The Villainess wants to be a Hero

My heart thumpy-thumps in my throat. The guards are here! I couldn't get caught by them! They'd put me in jail and I'd need to stage a breakout and that would take too much time and then El would know I snuck out last night and-

My genius mind pokes me. Right. I need to escape. Unfortunately, no boxes were nearby to utilize my ultimate stealth technique, but I didn't need one to escape from here. After all, I've been sneaking around Dynegard as a secret-[Calamity] for weeks now. If no one had noticed me in all that time, how difficult could it be to sneak away while the guards were busy trying to arrest people?

I turn to look at the guards who were gradually creeping closer to a stunned and silent audience. I could just start running right now. I'm even shorter than most of the dwarves. If I made it to the stands I could hide in the crowd until I found the perfect spot to hide and no one would ever be able to catch me. Not even my sisters could find me when we played find-the-hiding-[Calamity] and they were the smartest and best [Calamities] in the whole-

*Whhrrr*

I turn to look at Spinny only to see that he's spinning around on three wheels, going more around in a circle than running away and leaking smoke from places he hadn't leaked smoke from before getting hit by Choppy.

He looks hurt. Badly. I have to do something. Otherwise, Spinny will get arrested and he'll have to stay in the cell leaking smoke and spinning in circles and getting hurt worse and worse until-

No! I couldn't let that happen!

"I refuse!" My words roar out, and a handful of guard-dwarves turn to look at me, but I don't pause for even a moment. I have a temporary-teammate to rescue!

[Brave Soul] activates, after all, what could be more valiant than rescuing a teammate, and enhances my [Superior Strength] farther than it ever has before. Then my foot swings forward with a loud whoosh.

I don't lash out at any of the guards—not only were they too far away, but killing guards was definitely [Villain] behavior, not soon-to-be-[Hero] behavior. Instead, my kick sweeps out in an arc that sends a cloud of sand straight toward fancy-breastplate-dwarf and his not-as-fancy-sidekicks.

Then, while the guard-dwarves are busy coughing and trying to fight off my sandstorm, something warm and toasty like the insides of a volcano lights up in my chest as a skill I'd never used before activates. [Kindle Bravery] mixes with [Brave Soul] and turns to a fiery heat that spills out of me in a single roared word.

"RUN!!!"

My roar clatters and shakes against the arena itself. I can feel the heat of my breath-weapon wash over the stunned crowd. Only, instead of fire and screaming and burning flesh, it's more like a blanket that wraps around each one of them. A blanket that tells them that being brave is awesome and they could be awesome too if they would just be brave.

I hear the crowd begin to shake themselves from their stupor, even as I turn to sprint toward Spinny. Leaning down, I gently—I didn't want to snap his last spinny-saw by being too careless—reach out to grab ahold of him. Spinny must have panicked at the sudden grab because his wheels start to spin frantically and saws pop out. I stifle a giggle as one of them pokes into my stomach. and before he can bring another tickle-saw to bear, I shift him under my arm. I couldn't be distracted now. Not if I wanted to escape with the two of us un-jailed.

By the time I have my temporary teammate secured and take a look around, the crowd is starting to swarm over the railing and down onto the arena floor. And, like a wave tossed up by a [Calamity] playing with her ocean toys, the crowd crashes into the knot of guard-dwarves. A grin starts to burn up from my chest and onto my face, as I watch a dwarf in a dark brown leather apron striped with bits of some dark metal crash as he crashes into a guard-dwarf wearing not-shiny-at-all chainmail.

Leather-dwarf shouts something like 'This is for the crackdowns, you fascist prick,' as he starts wailing on not-shiny-guard's face. And he's not the only one. Other dwarves in similar aprons are swarming over other not-shiny-guard-dwarfs and shouting things like 'All guards are bastards' and 'Die pigs' and other mean things I'm not supposed to repeat.

In fact, if it weren't for shiny-breastplate, standing in the midst of the crowd and knocking people down with gentle taps of an equally shiny hammer, I don't think the guards would have stood a chance. But with him as an immovable point, the other guard-dwarves—at least the ones that weren't being stepped on—had somewhere to retreat to.

My heart thumpy-thumps again, louder than it had when the guards first appeared. I could be in there. Fighting against the Dwarf for the rights of the common dwarf. That's what [Hero] and Cat did when they weren't slaying ancient evils. They toppled corrupt governments and spread freedom everywhere.

Plus, it looks like a lot of fun. I bet if I just lowered my head and charged I could knock even shiny-breastplate down. Plus, plus, if I beat shiny-breastplate in open combat, then looting him would be fair. That was an adventurers guild rule. You could take anything from anyone so long as you beat them up first.

