#second best kid

[fountainpenguin]

Thinkin' about my boys... (I am haunted by them due to rescheduling their queued arts on a regular basis)

[fountainpenguin]

All the preview images for Factor It In chapters 2 to 7!

[fountainpenguin]

Doodling "T.U.F.F. Puppy" quotes but it's "WordGirl" ig

[fountainpenguin]

"It lives in a world where feelings cannot be defined by words. Oh, set me free from my jealousy..." (x)

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New Factor It In chapter today! ~ WordGirl trains Kid Math 'fic

Chapter 2 - “Tree Diagram”

📖 Read on FFN || Read on AO3

🐒 Start from Chapter 1

🌆 'Fic Series Guide

🥗 More WordGirl 'fics

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"Again, not my intention!" Mr. Big calls out, but Tobey's screech could curdle solid oak. He flails his arms and legs. "CATCH ME, CATCH ME, CATCH ME!" WordGirl kicks backwards, turning her arc into a loop and then a plunge. She can keep pace with soundwaves. The disconnect between Tobey's gaping mouth and his screams rattles her brain like a raisin in a tin can, but his shape and color are unmistakable even at this speed.

It's WordGirl and Huggy vs. the mind-controlled Kid Math and an army of Tobey's robots downtown...

Meanwhile, Victor and Victoria watch from a safe distance. Wow. Being a superhero sure seems like it would be the best...

(First 1,000 words under the cut)

January 3rd - Saturday - 1:41 pm

"All that is possible can be made probable once plans have been prepared."

➕ ➖ ✖️ ➗

Psst! Look for the words civilian and resilient

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WordGirl and Captain Huggyface are caught in a grueling fight against Tobey's giant robots AND a mind-controlled Kid Math!

Even gentle snowflakes feel like spikes of hail when you hurtle through them at Mach 4. They lash her cheeks and bite her eyes. WordGirl plows through them anyway, one hand up to block her cheek. Huggy covers her other one. It helps. A little. She's resilient either way.

She veers upward like a comet, then halts like a star in empty space. This whiplash arrival makes Mr. Big flail his arms and Tobey shout her name. WordGirl shakes her head, ignoring both, and floats a little closer.

"All right, Mr. Big! We can either do this the 'cheap and easy' way, or the 'hard and messy paperwork' way. Now, stop mind controlling my friend and leave this city alone!"

Mr. Big takes one look at her and jabs a finger at his remote. Behind him, a superhero kid dressed in blue bursts into the sky, hoisting a giant robot above his head. One of its legs almost whacks Tobey off the bakery's three-tiered roof. Huggy shrieks and grabs her neck, and WordGirl fights his fingers loose. A bright green light blinks from the hexagon buckle on Kid Math's belt, and she grits her teeth like saws.

There he is. And even from here, super-hearing or no super-hearing, she can hear Kid Math mutter the same mantra over and over under his breath: "Destroy competition. Construct new billboards. Destroy competition. Construct new billboards…"

"MY ROBOT!" Tobey wails, drawing his hands down his cheeks. "Number 14!"

"Oh, wow. Huggy, make a note: add Mr. Big to the list of villains we should never again leave Kid Math to handle alone. At least… not when we're across town instead of picnicking nearby with binoculars in hand."

He squeals agreement, wrapping arms and legs around her torso. Right. Back to business. WordGirl punches her hand into her open palm. "Okay, Kid Math! This chaos is way out of line. Your fractured reality is about to get simplified!"

Does that even make sense? Math puns aren't her thing. She can define every word with the gossamer touch of a fairy princess, but that doesn't mean she understands the full complexities of equations and numbers the way he does. Her mind blurs after about twelve. Kid Math stares back, glaze-eyed and ghostly.

Then he arches his back and hurls the massive robot directly at her. "WHOA!" she yelps, and twists her flight pattern like a snake. The robot (or what's left of it) cannonballs right past them. It plows through an empty parking lot outside a squid-themed restaurant- the one that doesn't serve seafood at all. WordGirl winces. Oops. Probably should've caught that… Tobey screams distress from the bakery roof, clawing fingers down his cheeks. Something about a partnership betrayed, and Mr. Big all but confirms this when he yells from the neighboring roof, "My mistake, Theodore! I can't choose what he wants to throw!"

"Oh, that is IT," Tobey snarls, but mostly to himself.

Kid Math twitches in the sky, his hands empty but his body still tense and looking for a fight. WordGirl keeps her eyes locked on his face. They can both fly at lightning speed (well… thunder speed), and dodging him will be a lot easier if he signals a move before he makes it. Thus far, she'd chased her wayward understudy - Not that she'd ever tell him he was sort of like her understudy - from the bank to the park to the steakhouse and around the loop again. Right from the start, it was clear something's up with him. His paths were too direct to ever pass as the real Kid Math. This mind-controlled puppet version of her friend charged straight from Point A to Point B without taking thermal updrafts and wind resistance into the equation. Absolutely ineffective. Totally unlike him.

