Chapter 1
“Nu-uh, he didn’t!”
“He totally did!”
It was Tuesday morning in the girls’ locker room, and Tiff was valiantly doing her best, alongside most of her classmates, to preserve her modesty while avoiding the judging, condemning stares of girls with developing bodies.
The conversation she was forced to overhear wasn’t much better.
It was vague and vapid in all the ways one would expect from “girl-talk gossip” and Tiff could probably create an entire mad-lib book around it. Only, instead of needing an adjective or two, she would need to supply the actual meat. She’d been paying attention, and even she didn’t know what the two girls were talking about: no names were mentioned, and there weren’t any real details. She didn’t know who “he” was or what he might or might not have done.
Tiff wasn’t even sure it mattered if the hypothetical boy actually did what he was accused of doing.
Tiff was certainly sure she didn’t care, one way or another.
Not since the source of the voices was two members of last year’s cheerleading squad, who would most likely make a return appearance. Again, not that Tiff cared or that it mattered in her life at all. But since they made it her business simply by virtue of being loud and obnoxious, Tiff didn’t really have a say.
It was probably a stunt to make some other girl jealous or a bid to raise their own rep.
Those girls were idiots, but they weren’t stupid. They played a serious game among the popular crowd, and every move mattered. Reputations lived and died on credibility, and it didn’t matter if X girl slept with Y boy. Chances were both of them never had sex in their lives and both were virgins, but again, it didn’t matter. What mattered was what people thought they saw and heard, and who had the most clout.
Tiff shook her head and tried to tame her mane of hair with the valiant help of a scrunchie. The unsung hero of fashion. Her hair, as well as being a pasty little vampire afraid of the sun, was one of the few things she inherited from her mom. But unlike her mom, who turned into a bronzed god when she stepped into the light, Tiff burned. Badly. And then went back to being incredibly white. Fortunately, September was cooling down the ever-present Southern California heat and they were experiencing a rare foggy morning. As such, first-period PE was going to be dodgeball inside.
There were pluses and minuses to dodgeball. Being closer to the nerds than the jocks, dodgeball was a dangerous game. However, any good nerd knew exactly how to work the system to get the most out of an entire hour sitting against the wall of the air-conditioned gymnasium. They might have to risk momentary pain in the form of a supposedly soft ball smashing into their face, but then they would reap the rewards of an entire period on the sidelines “recuperating”.
But it was a fine line to walk to convince the coaches.
First, it couldn’t be too soon into the match, because then they’d have the nurse come out, or even one of the coaches, half of whom had minor skills dedicated to checking well-being, and the ruse would be dead before it started, and they’d be right back in the game.
Where, of course, they would risk getting hit again, most likely harder this time, as most jocks took “returning players” as a personal insult to their pride. As if a single one of their shots wasn’t good enough to lay out a sweaty nerd!
Said nerd would, of course, argue that it was the jock who was sweaty, but such arguments of semantics generally flew over the other party’s head and, in the end, actually proved the point.
The next problem with indoor days like this was that games weren’t limited to a single class.
If Tiff only had to deal with the same 32 kids she spent half her life sitting next to in Homeroom, she’d find a way to deal. It was when unknown variables came into play that made her anxious.
For instance, her class was joined up with three others, taking up the entirety of the gym’s many courts for multiple matches. They were split into teams, and theoretically, over the course of an hour, all 128 kids would face off against each other.
That might sound fine on paper, but in practice, it fell apart immediately. The first sign of inconsistency was when the students were allowed to pick their own teams.
Such a system could never be fair. Not when teams had to have captains, which meant they would never be balanced. Some kids were picked because of friends, while others were destined to be picked last. Always.
It also meant that subtle things were at play, whether everybody realized it or not.
For instance, that innocuous, inconsequential conversation that played out in the locker room?
Not so innocent anymore.
One of the other girls, who “somehow” overheard, made it known to another girl, who was the friend of one of the girls who was supposedly dating one of the starting lineup on the varsity football team.
The mental gymnastics required to follow that train of thought were already taxing Tiff, but it didn’t matter to the thuggish-looking hill-troll currently glowering at the rest of her group, who were all waiting to be assigned a squad.
