System Certified Supervillain

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Victoria’s deep, modulated voice filled the Toyota Camry. She was covered, head to toe, in her new black armor, making her almost impossible to see. The blinking display on her dashboard read 10:84 pm…because part of it was broken. They had to wait until their dad was soundly asleep before they could creep out of the house.

At first, she didn’t want to let Amy or Tiff come along.

But Amy was adamant that Victoria wouldn't understand all the key phrases and lingo to get them into the joint, even after she gave Victoria directions to the storefront. As for Tiff, she refused to let her sisters go alone on some insane tangent cooked up from Amy’s crazy brain. Somebody needed to be the voice of reason. And, technically…it was her Class they were shopping for.

So it was, then, that she found herself wrapped up in one of Victoria’s old jackets with the hood pulled up while Amy had a black handkerchief with a skull printed on it wrapped around the lower part of her face.

“I can’t believe you have a transformation sequence,” Amy pouted fiercely. She had watched Victoria put on her armor and nearly melted with jealousy. “I can’t believe you were keeping this from me! That’s so cool! You’re the worst sisters ever.”

“I could drop you off at home.”

“You misheard. You’re the best sister in the world, no question.”

Victoria drove them through several sketchy streets, following Amy’s less-than-optimal directions. They took a wrong turn once, and Amy almost had them going the wrong direction down a one-way road, but after 25 minutes, Victoria pulled into a large parking lot with a closed grocery store, a 24-hour urgent care with a line spilling out of the door, and a row of small businesses with heavy shutters pulled down to lock their doors. One of the closed businesses still had its lights on inside, though the windows were mostly obscured by posters of video games released months ago and a flashy promo for an SLR camera with a huge price tag that was dramatically slashed in half, boldly declaring it 50% off!

Somebody had graffitied several more zeroes over the ad, making it look like it was 50000% off, but instead of peeling off the sticker or chipping away the paint, another note was tacked on inside the window in handwritten font, declaring the offer invalid.

“This is the place?” Tiff asked.

The question was a little redundant, since Amy had just directed Victoria into a parking spot directly in front of the shop, and the flickering sign above the business read: Phish and hips.

“Okay, so it’s a little dodgy,” Amy admitted.

“Your face is a little dodgy,” Victoria mused.

“But it’s closed,” Tiff sighed, ignoring how Amy was attempting to pummel Victoria’s arm.

Like most of the other shops on the strip, there were heavy iron shutters drawn down over the storefront. The exception was a gap for the two front doors, which had an accordion-style lattice stretched across it. Amy, undeterred, unbuckled her belt and motioned forward.

“Don’t worry about it! Come on!”

“Wait,” Victoria sighed. She grabbed Amy’s shoulder and pushed her back down into the seat and got out herself. Victoria walked around the car, made a show of obviously looking left and right down the deserted parking lot, and motioned for Amy to step out.

“Do. Not. Move,” Victoria told Amy firmly, and thankfully, the girl obeyed. Victoria moved to the rear passenger door and opened it up for Tiff. She didn’t feel the need to warn Tiff about running away, but then again, Tiff wasn’t that impulsive. The silhouettes inside the store subtly shuffled as Victoria herded her sisters to the barred entrance, and by the time they reached the door, a figure was already standing behind it.

“Operating hours are 9 am to 7 pm,” a man’s voice said. It was somewhat muffled, but Tiff assumed that was because he was talking through a set of closed glass doors. But then again, something else could have been at play, because those glass doors weren’t frosted, and yet Tiff couldn’t make out a lot of the man’s features. It really was like he was a dark shadow hidden behind a screen.

“Technology doesn’t sleep!” Amy said brazenly, squatting down to yell through the mail slot. Victoria sighed and pulled Amy up, nearly yanking her off the floor, but the man didn’t seem perturbed at all. Instead, he nodded as if he’d just heard part of a passcode.

“Buy, sell, or trade?” He asked.

“We’re looking to buy,” Amy said. “We need some special goods.”

The man’s shadow shifted from Amy and it became clear he was focused on Victoria.

“Cowl or scowl?”

Tiff was confused at the question, but Victoria did not share the sentiment.

“Neither,” her modulated voice oozed confidence. “I’m a Merc. These are my employers.”

“Weapons?” The guy demanded.