Also, the Kid Math she'd come to know over the past four months wouldn't just be flying around destroying billboards and things either. At least not most of the time. She winces at the memory of a furious, flush-cheeked Rex punching a street sign hard enough to send it crashing through a window. He didn't mean to- He's still learning his own strength.

Well, okay- Maybe she is being a little quick to grant him that benefit of the doubt… Even yesterday, Kid Math (undercover as 8-year-old Rex Pemdas: newly-enrolled 3rd-grade student of Woodview Elementary) had rambled to her on the way to the jewelry store that he had a plan to help the city "go green" before Earth Day rolled around in spring. His plan had involved "relocating" more than a handful of skyscrapers, and he'd been stubbornly reluctant to take "No" for an answer.

"Destroy competition. Construct new billboards. Destroy competition…"

Why she'd even escorted him to the jewelry store was another story altogether, and one that involved Invisi-Bill tackling his first solo crime since WordGirl had met him. The thin excuse to her brother TJ and tagalong Johnson had been "Rex wanted to check out the shiny doorknobs at the library and we need to run really fast to make sure we get there before it rains," to which TJ had rolled his eyes and snarked that Becky probably just wanted to get Rex hooked on Princess Triana novels. He and Johnson wished their new friend good luck. She and Rex sprinted off, and Invisi-Bill had actually made it pretty far down the street before Kid Math zeroed in on his whistling and-

A dot of green blinks in the center of her vision, snapping her focus to the battle at hand. Aha! Something they can use. WordGirl blasts forward, arms extended, with her eyes locked on that little flashing dot. Now we're getting somewhere…

📖 Read on FFN || Read on AO3

[fountainpenguin]

So I made a typo in my previous ask 😅. I meant to say "I could see him weirdly getting along better with the likes of Tobey and Victoria more then Becky could. For Victoria, if she dubs herself as the best when it comes to doing math along with being the best in several other areas, I could see that resulting in an interesting dynamic between her and Rex

[Marking for mild end of series spoilers again]

[Link to previous ask for Tobey comments in case anyone stumbles across this later and is like "why didn't you talk about Tobey?"]

I definitely keep playing with how I want Rex and Victoria interactions to go, I'm not sure yet. I never cared for Victoria as a character in my younger years, but she's been growing on me as I've played her against Tobey, Victor, and her parents. I do have an outline for a scene where Rex and Victoria cross paths at one of Victoria's million internships and extracurriculars, but nothing's final yet :)

Rex and Victor will definitely be bouncing off each other in my writing, though. Rex is humble enough to look to WordGirl for inspiration, but he still deals with a lot of jealousy over being the "second best." He and Victor sort of click in that way, though Rex's reaction is more "I feel lonely" and Victor is blinded with envy.

Victor Best is probably like, my third favorite character in the series after Rex and Reason. I like my boys logical and I like them unhinged, wheeze... He's so incredibly unstable and I love him so much.

/slaps my horrible son on the shoulder. Yeah this bad boy can hold SO many issues :)

I'm so obsessed with how lamb-like TJ becomes around the Bests and how he starts out cheerful and then he just kinda... gets incredibly nervous. He was really excited to become friends with Victor, but as soon as he saw his friend unraveling, you can see the wheels turning in TJ's head and man...

I love "Best of the Bests," it's got a little background dude going from 0 to 500 and snapping hard, then literally next episode we have a murder (/lh but also /gen) and then immediately from there we go into the series finale, these last episodes are all such heavy hitters sldkfj.

Shout out to Victoria having a mini breakdown over the idea of hurting / killing WordGirl when Dr. Two-Brains was trying to goad her into proving herself a villain but then Victor comes along and straight-up just /eats your superpowers

ANYWAY... I'm really excited to play with the younger kids in my 'fic writing. I love the little ways they all differ... TJ is the emotionally stable peacemaker who wants to be cool and nice and avoid conflict. Johnson is the shy yet courageous tagalong, Rex is excitable but naïve, and then you've got... Victor, struggling to hold onto his nicey-nice façade even though he's beyond the point of reason.

He's my everything. Those little moments we get where the camera is zoomed far away from him and you can STILL see his body shaking in rage or horror is... fantastic. He needs every tiny win he can get to the point that he grumbles when his sister "doesn't say 'swish'" because he's just got that little need to succeed, to be better... Victor doesn't even want superpowers "for himself," he just wants to rip Victoria to shreds. After he steals WordGirl's powers, I love how he just screams "I'm better than Victoria!!" in his sister's face instead of "I'm better than WordGirl" and he's just... yikes. I love him.

