Captain Awesome and Nacho Cheese Man called an emergency meeting of the Sunnyview Superhero Squad. They sat under the school-yard slide. Today they had much more to worry about than the cafeteria’s mushy food. Meredith’s story about the Sunnyview Spirit made them realize they were about to face their spookiest villain yet!

“But why do we have to go on Halloween night?” Nacho Cheese Man asked as he very nervously squirted canned cheese into his mouth. “Couldn’t we go on a nice, bright Sunday morning? Maybe the Sunnyview Spirit likes to sleep in and we can catch him napping?”

“Ghosts don’t sleep. And neither does the battle against bad guys and evil,” Captain Awesome replied. “Halloween night is perfect. It’s the one night a year we can go out after dark. . . . ”

“I guess we can wear our superhero outfits as our ‘costumes’ so that Spirit guy never knows we’re really superheroes,” Nacho Cheese Man added.

“Exactly! And we’ll go straight to the haunted house while the rest of the neighborhood will be distracted by the awesome power of cavity-causing . . . ”

“CANDY!” Both heroes jumped to their feet and shouted at the same time, bonking their heads on the bottom of the slide.

“I suppose we could go trick-or-treating to a few houses first,” Captain Awesome said, rubbing his head.

“Yeah. I mean, it couldn’t hurt.” Nacho Cheese Man agreed faster than he had agreed with anything else in his life. “We could always use the extra . . . um . . . ”

“Energy?” Captain Awesome offered.

“Yeah! That’s it. Energy!”

“So we’ll trick-or-treat at a few houses first,” Captain Awesome repeated. “Get some candy to give us some . . . energy. . . . ”

“But let’s skip Mrs. Humbert’s house,” Nacho Cheese Man suggested. “She only gives out toothbrushes and pennies. Can’t fight a ghost with a toothbrush and a penny. Wait a second. What do you use to fight a ghost?”

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to read every single issue of Super Dude again to see if he has any pointers,” Captain Awesome replied, eager to find any excuse he could to reread his old issues.

And so the super plan was made. Costumes! Trick-or-treating! Skipping Mrs. Humbert and her toothbrushes and pennies! Haunted house! But as Captain Awesome and Nacho Cheese Man broke out some Super Dude comics that they both just happened to keep in their backpacks for emergencies, neither one noticed a pair of high-top sneakers peeking out from a nearby tree.

Someone sneaky had been listening!