How Billy Buddy Got His PhD In Horribleness (Dr. Horrible, T/PG-13)
Disclaimer: I don’t have a PhD in Horribleness, and I certainly don’t own Dr. Horrible or anything related.
A/N: Born of the interim between when Journalism class started and when we actually got work to do. Chipped away at it for a week or so and brought it home to edit.
Rated “T” for allusion to alcohol.
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When he was a kid, he had wanted to be an inventor. Grabbing odds and ends from his room, salvaging doodads from the garbage, he stuck them together and played pretend. An empty paper towel roll plus a safety pin and a stick became a stun ray, and he’d run around the neighborhood “shooting” people who probably never realized he was there. He would duck whenever a car drove past, allegedly hiding from the LAPD. It was tremendous fun. Every once in a while he’d be able to lure another boy or two into the game, and the children would run around shouting and laughing at each other until the adults made them come inside.
He had been a lot more of a people person then, obviously. But as a child, wasn’t everyone?
Eventually all of his playmates, one by one, stopped coming by to play with the kid with the make-believe stun guns and started following their older brothers and sisters around, desperately trying to become one of the big kids. The six-year-olds became eight-year-olds, the eight-year-olds became ten-year-olds, and the ten-year-olds became teenagers.
He, however, didn’t have an older brother or sister to follow around. And he had always been a little more bookish than the others in his neighborhood. His pretend stun guns gradually turned into physics books from the local library, and his ducking-behind-the-bushes game became hiding-behind-the-bookshelves. Now, though, the danger was very real: he had managed to somehow rub a bully or two the wrong way, and they took every possible opportunity to stuff him in nearby trashcans or cram him in his locker.
As his solitude increased, his outgoingness and confidence diminished. He took to slouching, shunning his peers. He never really talked that much anymore, to anybody. He spent most of his time alone.
But with loneliness came creativity. He took his physics textbooks and his old toilet-paper-roll inventions, plus the perspective gained from his sixteen years on the planet Earth, and he combined them. Spiral notebooks began to fill with scribbled notes and half-finished sketches of partly-thought-through weapons and machines and gadgets. He took to digging through the trash for shards of metal and coils of wire, just like he had in his childhood. Now, though, he always had a definite purpose in mind. His scavenged junk started to form on the crude wooden bench in his basement. The inventions took shape.
But of course it wasn’t enough. Works of art were not made with finger paints, and Billy desperately needed to upgrade his projects from piles of scrap to real, working devices. He began to think of himself as a scientist. And a scientist needs resources, tools.
Theft started out with little things. A neighbor’s lawn hose here, the local school’s broken computer monitor there. His main problem was a lack of funds. He was flat-out broke, but surely he could make it, finish whatever his current venture was, if only he had $10 more, $20 more.
He had never been particularly strict in his code of ethics, after all. Finding and keeping money you find on the floor isn’t that different from just reaching into someone’s pocket and pulling it out yourself. The world was already a mess, in any case. A little untidiness here and there wouldn’t hurt anything.
A stolen wallet got him through the week. A week and a half, if he was lucky.
Billy was an obsessive person. He always threw himself into whatever he did. So it was inevitable that he eventually began poking around the fringes of the supervillain subculture. When he did, he was ecstatic. Here were people like the kids in his old neighborhood-they knew the same thing he did, that growing older didn’t always mean growing out of the best things in life. Here were curious, inventive, intelligent people.
He’d thought he was the only one left. Almost despite himself, Billy began to hope again.
They were colorful people, true. Many of them wore big, brilliant costumes Billy admired from afar but that seemed far too fanciful to be worn every day. He was jealous.
One day, he showed up at a party in a stark-white lab coat, the one he’s bought online and that was just the slightest bit big on him but was great to use in his basement when he felt particularly science-y. He was rewarded with several compliments from some henchpeople he’d met, and a couple people didn’t even recognize him. For whatever reason, that pleased him. The next time, he wore his old welding goggles. That night was the most fun night he’d had in a long, long time.
The next party, though, wasn’t nearly as untroubled.
That day, he’d binged on the funnel cakes the Pink Pummeler had brought and he was really feeling ill. He had just nervously excused himself from the presence of a sultry villainess named "Bait" and made a break for the restroom. As he was about to push open the door, he found himself intercepted by a heavily-painted face with an expression that gave him shivers.
Dead Bowie. Definitely the creepiest guy he had ever met. Rumor had it that he was on his way into the Evil League of Evil, the legendary confederation that was as choosy as it was prestigious. (Oh, how jealous Billy was!) But, up close, Billy could see why. The villain looked almost… dead, to state the obvious.
“Who’re you supposed to be?” the villain asks, slurring slightly. Billy noticed an almost-empty drink in his hand.
Billy swallowed as Dead Bowie peered at him appraisingly. His mind raced to find an answer. Something told him that giving Bowie his real name was not a good idea. He stuttered slightly, “D-doctor… doctor…” “Evil” was already taken; so was “Doom” and “Impossible” and all the best evil adjectives… except maybe… “Horrible,” he forced out conclusively.
He watched for Dead Bowie’s reaction with dread. He didn’t belong here, he wasn’t one of these confident, ingenious people, he was just a scared little Billy hiding inside of a ridiculously ill-fitting lab coat-
“Horrible,” Bowie mumbled with a slightly English accent. “Nice t’ meet you.” He pushed past Billy into the restroom. Billy soon heard awful retching sounds coming from within. Shaking somewhat, he backed away from the door. He eventually turned around but kept walking until he had left the party.
For hours after he had arrived home, Billy was at his workbench, jabbing and poking around with his rays. He was upset; he felt like he had when his playmates had first deserted him, restless, just not right. He didn’t understand.
When Billy had a problem, he went to his whiteboard. Tonight was no exception. He began scribbling an elaborate stick-figure drawing, with rays and lab coats and goggles and undead creepy guys.
It took all night and part of the morning, and a lot of marker ink, but at the end, Billy-exhausted and unkempt, with rings around his eyes, but triumphant-finally understood.
He was Billy. He was Dr. Horrible. He was going to fix things with the very inventions born of his brokenness. And he was going to be the best-no, no, the worst-villain the world had ever seen.
THE END