System Certified Supervillain

Trouble did not find Tiff instantly, though Amy remained suspicious of her sisters throughout dinner. But she was tired after a long day of hanging out with her friends, so most of her energy went toward stopping herself from faceplanting into the mashed potatoes, and she didn’t voice her complaints out loud.

Friday mornings at school were annoying for multiple reasons, not the least of which was that it was Friday, not Saturday, and thus the weekend was an entire day away. Tiff silently endured announcements in Homeroom as they advertised the upcoming football game with excessive energy, though she held slightly less disdain for it now that she was on friendly terms with Candice.

“Are you coming to the game tonight?” Candice asked, leaning over into the aisle.

“I’m not the cheerleader here, Candice,” Tiff chuckled.

“So?” Candice shrugged. “That’s not the only reason to come. Think of all the boys!” Tiff rolled her eyes.

“I’ve got better things to do with my time,” she scoffed. “Besides, is that really the point of going to a sporting event?”

“Yeah,” Candice answered seriously. “You think anybody actually cares about a high school game? Okay, fine, some people do, but football games are just as much about connecting as they are about playing. It’s all about being seen, Tiff.”

“Huh,” Tiff muttered. “Do scouts for professional teams come to high school games?”

“I’m talking about Ryan Romig, Tiff,” Candice flicked her hair aggressively over her shoulder. “I think he’s close to asking me on a date.”

“Hard pass,” Tiff shook her head. “I’ve got enough drama in my life.”

“More for me then,” Candice said airily. She began flickering her System screen in and out of existence in front of her. Like the rest of the class, she was perfectly capable of summoning her screen normally, but she seemed determined to personalize hers with extra flair. She could occasionally get a few veins of lightning to circuit through an already summoned screen, but she had yet to summon the screen entirely with electric discharge, and her current infusion was only about a 20 percent success rate. She didn’t seem bothered by the failures and dutifully practiced while ignoring the teacher droning on about an assembly. Tiff could admire the dedication.

Throughout the day, Tiff was just as distracted as yesterday. But instead of being anxious about a quest she didn’t want to complete ticking down a timer, Tiff was busy warding off System notifications. Granted, they were much more interesting than the previous quest, but they quickly got annoying as there wasn’t much, if anything, she could do about them.

Tiff hadn’t received any new quests for herself; all of her notifications had to do with her class. Bizarre things like [Trade Deal: Pending] or [Power Play: Success], she had no idea what to do with. The System wouldn’t give her any more information other than [Refer to TAS]. Tiff assumed [TAS] stood for her Territory Administration Suite, because the only other acronym she immediately thought of was a tool-assisted speedrun…and she wasn't currently sitting in her room with Amy loudly watching hour-long documentaries about old video games on her computer.

At least half of the notifications required approval or review, and as they were all locked behind her Administration Suite, Tiff knew she needed to bump figuring it out up her priority list. Interestingly, not every notification was nebulous, but none of them did anything to bolster Tiff’s confidence. On two distinct occasions, she got ominously vague messages saying: [Notoriety Increased! +25].

Tiff let out a heavy sigh. Without even lifting a finger, she was apparently growing more evil.

Somehow, Tiff managed to make it all the way through school without going crazy (or going to jail for gaining almost 100 points in Villainy).

Surprisingly, Amy wasn’t hanging out with her friends today, and as luck would have it, she also decided to take the bus back home.

“You’re up to something,” Tiff said with narrowed eyes as her sister unexpectedly bounded onto the bus. Amy immediately spooked her and plopped down next to her on the seat.

“Can’t I ride home every once in a while?” Amy asked innocently.

“Your face is screaming I want something. What is it?”

“You and Tori have been acting totes sus,” Amy admitted shamelessly. “You’re hiding something and I’m gonna find out what it is. You should be grateful,” Amy added with a longsuffering sigh. “I’ve devoted my whole weekend to this!”

“Amy,” Tiff said flatly, “What the heck.”

“Seriously,” Amy continued to nod. “I could be doing something productive, like my homework, but no! I need to spend my precious time sniffing out what you’re hiding!”

