The Villain Academy- Chapter Fifteen: Pride and Joy
Hi, everyone!
We're closing in on the end of "The Villain Academy," the novel that keeps on getting randomer as chapters were written earlier and earlier in the morning and later and later into November! Here we have Chapter Fifteen, following Chapter Fourteen. Peruse archives, people, they are lulzy. Trust me.
This chapter has a new character, a trap, an attempted escape, reversed cliches, Velociraptors, bloody stairwells, vampirish tendencies, and a stunning lack of empathy. Enjoy!
15. Pride and Joy
The rain was still coming down, but lighter now. The wind had died down a bit. But the night was still harsh. Anyone out in this sort of weather would need a nice big hot cocoa back home afterwards.
Joy walked across the grounds of the Villain Academy. She was a young woman with thin brown hair, tied back into two pigtails hanging down over her shoulders. Her eyes were an oceanic blue green, and she was costumed rather oddly.
Joy was an up and coming hero, with powers of manipulation of water. She was dressed in hues of blue, complete with a mask the color of sea foam, as her alter ego Nymph.
She had been the only one on duty at headquarters when Charlie had activated his distress signal. She’d been doing some paper work at the time.
Joy had been walking toward the exit after filing her papers, humming to herself. She was glad she’d gotten her paper work in early. Joy was a bit of a perfectionist, and she loved being early with her work. She loved being a hero, and she loved her powers. She was always looking to go on a mission. Joy was the sort of person who wasn’t happy unless she was busy and working.
A faint beeping began to emit from one of the stations. Joy stopped, turned around, and hurried over to see what was going on.
“A distress signal?” she had said to herself curiously. Then she remembered. Someone was going off to meet a mole in the Villain Academy. Something must have gone wrong.
Joy sat down at the station and tried to remember the name of the one who had gone to the Academy, and of the mole inside it.
She pulled up a couple of files until she came across the one for the mission at the Villain Academy. The mole was a girl, about fifteen, named Torianne Roennigke, and the man who was meeting her was her uncle, Charlie Cole. His sister was a famed superhero, Joy realized, recognizing the name. The girl’s father was famous as well, Joy thought as she recognized the other name as well.
She took the mission upon herself, both because no one else was around and because she wanted to. Joy had suited herself up, melted into water, and traveled along with rain clouds to the Villain Academy.
Now, she was here.
The grounds were eerily silent for this time of evening. She walked across the rain drenched but still dying grass, her footsteps quietly padding along.
Joy pulled out a little GPS-like device. It would lead her to the place where the distress signal had originated from. The machine pinged and Joy walked in the front doors, one of which was still hanging open.
“So much for security,” she muttered in her matter of fact, precise voice as she stepped through almost silently.
She followed the device down hallways, taking time to note her surroundings in case she had to make an escape. She was counting on danger awaiting her here, and she really didn’t fancy dying tonight.
She walked past a closet, with a broken mop in a corner near it. She regarded the mop with a puzzled expression. She wondered who had broken it.
Joy took a minute to peek inside the closet. It was empty, with a broken light bulb and what looked like glitter sprinkled all over the floor. She rubbed some between her fingers; it prickled. She looked up at the light bulb, then back to the glitter, and decided the glitter had come from shattered fragments of the light bulb glass.
She got up, closed the closet, and began to follow the device again.
She found a set of metallic stairs. The entire place seemed utterly deserted, which made her very suspicious indeed. Joy knew for a fact that the Academy had several dozen kids enrolled; where were they all?
She felt as though she were walking into a trap. But the device beeped insistently, so Joy screwed up her courage and walked down the stairs, trying to make as little noise as possible.
Her eyes were glued to the device as she walked through the silver archway. She was very, very close. So where was this Charlie guy? Shouldn’t he be talking to her, yelling out something, grateful for rescue?
She was walking across the room, staring intently at her device. The signal originated right about here…
She felt herself step in a puddle of something. Something sticky and wet. She froze where she stood and looked down at her feet.
Blood. She was standing in a puddle of blood.
She screamed and leapt back, her feet leaving bloody footprints on the gray floor. She dropped her device right into the puddle of sticky red. It shattered, its pieces mixing with the blood on the floor.
Joy’s eyes found the source of the blood and she screamed again, louder this time. A man was splayed there on the floor, a laceration marking his throat. One arm was outstretched, as though he had been reaching for something as he died.
