The Villain Academy- Chapter One: The Mission
Hi, everyone!
By popular demand (I love you guys. ^_^), and because I ought to prove I wrote 50k, here's Chapter One of "The Villain Academy," called "The Mission." Maybe I'l post it all tonight, who knows, I'm ignoring my history homework after all...
In this chapter, you get to meet my protag and learn more of the ever-continuing battle between heroes and villains and of the Villain Academy itself.
1. The Mission
Tori Roennigke walked along the sidewalk marked with chalk streaks and tree roots, coming home from school after another ordinary day. The sun was shining and she hummed as she turned and headed toward the front door of her house.
Still humming, Tori took out her silver house key from her bag, turned the lock, and swung the door open into total darkness. She didn’t seem at all fazed by this; she merely sighed.
She entered the dark house, put her key away, and dropped her backpack in the foyer. She walked through the house to the door leading to the basement underneath the staircase. She swung that door open and proceeded down the steep, gray cement stairs, muttering to herself.
“God, what could they possibly want this time?” she sighed, irritated.
When she entered the basement, a single harsh, bare bulb glowed over a scratched-up metal table with four beat-up old chairs clustered around it. Tori dropped herself irately into one, folded her legs, crossed her arms, and waited.
She eyed her reflection in the table’s warped surface. Her own eyes, one blue, one green, stared back at her, framed by curtains of chestnut brown hair, twisted into an annoyed expression. She rolled her eyes.
Suddenly a creaking came from the far wall. Once again, Tori didn’t bat an eyelash. It seemed she was used to this and terribly bored of it.
The creaking and squeaking stopped, and there was the sound of metal sliding against metal. Then came a loud, booming voice: “Torianne Amy Roennigke, you have been chosen.”
“Stuck in the dumbwaiter again, Uncle Charlie?” Tori called, unfazed.
There was a pause. “Maybe.” replied a different, yet oddly similar, voice.
“Mom told you not to use that thing anymore. Someday it’s going to collapse, y’know.” Tori said.
“But it’s such a cool entrance!” whined the voice from the shadows.
“Maybe if we turned on the lights you’d actually see where you’re going and wouldn’t get stuck,” Tori continued, walking over to the light switch and flicking it on, still with an annoyed air.
The light revealed an ordinary basement, with a pantry and cement walls and floor. In one corner was an open dumbwaiter with a man jammed inside, a man with hair the same shade of brown as Tori’s.
She walked over and pulled him out with some difficulty. Finally he was out, and they both collapsed in a heap on the floor.
“Well, that was unnecessarily painful,” Tori grunted, pulling herself up.
“Torianne, you have much to learn about super heroism. Entrances are everything,” her uncle advised, brushing dust off his suit.
Tori scowled and returned to her seat. “Don’t call me Torianne, Uncle Charlie. It’s a stupid name.”
Her uncle sat across from her, adopting a serious air and a matching voice. “Torianne, as you know, villains are growing in numbers every day.”
“Yes.” Tori said, her scowl deepening.
“Most villains are graduates of a sick, twisted take of the school system: the Villain Academy. Now, for years we’ve tried to neutralize this educational hotbed of evil, and for years we’ve failed,” Charlie continued. “But now, we have a plan so cunning, so brilliant, it cannot fail.”
Tori raised an eyebrow. “We’ve tried nuking it, Uncle Charlie. Twice.”
“How were we supposed to know the plutonium they sold us was fake?!” Charlie said defensively, his serious tone lost.
“They cackled evilly as they sold it to you. Honestly, Uncle Charlie, maybe the heroes should have a school too.” Tori said, voice dripping with satire.
“Anyway. Torianne, our new plan involves a mole to be enrolled in the Villain Academy. One of our own will pretend to be an evil student there, but they will really be a hero who will pass along information from the inside. We hope the mole can discover a weakness in the Villain Academy’s defenses so we can bring the school down,” Charlie continued, re-adopting his serious tone.
“Oh, no,” Tori groaned. “Me?”
“You’re remarkably perceptive, Torianne.” Charlie answered.
“Why me? I just want to be normal! I didn’t ask for my parents to be the world’s most amazing superheroes!” Tori cried. She found herself saying this far too often for her liking.
“But Torianne, your parents are the greatest superheroes on the planet. Meaning as their only child, you have incredible powers as well. You’re the best one for the job.” Charlie said.
“Being a shape-shifter isn’t that incredible. I can’t even change colors properly, anyone with a brain will be able to tell something’s wrong,” Tori argued.