“You should still do your homework,” Tiff scolded, but Amy stuck out her tongue. Amy then spent the rest of the bus ride trying to pester Tiff’s secrets out of her, but, in such a public place and aided by her passive skill, she said nothing.

It wasn’t until they finally reached their stop that Tiff began to get nervous. Amy slowed her pace to walk with Tiff all the way back home, but she knew the moment they set foot inside their door, Amy was going to be relentless. She didn’t have much time!

​

“Tori, help!” Tiff hissed the moment she opened the front door of their house and Amy flew past her. Victoria was sitting in an armchair in the living room and barely spared a glance at the living whirlwind. She heard Tiff’s frantic tone and came bounding over.

“Tiff, what-” Victoria started to ask, but she was cut off. Amy’s voice floated down the hall…from Tiff’s room.

“Holy crap, your room’s a mess!”

“Amy’s patience ran out,” Tiff groaned. “She wants to know my Class and said she won’t stop until she finds out!”

“So?” Victoria let out a sigh of relief.

“What do you mean, so?” Tiff asked. “She’s going to find out!”

“Well, yeah,” Victoria chuckled. “You weren’t going to be able to keep it from her forever.”

“But-”

“Hey,” Amy’s voice dawned with realization. “Isn’t all of this from your closet? Why’s it in the middle of the floor?”

“Come on!” Tiff hurried toward her room.

“You didn’t clean up after we reorganized?” Victoria asked.

“I pushed it to the side!” Tiff said hotly.

As soon as they reached her room, she came face to face with Amy digging through all her old junk. On one hand, she didn’t really care- it was junk for a reason-, but on the other hand, she valued her privacy!

“Amy!” She yelled. “What are you doing?! Don’t go through my stuff!”

Amy picked up a box, saw several old book reports and frowned. She tossed the box lazily to the side and moved to the next part of the pile.

“Amy! Get out of my room!”

“Make me!” Amy shot back confidently, moving into Tiff’s closet. That was precisely where she didn’t want her sister to be! But before she could order Victoria to remove the intruder, Amy gasped, tossed aside a familiar sweatshirt…and let her shoulders slump. Tiff felt herself get nudged into her own room, just in time for all 3 sisters to stare at a glowing, hovering crystal.

“This is what you’ve been trying to hide for over a week?” Amy asked in disbelief.

She sounded so sad and deflated that Tiff almost felt like she needed to apologize. And then she remembered her little sister was being a busybody and she got indignant.

“Hey, if you don’t like it, maybe you shouldn’t have snooped around so much!” Tiff said hotly. “Then you wouldn’t feel let down and I’d still have my privacy!”

“Yeah, but Tiff,” Amy grumped, pointing at the floating diamond. “What does it even do? I mean…wait. Wait! I know exactly what this is!”

Amy’s face quickly brightened, her momentarily offended attitude completely forgotten. She trotted in place excitedly, pointing behind her at the core floating in the closet as she exclaimed.

“This is a Plumbob! I’m so right, aren’t I?!”

“A…what?” Tiff asked, dumbfounded. She looked at Victoria, who was clearly bemused, but equally confused.

“A Plumbob! You know, from the Sims!”

Tiff slowly turned to face the floating rock in her closet…and felt overwhelmed by apathy. The core was green, it was floating, and it was an octahedron…and now that she had seen it, Tiff could not unsee it. She sat on her bed, shoulders slumped, and felt the will to fight drain from her.

“Oooh, it even floats!” Amy cheered enthusiastically, running her hand beneath the core several times to check for hidden wires or an invisible stand. “Can you stick it above people’s heads? OH! Can you then control them?! Are you some kind of [Puppeteer]?!”

Amy was in the process of trying to lift the core up and stick it above her own head, but strangely, it wouldn’t budge. Tiff finally recovered enough of her wits to yell at her little sister.

“What is wrong with you?!” Tiff shouted as she threw her hands in the air, jumping back up. “No, I can’t control people! What kind of messed up person does that?!”

“A Villain,” Amy shrugged easily before once again trying to relocate the core in the closet. Tiff froze, her mind whirring a mile a minute. How did Amy know? Who told her? Where was the leak? Besides Victoria, Tiff didn’t tell anybody. She turned furiously toward her big sister, expecting to see betrayal written all over her face and maybe hear a monologue about double-crossing…but Victoria had her hand slapped over her eyes and was laughing silently.