I love Victor and we'll get to see him and Victoria in Factor It In (in this Friday's update, in fact!), but I haven't nailed down exactly how the Rex and Victoria interactions will go yet. I think once Rex finds a friend in Victor then he'll pretty much believe everything Victor tells him about how annoying Victoria is and he might not want much to do with her, but we'll see!

But thank you for being interested! I have so much Victor & Rex brainrot and Victoria is growing on me too.

[fountainpenguin]

Out of all of Becky villain's, I'm of the belief that Rex would get along best with Mr. Big and Leslie. Mr. Big tries mind controlling him once in order to do his taxes but he doesn't even need to since Rex takes joy in doing it 🤣

😂 I'm obsessed with Rex / villain interactions because they're all so good. Some of my headcanons are:

He constantly calls Tobey "Theodore 3" and it ticks Tobey off. Also I have a story about Rex leading Tobey to his spaceship so he can fix some of its broken pieces (like the heater) and Becky just staring into the void like "Why did you do this?"

Rex is obliviously insensitive and so he and Chuck are constantly clashing because Chuck is soft and desperate for WordGirl interactions and Becky just constantly wants to shake her boy. Her little guy. He's dumb.

Kid Potato is already antsy about Butcher being friendly with WordGirl and I imagine that Rex doesn't like being friendly with villains, so Kid Math and Kid Potato actually get along really well by agreeing to hate each other and hold nothing back, they are completely raw and honest with each other in a way Rex isn't with the other villains, and that actually makes them "friends" and Becky stares into the void. I have so many thoughts about WordGirl and Kid Math in the superhero / villain retirement home, you KNOW Kid Math will be a "back in my day" rambler and WordGirl will just be like "Check your blood pressure" sldfkj.

Lady Redundant Woman multiplies, so that's a numbers game... Kid Math with a schoolboy crush on LRW is my favorite, I'm sorry but I love the idea of him squealing and getting excited when he gets to fight her.

Kid Math comes from a metal-based planet and he knows a lot about metal in my view. I cannot get over the idea of like, Kid Math wearing a metal bracelet or carrying a piece of metal or having metal glasses, or metal fillings in his teeth, and Captain Tangent just wrecks him. Not in a horrific way, just in a "oh wait, fighting someone with telekinesis is hard, actually" way sdklf. I think Tangent would leave Kid Math SO confused, because Tangent stops committing crimes while he rambles and Kid Math would just be like "... Is this surrender? Are we done?" and he'd just float there awkwardly.

I have a Factor It In chapter that opens with Seymour Smooth telling Kid Math about how there are numbers on the front and backs of the cards in people's pockets and he can exchange them for a prize and WordGirl just yells from off-screen "DON'T DO IT!" and it's funny to me, please let Seymour follow this kid around trying to make him a pawn. Every single villain who has a schtick of fooling people who aren't WordGirl deserves to get a win over Kid Math.

He would absolutely fall for Granny May's innocent old lady "I've retired, I'm just a bystander" act every time because "She said she changed! Why would she lie??"

He'd totally fall for Hal Hardbargain and the Coach if they tried to sway him for the same reasons. There are gadgets and great deals out there. There is more superhero training to be had.

Rex really just cannot be trusted alone with some of the top villains like Mr. Big and Dr. Two-Brains because he'll willingly put the mind control devices on and he'll walk right into traps, he's the worst.

Kid Math would be confused and answer every one of Ms. Question's questions because he thinks she's truly curious about him and doesn't understand her distraction tactics.

Invisi-Bill, AKA captain "I never work alone," is now in danger if both WordGirl and Kid Math show up on the scene. Good luck, dude.

I see Kid Math as a guy who just wants to punch bad guys and get in physical fights, and I think Big Left Hand Guy would actually be somewhat of a challenge since Rex is so small. WordGirl evades him by darting around him and grabbing him from behind, but I think Rex would just get slam-dunked constantly.

It's already canon that Becky can't recognize Amazing Rope Guy when he's not in costume, and we also know that Rex CAN see through her civilian identity and that she was shocked he was able to (and he was taken aback by her surprise because to him, it was obvious), so I lose my mind over this idea that although Rex is easily manipulated by villains, at least he's good at recognizing them out of costume.

I am very normal about my Kid "Second Best" Math and Victor "Second Best" Best ideas and boy howdy do I have a story to tell about what led to Victor wearing a superhero costume under his clothes in "Best of the Bests" slkdfjs.

Bless Rex, I love him <3 He's a goofball