villain.

⑊ t w o ⑊

V I L L A I N. That's what I am, or what I'm supposed to be. The law states that you must be what your mark decrees, but what if I don't want to become a ruthless killer? What if I don't feel like living a lonely life and torturing everyone I get close to?

No, a villain's life is not the life for me.

Still, I try. I try to hatch evil plans, small schemes. Sometimes I wish I was more like my mother, the villain. But she married my father, a hero (illegally of course), and everyone knows I'm more like him than my mother. In looks I am like her, but not in temperament.

Even my mother is not a grand, take-over-the-world villain. Just the head of a national smuggling operation and one of the biggest crime bosses of our nation. So yeah...not a movie villain, but still a "villain" nonetheless.

I try to play the good guy in school. Smiling politely, being semi-social and getting good grades all contribute to my "innocent " image. You may ask why many people don't suspect me to be a hero, and that is because while I keep up my "good" image, I still stay mostly in the shadows, unlike heroes such as Joe.

And so far, it's worked. No one seems to thinks twice about what might be written on my wrist. Well, no one except River Grey. Usually I don't use my clairvoyance, but when I caught her staring at me I needed to know something about her. Her name was all I drew out of her mind, but she was so bright that she started to sense I was there and I had to withdraw.

Then when she accused me of being a mind reader it took a lot of control to remain calm. Control. That is the key to maintain an innocent face. That was what I had practiced for hours every day since I was a child. Absolute control, especially of my abilities requires an almost superhuman strength, a strength that took me years to aquire.

Now I'm nineteen, and I have only few weeks left to be anonymous. A few weeks to be another masked identity. Then, on my twentieth birthday, the ink will be visible for one day, and I'll either reveal it, or hide it.

Everything River said to me, however little, was calculated and laced with a quick wit that I had to be careful I didn't trip over. Those kinds of people are a trap, and while I'd love to learn more about this mysterious girl, I'm afraid it will end up with me being exposed.

"Hey Valley," I smile as my little sister Valoria walks in and sighs loudly. It's always easy to tell when she's home.

"Hey 'Ri," she shrugs her bag off her shoulders and it hits the ground with a loud thump. "How was college?"

"It was good," I chuckle, noting her scowl. Hey, at least she's being polite. "There was a new girl there I think you'd like."

"Really?" Valoria's face lit up a bit and she sat down at the kitchen table where I was currently seated, already doing homework. "Oh, you have it too? It is quite annoying when you have homework on your first day of school," she remarked.