I take one step toward the knot of guard-dwarves with shiny-breastplate at the front of it and the crowd opens up—probably because shiny-breastplate was really good at knocking apron-dwarves down with his hammer. Our eyes lock. An expression crosses his face. One that looks kind of like El had while she was making rude and baseless accusations at an innocent and hungry [Calamity] who may have found and eaten a secret stash of chocolate that was being saved for a special time.

Then he bellows out a single word as he points his hammer in my direction "You!"

I turned to the side to see who he was yelling at, but other than me and Spinny, there was no one else.

"Yes! You!" He growls and tries to run toward me but a swell of apron-dwarves blocks off his attempted charge.

With a grumbly, growly sound, he turns away from the must-be-invisible person near me that he was shouting at and back toward the apron-dwarves swarming around him. He tries to bop his hammer into the crowd, but one of the apron-dwarves latches onto his hammer-swinging-arm and then another apron-dwarf latches onto his not-hammer-arm and then another and then another until he disappears into a pile of apron-dwarves.

A frown forms in my chest and my shoulders slump. Since shiny-breastplate was being beaten up by the group of apron-dwarves, even if I went in now and bopped him on the head real hard, I wouldn't be able to take his breastplate. That'd be stealing.

"Boo."

Well, even if shiny-breastplate was down, the melee still looked like a lot of fun. Guard-dwarves were fighting back to back in small groups while apron-dwarves were trying to swarm over them with sheer numbers. I could hear the sound of bones cracking as the guards hit people with hammers and wooden bats but that just seemed to make the apron-dwarves even more swarmy. And when they managed to pull one of the guard-dwarves down they made sure to stomp until the guard-dwarf stopped moving.

Maybe I could still get in-

*Whhrrr*

Oh, right. Spinny. I have to make sure he's safe. And I couldn't do that in the melee. "Don't worry, Spinny. I'll get you out of here."


Sneaking out of the arena hadn't been hard. The guards were too busy fighting with apron-dwarves to pay any attention to a soon-to-be-[Hero] and her temporary teammate Spinny. Even the groups of guards we'd seen while walking away from the arena and whistling innocently—the whistling was important to let everyone know you weren't involved in something nefarious—were too busy running around to talk to us. In fact, the only trouble had come from not being able to find Spinny's real team.

We'd tried. I kept my ears open for rescued-dwarf's voice but I didn't hear her. And unfortunately, I hadn't bothered identifying her heartbeat—that was something I only did for teammates and soon-to-be-teammates—so I couldn't find her that way. Even more unfortunately, Spinny didn't know where they were either. Every time I'd asked, he'd just spin his wheels or his spinny-saws a bit.

It wasn't all bad, though. Once we'd gotten away from Choppy and all the reminders of his gruesome injuries on the arena's sands, Spinny started looking much better. A few minutes in the cool, mountain air had cleared up the worst of his smoke-bleeding and the nice rooftop spot we'd found to stare at the moons had really helped calm him down from an agitated spinnyness to a more relaxed spinnyness.

And so, with no easy way to find his teammates, at least not without going door to door—which would definitely take too long and end up with me getting caught for breaking my bedtime—we'd decided to head back to the inn. It wasn't an ideal solution. Even Spinny had only kind of half-spun his wheels when I'd offered a spot on one of our couches to sleep since he couldn't stay in the same room with me—my sisters had told me many times that they'd [Annihilate] any boy who tried to sleep with me.

Sneaking back into the inn had been easy enough. A different shiny-dwarf was at the front desk, but they conveniently turned around the moment I walked through the front door and started sorting something on a shelf behind them. Even sneaking into our rooms was easy. Markus was gone from the couch he'd kept watch from and all the lights were still off.

It hadn't taken any effort to let Spinny down on the main couch. I did have to sneak back to my room to grab a blanket for him. I didn't want my temporary teammate to get cold, especially not with the injuries he'd suffered tonight.

Then, I'd sneaked back into my room, tucked myself in under the covers, and grinned widely at sneaking out and having an adventure and not getting caught. After that, I'd fallen asleep in moments.


I hop to the side as a blast of [Annihilation] turns a broken building into motes of kaleidoscopic light. My tail swings back and bops a leonine nose hard enough for me to hear the Wyrd break. I grin and look over my shoulder just long enough to stick out my tongue.

"Missed me, Bel!"

Bel huffs out a blast of [Blackflame] but her shattered nose sends the droplets of ever-burning flame scattering to the ground rather than anywhere near me. "Stand still, you obnoxious little brat!"

"Missed again!" My claws dig into stone as I push myself up and away from her charge. "You'll have to be quicker than that!"

With the sound of skin tearing, a hundred hands wielding a hundred blades of inky-blackness erupt from my sister's back. "I'll show you quick!"