Whimpering, Joy recognized him. It was Charlie, and the distress signal he sent hadn’t been enough to save him. He was most definitely dead.
“Oh my God…” Joy murmured, feeling faint. “I…I have to get out of here!” she realized, her breath coming fast. She didn’t want to share Charlie’s fate. She wished she’d called in someone else to do this.
“You’re not going anywhere,” came a cold voice from behind her. Joy’s eyes opened wide in alarm and she spun around.
Standing there were six children. Three of them looked like sisters; one of those three was the leader, apparently, with blood stains all over her. There were three others, two boys and a girl. They did not look at all friendly.
“Did…did you do this?” Joy asked, her voice quavering, pointing to the blood soaked cadaver behind her.
“Yes,” Aimee answered easily, glancing down at the body for a moment before her pale eyes flickered back to Joy. “I take it you answered the distress signal?”
Joy’s eyes dashed around, looking for an escape. She had to get out of here, or in the very least away from these children.
She saw a door on the far side of the room. It was her only chance.
“Don’t try to run. It’s useless, you’ll just be quite tired when we kill you,” Aimee said, shaking her head slowly and crossing her arms.
Don’t listen to her, Joy told herself. You’ve got to get out of here. Run! Now!
She broke into a sprint and made a mad dash for the door.
“After her!” she heard someone behind her yell. She heard pounding footsteps following her across the basement lab, pounding on the rough concrete floor. Joy ran as though her life depended on it, because it did. She’d never been very athletic, but tonight, this time, she was running fast enough to earn a gold medal in the Olympics.
Joy made it to the door and struggled with the knob in her desperation. Looking to buy herself some time, she fired a blast of water at her pursuers, swung the door open, and continued to run.
Behind her, the six villains coughed and sputtered as a blast of salty sea water drenched them to the bone. They’d all gotten salt in their eyes and complained as the stood on the spot, struggling to get it out.
“Well, you know what they say…fight water with fire,” Angie growled, blinking rapidly.
“Isn’t it the other way around normally?” Rune pointed out, trying to shake the water off his glasses.
Angie rolled her eyes. “Whatever! Who cares? Come on, she’s getting away!” she exclaimed, pointing to the open door.
The blood on Aimee’s shirt was mixing with the salt water, lifting the stain a bit. As she wrung out her clothes as best she could, the pale red flowed out with the water.
“Angie’s right, we have to go.” Aimee declared. And they set off after Joy again.
Joy was running, her breath was catching fast in her chest. The door had opened to a very long hallway, and she couldn’t tell where it ended. There were many doors lined up in one wall. Should she hide in one of the rooms? Should she keep running?
She was getting tired, so she swung open one of the doors and hurried inside.
She breathed a sigh of relief, trying to catch her breath. The room was pitch black dark and seemingly deserted, and Joy was glad for that. She listened at the door. The kids were definitely following her. She heard them chattering and running up the hallway, thinking she had kept on running. Joy smiled wearily. Her plan had worked. She was a genius. She just had to wait until they were far enough away, leave the room then, and make her escape from there. Everything would be okay now. She was safe.
She heard a clicking noise, as of sharp teeth snapping and rubbing against each other and a warbling growl from somewhere behind her.
Hardly daring to move, Joy ran a trembling hand along the wall, groping around for a light switch. She found it. She really didn’t want to click on the light, but she had to.
Light flooded the room, exposing the small pack of Velociraptors standing behind her. Joy gasped, fighting her urge to scream and expose herself. The Velociraptors stared at her with beady little eyes, their yellowing, blood stained teeth clicking together, making growling noises that came from deep in their throats. They were an odd purple color, each with three red stripes on their spines. Their eyes were yellow, with snake like black pupils. They had long claws on their hands, and each had a huge claw on each foot. Long, stiff tails balanced them as they stood staring at her.
“Oh. Oh, no. What is this place, Jurassic Park?” she muttered, her voice high and terrified.
Without warning, one of the Velociraptors gave a roar, leapt forward, and slashed Joy across her shoulder. She screamed, blasting it back with a jet of water. It gave a beastly cry as it was shot back, crashing against the wall but staying on its feet.
Bleeding profusely, Joy groped around for the doorknob behind her, opened the door, and ran for her life.
The six kid villains were far at the other side of the hallway when they heard her footsteps. They spun around; she had a massive scratch on her and she was being chased by a pack of Velociraptors. They joined the chase.
