League of Do Gooders, Ne'er do wells, and those of Evil Intent

Supervillains 201

Ahem. Attention. This is your villainous overlord, Ivan Clark AKA the one, the only, Bogus Shakespeare, reporting in. I trust you have been filled with sufficient fear that you will respond with the appropriate stunned silence for the scenario, unlike the middle aged bowlers who I made into my hostages that absolutely would not shut up. The movie quotes were the worst. One of these idiots, in a national hostage crisis, comforted another idiot by claiming "the dude abides". I hate today.

My grand master plan was to bring Flare in, convince him to be a superhero, have an epic fight, go to jail, break out in like a day or two tops, then begin a lifelong friendship/rivalry that he would tell his children about and if I knew what gender I was or what kind of offspring I would produce, I'd probably tell them too.

That was the plan, anyways.

Apparently, SOMEONE, not throwing out names because I'm not 100% sure who to blame for this one, forgot that Flare was a tall guy and not a short girl. I was a touch confused when Yinyue from high school just appeared in my doorway with badly done red highlights in her hair, and significantly more confused when our conversation began.

"Whoa. Yinyue. Hi. Nice robot legs." I stuttered. I had no prepared speech, because she was in no way supposed to be here.

"I'm going to give you an opportunity." Situ said, without really acknowledging our history and the zero times we had a conversation without Flare as an intermediary. Rude.

"Hey, uhh... this is a weird time. Could we talk after Flare arrives? This whole thing was kind of supposed to be his superhero origin story and I know it's not the ideal location"- I yammered. Honestly, nothing was going according to plan.

"I'm Flare." Said the girl who was blatantly not Flare.

"And I'm disgraced former US vice president Spiro Agnew." I replied.

"I'm Flare." Yinyue demanded.

I changed my body shape to resemble Spiro Agnew. It seems like a weird thing to suggest that a person can change their appearance on the drop of a hat, but for someone like me, it's as natural as any other motion. Extend my arm, change the shape and appearance of my arm, pretty much feels the same. It always defaults back to the same appearance if I lose focus.

"Listen here, whippersnapper." I said, trying to sound like a disgraced vice president from the early 1970's.

Yinye grabbed a bowling ball with her one arm. With a surprising display of agility, she jumped up into the air, did a flip, and used the momentum to swing the ball into the table where I was sitting. I got a table to the sternum. Lucky me, I have no idea what parts of me host vital organs but that did not seem to be one. I just kind of jellyfished backwards for a second then reassembled into place. Neat. I looked down at my hands, which had turned back to the default white with black veins. Less neat. I was a disgraced former US vice president for a little while, and then I was... this.

"I really don't want to fight you." I told Yinyue. "I have literally nothing against you, and I don't really have anything cool planned for you."

"Then release the hostages!" She demanded.

"If I release the hostages, there's no way Flare's going to show up!" I reasoned.

Situ threw another bowling ball. It flew directly past my head. I could feel it graze my cheek.

"I AM FLARE!" She reasoned louder.

"Okay okay look. Remember the school? Remember the hallways full of black? That was me. I can do that again. I can weaponized the hostages, I can disable you, I can make you see whatever I want you to see." I shot a little bit of mist at one of the bowling balls. Not a lot, just to make it look like a really big spider, to make it feel like it was squirming and writhing and trying to crawl up Yinyue's arm. She panicked and dropped the ball. "Your perception is mine, your logic is useless. All you can do is escape." I made a wave of mist behind me form into little spiders. This whole encounter was going to be much easier to deal with now that I knew that spiders made Yinyue uncomfortable. I often defaulted to spiders.