She stood up and stared intently at the chair for a moment. She took a deep breath and her body morphed into its form. It seemed she melted, hovered in midair a second, and then reformed herself. Only this time, her form wasn’t that of an average teenage girl. It was an exact copy of the chair. But the Tori-chair was not silver like its twin. Rather, it was a mix of the chestnut brown of Tori’s hair, the blue of her school blazer, the white of her blouse, the blue-and-yellow plaid of her skirt, the navy blue of her knee-high socks, and the black of her shoes all mixed together haphazardly with the pale peach of her skin.
“See?” Tori said, her voice coming from somewhere on the chair. “It’s not subtle at all! I’m not all I’m cracked up to be.”
She morphed back into her true form, shifting and twisting, reappearing with a defiant glare in her mismatched eyes.
“You just need more practice, Torianne,” Charlie assured her, putting a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t meet his eyes. “You know your folks would want you to do this.”
That argument always worked. More than anything, Tori wanted her parents to be proud of her. Being born a shape-shifter, the rarest power of all, didn’t satisfy this desire. So whenever the heroes needed help, but Tori was reluctant, all you had to say was that her parents would want this from her.
Tori looked up at her uncle, the defiance gone. “Really?” she asked softly.
“Yes, of course. You know how long we’ve been trying to bring down the Academy. I mean, I wish I could do this--“
“But your power sucks,” Tori interrupted.
“It does not! Being able to do different voices is far more useful than you think,” Charlie replied self-protectively. “Like, I can trick anyone into thinking I’m anyone else as long as they can’t see me.”
“So you’re only good over the phone.”
“At least my powers work how they’re supposed to,” Charlie teased.
“At least my powers are cool even when they don’t work how they’re supposed to,” Tori shot back. “What do you need me to do?”
“I need you to pretend to be a villain-in-training. You need to enroll in the school, take their evil, convoluted classes, befriend the despicable students and teachers, and gain their trust. Then you need to find their weakness and bring it to us so we can destroy the school. It’s simple, as long as you don’t blow your cover they’ll never suspect a thing,” Charlie assured her.
“Um, are you sure about that? Villains are smarter than we give them credit for,” Tori said.
“How do you know?”
“Well, they’ve outsmarted us bunches of times.”
“No, they haven’t, we’ve just…allowed them to win sometimes.” Charlie said, his eyes darting about.
Tori folded her arms. “You’re a terrible liar, Uncle Charlie.”
“I know,” he admitted. “But you are not. Torianne, you’re clever, you’re probably the most powerful hero around and the only one young enough for the job. Maybe you could even learn their tactics, uncover their secret plans, or steal their twisted technology, so we can use it against them!”
Tori smiled. “That sounds cool. When am I leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning. You’ll be using the alias Tori-Lynne Parathion, an orphan seeking out an elder sibling to exact revenge upon for abandoning you,” Charlie said.
“Sounds evil enough.”
“I know, it’s brilliant! Now, how do you feel about a haircut…and purple streaks…and stuff?”
“WHAT?!” Tori cried, clutching her long hair. “I’m not going to let you cut and dye my hair! Are you crazy?!”
“Torianne, what if they recognize you? And truth be told, you don’t look much like a villain,” Charlie pointed out.
Tori scowled and kept her grip on her hair. “I don’t care! You’re not touching my hair!”
“Torianne, don’t be difficult! It’s just a little trim.”
“We’ve established you’re a bad liar. Just how short are we talking here?” Tori asked, apparently intent on keeping her hands entangled in her hair for the rest of her life.
“Um…well…about up to your chin, and it’ll be really messy and stuff,” Charlie admitted meekly.
Tori screamed and her grip tightened. “Forget it!”
A little over a half-hour later after a fight comparable to hand-to-hand combat, Tori glowered, defeated, in the chair with her hands and feet tied. “Is this really necessary?” she grumbled as her uncle approached with scissors.
He gave her a look. “Tori, you ripped off half my mustache. I think it’s entirely necessary,” he replied, pointing to the remnants of said mustache.
Tori sulked as long locks of brown hair fell to the ground around her feet. “Oh,” she murmured sadly, kicking them around with her foot.
Charlie was far from a hairdresser, and his cuts were lopsided and uneven. He claimed this was the effect he had intended, but he was truly a horrible liar.
After Tori’s impromptu barber’s appointment, she stared at her reflection in the mirror her uncle had given her after he untied her. “Oh…oh my God.” she said, feeling around for hair that was no longer attached to her head. She rounded on her uncle. “What did you do?!” she shrieked.
“Well, see…” Charlie started, thought better of it, and ran for his life.
You like, Y/N?
I have to change the background on my computer cause NaNo's over...I'll miss my MiniMCR NaNo comic background...
Quote of the Day: "I'd say Gerard is the second-coolest motherfucker on the planet, only because I am first and therefore cooler."