Joy ran, her breath shallow but her feet quick, driven by the desire to survive. She heard the Velociraptors, roaring, their clawed feet clicking on the cement floor in hot pursuit of her. Slightly behind at a safe distance, she heard the pounding feet of the children.
She was losing a lot of blood; she had her hand clamped tight over her wound, trying to stem the bleeding as she ran. It wasn’t doing much good, but it was all she could do at the moment. She ran past the door, which was conveniently still open, and across the floor where Charlie’s bloody body lay. She ran through the archway, back up the stairs, past the closet and the broken mop, looking for a place to hide from dinosaurs and murderous little children.
The Villain Academy seemed to be a building that went on forever. Joy kept running and running, still relentlessly pursued. She was running down a staircase when she tripped and fell.
She screamed as she tumbled down the long flight of stairs, getting bruised and losing even more blood. She was losing consciousness with every step she tumbled down. Her eyelids became heavy and the world was growing dark. The stairs went on forever. She was tumbling and rolling. Joy was reminded of her childhood, when she would roll down grassy hills, turning and tumbling over and over, with the ground above her and the sky below. She always got grass stains on her clothes, but her mother never minded and let her roll down the hills over and over again.
With each tumble the pain was dulling as Joy’s entire body began to bruise and go numb. The stairs kept coming, and she was fading, her mind in the memory of grassy hills and sunny summer afternoons. Her mother would get her ice cream when they went to the park. She liked mint chocolate chip, with rainbow sprinkles and gummy bears. Her mother laughed when she asked for it, but got it for her anyway.
A broken smile formed on her lips. Her entire front was stained with blood from the cut on her shoulder. Every time she rolled on her stomach, a splash of blood fell on the stair she’d been on. Her ankle got caught in the banister, and she began to slow down. But her momentum was too great, and pulled her along. Her ankle stuck for a moment before a crack like a gunshot resounded in the air; it was broken but Joy was already halfway gone, and didn’t realize, still lost in the memories.
She rolled off the last stair, crumpling in a heap on the floor past the stairs. Her breath came ragged and shallow as she began to fade away, her sight blurred and her mind bruised. Far away at the top of the stairs, she saw the vague forms of the six children she had been running from, rendered fuzzy by her messed up sight. Her ankle stuck out at an odd angle, throbbing dully. She lay on her side, left arm crushed by the rest of her, with blood and sweat mixing on her face. Her mask fell off, fluttering to the ground like a leaf. She closed her eyes, breathed one last long breath, and she was gone.
The six kid villains stared down at her from the top of the stairs apathetically. The Velociraptors were down there, having finally captured their prey.
“We should get the tranquilizers before they come after us.” Aimee said, not saying a word about the woman they had just let die.
The others nodded, and they went back the route they had come, back to the basement lab for tranquilizer guns. Aimee knew the way, remembering Truculent firing them at dinosaurs so long ago.
It took some digging, but in the same room Joy had hidden in were the tranquilizer guns, sterile and white and gleaming, leaning up against a wall. Aimee took Truculent’s safari hat and put it on her own head.
Taking control over the pack of dinosaurs was remarkably simple. Dragging them back down to the basement lab was the difficult part.
There were six Velociraptors and six of them. Each took a drugged beast and began dragging them by their tails.
“Why did we let her go so far?” Angie grunted, pulling her burden along with supreme difficulty. The Snowflakes were levitating their pair with ease, and Altair was hovering with the dinosaur’s snout dragging along the ground. They were all tired from running, and having to carry thirty pound dinosaurs wasn’t at all easy. Also, there was the fact that these things could wake up at any moment, so they had to move quickly. It was a stressful situation.
“Wait,” Rune said, panting as he dragged his dinosaur, “aren’t the heroes going to get suspicious when that lady doesn’t come back or radio in or anything?”
“Probably,” the Snowflakes answered together with matching grimaces.
“So what do we do?” Angie asked, glancing up at them.
“Hope for the best?” the Snowflakes answered, but they sounded unsure.
“We should check if she has a phone or something,” Aimee said, her words broken up by grunts as she pulled her load along, “and keep it. And if someone calls, just say that…that she quits. All was fine, but she has quit the hero profession.”