Buildings crumble as I scramble back away from Bel's stretchy hands as they shoot out toward me. Three of them pierce into the ground in front of me and my tongue lolls out of my maw as I hop nimbly to either side to dodge her second round of stretchy-arms.

Before she could pull her hands back, my aura snakes out toward wyrd-wrought flesh—If Bel was using [Song of the Hundred-Handed] then she couldn't complain about [Aura: Caress of the Calamity]—and shreds it in a scintillating burst. My grin widens as Bel's roar shatters a chunk of city wall behind me, only to fade as she launches herself forward impossibly fast.

How?!?

My eyes flicker back and forth, even as I hear the sound of air screaming in agony as dozens of [Blackblades] carve rents into the boundary between reality and unreality. My head twists from side to side as I frantically search for the-

There!

A hair-thin limb stabbed into the ground beneath my feet is flexing and swaying with Bel's weight as she lances toward me. I almost groan. It's so obvious! How could I have missed-

"Too slow, brat!"

I look up to see that Bel's almost on top of me, a dozen [Blackblades] poised to attack from every angle. She's too close to dodge. No matter which way I went, I'd be in range for her blades or her song. Although…

My grin widens far enough for my second tongue to loll out beside the first. 'The only way out is through.' Bel taught me that.

"[Devourer of Dead Go-

"Ciel, get up, right this minute!"

My eyes shoot open. That's E! And she sounds mad. Maybe she didn't sleep well? Or maybe the inn doesn't have her nasty morning drink. Or… oh, no! Was I late for a team planning meeting? No. That couldn't be it. El doesn't let me plan things anyway. Maybe she was just upset because she didn't have an awesome dream of rampaging with her favorite—in a six-way tie for first—sister.

I spit a wad of blanket out of my mouth and jump out of bed. I look down at the clothes I'm wearing. These aren't my pajamas. Why did I… My infallible memory pokes me. Oh, right. I snuck out last night and met burnt-custard and shiny-breastplate and-

"Now, Ciel."

A frown forms in my chest, it really did sound like El hadn't gotten her nasty drink at all. Maybe I could… my eyes drift over the walls, but for some reason, there are no windows conveniently placed for me to escape from. I make a note for my impeccable memory to remind El that inn rooms have to have windows. Otherwise, how would we escape from a [Villain] trying to catch us while we're sleeping?

Well, if I couldn't escape grumpy-El, then I'd just have to face her like a soon-to-be-[Hero]. And with that decided, I slam open my bedroom door and rush into the living room, "Hi El, Hi Markus, Hi Sp- I mean, what's he doing here?"

El's eyes narrow in amazement at my genius deflection while Markus looks up from poking Spinny with his paws. I grin widely at both of them. "It's time to go find a quest so we can put an end to the not-food monsters!"

"Don't you want breakfast first?" El's voice has that sing-song note to it that means she's planning something, but what did that matter?

My stomach grumbles loudly, reminding me of all the awesome food I didn't get to eat last night. "Food first, then adventure!"

El smiles her dessert-stealing smile and pulls a cord near where she's sitting. A moment later, a shiny-dwarf opens the front door with a bow. "Is there anything I can do for you, miss?"

"A traditional dwarven breakfast, enough for six."

My eyes widen. There are only three of us. Four if you count Spinny, but he probably doesn't eat people-food. That meant…

"Thanks, El!"

I would have leaped over to hug her, but for some strange reason, El didn't like hugs, which would have dropped someone else down my list of favorite people, but not her. My teammates were my favorite not-sister people in the whole world.

"Of course," her dessert-stealing smile widens as the shiny-dwarf vanishes as quickly as he arrived. "And while we're waiting for breakfast, we can discuss what exactly a damaged automata is doing in our rooms and how it got there."

I look at Spinny, who seems perfectly content to let Markus hop around on his head and poke at him. I obviously couldn't tell El I'd snuck out last night and rescued him from a group of [Guards] by causing a mini-rampage.

"Maybe he's-," I pause before I can admit to something that El would seize on to get me to admit that I'd snuck out and quickly change the subject. "I mean, what's an automata?"

"A device powered my manastones arcano-circuitry. Similar in nature to my Tollheim, although significantly more complex from an engineering standpoint."

I struggle to keep the grin in my chest from moving up to my face as my teammate falls into my brilliant trap.

"But that's not the point in question, is it, Ciel. I already asked Markus, and he said that none of the inn's staff entered our rooms last night—something that would have been an unacceptable breach of decorum for the worst of inns, let alone the Gilded Mine. So again, I wonder how a damaged automata managed to somehow appear in our rooms last night sometime after an extremely loud door slamming woke us up from slumber."