“How…?” Tiff barely managed to ask.

“Oh, was I right?” Amy chirped brightly. Tiff felt faint and needed to sit down. She didn’t expect to get a workout in her own bedroom today. Amy continued, oblivious to Tiff’s inner turmoil. “I knew it had to be something like that. I mean, did you think you were being sneaky? You’re about as un-stealthy as they get, Tiff. You only started clamming up a week ago once you got your Class, which, to be fair, you did say you didn’t like and didn’t want to talk about, but you practically start sweating any time anybody brings up Affinity these days. Didn’t we used to love playing Heroes and Villains? You never used to get skittish around the V-word.”

Amy turned around, ignored how Tiff seemed to be melting into a pile of misery, and pointed at Victoria.

“Help me move this thing. It won’t budge.”

“I don’t think I can,” Victoria finally let out the laugh she'd been trying to hold in all this time, but she moved next to her youngest sister anyway. The sound was enough to drag Tiff back to her senses.

“Tori,” Tiff commanded. Both sisters turned to look at her expectantly. Tiff pointed at Amy before holding her hand out and slashing it through the air like a knife. “Put her in the rack.”

Victoria, still grinning, glanced down at Amy, who was starting to pale, and shrugged.

“Wait,” Amy hastily backed up. “The rack? As in, a tort- Tori! No!”

There was no possible way for Amy, an un-Awakened 15-year-old, to escape a close combat specialist within grappling range. Before she realized it, Victoria had grabbed her, turned her entire world upside down into a jumbled mess, and had her stretched out across her shoulders.

“Choo got it, boss,” Victoria grinned…and proceeded to dunk on Amy by dropping her from the top rope, otherwise known as Tiff’s bed.

​

“You girls good in there?” Tiff’s dad asked, peeking his head into the bedroom. Tiff had moved to her chair and looked like she aged a decade, while Victoria was sitting on Amy, who was calling out various wrestling moves like some overly surprised ringside announcer. “You know the rules about roughhousing.”

Tiff sighed and closed her eyes, while all three of the girls repeated the number one rule everybody in the house needed to obey.

“““Get it out of your system before Mom gets home,””” they all chorused in unison. Rick nodded in satisfaction. “Good. How do you feel about lasagna? I can pop one in the oven and it’ll be ready in an hour. Sound good?”

“Great, Dad,” Victoria nodded.

“Sounds good,” Amy shot a thumbs-up from her place face-down on the floor.

Rick waited, but he didn’t hear a third agreement.

“Tiff?” He asked.

“Oh,” Tiff shook her head. “Lasagna is fine. Thanks, Dad.”

“An hour, girls,” he shook his head. “Get it all out.”

Rick closed Tiff’s door behind him and she listened to his footsteps slowly thump down the hall. She turned to her sisters, who had given up on the wrestling match and were just lazing on the floor. She wasn’t sure why Amy allowed Victoria to continue sitting on her, but it wasn’t her problem. She nodded nervously toward the door their dad had just disappeared through.

“You don’t think he knows…do you?” She asked. Amy tried to shrug, which was impossible from underneath her sister, who finally had mercy and let her up.

“Beat me,” Amy said. “Does it really matter if he does?”

“Yes!” Tiff hissed.

“Why?” Amy shot right back.

Tiff blinked, taken aback.

“Because I’m a Supervillain?”

“Oooh,” Amy perked up. “Not just a standard Villain, but Super? How awesome is that?”

“It’s not!” Tiff hissed. “He works for Heroes! He could tell somebody!! They could find out!!!”

“Oh honey,” Amy sidled up to Tiff and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Dad brags about us all the time. They already know your name is Theophania. Your wardrobe has more black than a funeral parlor. They already think you’re evil-coded.”

“Evil…?” Tiff trailed off as she stared at Amy’s growing smirk. “Amy,” she said calmly. “Do you want to go back in the rack?”

Victoria raised a thumb from where she lay on the floor and Amy shuddered.

“Hail to our new overlord! Do, ah, we have to use a new title for you?”