She was proud of herself for coming up with such a wonderful idea. Everyone agreed, nodding and smiling, deciding upon the plan. Having a plan made them feel more united, more sure of themselves. So they dragged the Velociraptors back to the basement lab with high morale and a feeling of contentment.
“Make sure you lock it up tight,” Angie said to Aimee once all the dinosaurs were back in their room down below.
As if to answer, Aimee slid the last bolted lock shut with a resounding click and smiled.
Once that was done, they followed their path back to the body of the woman. They still had no idea who she was, but it didn’t matter much and they didn’t care at all.
“Ew,” Aimee said, adopting a disgusted expression. The body had been horribly mangled by the Velociraptors, and they were all careful not to get blood on their shoes. It was a difficult undertaking; there was blood all over the place, especially on the stairs.
“I don’t think she has any pockets or places to keep a phone or anything,” Rune said.
They all agreed, mainly because they didn’t want to have to look around.
They all looked at the flood of blood on the floor, and then at Rune curiously, all thinking the same thing. He noticed and gave them an exasperated look.
“What, do you want me to get down and lick the floor?” he scoffed. “Or, I don’t even know, pull out a straw or something?”
“You gonna…” Altair asked, gesturing towards the body.
“No,” Rune said, almost defensively. His eyes flickered in between his classmates and the bloody corpse. “It’s probably stale by now, anyway.”
“Ew,” they all said, flinching.
“What? It’s true!” Rune said indignantly. He bent down, dipped his finger into one of the blood pools, and sampled it with a thoughtful expression.
“Eww,” they all said, taking a step back. “That’s so gross, Rune,” Angie groaned.
“Hmm. B negative,” Rune said after a moment.
“Different blood types have different tastes?” Aimee asked, repulsed.
“Well, of course. It’s like potato chips have different flavors.” Rune explained, as though it was obvious.
“I’m more alarmed by the fact that you can tell the difference,” she muttered. He overheard and rolled his eyes.
“So, I don’t know about you guys, but what with all the death, weird family reunions, dinosaurs, and more death, I’m pretty worn out,” Altair said.
The others agreed. “Yeah, we should probably be getting to bed,” Aimee said, stifling a yawn and suddenly feeling how sore and tired she was.
They all trooped back through the halls, settling into an exhausted silence. The girls went off to their own dormitory, even though now that Aimee was at the age she was supposed to be, thirteen, she didn’t really belong with the fifteen year olds anymore. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone, and all her stuff was there anyway. Her messenger bag was still abandoned in the library, but she really didn’t have anything important in there anyway.
Aimee took a long shower, washing off the events of the day, as well as the blood. She felt much better afterwards. It had been a very long day.
She loved having long hair again, she realized as she brushed it, changed into her pajamas. Her true hair color suited her much more than the old brown hair had, and she loved it.
Aimee climbed into her bed, ready for a nice long sleep. Everyone would probably sleep late the next morning, they were all weary.
The dormitory settled into silence as one by one, all the girls drifted off to sleep. They were too tired to dream, which was fortunate, as their dreams would probably involve dinosaurs and gallons of blood. Dreaming of such things isn’t particularly pleasant.
They didn’t give a thought to how they would function without the headmaster, whose body still lay among bushes outside on the grounds. They didn’t wonder who would clean up the bloody bodies, one of which mangled beyond all repair. They were villains; they didn’t care. Empathy wasn’t their strong suit. In fact, the word empathy wasn’t even in their vocabulary.
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...I'm not obsessed with writing death scenes. Really. I swear. I will admit I am obsessed with neons. Precious precious neons. *hoards*
I'd like to take a moment to discuss the origin of Joy's character. A couple years back I planned out a series about a bunch of girls who gained magical abilities from magical jewelry. Anyway, one was a pretentious, smart girl named Joy. So basically this Joy is just Joy 1.0 grown up minus the magic charm bracelet. Same personality, same physical appearance, same powers. There were a bunch of characters, actually. Joy 1.0 was always at odds with this other character Ginger who's a lot like Angie, I now realize. Hot-headed with fire powers and such. The others were (I think) Juliet, Heather, Sara, Katrina, and Grace. Katrina and Grace were cousins and they were always fighting too. The most recent write up's from like 2006...I haven't thought of it for awhile now, but Joy came back here! Yey.
And my brother is being thoroughly mocked for the whole Padme Amidala deal. I told him "People on the internet are making fun of you." xD
Quote of the Day: "If I revealed my secret identity, the world would go to shit."
