Bella struggled to bite her tongue as she listened to Professor O'Riley spout his nonsense in her 8am class. She really wanted to tell him how wrong he was 85% of the time, but she didn't need him taking a closer look at her grades in his course. She had to stay quiet, at least until next semester.
Professor Dunkin was amazingly sweet, which was probably why no one ever even questioned whether she was the "Finance Phantom". She was knowledgeable about, not to mention skilled at, stealth and evading both law enforcement and super heroes, but that 1:00-2:00 class dragged on forever.
When Bella finally finished, she waited in the quad and studied biology until Hades finished at 5pm. Apparently, as student body president he had to meet with other members of the board every Wednesday from 3pm-5pm. It was the only time that worked for everyone other than weekends. Bella didn't mind, though. It gave her extra time to make sure she knew what she was doing.
Bella stared at the notes she took while studying with Jade. She knew where everything in the brain was and which part of the brain needed to be activated in order for a person to feel fear or which part she needed to stimulate in order to stop someone from being able to, say, move their arm, but everything in the brain was so close together and so delicate, she could easily hit the wrong thing. Worse case scenario, she paralyzes someone. If that was the headmaster, she didn't really care, but what if it was Hades?
She shook the thought from her head and went back to studying. The brain was one thing, but she needed to know about all the different parts of the body. She didn't want to be a one-trick pony, so to speak. If she could figure out how to do it, she wanted to be able to temporarily trick the body into thinking that it was being attacked by a virus. If what she knew about the body and about superpowers was correct, the body would redirect it's resources to fixing the problem and her opponent's powers would be significantly weaker. The only problem was she didn't know if the body would stop attacking itself once she pulled back.
Everything she was hoping to do was theoretically possible, but it was just theoretical. To her knowledge, it had never been tried before. To make her opponents her test subjects... well, even for a villain, it seemed positively evil.
Bella sighed as she flipped the page in her notebook.
"What's that sigh for?" Bella turned to see Hades leaning over her with a cup in one hand and a large book secured in the other.
"Nothing. What's that?" she responded.
"This is a cherry vanilla milkshake," he teased, shaking it in his hands and pretending to take a sip.
"From Hal and Mal's?" she asked, skeptically. The only type of milkshake Bella drank anymore was cherry vanilla from Hal and Mal's. Ever since she first tasted it and saw how the color was only two shades off from that of her hair, she fell in love and all other milkshakes paled in comparison.
Hades smiled and nodded. "The one and only."
"When'd you get it?"
"Do you want it or not?"
Bella looked at him, then at the cup, then back at him, trying to figure out how he did it while also meeting her at 5:10 like they'd agreed. She finally took the milkshake and took a sip. Yup, that was a Hal and Mal's shake. She smiled slightly before turning her attention to Hades again. "When I asked that question, I was referring to that huge book in your hand," she clarified.
"Oh, that's not important right now. If we're lucky, it won't be important at all." He shrugged as if that wouldn't make her even more curious about what was in that book. "Come on," he said, waving her toward the bus stop as he walked.
YOU ARE READING
Villains in Training
Fantasy"There are all types of supports for heroes," Bella said angrily. "There's schools and mentors and even government aid sometimes. We just want one thing, ONE THING, to help us reach our potential." "Potential to be villains?" Quinn asked, exaspera...
