Fascinating Villains

{29} - Ballistic

Cheryl's voice echoes intimidatingly inside the desolate warehouse.

"Tonight's the night, hon. We've got a target!"

I did not imagine that we would be going after specific wrongdoers... Evidently, I have never been a vigilante, and she knows what she is doing.

Startled, but eager, I tell her, "Okay. How do we do this?"

I stick my hands in my pants' front pockets, butterflies stirring inside my stomach.

The repository has seemingly been out of order for months, if not years, and is medium-sized with terrible neon lighting. The strangest thing is the absolute lack of critters or bugs. Flies were buzzing in small armies just outside, mangy rats could be heard scraping the bottoms of dumpsters and all sorts of insects crawled between the cracks of the cement square that is laid around the building. Still, inside of here, you could hear a pin drop. There is not even a howl of wind or a creaking pipe somewhere.

Cheryl is standing proudly on an upturned metallic chest, with its lid missing.

In a dramatic tone, she announces, "First and foremost, non-ladies and non-gentlemen, let me introduce you to the one and only, yours truly..!"

The sudden blasting and popping of fire crackers make my heart skip a beat. I back away, blinking at the bright fiery explosions of gold, red, green, purple and white sparks behind her. Meanwhile, she is effortlessly transforming, lowering her gracefully opened arms in an overtly theatrical way. With a satisfying crackle, tall letters crafted from pieced up neon rods light up inside the dimly lit room. They appear to be propped upward thanks to metallic structures. I read the flickering yellow and white letters: F, O, U, L...

Foul Play?

My friend reaches behind her back with her left hand, pulling out a mask from thin air. The sharp edges of the silver garment blind me momentarily, shining when they catch the sparkling fire crackers' dying light. Holding it loosely by the chin, she inserts it seamlessly inside her lowered hood, where it covers every last inch of her delicately sculpted face. As she draws her fingers away, I feel my eyes turning round and wide.

"Foul Play!" she declares.

I am aghast by her voice, which is modified by the mask; high-pitched, low-pitched, distorted and distinct, all at once and applied to different syllables. However, that is not what troubles me the most. And it is not the large almond shaped eyes, angled like an alien's or a cat's and beaming with kryptonite green luminosity... Under those... Is that uncanny smile, huge with garish red lips. Crisp white teeth clenched together, surrounded by an inhuman, disformed grin the color of fresh blood. Exactly like... Or frighteningly like The Joker's trademark smile.

Cheryl is wearing the emblem of Gotham City's most infamous, unhinged and feared supervillain.

I gasp, breathing unsteadily. "Wow... Isn't that name kinda..?"

I chuckle nervously.

Villainous? Ominous? Criminal appropriate?

"You'll learn to love it. In this costume, always call me by it, I don't answer to other names."

What the heck am I getting myself into? Oh, God, does she have a dissociative identity disorder..? I have not noticed any signs of sever mental disability in her prior behavior. She is perceptibly unstable, but not significantly more than our fellow Gothamites.

/No, silly! Slipping up and revealing our secret identities is simply very dangerous in our line of work./

Oh, obviously, right... Although, I would not describe this as "our" line of work, just yet. I am painstakingly inexperienced, as demonstrated. I still rely too heavily on normal logic.