It doesn’t even matter that he isn’t on the football team itself, and he probably doesn’t even know the guy who is…
Tiff sighed in relief as he made his grunting choice with a little too much venom behind it, and another poor soul got picked. Tiff blessedly got chosen for a different team that wouldn’t face off against that idiot for hopefully quite some time.
Instead, she found herself amidst two groups of incredibly mediocre students. At least as far as athletics were concerned. She smiled weakly at some of the other girls in solidarity and looked at their token male with more than a little bit of pity. The poor boy had freckles, was even skinnier than Tiff was, and had to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose constantly. Tiff sent a quick prayer that his glasses would remain intact throughout the period. Replacing them probably wasn’t cheap.
And, while she was at it, maybe that his System might give him a little help in the stats department?
She watched one of the noodle-arms on the opposite team try to hurl the ball and get one of them out, but instead of a mighty “HRRRRAAAAGHHHHH!” like he wanted, it was more of a “hehhhh,” and it lost most of its momentum before it got halfway. The person who caught it actually looked surprised that they did, especially since they had to dodge into it to do so. The attacker lowered his head as he made his way to the bench.
Tiff was, at this point, distracted. Her “prayer” to the System was an obvious joke, since it wasn’t something that understood prayers, and she wasn’t a member of that cult that worshiped it as a deity. They were certifiably insane, the lot of them. But thinking about the System made her start to think about the System, and by the time she realized she’d done it, she summoned up her screen.
For as long as she could remember, Tiff’s Status was the same. It showed her name, her age, and that was about it. Everything else was “Locked”. That all changed the moment she turned 16, when the first big shift she had ever seen occurred. Instead of saying “Locked”, her Status now said “Initializing.”
She’d freaked out and immediately rushed to the closest family member, who happened to be Victoria, and started melting down. Victoria held her gently and stroked her back, letting her spill out her nervous energy until she was a limp noodle, and then explained that no, Tiff wasn’t broken because she didn’t immediately receive a Class. Sometimes it took time. Which Tiff would have remembered if she were thinking straight, but she wasn’t. She was excited, scared, happy, elated, nervous, and about to vomit from any given one of those. Thankfully (for Victoria), she did not vomit.
Now, two weeks in and still “initializing”, Tiff was sort of numb to it.
She still wished the System would hurry up and get it over with. Tiff could barely stand the slowly growing suspense.
Would she get a terrible Class? She heard that one of the senior boys had been assigned an Apprentice Class to start with. That was big news. Apparently, his parents ran some sort of shop, maybe a woodworking shop or a smithing shop, where they machined parts and stuff. Tiff didn’t really know, but he helped out a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Enough for the system to recognize the fact that he was good at what he did. Hopefully, he liked doing it well enough to keep doing it…whatever it was.
Tiff frowned. She couldn’t help either of her parents with their jobs.
For one, her mom was a trucker, and Tiff didn’t know how to drive. She didn’t have her permit and she wasn’t even taking driving classes. As much as she whined about it to her parents whenever she had to beg them to take her somewhere, she wasn’t in a hurry to get a license of her own.
She was closer to being able to help her dad…but saying that would be a real stretch, because Tiff wasn’t taking any computer science classes and she wasn’t a budding Technomancer. The most experience she had with “programming” was messing around with RPG Maker on her computer when she bought it on sale a few years back. She quickly found it wasn’t for her and lost interest.
So what did interest her? That was one of her big worries, probably the biggest worry shared by most kids her age: what do I do when I grow up? Her plans were vague and nebulous and drifted between “make video games” and “creative writing”. Chances were she would end up taking a few courses at a community college after graduating and hopefully she’d figure it out by then.
She wasn’t like Victoria, who didn’t need to go to college at all and went straight into an apprenticeship (if that’s what it was called) as a Martial Artist at a Hunter’s Guild. She was really strong, athletic, and dexterous, so the System gave her an A in her Physical Stats, just like their mom. Originally, Victoria wanted to be a boxer or an MMA fighter, but when her System presented her with abundant strength, she figured it would be a waste of her talents if she didn’t put them to better use. So she became a [Bodyguard] instead. She didn’t care to become a straight-up Hero, so she was working down the Neutral Affinity path toward Mercenary. Currently, she was a Hunter. Their parents were a little disappointed that Victoria didn’t choose the Hero route, but it wasn’t like Mercenaries were completely evil, and there was nothing to say they couldn’t work together regardless. They loved her and respected her decision, though both parties heckled each other playfully at dinner from time to time.