“You’re looking at ‘em,” Victoria smirked, raising her arm and flexing a bicep. The shadow of the man stood still for several moments before he eventually nodded.

“Step back,” he said.

The girls all did so as he worked a lock on the other side. Tiff listened to a key turn, a bolt slide, and a chain jingle as it got unhooked. For a simple pair of doors, there was a lot of security. In fact, she didn’t understand why they had to undo so many catches when one of the doors wasn’t even usable. The left door, besides being covered completely in a window cling featuring an advertisement for a particular brand of graphics cards, had a large white printout taped to it that read: USE OTHER DOOR. It had a bold black arrow pointing to the right, where clearly customers were supposed to step through.

And yet, it was the theoretically broken side that opened up.

Tiff paused as it swung open, because none of the yellow light from inside the closed shop spilled out into the parking lot.

“Hurry up,” the man’s gruff voice grunted. “Time is money, don’t keep the boss waiting.”

Victoria grabbed each of her sisters and pulled them close behind her before fearlessly stepping into the darkness. Once all three were in, the door closed behind them with a snap and they found themselves standing in a small booth. A purple UV light flicked on and quickly scanned them from head to toe.

“What was that?” Amy asked, more intrigued than frightened.

“Security scan,” a new voice called out as the rear door to the booth opened. “While I’d love to take people at their word, this world isn’t so simple. You can’t fault a guy for being cautious.”

“So long as that’s all it is,” Victoria said, stepping in first. Tiff and Amy quickly followed suit, and she wasn’t too surprised to find a somewhat thin man wearing jeans and a collared shirt sitting on a stool next to a workbench. This part of the room wasn’t the same as the showroom floor they’d seen through the windows. She didn’t know how they did it, but they appeared to be in a workshop.

The man himself stood, walked up to them…and frowned. He wasn’t short by any means, but Tiff watched his chin continue to tilt as he stared up at Victoria. Tiff watched his eyes compulsively slide over to his two bodyguards, or at least that’s what Tiff thought of now that she got a better look at the two silhouettes she’d seen through the windows. They were big, beefy dudes, like linebackers on a football team. And yet, Victoria was a couple of inches taller than both of them, and her suit’s definition showed off every one of her muscles.

“Don’t start nothin’, won’t get nothin’,” Victoria said, likely knowing what he was thinking. She crossed her arms and nudged Amy forward with her hip. “It’s all you, Short Round.”

Amy bristled. She whirled around and hissed at her sister, but after puffing up and glaring for several seconds, she deflated.

“Whatever,” she swatted a tuft of red hair out of her face. “Mister, are you Haxus?” she asked.

“I am,” the dude in the collared shirt said with a raised brow. “Pleased to meet you…Short Round. And you are…?” He asked leadingly, glancing up at Victoria.

“Irrelevant,” Victoria scoffed.

“Charming,” he grimaced. “Business it is then. You say you’re buying. I’m selling. What do you need? We’ve got chips, we’ve got cards, we’ve got processors…accessories, you name it, I’ve got it. Want it? I can get it. So let’s find out what fits and make a deal.”

“We need computer parts,” Amy began, but before she could continue, Haxus slid back over to his stool and started typing away at a wireless keyboard. Tiff couldn’t see any computers around, so she wondered how he knew what he was doing…let alone what for.

“You’re in the right place,” Haxus smirked. A pair of small drones whirred to life from the workbench and zoomed across the room, hovering to match altitudes before locking themselves in place. Through technology Tiff could never understand, they projected a light screen, much like a System window, only without the System’s help. And where the System might display stats or quests, this display was chock-full of merchandise. The longer Tiff looked at it, the less it looked like a System window, and more like an eBay or Amazon page. The only problem was that she had very little experience with either of those, too.

“Graphics cards? RAM? Motherboards? Processors? Cooling? You want cooling? My man, it’s September in Los Angeles, and it isn’t getting any colder. You want AIO cooling to chill your rig? We’ve got a new Free-zor 4500 with a 360mm radiator and a triple-fan array. You got a Core i9? This baby will keep it chilled at a smooth 600rmp….”

Tiff was lost. More lost than when Victoria drove her to the Adventurers’ Union, taking the screwiest path possible…because she was standing in the same room that she entered before the man started talking and she hadn’t moved!