~June
By popular demand (I love you guys. ^_^), and because I ought to prove I wrote 50k, here's Chapter One of "The Villain Academy," called "The Mission." Maybe I'l post it all tonight, who knows, I'm ignoring my history homework after all...
In this chapter, you get to meet my protag and learn more of the ever-continuing battle between heroes and villains and of the Villain Academy itself.
1. The Mission
Tori Roennigke walked along the sidewalk marked with chalk streaks and tree roots, coming home from school after another ordinary day. The sun was shining and she hummed as she turned and headed toward the front door of her house.
Still humming, Tori took out her silver house key from her bag, turned the lock, and swung the door open into total darkness. She didn’t seem at all fazed by this; she merely sighed.
She entered the dark house, put her key away, and dropped her backpack in the foyer. She walked through the house to the door leading to the basement underneath the staircase. She swung that door open and proceeded down the steep, gray cement stairs, muttering to herself.
“God, what could they possibly want this time?” she sighed, irritated.
When she entered the basement, a single harsh, bare bulb glowed over a scratched-up metal table with four beat-up old chairs clustered around it. Tori dropped herself irately into one, folded her legs, crossed her arms, and waited.
She eyed her reflection in the table’s warped surface. Her own eyes, one blue, one green, stared back at her, framed by curtains of chestnut brown hair, twisted into an annoyed expression. She rolled her eyes.
Suddenly a creaking came from the far wall. Once again, Tori didn’t bat an eyelash. It seemed she was used to this and terribly bored of it.
The creaking and squeaking stopped, and there was the sound of metal sliding against metal. Then came a loud, booming voice: “Torianne Amy Roennigke, you have been chosen.”
“Stuck in the dumbwaiter again, Uncle Charlie?” Tori called, unfazed.
There was a pause. “Maybe.” replied a different, yet oddly similar, voice.
“Mom told you not to use that thing anymore. Someday it’s going to collapse, y’know.” Tori said.
“But it’s such a cool entrance!” whined the voice from the shadows.
“Maybe if we turned on the lights you’d actually see where you’re going and wouldn’t get stuck,” Tori continued, walking over to the light switch and flicking it on, still with an annoyed air.
The light revealed an ordinary basement, with a pantry and cement walls and floor. In one corner was an open dumbwaiter with a man jammed inside, a man with hair the same shade of brown as Tori’s.
She walked over and pulled him out with some difficulty. Finally he was out, and they both collapsed in a heap on the floor.
“Well, that was unnecessarily painful,” Tori grunted, pulling herself up.
“Torianne, you have much to learn about super heroism. Entrances are everything,” her uncle advised, brushing dust off his suit.
Tori scowled and returned to her seat. “Don’t call me Torianne, Uncle Charlie. It’s a stupid name.”
Her uncle sat across from her, adopting a serious air and a matching voice. “Torianne, as you know, villains are growing in numbers every day.”
“Yes.” Tori said, her scowl deepening.
“Most villains are graduates of a sick, twisted take of the school system: the Villain Academy. Now, for years we’ve tried to neutralize this educational hotbed of evil, and for years we’ve failed,” Charlie continued. “But now, we have a plan so cunning, so brilliant, it cannot fail.”
Tori raised an eyebrow. “We’ve tried nuking it, Uncle Charlie. Twice.”
“How were we supposed to know the plutonium they sold us was fake?!” Charlie said defensively, his serious tone lost.
“They cackled evilly as they sold it to you. Honestly, Uncle Charlie, maybe the heroes should have a school too.” Tori said, voice dripping with satire.
“Anyway. Torianne, our new plan involves a mole to be enrolled in the Villain Academy. One of our own will pretend to be an evil student there, but they will really be a hero who will pass along information from the inside. We hope the mole can discover a weakness in the Villain Academy’s defenses so we can bring the school down,” Charlie continued, re-adopting his serious tone.
“Oh, no,” Tori groaned. “Me?”
“You’re remarkably perceptive, Torianne.” Charlie answered.
“Why me? I just want to be normal! I didn’t ask for my parents to be the world’s most amazing superheroes!” Tori cried. She found herself saying this far too often for her liking.
“But Torianne, your parents are the greatest superheroes on the planet. Meaning as their only child, you have incredible powers as well. You’re the best one for the job.” Charlie said.
“Being a shape-shifter isn’t that incredible. I can’t even change colors properly, anyone with a brain will be able to tell something’s wrong,” Tori argued.
