Lost Destinies

↳ 24: A Scheme So Devilish And Dastardly

Backpack stuffed with maps, Ramona waited in line to sign up for the larceny competition, craning her neck to get a good look at everyone ahead of her. She paused to glance sidelong at Claude, who was fishing around in the pocket of someone who was distracted.

"Claude!" she hissed under her breath, swatting at him. "Stop pickpocketing people—Minerva!"

Claude backed off, holding up his hands in a false profession of innocence. "What? It's a crime convention and I'm not allowed to do crime?" Minerva nodded along with wide eyes, slipping more jewelry into her corset.

"You're gonna get your throat slit for doing that here," Ramona huffed quietly, although he had a point. She perked up as the line inched forward. "We're almost to the front."

Her attention was diverted to the main stage by the guy with the microphone who felt the need to ferociously assault everyone's ears.

"IT'S THAT TIME, VILLAINS—THE CONTESTANTS FOR DASTARDLY SCHEMES WILL NOW COME TO THE MAIN STAGE. AS PER THE RULES, THEY CAN CHOOSE TO ANNOUNCE THEIR PLANS OR KEEP IT A MYSTERY. ONLY A MAXIMUM OF TWENTY CONTESTANTS WILL BE ACCEPTED INTO THE DASTARDLY SCHEMES CATEGORY, SO GET TO THE STAGE BEFORE SOMEONE ELSE SNATCHES YOUR SPOT. THE FIRST TWENTY VILLAINS WHO CAN SHOVE THE OTHERS OUT OF THE WAY WILL MAKE IT ONTO THIS STAGE. NO EXCEPTIONS!"

"This'll be fun," Minerva murmured dryly. The moment the announcer finished his speech, people were pushing violently through the crowd, punching or stabbing at anyone who stood in their way. The twenty-contestant rule was a test—you had to prove that you were bold enough to brave the sea of psychos and vicious enough to make it to the stage. It was also, Ramona knew, simply a matter of resource constraint. Twenty dastardly schemes was already a lot to judge, and it would be a waste of time to allow more when they would inevitably fail disastrously anyway. So many schemes running at once oversaturated the villain scene and made it all the more difficult for the other categories to go about their business during crime spree season, when police were on much higher alert than usual. There was plenty of evil to go around, but the good to exploit was finite. Destroying everything at once would ruin the fun.

Ramona finally made it to the front of the line, hastily filling out a sign-up sheet while occasionally sparing glances at the bloodbath happening off to the side. There was really no need to be so extra, but everyone insisted, apparently, on clawing and hacking their way to the main stage, leaving a trail of beaten and bloody adversaries behind them. Some people were actually getting killed trying to join the Dastardly Schemes category, while the hosts looked on gleefully. To be fair, anyone dying was a murderous sociopath anyway, so it was really just karma.

"Oh, the cringe," Claude moaned as a man dressed in glittering furs was the first to slam his scepter on the stage. He'd been freezing his opponents with ice magic, which was probably about as cliché as any of these guys were possibly going to get. "Is that a... Snow Queen copycat? Good godmothers, she wasn't even a villain!"

"She did go crazy and encase her whole palace in ice that one time," Ramona conceded.

Minerva pointed to a girl dressed in a tattered ball gown, slashing at others with a jagged glass dagger. "Speak for yourself. I'm rooting for Evil Cinderella."

Claude covered his eyes. "What is wrong with these people?"

The three of them departed from the line after turning in their sheet and ducked around the crowd to avoid the chaos. The announcer called out the names of qualifying competitors one by one, and each was just as cheesy and cartoonish as the last. The Frost King, Skull Hammer, Red Vengeance... they were all ridiculous. Not any more ridiculous than The Ugly Duckling, of course, but at least she hadn't come up with that stupid name herself. One after the other they shouted their preemptive victory speeches and made at least a vague declaration of their plans, although most were smart enough to keep the details to themselves. In a race to be the most evil, it was far too easy for others to steal your ideas before you had the chance to execute them.