Professor Why's Academy for Extraordinary Youngsters

Villainy 101

Yinyue punched me in the face. She spat in my mouth. She dented my helmet, and her worst offence was somehow still the binder forts she built up in math class. I wasn't going to cheat off her paper, but it was this subtle elitist action that made me want to fight back even more. Even with all the power I was given, this powerless foreign kung fu movie reject still had the gall to challenge me, and worst of all, she succeeded! If our charismatic leader hadn't shown up, I would have been unmasked. The entire operation was a failure.

I changed back into normal clothes, stored my costume underneath a false floorboard, and proceeded to the science lab. Dusty vials and underused chemistry supplies lined the shelves, but one particular set stood out perfectly clear. As always, there was a "very" well hidden vial that was welded into a shelf- the kind of idea a lizard would come up with, and with a few turns counter clockwise, a little slit opened up. A pair of beady eyes stared out at me.

"To enter this room, you must complete this puzzle! There are four bottles on the table! One contains simple water, but the other two"-

"Lizard." I scolded.

"It's Doctor Gecko to you, madame!"

"Dumb lizard." I replied.

"I have a genius level of intelligence! I am the perfect specimen, not only of geckos, but of all creatures!" He said, patting himself on the back with the hands he didn't have.

"If someone already figured out that there's a secret door behind this shelf, do you think they'd somehow find themselves stuck in trying to open it? The door won't go anywhere, and it's not like there are a shortage of crow bars in the world." I couldn't believe this idiot.

"...October." He began.

"Yes?" I replied.

"You know I loathe you, yes?" He said.

"It's tragic, then, that you need me." I said.

The door opened. Dr. Gecko looked as pretentious as always. What on earth does a tiny Gecko need a lab coat for? His compatriot, a normal brown bear trained from infancy to obey Dr. Gecko's every order named "Mr. Hide", was dressed in the same dumb outfit. It was covered in drool.

The doorway lead into an underground concrete passage. Some eccentric rich idiot built a nuclear bomb bunker in case the Soviets decided to nuke northern Alaska in the 60's rather than any given high population area or military installation. Panic truly makes the best of all of us, and his bankruptcy at the hands of his own irrational thought turned into our gain, since this pristine bunker was left here, a city away from the northern headquarters of the league of heroes, on top of a hero training school, and in a place with portable generators, fuel to last years, and beans to last decades. We didn't dare touch the beans, but Dr. Gecko had rigged a few of the cans as a kind of emergency last ditch resort if everything went wrong, and he refused to tell any of us what that last ditch resort was.

My disposable troops, being Clement the artist and Redd the mechanic, were currently imprisoned. Unfortunately, with the boss currently out on business, what we were left with were the "keepers", two apprentices of this great old villain that died who legitimately called himself "Davy Jones". Apparently, he could speak with the dead, and his nautical theme was completely irrelevant. His followers were two... special snowflakes.

In the center of the room was this big, tattooed beefcake who named himself Crash. Honestly, were it not for his legacy, I'd be more than happy to just lump him in the "disposable" category myself. He had this spear, and he could siphon kind of a lame version of the superpowers he took from others, and that sounds like a really cool mid-fight thing, but for this coward, it meant a whole lot of grave digging. He was feeling really big since he got a power that let him shoot fireballs out of his hand.

"Oh look. It's the favorite." He said, warming up an attack. You could tell an attack was coming because the corresponding tattoo would glow and his long, greasy hair would go from falling all over his face to blowing behind him in wind that didn't really exist. Cool stuff. Now if you had to guess what this little coward who suddenly got an ego trip because of a fireball power would use to intimidate something would use to intimidate, and your answer wasn't "fireballs", you clearly do not have my incredible breadth of psychological knowledge. A piddly little fireball flew at me.

Here's the thing about Crash. He's a coward and an idiot. We'd established weeks ago that I could reflect powers now. He knew it, I knew it, but he threw his crummy fireball and I held out a hand, which made the fireball go back. Wow. What an amazing set of circumstances. Crash absolutely dove for the ground to dodge.

"Y-you're lucky I didn't burn your face off!" He said, quivering. "I'm getting stronger every day!" His giant muscles that he trained so hard to cultivate every day really made the shaking more dramatic.

"How special." I responded, kicking him as I walked past to address his sister, Hush, who had been quietly standing in the corner. Her gift from Davy Jones was way less useful, some random fishing pole that bobbed up and down in any surface. Her long black hair gently blew behind her, leaving an absolute mess of shedding for someone else to vacuum. Hush was certainly too valuable for menial chores. She got jobs done quickly and discreetly, so she was my favorite of the pawns. "What have you found?"

"This." She said, handing me a pile of discarded hairbrushes, lost socks, and a literal T Rex scale.

"Did anyone see you?" I asked.

"If they did, I wouldn't be here." Her facial expression matched her name. Not a trace of emotion. It wasn't focus, it wasn't boredom, it was silence, like the surface of a lake. I could rely on her to not cause undue drama, and for that I was very grateful. If anyone was going to cause undue drama, it was going to be me.

I gave the box to Dr. Gecko to analyze. One of the students was good enough. One of them would fit. A friendly "If it's not them, you're going to have to fit the bill" followed me as I left. Lovely. The science was out of my hands now, however. I would spend the next several hours sitting in front of a mirror, meticulously covering up every bruise, and I would walk outside on an injured leg without the slightest trace of a limp. If pain is what I had to deal with to finish the plan, pain was acceptable. If Flare and Yinyue got in my way, I swore I'd stop them.