Tiff wasn’t like Amy either. Amy had all the natural talent in the world and everything seemed to come naturally to her. Not only that, but she seemed so good at whatever she did, making it look so easy. And she was smart. She hardly studied (electing to loaf around on Tiff’s bed more often than not), and what she learned seemed to stick with her perfectly. If Amy wanted, Tiff was certain she would have her pick of schools from anywhere across the country.
And then there was Tiff. Average. She had decent grades, not good and not bad, with a few A’s, a few B’s, and a C. She didn’t have any glaring weaknesses, but she didn’t have any one particular thing she could do incredibly well. She wasn’t strong. She wasn’t athletic. She was good at video games? She was sure that didn’t count for anything.
If Tiff were honest, the one thing she would claim for herself was that she was hardworking. She was loyal, stubborn, and would not quit. Even when it drove her to tears. Even when it meant starting over from scratch because she realized she did it wrong, whatever it was.
Yes, that was Tiff in a nutshell, completely average and unremarkable-
Tiff suddenly went stiff and lurched to the side as her body locked up. She’d been only partially paying attention to the game of dodgeball going on around her, having been daydreaming about the System. Her Status sheet was still open, which was why she froze. Suddenly, it changed. Where before it repeated “Initializing” over and over, the fields were now filled with actual information. Tiff didn’t see the change happen: one moment it was one thing and the next it wasn’t. There was no fanfare, no spinning letters and numbers like a slot machine wheel that slowly clicked into place like an over-the-top game show. No glitches or short-circuits.
She almost wished there was.
She desperately wished there was.
There had to be a mistake. This couldn’t be right. She was average. She was normal. She was just like everybody else, who made up 97% of the world. She’d Awaken as an unaffiliated, unassigned Citizen and go about her life.
She wasn’t supposed to have an Affinity.
She wasn’t supposed to have a Class.
Those were things only the truly outstanding were awarded by the System. One of them, by itself, should have been reason to celebrate.
Both of them, together?
That was legendary.
And her System told Tiff that it was her.
But for all the wrong reasons.
Tiff didn’t get a chance to explore the rest of her stats. She didn’t have time to devolve into a sobbing, incoherent mess either.
The world, with its sense of humor and a bit of Murphy’s Law, chose that moment to remind Tiff that she was, in fact, in the middle of a dodgeball game. She was barely coherent enough to hear someone shout something along the lines of, “Look at that one! She’s a sitting duck!” And then something not at all as soft as it should have been slammed straight into her face, blinding her with pain as white sparks erupted like fireworks going off inside her brain, and she crumpled instantly to the floor, knocked out.
When she woke up, she was lying on a thin, uncomfortable, green mattress, surrounded by a pull-around curtain. Tiff didn’t know how long she had been unconscious, but she recognized the room she was in as the school’s infirmary. Now that she was awake, her body shuddered involuntarily, causing the waxy paper she was placed on to crinkle. That, in turn, must’ve alerted somebody else in the larger part of the room, because Tiff heard a slight grunt, the shuffling of some papers, more rustling, a thump, and then footsteps. She had just enough time to school her face into something vaguely neutral as the curtains surrounding her bed were forced open.
“Good, you’re awake,” a deceivingly pleasant voice greeted her ears. Tiff rolled her head to the side to see, unsurprisingly, the school nurse. Tiff never had to deal with the woman, which was why she was shocked to hear how soft and kind her voice sounded. To look at her, the nurse was getting along in her years, possibly in her late 50s or 60s, and she almost always wore a perpetual frown. Rumors had it that she’d been to war, and chances were higher than not that they were true. Tiff noticed she had lots of laugh lines crinkling her eyes, suggesting the woman had plenty of sources of joy. Maybe she’d judged the nurse wrong? She shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, something that was painfully relevant to Tiff at this exact moment.
“Open,” the nurse commanded, leveraging a tongue depressor in one hand while holding a pen light in the other. Tiff did as she was told. She went ahhh when instructed and blinked rapidly as the bright light was pointed directly in her eye.