“The System gave her one,” Victoria’s muffled voice floated up from the carpet.

“Oh ho?” Amy grinned, but Tiff shook her head rapidly.

“Amy, stop. Please. I know this seems like a joke to you, but can you be serious for just a moment?”

“Ehhh,” Amy looked like she wanted to ignore Tiff’s request, but seeing her sister’s uncharacteristically somber face, she relented. “Sorry.”

“It’s…well, I can’t say it’s okay,” Tiff admitted. “I didn’t want you to find out. I didn’t want anybody to find out. But now that you have, I suppose it’s for the best. I really could use your help. But, Amy, I’m being very serious here; you can’t tell anybody. We need to keep this circle small. Do you understand?”

“If you say so,” Amy agreed, but it was clear she didn’t think Tiff’s Affinity was nearly as big of a deal as Tiff was making it out to be. “But what do you need my help for?”

“This,” Tiff sighed. She swiveled around to face her desk and reached into her drawer where she’d slipped the USB stick she’d received as a quest reward.

Amy stared at it for several seconds before a mischievous smile crept up her face, but as she opened her mouth, Tiff held up a hand.

“Amy, serious time. If you can’t behave, I’m going to kick you out. No, this isn’t full of nudie pics or whatever other weird fantasies you try to pin on me. Can we concentrate?”

“You say that,” Victoria’s voice rose from the floor again, “But how do you actually know? We haven’t looked at it yet.”

Amy’s grin was back, but Tiff shook her head, even as she handed the stick over to her younger sister.

“Because I got this as a quest reward. I don’t think that’s what the System is going for.”

“A quest reward?” Amy asked with a gasp. Her attitude did a total flip, and she cupped her hands reverently, as if she were about to receive a holy relic. “Let me see, let me see! Ohhhhh wow…,” she frowned as she held the small hunk of plastic. “It’s so…normal. What is it?”

“That’s the thing,” Tiff sighed. “I don’t actually know. The System called it my Territory Administration Suite. But when I plugged it into my computer last night, it said it didn’t recognize the files, or something like that.”

“You actually tried it?” Victoria asked, rolling over and sitting up.

“Excuse me,” Tiff scoffed, “I get curious too, you know.”

“Territory?” Amy asked, squinting as she tried to read the engraving on the side of the stick. “What territory?”

Tiff closed her eyes and almost cursed.

“I should start at the beginning, shouldn’t I?”

​

It took longer than an hour to explain everything in enough detail that would satisfy Amy. They had to pause midway through Victoria’s retelling of Tiff’s Assessment day…as for why Victoria was telling it, she was a much better storyteller than Tiff. She also had the benefit of embellishment, which Tiff could not do, even if she wanted to.

All through dinner, Amy bounced in her chair, clearly about to burst, but Rick said nothing, very much used to his daughters’ shenanigans. As penance for not cluing him into their loop, he made sure Amy double-washed all the dishes (even though he tossed them into the dishwasher afterward anyway) and had Tiff take the trash out to the street. He even found some random chores for Victoria, and it wasn’t until after 8 pm that the girls were huddled in Tiff’s room, like a grade-school sleepover.

“Wow,” Amy actually grinned, staring at the screen Tiff had finally agreed to share with her. “You’re a real, genuine Supervillain! How crazy is that?”

“So now you know why there’s a core floating in my closet,” Tiff sighed. “And I wouldn't call it crazy. I call it a disaster.”

“And so, this stick is supposed to help you run your territory, right?” Amy asked. She’d taken everything in more stride than Tiff gave her credit for…but then again, Tiff always was the worrier of the family.

“Supposedly,” Tiff nodded. “But my computer won’t run it.”

“Well, there’s your first problem,” Amy chuckled.

“What do you mean?” Tiff asked.

Amy grinned wickedly and made a rubbing motion between her thumb and two fingers.

“I’m not paying you,” Tiff instantly scoffed.

Amy’s smile dimmed briefly before shrugging. “Eh, it was worth a shot. I suppose I can work for free. I’m part of the team now, baby!”

A new screen popped up in Tiff’s peripherals, and as she had trained herself diligently over the course of the day, she glanced at it. She immediately did a double take.