Amy, on the other hand, was slowly raising her hands in a “gimme” motion and might have started drooling.

“Shorty,” Victoria grumbled, drawing Amy back to reality.

“Not interested in cooling?” The man quickly shifted tracks. “How ‘bout cards? You do any mining? There’s a new ‘coin’ cropping up every week these days; you want to get ahead, I’ve got access to cards that haven’t even hit the market yet. Making investments? You got a line tapped into the Market? We can help you become discreet. We’ve got promotions on deflection too. Judging from your…colorful attire, I take it you aren’t looking to draw attention.”

Haxus talked a mile a minute, offering more promotions than a mobile app gatcha game. Amy vouched for this guy, saying she’d read his blog, but Tiff was starting to question her sister’s taste in literature. Tiff had no problem imagining this guy writing up tech articles…every 5 minutes of the day, by the sounds of things. Tiff had no idea whether he knew his stuff or not, because she was so tech-illiterate. After hearing about system specifications and product numbers that kept adding more and more zeroes, she was getting annoyed. Truly not knowing any better, she wondered if this guy was one of those fabled door-to-door salesmen people used to talk about back in the day. After catching a promo that promised financing and low monthly payments, she had enough.

​

“Is he trying to swindle me?” Tiff muttered to herself.

​

Though she didn’t mean those words for anybody else, the entire room froze. Haxus, the two bodyguards, Amy and Victoria…they all stopped immediately. Whatever they were doing- hand motions, scratching an itch, subtly shifting their weight around to inch toward a concealed weapon…none of it mattered. It wasn’t that they were completely unable to move a muscle, but they were immobilized by fear.

The room didn’t actually freeze, but chills ran up everybody’s spine, even Victoria in her armored suit, and the room felt like it had been plunged into ice. Every head slowly turned toward her, chests rising heavily through labored breath. Tiff tilted her head curiously, unsure of why everyone had reacted and why they were all staring at her. Fortunately, Victoria was an exceptionally quick thinker.

“Don’t worry, boss, I’m on it,” she said, raising her hand to her neck and cracking it dramatically. She turned toward Haxus, flexing her fingers and popping them slowly, one by one as she made a fist.

“Mr. Haxus,” she began, her deep voice coming out grating and threatening. “As you can see, my employer is generous, but her patience is not unending. I suggest you do not waste her time.”

“Ah nah,” one of the bodyguards said, throwing up his hands. “I ain’t playin’ with no cape. Hax, we should bounce. Hit the button and get out while we still got an out.”

“What…was that?” Haxorus muttered.

“You ever felt aura before, Hax?” The other guard asked grimly. While before he was posturing and trying to look threatening without actually doing anything, now he quickly slipped his hands into his pockets and brought them back out, fitted with brass knuckles.

“You like having hands, son?” Victoria leaned forward. She didn’t even take a step, but all three of the men trembled. “Then I’d suggest putting those away.”

The man could have been anywhere in his 30s or 40s. Tiff wasn’t the greatest estimate of age. But he was big, buff, and had a tattoo on his shoulder that suggested he’d been in the military. And yet, he cowered under Victoria's presence. Props to him; he didn’t back down, even if he did grow a shade or two paler. Several tense moments passed…before Haxus gulped nervously and nodded to his men.

“Look, ah, lady. Lady? You’re a lady, right?” He asked Victoria nervously, who only barked out a single, harsh laugh.

“Got it. Lady, we don’t want trouble. We aren’t gonna fight. But I gotta say, robbing us isn’t a great idea. We’re insured, and some of those companies are worse than actual heroes when it comes to punishments.”

Victoria let him stew nervously in his juices for several moments before she shook her head. She raised her left arm where a tiny pouch was attached to her tricep. She popped open a flap, squeezed a finger into the tight pocket, and pulled out…something. Tiff didn’t know exactly what it was, but it was shiny, blue, and looked valuable. It must have been, too, because she could see the greed in the three men’s eyes as they all leaned forward despite themselves.

Victoria made a show of holding the thing up in the air, where Tiff thought it looked remarkably like a coin, before walking fearlessly up to the workbench and placing it down on the surface.

“Who said anything about robbery?” She asked, returning to Tiff’s side. “Our money’s good. But, gentlemen…let’s try this again, shall we? And try not to waste the boss’ time.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he gulped, his gaze transfixed on the glowing blue object. “What do you want from me?”