“Everything seems fine,” the older lady sighed, finally taking a seat. “We were starting to worry. You took a nasty fall in first period. That was about 8:45. That was several hours ago.”
“Ahh?” Tiff tried to ask what time it was now, but her mouth was incredibly dry.
“Here. Drink.”
Tiff took the small paper cup handed to her and did so gladly. She finished it in a few gulps and was sad to find it empty; she poked around the edges with her tongue to coax out the few remaining drops.
“Here, let me.”
With a chuckle, the nurse took the cup back and refilled it. It took another three until Tiff was satisfied. She had to wonder, why were the cups so small? But thinking about it, there were probably lots of reasons not to have large, glass containers full of liquid in reach of injured people.
“Time?” Tiff eventually squeaked out. The nurse shook her head.
“2:27. School’s almost out,” she chuckled again, guessing at why Tiff was starting to panic. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to go back to class.”
Tiff tried to nod and sit up, only for the nurse to lean forward quickly and help her. She got a pillow placed behind her back, but she wasn’t allowed to leave the bed. It was just as well. Tiff didn’t think she had the mental capacity to coordinate actual walking at the moment. After all, she could not, no matter how desperate she was, forget the cause of her initial panic.
“Checking your system?” the nurse asked shrewdly as Tiff’s eyes glazed over. Tiff nodded.
“It just came on today.”
The nurse’s eyes narrowed.
“That makes a lot more sense.”
Her head tilted back as she sighed, staring at the ceiling.
“At least we know why you were out for so long. According to your teacher and classmates, the hit wasn’t actually that hard. Not that those meatheads could tell you what ‘soft’ is,” the nurse muttered. She turned her attention to a clipboard on her lap. Several minutes passed in silence, only the scratching of a pen across paper filling the room. Eventually, she turned her attention back toward Tiff.
“Theophania VanDyne?” the nurse proclaimed, making some final notes on her clipboard. Tiff cringed hard but nodded. She didn’t like her full name. That’s why she introduced herself as “Tiff”.
“On my orders as school nurse, you are to rest until the end of school. I see you normally take the bus; your parent or guardian will be contacted to collect you. I don’t want you to be put in a position of stress or one where sudden movement can upset you. You might find yourself disoriented and spacey. This is normal. You’re fine. Everything is fine. You just need more rest. Don’t worry, everybody goes through this once in their life. You’ll be good as new in a few days.”
Tiff couldn’t stop the scowl from forming even as she nodded. She heard the nurse chuckle as she stood up and left.
Theophania severely doubted that anyone else had experienced what she was going through right now. And that wasn’t the moody, angsty, teenage part of her brain crying out at unfairness and “not being understood.”
She turned her attention fully toward her Status sheet.
Name: Theophania VanDyne
Affinity: Supervillain
Alias: Dark Queen
Age: 16
Class: Dungeon Master
Level: 1
Strength: D
Mind: S
Magic: S
Skills: Indomitable
Tiff suddenly found it hard to breathe, but she was really unnerved at how calm she actually was. As small and unrefined as her initial Status sheet was, it truly was legendary. Possibly one of a kind. Not just the fact that the System had assigned her so many things, but the combination of all of them put together. And the very unique setup that seemed created just for her. But Tiff couldn’t tear her eyes away from one single word.
Supervillain.
There it was, larger than life, blotting everything else out.
Supervillain.
Deep, threatening letters, almost the color of blood. Something between burgundy and wine. But that didn’t matter.
Supervillain.
Nothing mattered. Not anymore. Any vague hopes and dreams, plans and presumptions…gone. All because of that one, simple word. She felt the doors of her future closing all around her. Equality was promised, but it wasn’t hers. Not when she had such a damning affiliation.
Supervillain.
She wasn’t a good guy. She wasn’t even neutral.
No, according to the System, she was downright evil.
No, not even that. She wasn’t just evil. She was the most evil. She was the evil that terrified everyday, common, garden-variety evil. She was so bad, they added super in front of it. She was the thing spoken of in hushed tones and whispers, the very thing that fueled nightmares and destroyed nations.
Tiff finally got her wish. Her System came online.