She stood up and stared intently at the chair for a moment. She took a deep breath and her body morphed into its form. It seemed she melted, hovered in midair a second, and then reformed herself. Only this time, her form wasn’t that of an average teenage girl. It was an exact copy of the chair. But the Tori-chair was not silver like its twin. Rather, it was a mix of the chestnut brown of Tori’s hair, the blue of her school blazer, the white of her blouse, the blue-and-yellow plaid of her skirt, the navy blue of her knee-high socks, and the black of her shoes all mixed together haphazardly with the pale peach of her skin.
“See?” Tori said, her voice coming from somewhere on the chair. “It’s not subtle at all! I’m not all I’m cracked up to be.”
She morphed back into her true form, shifting and twisting, reappearing with a defiant glare in her mismatched eyes.
“You just need more practice, Torianne,” Charlie assured her, putting a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t meet his eyes. “You know your folks would want you to do this.”
That argument always worked. More than anything, Tori wanted her parents to be proud of her. Being born a shape-shifter, the rarest power of all, didn’t satisfy this desire. So whenever the heroes needed help, but Tori was reluctant, all you had to say was that her parents would want this from her.
Tori looked up at her uncle, the defiance gone. “Really?” she asked softly.
“Yes, of course. You know how long we’ve been trying to bring down the Academy. I mean, I wish I could do this--“
“But your power sucks,” Tori interrupted.
“It does not! Being able to do different voices is far more useful than you think,” Charlie replied self-protectively. “Like, I can trick anyone into thinking I’m anyone else as long as they can’t see me.”
“So you’re only good over the phone.”
“At least my powers work how they’re supposed to,” Charlie teased.
“At least my powers are cool even when they don’t work how they’re supposed to,” Tori shot back. “What do you need me to do?”
“I need you to pretend to be a villain-in-training. You need to enroll in the school, take their evil, convoluted classes, befriend the despicable students and teachers, and gain their trust. Then you need to find their weakness and bring it to us so we can destroy the school. It’s simple, as long as you don’t blow your cover they’ll never suspect a thing,” Charlie assured her.
“Um, are you sure about that? Villains are smarter than we give them credit for,” Tori said.
“How do you know?”
“Well, they’ve outsmarted us bunches of times.”
“No, they haven’t, we’ve just…allowed them to win sometimes.” Charlie said, his eyes darting about.
Tori folded her arms. “You’re a terrible liar, Uncle Charlie.”
“I know,” he admitted. “But you are not. Torianne, you’re clever, you’re probably the most powerful hero around and the only one young enough for the job. Maybe you could even learn their tactics, uncover their secret plans, or steal their twisted technology, so we can use it against them!”
Tori smiled. “That sounds cool. When am I leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning. You’ll be using the alias Tori-Lynne Parathion, an orphan seeking out an elder sibling to exact revenge upon for abandoning you,” Charlie said.
“Sounds evil enough.”
“I know, it’s brilliant! Now, how do you feel about a haircut…and purple streaks…and stuff?”
“WHAT?!” Tori cried, clutching her long hair. “I’m not going to let you cut and dye my hair! Are you crazy?!”
“Torianne, what if they recognize you? And truth be told, you don’t look much like a villain,” Charlie pointed out.
Tori scowled and kept her grip on her hair. “I don’t care! You’re not touching my hair!”
“Torianne, don’t be difficult! It’s just a little trim.”
“We’ve established you’re a bad liar. Just how short are we talking here?” Tori asked, apparently intent on keeping her hands entangled in her hair for the rest of her life.
“Um…well…about up to your chin, and it’ll be really messy and stuff,” Charlie admitted meekly.
Tori screamed and her grip tightened. “Forget it!”
A little over a half-hour later after a fight comparable to hand-to-hand combat, Tori glowered, defeated, in the chair with her hands and feet tied. “Is this really necessary?” she grumbled as her uncle approached with scissors.
He gave her a look. “Tori, you ripped off half my mustache. I think it’s entirely necessary,” he replied, pointing to the remnants of said mustache.
Tori sulked as long locks of brown hair fell to the ground around her feet. “Oh,” she murmured sadly, kicking them around with her foot.
Charlie was far from a hairdresser, and his cuts were lopsided and uneven. He claimed this was the effect he had intended, but he was truly a horrible liar.
After Tori’s impromptu barber’s appointment, she stared at her reflection in the mirror her uncle had given her after he untied her. “Oh…oh my God.” she said, feeling around for hair that was no longer attached to her head. She rounded on her uncle. “What did you do?!” she shrieked.
“Well, see…” Charlie started, thought better of it, and ran for his life.
You like, Y/N?
I have to change the background on my computer cause NaNo's over...I'll miss my MiniMCR NaNo comic background...
Quote of the Day: "I'd say Gerard is the second-coolest motherfucker on the planet, only because I am first and therefore cooler."
~June