powers now too and was more marketable, so it would be better if Vicki played the villain instead. Lansky got her to agree to this by saying it would be a big help to Carly if Vicki made herself into a villain for her to fight, and a frustrated Vicki agreed.
In the present, Vicki throws an unresisting Carly around while screaming that she gave up everything to bolster Carly’s popularity but Carly didn’t care, and also that Carly discarded her in favor of Gracey when it came to figuring out the secrets of the mud monsters. Kimiko is rendered powerless as Vicki moves the fight to a part of the yard with no water sources, Sylvia is pushed too far back to help the others, and Misha is swarmed by monsters until Siggy begins shooting them away from her. Misha kisses Siggy in thanks and then runs off to fight while Carly gapes.Vicki finally flees, saying that she’ll finally make a name for herself and will be remembered for centuries before vanishing underground.
Sylvia criticizes Carly for not really fighting during the encounter while Kimiko gets Carly’s suitcase, which had gotten knocked aside in the fight. Carly tells the others she knows where Vicki is going and will get them private transportation so they can beat Vicki to that destination, then says that she thinks the contents of the suitcase will compel Vicki to surrender but they’ll fight her if that doesn’t work. She also calls out Misha for kissing Siggy, calling him her boyfriend, which stuns both Misha and Siggy.
Agent Sawyer "Sawmill" Millius of Black Hops arrives in a helicopter and takes the Kamen Corps to South Dakota; the enhanced dog Grendel, AKA Commando-G, is also with him. On the way, Carly notes that she realized the monster attacks always happened during the dates and times when Vicki was away at geology conferences, so after calling Kristen and verifying that Vicki has a conference coming up in Rapid City, Carly figured she’d head there next. Since Rapid City is very close to Mt. Rushmore and since Vicki said she wanted fame, Carly concluded that Vicki would likely try to resculpt the monument to showcase herself. Indeed, Vicki arrives at Mt. Rushmore and prepares to rework the faces so they’re all of her, but the Kamen Corps show up before she can even start.
Vicki realizes that the heroes are wearing clothes made from her designs, and Carly confirms this. The ‘surprise’ that Vicki put in the mud test results were Vicki’s own designs for a fashion line, but contrary to what Vicki thought, Carly did in fact see the designs and made uniforms based on them. Vicki is touched but says it’s too late for her to change course; she attacks the heroes and demands to be addressed by her supervillain identity of Vermillion Masquerade. Carly refuses and the heroes battle Vicki, but while Vicki uses rocks and mud as shields which largely block Misha’s and Kimiko’s attacks, Sylvia is able to use her powered armor to tackle and hurt Vicki. Despite her wounds, though, Vicki refuses to surrender and is able to trap Sylvia under a massive rock.
Millius radios to Carly and says he can just snipe Vicki, but Carly refuses. Vicki rants that she’s stronger than the heroes since she can move mountains and make monsters. Carly, at long last, tells her to shut up.
—Carly Vanders
Carly rebukes Vicki for having a victim complex, saying that they’re all the children of pioneers, innovators, soldiers, and other hard workers who fought to make their dreams into reality and never let themselves accept being victims. If Vicki really wants to be a villain, Carly notes, then Vicki can make that choice, but she emphasizes that it’s a choice and not something Vicki was ‘forced’ to do by being ignored or unnoticed relative to Carly. Finally, Carly says that she chooses to be a hero and a friend, and as a friend, she’s prepared to knock some sense into Vicki.
Finally fighting back, Carly hits Vicki, and then the four members of the Kamen Corps launch a massive combo attack which shatters Vicki’s defenses and leaves her stunned. After Carly apologizes for not seeing how Vicki was struggling, Black Hops arrests Vicki, though Millius notes that they do have options besides simply throwing her in jail forever. Misha, thinking of her own sister Kanina (the mercenary leader Hare Trigger), commiserates with Carly over how hard it is to fight friends and loved ones. Carly thanks her for the sentiments and they had back to Carly’s destroyed house, where Carly reminisces over the good times she had with Vicki in their youths. In one of those memories, Vicki asks Carly if they’ll grow apart when they’re older, but Carly says they will always be friends.
In an epilogue, Father Retter interrogates Kanina, who recently had a saint’s hand grafted onto her body. Millius then takes Retter and Gracey to deal with other business. They talk about Vicki as they walk, with Gracey noting that Vicki’s cell has an automatic turret which will shoot her if she draws upon her powers, and that the cell itself is reinforced in such a way to dampen Vicki’s powers. Millius, however, thinks that Vicki is so despondent she won’t try to escape. But in the cell, Vicki is visited by the same entity she got her powers from, which it turns out is also the entity that was pretending to be Schultz. The entity criticizes Vicki for not using her powers more destructively and takes back all the extra power he gave her which augmented the energy she absorbed from the space probe. He tells Vicki that she’s not special and he’s the kind of monster who eats other monsters, then leaves as Kanina watches from her own cell.
Elsewhere, the Kamen Corps and Black Hops celebrate their victories.
This comic contains examples of the following tropes:
- An Aesop:
- Don’t sacrifice your passions, even to noble-sounding causes.
- If your life isn’t going the way you want, make positive changes instead of giving in to frustration and becoming villainous.
- Driven by Envy:
- Vicki resents how Carly got everything she wanted, including popularity and opportunities to pursue her passions, while Vicki languished in obscurity.
- It’s also implied that another reason for Vicki’s resentment is that Carly faced the same pressures to sacrifice her passions and ideals that Vicki did, even to the extent of being told to do so by the exact same people (Wormwood and Lansky), but didn't give in. Carly had enough strength of character to resist both Wormwood's pressure to abandon her art and Lansky's pressure to compromise her heroic ideals, but Vicki didn’t, and she couldn't handle being confronted with that fact on a regular basis.
- Redemption Demotion: After being captured by Black Hops and starting on the path to redemption, Vicki is stripped of most of her powers.
- Rushmore Refacement: Vicki tries to do this before the Kamen Corps stop her.
- Screw the Money, This Is Personal!: Vicki has become rich from the money she’s made working with Lansky, but she clearly doesn’t care about the wealth and is instead focused on her vendetta against Carly.
- Senseless Sacrifice: Vicki wanted to go into art, but she let herself be pressured into focusing on science instead so she could serve as a role model and inspiration to other girls who wanted to go into STEM. Later in life, she wanted to be a hero, but she let Lansky pressure her into taking a villain role so as to bolster Carly. However, it’s clear by the end that Vicki was wrong to make these sacrifices.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Carly eventually shuts down Vicki’s whining.
- Unwanted Assistance: Carly’s superhero career was largely due to Lansky and Vicki setting up fake monsters and even a fake supervillain for her to fight. Carly, of course, had absolutely no desire to build her brand like that.