​

[Bonus Quest! Exploitation]

Employ minors without pay or benefits.

1/1 underage employees.

Reward: 250 Notoriety

​

“Not helpful, System,” she muttered through ground teeth, banishing the screen. Her sisters gave her a curious look, but she ignored them. “What do you mean, Amy?”

“Welllll,” Amy drew it out, “We won’t know until we try it again, but there’s a chance it’s not compatible with your PC. How big is the file size? Did it tell you to format a hard drive or ask you to run it in boot?”

“Boot?” Tiff repeated, already feeling way in over her head. “It just beeped and gave me an error.”

“You really should take this to Dad,” Amy said, but she shook her head and shrugged. “I get why you don’t, though. Still, it’s a good thing he works in tech.”

​

With Amy on the case, as a self-appointed “tech-hench”...

…V(illainous).I.T….

…Overlord Consultant Minon…

Name pending.

Anyway. With Amy on board, things went much smoother. She coaxed Rick into giving her some old junk parts he pulled apart from a retired server farm that he was hoard- rather, that still had potential -and quickly cobbled together a makeshift computer. They did try loading the USB into Tiff’s computer, finding out that the SystOS was, indeed, some sort of unknown operating system, and Amy wasn’t willing to sacrifice her gaming rig just in case it ate up all her RAM. With speed that would make a Technomancer proud, Amy had the “new” machine hooked up to a monitor and pushed the power button.

Despite being a fully colored, modern monitor, the screen glowed faintly, indicating it was powered, but it remained black. Retro-looking scanlines occasionally cascaded down the screen, and green text started blinking in a way that made it seem like the number of pixels was limited.

BOOTING…BOOTING…BOOTING…

The message repeated multiple times before shifting to various loading states. As soon as new text popped up, it instantly vanished as lines upon lines of syntax scrolled everything away. Tiff couldn’t keep up with it at all and quickly became overwhelmed. Victoria frowned grimly, also unable to follow the rapidly evolving chaos, but unlike Tiff, who didn’t know what to do about the runaway computer, Victoria looked like she was about to put her fist through the monitor.

Fortunately, Amy seemed to be a pro. At various points, she scanned the words as they froze on the screen and let her fingers fly over the connected keyboard. After the most agonizing hour from the last…had it only been a day? Tiff’s life was going off the rails much faster than she found acceptable. After an hour, Amy had the SystOS loaded, and the cobbled-together machine was proudly displaying: TERRITORY ADMINISTRATION SUITE.

Tiff had given vague details to both of her sisters about what her System was willing to share with her, so they weren’t too surprised at what they saw. The root menu looked awfully close to what Tiff described on her own screen, with several extras.

​

MAP

STATISTICS

DYNAMICS

RIFTS

​

Three options by themselves weren’t exactly showstopping, but there did appear to be room for later expansion. Highlighting one of the options with the cursor revealed many more details, so much that the girls sucked in a sharp breath and took a moment to collect themselves.

First, the map.

In glorious black and green, in a resolution greater than top-of-the-line movie cameras, was a satellite view of Tiff’s territory. A perfect sphere of 40 miles, rendered in stunning 3d, was displayed for their perusal. The map could be zoomed out to take the view from darn near orbit…or zoomed in close enough to see plaster peeling from decades-old apartment buildings. Amy figured out how to navigate the horrid mess, but Tiff quickly grew nauseous and had to look away. Not before she understood exactly how much detail the map provided, however, as it seemed to update in real time. It didn’t show any people, but if Amy zoomed in on one of the busy roads, they could watch cars slowly advance, like enemies in Frogger moving across the road.

Or it could have simply been an average Friday night for LA traffic. Hard to tell.

There was a legend in the corner of the map that gave helpful information, such as a scale marker, and an interesting icon that looked like a pair of headphones with a line through them.

As the computer they built didn’t have a speaker setup, they assumed it was muted.

The Statistics tab was, as Tiff feared, remarkably like a spreadsheet. It had a nightmarish amount of information she had no clue how to navigate, and even Amy seemed overwhelmed. They glanced at some of the things they thought they understood, like the total population of Tiff’s territory and a more detailed estimation of varying Affinities…as well as a distressing total labeled as “estimated worth.”