“Short Round?”

“We want protection,” Amy said, still looking at Tiff like she’d never seen her before. “For a computer. A server. Think of it like a database. We don’t want anybody getting in.”

“You have specifics?” Haxus asked.

For the next 15 minutes, though it felt like hours to Tiff, Haxus and Amy hashed out all the details and narrowed down exactly what they were looking for. Once, and only once, Tiff thought about creeping closer to the bizarre coin, wondering if she could satisfy her growing curiosity, but the moment she shifted her stance, the two guards snapped their heads in her direction.

Great, now she was afraid to move.

Not because she was worried about what they might try to do to her, but what Victoria could do to them. Or worse, whatever that…aura was that leaked out of her earlier. She didn’t feel anything leaving her body, but she was reminded of that guy she ran across in the lobby of the Adventurers’ Union that tried to intimidate her and figured the sensation probably wasn’t a figment of her imagination.

In a way, Tiff really did have super powers, if she thought about it hard enough.

She didn’t know what to do with this information, so she stood like the world’s most introverted statue, awkwardly waiting for her sister to finish talking shop.

Eventually, Haxus pushed a button on his workbench, which raised a hidden safe from the floor beneath a cabinet on the other side of the room. He crouched in front of it, but instead of a standard keypad or combination dial, it had a fingerprint pad, an eye scanner, and a microphone.

“Purple Wellington Nimbus,” he said, and the thing let out a hiss. The safe popped open, and Haxus pulled out a small glass vial of neon pink liquid. Tiff assumed those random words must have been a password, but she had no idea what the radioactive Pepto was. She was fairly certain they’d come here to buy computer parts, but by now she wasn’t so sure.

“That doesn't look like an encryptor,” Amy frowned. Haxus shook his head.

“Short Round, you think we carry enough stock to counter every single cyber threat? Hell no. Ain’t possible in the digital age, baby.”

“So what is this?”

“We don’t carry it, we make it.”

“Ohhhh,” Amy gasped in realization. “You’re a Technomancer.”

“Momma said I’d have been better off in MIT,” Haxus smirked as he brought down a small pair of very round, very black goggles. They looked like welding goggles, but Tiff wasn’t a welder, either.

“‘Course,” he grunted as he sat down and pulled over a small electrical chip. “What she didn’t realize is that to go to one of those schools, you also gotta be smart. I ain’t no idiot, but, my guy, I speak computer, not science.”

Tiff had no idea what she was looking at, but it had tiny metal pins on one end, so she assumed it needed to be plugged into the computer’s inner bits. Fortunately, Amy looked like she was following along. Haxus literally did speak computer, as he dribbled some of the pink liquid onto the chip and started telling it what to do. To her great shock, it listened. The droplets quivered in place before oozing around and sinking into the electronics. After about a minute, there wasn’t a single trace of the pink goo.

“You plug this into the motherboard,” Haxus explained, holding up the chip and holding it in front of Amy. She reached out to grab it, but he pulled his hand back quickly.

“Listen,” he said seriously. “This is powerful stuff. It’s active cyber security. If you really want to keep your database or server secure, don’t connect it to the internet. Keep it offline. Mundane Citizens can’t crack this. I’ll spare the technical details, but this? Think of it like giving your computer life. It isn’t- alive, that is -but it fights for itself. Once you plug it in, give it 5 minutes to spread through your machine. Boot the machine; security will run. Make sure you run setup before 10 minutes have passed, or even you will be locked out. After that, even if the chip’s destroyed, the fix is in. Ain’t nothing short of a Techie with Mind A or higher hacking that, and that’s with a direct connection. Sorry, I don’t have anything rated higher, but if you’re trying to keep out a Meta that strong, they’re gonna be a Super and you’ve got bigger problems.”

“Yeah, but where do I put it?” Amy asked.

“It’s adaptive,” Haxus said. “Put it in an m2 slot. Don’t worry, it’ll fit.”

The moment the tiny chip hit Amy’s hand, Haxus yelped and skipped back. His guards stiffened, squared up and started moving to protect him, but he rapidly waved them away, all while unable to look away from his hands.

Or, as it turned out, a System notification.

