Found You

1. A Villain Whose Perfidy Duncan Never Got To See End

Two of the Quagmire triplets were on their way to a school sanctioned pep rally - otherwise known as an intellectually deprecating social event - walking along the dark, dreary, depressing hallway of Prufrock Preparatory School, when they turned the corner and found a man in the middle of their path, as if he'd been standing there for four and a half minutes after being alerted by his henchpeople that orphans were heading his way.

"Hello, hello, hello." He held his hands together at the fingertips, which clued the triplets in that this might be a villain, similar to how you can tell who the bad guy is in a bad movie if he wears black and has an accent, or a cat. "What are helpless orphans like yourselves doing in a place like this?"

"Who are you?" Isadora asked, not frightened so much as confused.

The gross-looking man - who you have most likely identified at this point, thought the Quagmires had not - did not appreciate her boldness. "Don't pretend this handsome face doesn't haunt your every waking and sleeping hour."

He began walking towards the triplets, who in turn walked backwards. "You will never be rid of me. You'll never be safe."

Duncan privately thought it sounded like the man was speaking from a script.

"So much to learn, orphans, and I am here to school you." The man chuckled at the terrible pun and stopped walking, the triplets' backs almost at the wall.

"The three of you better... Wait." He stopped, looking between the triplets like a confused, condescending toddler. "You two better... Wait." He stopped again, glancing at the floor next to Duncan like there was supposed to be something next to him. "Where's the midget?"

"One, two..." Once he'd apparently overused his ability to count, he looked the Quagmires in the eyes, recoiling in shock, with an expression similar to the one you yourself most likely wore when you found out your mother's first name wasn't actually 'Mom.'

"You're not the Baudelaires." The villain stated accusingly. "Who are you?"

Duncan finally spoke, gaining his courage from the man's foolishness. "Who are you, you miscreant?"

"Miscreant?" Realization dawned on the gross man's face and he started walking towards them again. "Oh, I know who you are now. You sound just like your mother, Quigley."

A surge of anger boiled up from his chest. "Duncan."

The man ignored him, speaking in his falsetto, in a poor attempt at sounding like a woman. "'You miscreant, never again will you darken the doors of this airplane hangar.'" He scoffed at the memory, mouth curling into a sneer. "Such a tiresome woman. Always reading Italian poetry, and activating trap doors."

Isadora's eyes narrowed. "How do you know our mother?"

"Oh, I know everything, orphans." He loomed over them like a slimy, threatening palm tree with bad breath.

"I know the number of hairs on each of your heads-"

That had to be an exaggeration.

"-the number of sapphires in your secret vault-"

That was a little more likely.

"-the number of tombstones in your family plots."

And that was just creepy.

"Well, well, it seems this trip to Prufrock will bring me twice the fortune." He grinned ruefully at his half-pun. "And there's nobody who can stop me."

There are moments in life, when it might feel as though you are living in a sitcom, something like the Truman Show, where things happen as if a screenwriter wrote it that way. This was one of those moments for the Quagmire triplets, because, as if he was told by a director to be there at that exact moment, a man in a hairnet, who the Quagmires would never get the chance to meet and thank for the indirect rescue before his untimely death, appeared at the end of the hallway, chasing a bully with red curls and tap shoes.

"Give me back my burrito, you miscreant!"

"Larry?" The villainous man turned around in surprise and the triplets seized the opportunity to escape, bolting down the hallway.

This was the Quagmire's first time meeting the notorious Yzma.

Wait...

That's not right.

Hold on, I've got it.

This was the Quagmire's first time meeting the notorious Count Olaf.

But it certainly wouldn't be the last.