~June
We're closing in on the end of "The Villain Academy," the novel that keeps on getting randomer as chapters were written earlier and earlier in the morning and later and later into November! Here we have Chapter Fifteen, following Chapter Fourteen. Peruse archives, people, they are lulzy. Trust me.
This chapter has a new character, a trap, an attempted escape, reversed cliches, Velociraptors, bloody stairwells, vampirish tendencies, and a stunning lack of empathy. Enjoy!
15. Pride and Joy
The rain was still coming down, but lighter now. The wind had died down a bit. But the night was still harsh. Anyone out in this sort of weather would need a nice big hot cocoa back home afterwards.
Joy walked across the grounds of the Villain Academy. She was a young woman with thin brown hair, tied back into two pigtails hanging down over her shoulders. Her eyes were an oceanic blue green, and she was costumed rather oddly.
Joy was an up and coming hero, with powers of manipulation of water. She was dressed in hues of blue, complete with a mask the color of sea foam, as her alter ego Nymph.
She had been the only one on duty at headquarters when Charlie had activated his distress signal. She’d been doing some paper work at the time.
Joy had been walking toward the exit after filing her papers, humming to herself. She was glad she’d gotten her paper work in early. Joy was a bit of a perfectionist, and she loved being early with her work. She loved being a hero, and she loved her powers. She was always looking to go on a mission. Joy was the sort of person who wasn’t happy unless she was busy and working.
A faint beeping began to emit from one of the stations. Joy stopped, turned around, and hurried over to see what was going on.
“A distress signal?” she had said to herself curiously. Then she remembered. Someone was going off to meet a mole in the Villain Academy. Something must have gone wrong.
Joy sat down at the station and tried to remember the name of the one who had gone to the Academy, and of the mole inside it.
She pulled up a couple of files until she came across the one for the mission at the Villain Academy. The mole was a girl, about fifteen, named Torianne Roennigke, and the man who was meeting her was her uncle, Charlie Cole. His sister was a famed superhero, Joy realized, recognizing the name. The girl’s father was famous as well, Joy thought as she recognized the other name as well.
She took the mission upon herself, both because no one else was around and because she wanted to. Joy had suited herself up, melted into water, and traveled along with rain clouds to the Villain Academy.
Now, she was here.
The grounds were eerily silent for this time of evening. She walked across the rain drenched but still dying grass, her footsteps quietly padding along.
Joy pulled out a little GPS-like device. It would lead her to the place where the distress signal had originated from. The machine pinged and Joy walked in the front doors, one of which was still hanging open.
“So much for security,” she muttered in her matter of fact, precise voice as she stepped through almost silently.
She followed the device down hallways, taking time to note her surroundings in case she had to make an escape. She was counting on danger awaiting her here, and she really didn’t fancy dying tonight.
She walked past a closet, with a broken mop in a corner near it. She regarded the mop with a puzzled expression. She wondered who had broken it.
Joy took a minute to peek inside the closet. It was empty, with a broken light bulb and what looked like glitter sprinkled all over the floor. She rubbed some between her fingers; it prickled. She looked up at the light bulb, then back to the glitter, and decided the glitter had come from shattered fragments of the light bulb glass.
She got up, closed the closet, and began to follow the device again.
She found a set of metallic stairs. The entire place seemed utterly deserted, which made her very suspicious indeed. Joy knew for a fact that the Academy had several dozen kids enrolled; where were they all?
She felt as though she were walking into a trap. But the device beeped insistently, so Joy screwed up her courage and walked down the stairs, trying to make as little noise as possible.
Her eyes were glued to the device as she walked through the silver archway. She was very, very close. So where was this Charlie guy? Shouldn’t he be talking to her, yelling out something, grateful for rescue?
She was walking across the room, staring intently at her device. The signal originated right about here…
She felt herself step in a puddle of something. Something sticky and wet. She froze where she stood and looked down at her feet.
Blood. She was standing in a puddle of blood.
She screamed and leapt back, her feet leaving bloody footprints on the gray floor. She dropped her device right into the puddle of sticky red. It shattered, its pieces mixing with the blood on the floor.
Joy’s eyes found the source of the blood and she screamed again, louder this time. A man was splayed there on the floor, a laceration marking his throat. One arm was outstretched, as though he had been reaching for something as he died.