“Shit,” Haxus said, his eyes nearly popping out of his sockets. “Shit. Shit shit shit! Hoh. Okay. Wow. Um. My dude. My dude. You did not tell me you’re a freaking Villain!”

He manifested a System screen and spun it around so Tiff could see.

​

[Quest: A Dark Deal]

Take a step over the line, aid someone with less light than you on the Greyscale.

Reward: +55 Infamy

​

The Dark Queen will remember this.

​

Outwardly, her face was stone cold. But inside, Tiff was cringing. Why did the System give her name away? Why did it think that was a good name in the first place? And why did it have to be hers?

Sure, at least it didn’t call her Theophania, but actually that was just as bad. And why did it make her sound like a character from a crappy RPG that claimed the player’s choices mattered?!

Victoria, once again, was Tiff’s savior.

“I trust that tonight's transaction will remain…confidential?” She asked. Well, she threatened. Tiff was pretty sure that deep, gruff voice carried a question mark, but she was equally confident Victoria could use said question mark to bludgeon somebody to death.

“Lips are sealed, ma’am,” Haxus said, doing the classic thing where he mimed zipping up his mouth and tossing away the key.

“Perfect,” Victoria said. “Is payment satisfactory?”

Victoria nodded to the blue coin and Tiff watched the man visibly gulp. He was probably weighing the possibility of milking them for more, but to balance the scales, Victoria could probably “negotiate” a lower price. He seemed to think better of it and nodded.

“We’re good.”

“Transaction…complete,” Victoria crooned. “Short Round, boss, time to move. Mr. Haxus, perhaps we’ll be seeing you around.”

The man shuddered, but Victoria had already turned and was guiding her sisters to the door. They had to wait for one of the guards to open it for them, but Tiff decided to thank the man. But she didn’t know what to say, so she merely tilted her head magnanimously. His eyes widened and Tiff cringed. This trip wasn’t going at all as she'd envisioned.

Victoria escorted them back to their car, chucked both of her sisters into the back seat, and cranked the engine to life. It…wheezed…mightily, and Victoria slowly pulled out and started the trek back home.

Amy instantly whirled around in her seat, pointed accusingly at Tiff, and wrenched the bandana away from her face.

“You,” Amy accused, but her lips started trembling, “Are a badass.”

Tiff was slightly taken aback. She hadn’t done anything; she had barely said a word. In fact, she hadn’t meant for the words she had said to be heard by anyone. Amy seemed to understand Tiff’s confusion, because she waved her hands around animatedly while chattering excitedly.

“One sentence! You said one sentence! And you had old guys trembling in their boots! That was amazing! You were like, ‘Don’t rip me off, peasant,’ or whatever, and they were all like, imma pee my pants!”

“Amy,” Tiff groaned in disbelief. “I did not say any of that. That’s not remotely true.”

“Eh, close enough!” Amy waved Tiff away, undeterred. She turned to her other sister. “And you! Oh. Em. Gee! You were like, half woman, half ninja, half awesomesauce!”

“Your math sucks, ‘short round’,” Victoria smirked, popping the visor on her mask up and letting her real voice come out. Amy stuck out her tongue but quickly started bounding in her seat.

“Oh! Oh! That reminds me! What’s your callsign?!”

“Don’t have one, Amy,” Victoria sighed. “This was a one-time deal. Don’t get used to it; I’m not letting this become a thing.”

“We’ll see about that,” Amy said cheerily. Tiff rolled her eyes, wondering how Amy could simply brush aside the fact that she was basically plotting to terrorize the neighborhood. “But next time, I need a better name. None of this ‘Short Round’ crap. If anybody is short, it’s Tiff.”

“Sorry,” Victoria cackled. “Can’t call Tiff shorty. She’s already got a name.”

“Waaaait.”

Amy’s eyes widened and she slowly turned to stare at Tiff. Tiff groaned and closed her eyes. Thankfully, it was Friday, and she could sleep forever, starting tomorrow.

“What’s it called? Who came up with it? Why haven’t I heard of this?”

Amy’s barrage of questions was relentless. Tiff glanced up and caught Victoria’s eyes in the rearview mirror. Tiff narrowed her own; Victoria knew exactly what she was doing. Tiff couldn’t lie.

​

But she didn’t have to tell Amy, either.

¹

Thanks for reading! Have a great day :)

Discord

Patreon