[Deadline: 23:38:43]
The deadline starts at 2 am. Luke noted, checking his phone as he wafted through garbage bags in his apartment.
Like in the dream/death/nightmare/whateverthefuckthatwas, his apartment was completely trashed. Slowly cleaning it over the last ten minutes made him keenly aware of just how much of his stuff was destroyed. Normally, Luke would be stressing to the gills about how much money it would cost him to replace everything.
But right now, he had bigger problems.
And he didn’t feel stressed in the slightest.
“It’s strange,” Luke mumbled. “I feel light.”
Not just emotionally either. His body felt light and full. His muscles were fresh and powerful. It was easier to breathe, easier to think and easier to just be. It made cleaning much more exciting. It also gave him something to think about.
What exactly am I going to do? That felt like a big question. Especially when he started thinking about what he was going to do now that he had powers. Or at least, he thought he did. They might still be shy, but he felt like something there. Something that had taken root in his heart. The question felt like too much to tackle at once, so he decided to narrow it down to what he was going to do about his quest.
Daily Dose of Evil… or DDE for short. He had ideas. He had many ideas. But how to go about them was a little bit more complex. Then, there was the list of criteria that all those ideas had to meet.
The first criteria was not to get caught.
The second criteria was to make the act fall under the minor villainy category.
He wasn’t going to kill anyone or maim them. That was a big no-no.
And it can’t just be anyone. Luke wasn’t completely against involving other civilians, but when it was his first time doing something like this it felt wrong. Doubly so when he already had someone in mind that deserved it.
But that presented more complications.
“Puck would probably just beat my ass,” Luke grumbled.
Out of curiosity, he grabbed one of the more disappointing issues of Oblivion Files: Lost in the Cosmos and tried to rip it down the middle. The thick comic book tore only slightly before his fingers started to ache. “Yeah, Puck would definitely kill me if I tried to hunt him down.”
That was okay. The first step to anything new was accepting you were out of your league and you wouldn’t be good at it immediately. The second step was finding something to teach you.
Or someone.
While he was cleaning away, Luke thumbed through the internet on his very not broken phone, looking through various assortments of news, guides, lists and laws. He needed to find out what people considered a minor crime, and he also needed to find out the easiest way to get away with it.
It was harder than he had hoped. As you would guess, most of the information about committing crimes wasn’t easy to find, and the real helpful stuff was taken down before Luke ever got the chance to see it. The one problem with the web being monitored was that you couldn’t use it for evil. Well, not as easily.
He still found some sweet spots, using vague non-descript wording to imply that certain alleys, bars and streets at certain times were easy spots to rob unsuspecting victims.
Robbery could be a good crime. It was relatively harmless in the grand scheme of things, and there was a chance the System Seven, as it called itself, wouldn’t care about him taking things of little value if he still gave the victims enough of a fright.
They would get over a little fright.
Still, even though he found traces of helpful information, Luke had learned something even more valuable.
There wasn’t a guide for evil. Inconsequential stuff, sure, but the world of villains wasn’t a very welcoming place, and there was no gate of entry. A dog-eat-dog culture made getting your foot in the door next to impossible.
And to top it all off, he still wanted Puck to pay.
What’s the point of being a villain and having a say if I just sit by and let people pull that shit on me.
In the words of his father, that fucker would learn the hard way.
To do that, Luke knew exactly what he needed to do. He’d known it from the moment he climbed up the stairs towards his apartment and walked past room 204.
His neighbour, also known as Bloom, the botany-based genetic nightmare who he was pretty sure had committed crimes against humanity on multiple occasions.
She could tell him everything he needed to know.
She could also help him with Puck.
She could also feed me to her horrific creations.
Whatever the case, if he asked, it was going to be a bit of a gamble. She might see him as a competitor even if they were far apart in strength and take him out early before he could grow.
She might force him to become her minion.
“Let’s hope she likes brownies,” Luke said to no one at all, pulling out an intact baking dish. “I need to stop talking to myself.”
Maybe his Fourth Person Syndrome had gotten worse.
It was par for the course.
******************
There was a knock at the door. Hard enough to be intentional, soft enough to not be an immediate threat.
Cassandra opened her eyes slowly, stirring from her sleep. There was a moment of confusion as she found herself not in her bed, but in her nightgown with a book resting on her stomach and a glass of red spilled over her chaise. Her nightly routine was rather robust, and it generally didn’t involve an empty bottle of wine shattered against her coffee table.
It must’ve been Henry. Cassandra thought, cupping her head as her super-enabled metabolism started erasing the last remnants of a hangover. It’s always Henry.
She could struggle to think of a person other than her ex that could send her spiralling like this. He was a real asshole. A psychopath, too, but that was honestly one of his more attractive qualities in her eyes.
There was another knock at the door.