Whimpering, Joy recognized him. It was Charlie, and the distress signal he sent hadn’t been enough to save him. He was most definitely dead.
“Oh my God…” Joy murmured, feeling faint. “I…I have to get out of here!” she realized, her breath coming fast. She didn’t want to share Charlie’s fate. She wished she’d called in someone else to do this.
“You’re not going anywhere,” came a cold voice from behind her. Joy’s eyes opened wide in alarm and she spun around.
Standing there were six children. Three of them looked like sisters; one of those three was the leader, apparently, with blood stains all over her. There were three others, two boys and a girl. They did not look at all friendly.
“Did…did you do this?” Joy asked, her voice quavering, pointing to the blood soaked cadaver behind her.
“Yes,” Aimee answered easily, glancing down at the body for a moment before her pale eyes flickered back to Joy. “I take it you answered the distress signal?”
Joy’s eyes dashed around, looking for an escape. She had to get out of here, or in the very least away from these children.
She saw a door on the far side of the room. It was her only chance.
“Don’t try to run. It’s useless, you’ll just be quite tired when we kill you,” Aimee said, shaking her head slowly and crossing her arms.
Don’t listen to her, Joy told herself. You’ve got to get out of here. Run! Now!
She broke into a sprint and made a mad dash for the door.
“After her!” she heard someone behind her yell. She heard pounding footsteps following her across the basement lab, pounding on the rough concrete floor. Joy ran as though her life depended on it, because it did. She’d never been very athletic, but tonight, this time, she was running fast enough to earn a gold medal in the Olympics.
Joy made it to the door and struggled with the knob in her desperation. Looking to buy herself some time, she fired a blast of water at her pursuers, swung the door open, and continued to run.
Behind her, the six villains coughed and sputtered as a blast of salty sea water drenched them to the bone. They’d all gotten salt in their eyes and complained as the stood on the spot, struggling to get it out.
“Well, you know what they say…fight water with fire,” Angie growled, blinking rapidly.
“Isn’t it the other way around normally?” Rune pointed out, trying to shake the water off his glasses.
Angie rolled her eyes. “Whatever! Who cares? Come on, she’s getting away!” she exclaimed, pointing to the open door.
The blood on Aimee’s shirt was mixing with the salt water, lifting the stain a bit. As she wrung out her clothes as best she could, the pale red flowed out with the water.
“Angie’s right, we have to go.” Aimee declared. And they set off after Joy again.
Joy was running, her breath was catching fast in her chest. The door had opened to a very long hallway, and she couldn’t tell where it ended. There were many doors lined up in one wall. Should she hide in one of the rooms? Should she keep running?
She was getting tired, so she swung open one of the doors and hurried inside.
She breathed a sigh of relief, trying to catch her breath. The room was pitch black dark and seemingly deserted, and Joy was glad for that. She listened at the door. The kids were definitely following her. She heard them chattering and running up the hallway, thinking she had kept on running. Joy smiled wearily. Her plan had worked. She was a genius. She just had to wait until they were far enough away, leave the room then, and make her escape from there. Everything would be okay now. She was safe.
She heard a clicking noise, as of sharp teeth snapping and rubbing against each other and a warbling growl from somewhere behind her.
Hardly daring to move, Joy ran a trembling hand along the wall, groping around for a light switch. She found it. She really didn’t want to click on the light, but she had to.
Light flooded the room, exposing the small pack of Velociraptors standing behind her. Joy gasped, fighting her urge to scream and expose herself. The Velociraptors stared at her with beady little eyes, their yellowing, blood stained teeth clicking together, making growling noises that came from deep in their throats. They were an odd purple color, each with three red stripes on their spines. Their eyes were yellow, with snake like black pupils. They had long claws on their hands, and each had a huge claw on each foot. Long, stiff tails balanced them as they stood staring at her.
“Oh. Oh, no. What is this place, Jurassic Park?” she muttered, her voice high and terrified.
Without warning, one of the Velociraptors gave a roar, leapt forward, and slashed Joy across her shoulder. She screamed, blasting it back with a jet of water. It gave a beastly cry as it was shot back, crashing against the wall but staying on its feet.
Bleeding profusely, Joy groped around for the doorknob behind her, opened the door, and ran for her life.
The six kid villains were far at the other side of the hallway when they heard her footsteps. They spun around; she had a massive scratch on her and she was being chased by a pack of Velociraptors. They joined the chase.