There was a dollar sign in front of that one, and judging from all the zeroes, the System had to be including property value in addition to liquid finances. California was considered a powerful economy all on its own, but there was no way a 40-mile sphere had a net worth in the trillions.

The Dynamics section worried Tiff the most. She had no idea what to expect from the name by itself, and once Amy opened it up, she still wasn’t sure she understood what it meant. However, this section seemed to be the meat and potatoes of the TAS's administrative portion. It looked like an email screen, with hundreds or thousands of internal memos, many of which had an exclamation point next to them declaring approval pending. Tiff decided to leave it alone for now, not daring to mess with any of the settings.

Eventually they ran through everything they had on hand, even if they were nowhere close to understanding any of the mysteries. They all leaned back and stared at the screen contemplatively.

“Wow,” Amy whispered, earning a nod from both of her sisters. “Tiff…this is…this is amazing.”

“Right?” Tiff agreed, but her voice was tired, not proud. “Now can you understand why I’m overwhelmed?”

“I don’t know how you understood half of that,”Victoria said. “At least the map, I can understand. Everything else? Good luck, Tiff.”

“I’m worried about the Rift tab,” Tiff said. “All it said was 3 active Rifts. At least the map showed us where they were.”

“I didn’t know they could form underground,” Amy said. Victoria nodded.

“They sure can. I didn’t know they could form so close together. I doubt anybody else knows these even exist. They’re buried in solid rock. Tiff…with this knowledge…knowing where Rifts are spawning….”

Victoria trailed off but Tiff understood perfectly.

“I know. Somebody needs to know about this, right? But how are we going to let people know? I mean, they should know, right? Telling somebody about an unknown Rift is the right thing to do, isn’t it? But if they see my map….”

“Yeah,” Victoria grimaced. “I don’t think that’s covered by a standard Assessment. We could see through walls with this.”

“Really?” Tiff blanched. Victoria waggled a hand.

“Sort of.”

All this time Tiff and Victoria were chatting, Amy had fallen silent. Eventually, she snapped upright, drawing her sisters’ attention.

“Okay, okay,” Amy fidgeted, coming to a conclusion all on her own. “Before we do anything, and I mean anything, we need to find a way to protect this.”

“Isn’t that what I’m for?” Victoria asked. Amy shook her head.

“You’re Tiff’s heavy. Ain’t nobody gettin’ to Tiff ‘cept through you,” Amy said in a bad attempt to sound like a New Yorker. She cleared her throat and continued. “I mean computer security.”

“Like an antivirus?” Tiff asked. Amy gave her a weak smile and shrugged.

“Sure. Let’s call it that.”

“I mean, don’t we already have an antivirus?” Tiff asked. “Dad set it up on all our machines.”

“Well, it’s not actually an antivirus,” Amy rolled her eyes. “Just trust me on this.”

“Sure,” Victoria chuckled. “But it’s almost 10, Amy. No computer store is going to be open this late.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Amy shook her head. “If we were talking big box stores, well, yeah, they’d be closed. That's why we gotta go to a local joint.”

“Amy, what kind of local PC repair shop is going to be open at this time of night?”

“Phish and Chips,” Amy declared triumphantly. Victoria spluttered and Tiff wondered if she needed to start drooling.

“Absolutely not,” Victoria instantly denied. “That sounds like bait because it’s obviously bait. You want to get your credit card or identity stolen? That’s on you. I’m not about to walk face first into a scam.”

“First,” Amy declared authoritatively, as if it were a foregone conclusion that they were leaving, “You won’t be walking. You’ll be driving. Secondly, it sounds shady as heck because it is shady as heck. The owner is a Mercenary named Haxus. It’s better if we go, uh, after hours. He runs a blog on Technobabble.”

“Amethyst VanDyne,” Victoria growled threateningly as she narrowed her eyes. “What are you getting up to in your free time?”

“It’s a grey site!” Amy threw up her hands defensively. “Trust me! He’s legit! Really legit! All his posts tell you exactly how it is!”

Victoria hit Amy with the imperious stare until the younger girl wilted.

“But, ah, it might be best if you have a way to disguise your face?” She added with a nervous laugh.

¹

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