Cassandra’s already gloomy mood dimmed a peg. This second knock was lighter than the one that roused her from her slumber.
Nervous.
Whoever was outside didn’t like that they hadn’t gotten an answer.
“I swear if this isn’t important, I’m going to use their skin as a rag.” Cassandra groaned, eyeing the red stain on her chaise. It was imported.
The supervillainess righted herself and called upon that special little essence in her heart. Her superpower extended her mind out. Suddenly, the one became the many as her body had long since stopped being the single carrier of her consciousness.
Bulbs of light hanging from vines neatly across her apartment lit up in a soft orange luminance as her mind travelled to the door. A petal screwed between the crevice of the wall and the gutter outside her door bloomed open, barely bigger than a nail. Designed with just enough optic nerve, it showed her something that was most definitely not enough to warrant waking her.
A nervous young man in bloodied cashier clothes holding…
Is that brownies? A full tray of them from the looks of it, with steam still wafting off. She could tell it was still hot because the blondie had oven mitts on, nervously tapping his feet as he played hot potato with it.
And it’s just Luke.
Her Normie next-door neighbour who always seemed to be alternating between motivated and miserable. He also talked to himself a lot more than a regular person should and always seemed extremely on edge during their limited interactions.
But he was fun to mess with when she was bored.
And he had brownies.
And she was hungover.
Coming to an older woman's house in the middle of the night bringing treats, hmmm? She stood up, taking in her reflection for a moment. Midnight black hair spilled over her shoulder, contrasting with her emerald eyes and the streaks of green veins that crawled up her neckline. With her nightrobe wrapped around gently, she might look less like a serial killer than normal.
Maybe just enough to keep the young man at ease.
Worst comes to worst, I can just scare him into leaving the brownies. Cassandra told herself, waltzing towards the door and opening it to the sight of a very haggard-looking neighbour. She leaned against the door, giving him a questioning look while her eyes shifted between the brownies and his eyes.
“Luke? Do you know how late it is?” She asked, truthfully not knowing herself.
“Right, sorry,” Luke said, not sounding sorry in the slightest as his eyes moved a little bit too frantically. “But I brought brownies.”
“I can see that,” Cassandra said. “Would you like to tell me why you’re bringing brownies to my house in the middle of the night? I’m awfully curious.”
“I uhhhh…” Luke paused and looked around the empty parking lot. “...could we talk about it inside?”
“Is this your version of a confident approach?” Cassandra asked, leaning against the door. “Because if that's the case, hon, you can just leave the brownies at the door.”
“What do you mean-” Luke paused, looking at himself, then her, then around the both of them fully taking in exactly what this looked like. “Oooooh. Oh, god no! Wait, no I mean you look lovely but ah-”
“Thank you.” She interrupted with a smile.
“Look, I need a favour.” He said forcefully, far less flustered than she would’ve expected. He wasn’t on his tippy toes around her tonight. Strange.
“I don’t offer that kind of favour here, Lukas.” Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“No! Not that! I need help from Bloom.” Luke emphasised, whispering the last bit. “Not Cass.”
It was cute how he tried to act like her identity was a secret. She wasn’t one to flaunt it, but you could figure it out with a quick search on the web.
Help from Bloom, huh? That was not in character, especially not from someone as shit scared of her as Luke acted like he was half the time. What made it even more curious was the fact that she wasn’t some type of Fixer who was known to deal with Normie's problems. It was partly insulting to think that anyone would come to her with problems of the everyday variety.
She might not be The Silence, but she wasn’t some punk.
Still, the supervillainess took a moment to reevaluate Luke. The blood on his clothes spoke of something violent, but he didn’t seem to have any obvious wounds. So, it's not healing. He had taken the time to bake fresh brownies, so clearly this was planned. Urgent enough to wake me up, but not life or death urgent. He also seemed far more composed around her than he ever had been previously, his eyes flickering with a vehement focus she recognised.
He’s got Star-Eyes.
“You’ve got five minutes to explain.” She finally decided, pulling the door open to let him pass. “And you better hope those brownies are delicious if I don’t like what you say.”
His eyes had a brief flash of relief before they reverted back to that hyper-focused glow. “Thanks.”
“Your five minutes started when you knocked on my door.” She added.
Cassandra had never seen a person rush inside so hastily.
*******************
[Deadline: 23:33:56]
“So in essence, you want me to help you kill someone?” Bloom, aka Cassandra, said, coming to that conclusion from Luke’s long-winded and very rushed explanation. Which left out key points like System Seven and tripping balls because she didn’t need to know those specifics.
Luke shook his head, snacking on the singular slice of brownie left. “Kill is a strong word. I just want to ruff him up.”
“Right,” Cass said, sounding quite sarcastic.