Joy ran, her breath shallow but her feet quick, driven by the desire to survive. She heard the Velociraptors, roaring, their clawed feet clicking on the cement floor in hot pursuit of her. Slightly behind at a safe distance, she heard the pounding feet of the children.
She was losing a lot of blood; she had her hand clamped tight over her wound, trying to stem the bleeding as she ran. It wasn’t doing much good, but it was all she could do at the moment. She ran past the door, which was conveniently still open, and across the floor where Charlie’s bloody body lay. She ran through the archway, back up the stairs, past the closet and the broken mop, looking for a place to hide from dinosaurs and murderous little children.
The Villain Academy seemed to be a building that went on forever. Joy kept running and running, still relentlessly pursued. She was running down a staircase when she tripped and fell.
She screamed as she tumbled down the long flight of stairs, getting bruised and losing even more blood. She was losing consciousness with every step she tumbled down. Her eyelids became heavy and the world was growing dark. The stairs went on forever. She was tumbling and rolling. Joy was reminded of her childhood, when she would roll down grassy hills, turning and tumbling over and over, with the ground above her and the sky below. She always got grass stains on her clothes, but her mother never minded and let her roll down the hills over and over again.
With each tumble the pain was dulling as Joy’s entire body began to bruise and go numb. The stairs kept coming, and she was fading, her mind in the memory of grassy hills and sunny summer afternoons. Her mother would get her ice cream when they went to the park. She liked mint chocolate chip, with rainbow sprinkles and gummy bears. Her mother laughed when she asked for it, but got it for her anyway.
A broken smile formed on her lips. Her entire front was stained with blood from the cut on her shoulder. Every time she rolled on her stomach, a splash of blood fell on the stair she’d been on. Her ankle got caught in the banister, and she began to slow down. But her momentum was too great, and pulled her along. Her ankle stuck for a moment before a crack like a gunshot resounded in the air; it was broken but Joy was already halfway gone, and didn’t realize, still lost in the memories.
She rolled off the last stair, crumpling in a heap on the floor past the stairs. Her breath came ragged and shallow as she began to fade away, her sight blurred and her mind bruised. Far away at the top of the stairs, she saw the vague forms of the six children she had been running from, rendered fuzzy by her messed up sight. Her ankle stuck out at an odd angle, throbbing dully. She lay on her side, left arm crushed by the rest of her, with blood and sweat mixing on her face. Her mask fell off, fluttering to the ground like a leaf. She closed her eyes, breathed one last long breath, and she was gone.
The six kid villains stared down at her from the top of the stairs apathetically. The Velociraptors were down there, having finally captured their prey.
“We should get the tranquilizers before they come after us.” Aimee said, not saying a word about the woman they had just let die.
The others nodded, and they went back the route they had come, back to the basement lab for tranquilizer guns. Aimee knew the way, remembering Truculent firing them at dinosaurs so long ago.
It took some digging, but in the same room Joy had hidden in were the tranquilizer guns, sterile and white and gleaming, leaning up against a wall. Aimee took Truculent’s safari hat and put it on her own head.
Taking control over the pack of dinosaurs was remarkably simple. Dragging them back down to the basement lab was the difficult part.
There were six Velociraptors and six of them. Each took a drugged beast and began dragging them by their tails.
“Why did we let her go so far?” Angie grunted, pulling her burden along with supreme difficulty. The Snowflakes were levitating their pair with ease, and Altair was hovering with the dinosaur’s snout dragging along the ground. They were all tired from running, and having to carry thirty pound dinosaurs wasn’t at all easy. Also, there was the fact that these things could wake up at any moment, so they had to move quickly. It was a stressful situation.
“Wait,” Rune said, panting as he dragged his dinosaur, “aren’t the heroes going to get suspicious when that lady doesn’t come back or radio in or anything?”
“Probably,” the Snowflakes answered together with matching grimaces.
“So what do we do?” Angie asked, glancing up at them.
“Hope for the best?” the Snowflakes answered, but they sounded unsure.
“We should check if she has a phone or something,” Aimee said, her words broken up by grunts as she pulled her load along, “and keep it. And if someone calls, just say that…that she quits. All was fine, but she has quit the hero profession.”
She was proud of herself for coming up with such a wonderful idea. Everyone agreed, nodding and smiling, deciding upon the plan. Having a plan made them feel more united, more sure of themselves. So they dragged the Velociraptors back to the basement lab with high morale and a feeling of contentment.