He couldn’t see her face because she was lounging much too deep on her strange one-person couch, but the cashier would bet she was grinning. Cassandra didn’t take him very seriously, that much had been made clear every time she tried to egg him on. Which bugged him, because Luke felt all of this was extremely serious.
Having explained everything from Darkspark putting out a hit, to Puck basically triggering his Exodus Luke would’ve expected a different reaction. But no, apparently all the shitty things that had happened to him were unimpressive in the supervillainess's eyes. She also had gone uncharacteristically silent when had elaborated on what he truly wanted.
Mentorship into the ins and outs of not getting caught. Or at the very least a pointer in the right direction. Any advice was welcome.
I think she only let me in because of the brownies. Is this what it feels like to be used?
“I think it’s important we establish a few things first before we do any roughing up, Luke.” Her head popped up over the fancy couch and Luke tried his hardest not to look at the green veins running up her neck and into her mouth. “For starters, I’m not going to dispose of you just because you have powers now, even if you live in my motel.”
“That’s comforting to know.”
“But if you’re planning on being a villain this is not your base of operations, okay?” Cassandra said. “I don’t need small fry coming here and breaking shit looking for you.”
I mean that's exactly what Puck did. He chose to keep that to himself, just like he chose not to ask about the wine stains on the rug or the smashed empty bottle Cassandra seemed insistent on ignoring. “Got it.”
“Secondly, I’m not going to mentor you or give you tips on how to live this life.” She sunk back into her couch. “If you want that, go be a superhero. It’s their way of doing things. In their world, that's how things work, but in mine, you gotta walk your own path. Because you can’t trust me and I can’t trust you.”
That’s a very pessimistic way of viewing things. But it was probably accurate. The people that took the path he’d stumbled into weren’t generally good. There wasn’t much of a reason to believe that helping one another wouldn’t lead to them stabbing you in the back.
Backstabbing was pretty standard practice.
Luke leaned against the countertop, admiring how nice the marble was. Cassadra's apartment was a far cry away from his in terms of quality. Then again she did also have vines and greenery growing all over the place, with living bulbs for light that glowed in an eerie orange.
Probably should’ve listened to the alarms in my head when I walked in here. If she wasn’t going to help him, the cashier didn’t see a reason to stick around. He’d just have to figure something else out.
“I’ll just figure out things by my lonesome then, thanks for the advice.” Luke nodded, stepping towards the door.
A vine sprung from the ceiling and coiled around his wrist before he could get even a step closer.
And now I die like a dumbass for walking into Bloom's apartment. Good job me, you didn’t even live a day as a supervillain.
“Hold your horses, young man, you didn’t let me finish,” Bloom said, getting up from her couch and collapsing back into a chair, facing him this time. Predatory emerald eyes looked him up and down like an easy meal. “I won't teach you anything, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do each other favours.”
She flicked her finger and the vine slipped off his wrist. “There’s nothing wrong with favours between neighbours.”
Luke didn’t like her grin. He didn’t like her grin one bit.
“Come, sit,” Bloom said, gesturing to the couch.
Option A, leave and don’t get yourself into another potentially life-ending deal and complete DDE by just robbing someone, or pissing on a tree? Does public indecency qualify- Luke dismissed that line of thought and evaluated option A. It was sound, safe and the right selection. It was what he would’ve done before he’d gotten his powers.
But.
Option B, sit on the couch, deal with the consequences of whatever Bloom could want from me and potentially break Puck’s kneecaps. Stupid, rash and completely unnecessary. But… super. A lot more super than just testing if public indecency was a minimum enough of a villainous act.
Luke briefly weighed his options. His brain, rightly so, told him to run as fast as he could out of there. But his instinct and that funny lightness emanating from his heart told him to just ride the roller coaster of life.
The cashier found himself on the couch before reason could win out.
“You didn’t lace these things did you?” Bloom asked, twirling her wine glass. “Because your eyes are kinda freaky right now.”
Luke was well aware. He could see it reflected in the window behind her.
“I figured it was just a post-Exodus thing.” Luke shrugged.
Or a manic episode. All he knew was he felt focused. Focused and free. Free of thought, free of body and free mind.
“They call that being Star-eyed.” Cassandra nodded. “So what do you do, neighbour?”
“Wayda mean?”
“Your power dumbass. What is it?”
Luke shrugged. “I haven’t really figured that out yet.”
Cassandra froze momentarily, seemingly a bit shell-shocked as she raised her eyebrows. “How?”
“Your power comes from that tingling sensation in your heart right?” Luke asked. That's what it said online.
“It can vary, but yes generally people feel their power in their heart to begin with. It changes as you grow.”
“Well then how do I…” Luke flailed his hands around, trying to conjure some kind of effect. Nothing happened. “...use it.”
Cassandra gave him a strange look. He gave her a strange look back. She tilted her head at him for a moment as if he were a curiosity.
“Using your powers is like breathing. You should know intrinsically.” Cassandra said, then offered her own theory. “You could be a Blank.”
Somehow I doubt that. Blanks were technically the rarest of all types of powers, possessing abilities that were constant. Most of the time they weren’t even aware of their own Exodus nor that they had abilities to begin with. From what Luke had heard they only ever caught on to their powers when the results of them started becoming obvious.
But for the most part, Blank’s powers were subtle and discreet.
Unconsciously Luke’s eyes wandered over to the glowing red deadline that stayed permanently within sight, slowly ticking down. There was no way System Seven qualified as being a Blank, but Luke had never heard of anything like it and wasn’t very inclined to talk about it.
He also felt like Cassandra would push the subject. It was fair, knowing what he could do would give her a measure of security that could replace actual trust.
So just tip-toe around it. The rewards section of his DDE quest came to mind. The things it offered him sounded awfully like faucets for a superpower, especially the skill. A fog started to creep into his head, like a canvas absorbing all his ideas and leaving behind a plan.
It felt bizarre.
“I… feel like getting Puck back will make me… stronger.” Luke tapped on his heart to emphasise the point. “In here. I can’t really explain it well. It feels like my whole being just needs to do this.”
A half-truth. He knew for a fact he would get stronger if he committed a crime but it didn’t need to be Puck. Luke just wanted it to.
“A revenge type of deal, huh?” Cassandra questioned and Luke felt as if he’d piqued her interest. “I’ve seen something similar before. I can work with that.”
Luke frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you’re worth helping because you can be useful to me,” Cassandra said. “The brownies bought you my time, the same way your power can buy my help. Transactions are the key to this life.”
That was an awfully pragmatic way of looking at their interaction. Pragmatic in ways that disturbed Luke a little, thinking of himself as some tool rather then a person to be sympathised with. Then again, the cold calculating nature of the transaction Bloom offered warmed his heart a bit.
Like a villain should.
“So what do you want?” Luke asked, knowing he was treading on thin ice. “Specifically.”
“I’d like you to participate in the Pit this weekend, that’s all,” Cassandra said candidly. She smiled as she spoke. “I get a commission for any newbie I send in there, got a deal with one of the promoters.”
That’s… not the worst idea actually.
The Pit was a pretty notorious attraction of Venus City, located just far enough on the outskirts to avoid police but just close enough to draw in a crowd. There were many underground fighting rings but none had as much money, history or respect behind them.
Nor did they have an emperor, willing to part with millions to put fights together between the super-abled of the world. How it avoided being shut down by E.R.A.O while being incredibly illegal was beyond Luke, but he knew for certain it drew quite a crowd.
There were constant mentions of it in every superhero discussion, whether it was betting, experiences or just excitement about upcoming matches. It was also known to be brutal but not terminal and the cherry on top of the coliseum was simple.
Anyone could sign up.
If you had powers, the emperor wanted to see them, regardless of how useless or boring they might seem.
An easy payday for newbie Supes which somehow didn’t discriminate between villain or hero.
Plenty of well-renowned heroes had clips of them in the Pit. Hell, everyone eventually ended up fighting there.
Luke had never been himself because of the ticket prices but he’s always wanted to go. Although he’d never imagined himself participating. Maybe he could crush two birds with one stone.
There’s just one tincy, wincy little problem.
“Would the cut you get come out of my winnings?” Luke asked, acutely aware of how her lounging body language was an attempt to relax him and show power.
She scoffed and held a hand to her mouth, giggling a little like he’d said something funny. Those green veins pulsed on her neckline and the bulbs of natural light faded for a moment.
Luke felt his heart tighten.
“Of course not, Cesar would never allow anything like that. I do get more if you win, so do at least try for me.” She said, smiling again.
It didn’t reach her eyes. They were the same dark emerald green, devoid of emotion.
She’s lying.
He wasn’t sure if she was lying about taking some of his money or something else, but he knew for certain she wasn’t telling him the whole truth. The question was what he was going to do about it.
Red flags Luke. Red. Flags.
“I'm happy to trade favours,” Luke said, keeping his hand firmly tucked at his side. He was not shaking hands again. “As neighbours.”
Cassandra's smile finally extended to her eyes which lit up like she’d just unwrapped a present.
“Perfect. Do you by chance have a mask?” She asked.
Didn’t think I’d ever need one. Until now.
“Nope.”
“When do you want this done?”
“Before 2 am tomorrow.” If he didn’t do it by then he’d suffer “ouchies” and he didn’t want to find out what that meant.
She leaned forward, keeping that hungry smile. “Then you better go get one. Along with some rope. I’ll text you a list.”
Then she kicked him out of her apartment before he could say another word. Being manhandled out the door by vines.
[Deadline: 23:25:45]