“Make sure you lock it up tight,” Angie said to Aimee once all the dinosaurs were back in their room down below.
As if to answer, Aimee slid the last bolted lock shut with a resounding click and smiled.
Once that was done, they followed their path back to the body of the woman. They still had no idea who she was, but it didn’t matter much and they didn’t care at all.
“Ew,” Aimee said, adopting a disgusted expression. The body had been horribly mangled by the Velociraptors, and they were all careful not to get blood on their shoes. It was a difficult undertaking; there was blood all over the place, especially on the stairs.
“I don’t think she has any pockets or places to keep a phone or anything,” Rune said.
They all agreed, mainly because they didn’t want to have to look around.
They all looked at the flood of blood on the floor, and then at Rune curiously, all thinking the same thing. He noticed and gave them an exasperated look.
“What, do you want me to get down and lick the floor?” he scoffed. “Or, I don’t even know, pull out a straw or something?”
“You gonna…” Altair asked, gesturing towards the body.
“No,” Rune said, almost defensively. His eyes flickered in between his classmates and the bloody corpse. “It’s probably stale by now, anyway.”
“Ew,” they all said, flinching.
“What? It’s true!” Rune said indignantly. He bent down, dipped his finger into one of the blood pools, and sampled it with a thoughtful expression.
“Eww,” they all said, taking a step back. “That’s so gross, Rune,” Angie groaned.
“Hmm. B negative,” Rune said after a moment.
“Different blood types have different tastes?” Aimee asked, repulsed.
“Well, of course. It’s like potato chips have different flavors.” Rune explained, as though it was obvious.
“I’m more alarmed by the fact that you can tell the difference,” she muttered. He overheard and rolled his eyes.
“So, I don’t know about you guys, but what with all the death, weird family reunions, dinosaurs, and more death, I’m pretty worn out,” Altair said.
The others agreed. “Yeah, we should probably be getting to bed,” Aimee said, stifling a yawn and suddenly feeling how sore and tired she was.
They all trooped back through the halls, settling into an exhausted silence. The girls went off to their own dormitory, even though now that Aimee was at the age she was supposed to be, thirteen, she didn’t really belong with the fifteen year olds anymore. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone, and all her stuff was there anyway. Her messenger bag was still abandoned in the library, but she really didn’t have anything important in there anyway.
Aimee took a long shower, washing off the events of the day, as well as the blood. She felt much better afterwards. It had been a very long day.
She loved having long hair again, she realized as she brushed it, changed into her pajamas. Her true hair color suited her much more than the old brown hair had, and she loved it.
Aimee climbed into her bed, ready for a nice long sleep. Everyone would probably sleep late the next morning, they were all weary.
The dormitory settled into silence as one by one, all the girls drifted off to sleep. They were too tired to dream, which was fortunate, as their dreams would probably involve dinosaurs and gallons of blood. Dreaming of such things isn’t particularly pleasant.
They didn’t give a thought to how they would function without the headmaster, whose body still lay among bushes outside on the grounds. They didn’t wonder who would clean up the bloody bodies, one of which mangled beyond all repair. They were villains; they didn’t care. Empathy wasn’t their strong suit. In fact, the word empathy wasn’t even in their vocabulary.
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...I'm not obsessed with writing death scenes. Really. I swear. I will admit I am obsessed with neons. Precious precious neons. *hoards*
I'd like to take a moment to discuss the origin of Joy's character. A couple years back I planned out a series about a bunch of girls who gained magical abilities from magical jewelry. Anyway, one was a pretentious, smart girl named Joy. So basically this Joy is just Joy 1.0 grown up minus the magic charm bracelet. Same personality, same physical appearance, same powers. There were a bunch of characters, actually. Joy 1.0 was always at odds with this other character Ginger who's a lot like Angie, I now realize. Hot-headed with fire powers and such. The others were (I think) Juliet, Heather, Sara, Katrina, and Grace. Katrina and Grace were cousins and they were always fighting too. The most recent write up's from like 2006...I haven't thought of it for awhile now, but Joy came back here! Yey.
And my brother is being thoroughly mocked for the whole Padme Amidala deal. I told him "People on the internet are making fun of you." xD
Quote of the Day: "If I revealed my secret identity, the world would go to shit."
~June