My genius mind pokes me and the grin in my chest dies. My teammates knew something was up. Not that I'd snuck out and rescued Spinny, but that something wasn't right.

I look over at Spinny. I could still claim innocence and put all the blame on him—who wouldn't believe that someone as awesome as Spinny managed to make it inside our rooms completely undetected—except… My eyes trace over a pair of nasty gashes chopped into his sides last night by Choppy. What kind of soon-to-be-[Hero] would let a temporary teammate take the blame for something they weren't responsible for?

The frown that forms in my chest at that question is wrinkly and scrunchy and doesn't feel good at all. Because I know the answer to it. I'd be the worst kind of [Hero]. The kind that were only [Heroes] because the book said so, not because of anything they did. The kind that lied and cheated because they could and when they got caught they'd just beat up whoever caught them and say something like, 'Weaklings like you should know their place.'

No! My head shakes violently. I didn't want to be that kind of [Hero]. That kind of [Hero] wouldn't have awesome teammates. That kind of [Hero] wouldn't have rescued burnt-custard and met Spinny. I will never become that kind of [Hero]!

My shoulders straighten. I look directly at my teammates and Spinny. Regardless of how long and boring the lecture would be, I wouldn't let someone who wasn't involved suffer it.

"I snuck out last night." A breath whooshes out of me as I admit my guilt. "I wanted to find something fun to do since all we did before bedtime was eat dinner and not make too much noise."

"Chirp."

"You did? But I was super sneaky. I even used my-" I pause before admitting to my secret-[Calamity] powers only for my infallible memory to tell me that they already knew I wasn't crafted from flesh like they were. Something fuzzy and bubbly forms in my stomach. It feels kind of good and also kind of bad, but I focus on my teammates instead of the feeling and continue. "My special Wyrd powers to sneak out without Markus spotting me."

"Chirp?"

"Yeah, they're kind of like-"

"Let's put a spell anchor on that for a moment," El interrupts before I can show off my super cool Wyrd powers. "You still haven't told us how you ended up with a damaged automata."

"His name's Spinny," I correct her—it's important to use someone's name, after all—but she just keeps staring at me in confusion, so I decide to explain further. "He has little spinny-saws that can pop out and tickle you, only he can't do that now because he got real hurt in the arena last night."

"Chirp?"

"Yeah!" I grin widely and punch my fist into my hand at his question. "It was great. Burnt-custard took me there after I rescued her from shiny-breastplate and they gave me rampage juice and Spinny made it all the way to the finals and then I had to rescue him from Choppy and then the [Guards] charged in and all the apron-dwarves got really fired up and started their own mini-rampage that was maybe caused by a cool skill I got after killing those not-food monsters called [Kindle-"

"What was that about a riot that you might have started?" El's voice cuts through my excited explanation of last night like a [Dragonlance] through a dragon's neck.

"Is that what a mini-rampage is called?" My head tilts to the side. I like mini-rampage better.

"Ciel."

"Well, Spinny was about to die so I jumped in to rescue him from Choppy by blocking Choppy's axe with my head." I decided to explain again, this time with more details. El likes details. Especially in my stories. "But before I could even make sure he was ok, shiny-breastplate came in and said he was shutting the event down. I wasn't going to let Spinny get arrested like that, though, he might have died from smoke-loss in one of the cells before anyone would have noticed. So, I kicked some sand at him and my new skill [Kindle Bravery] activated and then all the apron-dwarves in the crowd were charging the guard-dwarves."

"Please tell me you didn't get involved in the fighting."

"Nope! I had to make sure Spinny was safe. So we ran away and tried to find his real team but couldn't so then I said he could stay with us and he agreed."

El breathes out a whooshing breath and mutters something like, 'Well, if worse comes to worst, we can visit the Aldenard branch office and…' "So, you caused a riot. Stole someone's automata and then came back."

"I also rescued burnt-custard from wrinkly-jerky with my stealth box," I add helpfully.

"I…" my teammate looks at me in that flat-eyed way of hers that said how proud she was of me. "No. I don't think I want to know."

"Yeah," I agree. "I should have looted his shiny breastplate too."

"Chirp."

"It's not stealing if you beat someone up before taking it. That's in the adventurer rulebook."

"Chirp."

"It is too. It's not my fault you don't like to read."

"Chirp."

"Well, maybe if you-"

Normally, we would be interrupted by El telling us to shut up or threatening to set us on fire. This time we were interrupted by a solid knock on the door.

I spring up to my feet, "That must be breakfast!"

I practically teleport—although not actually teleport, because all my magic was sealed away with the rest of my secret-[Calamity] skills—and slam the door open. My face falls almost immediately as I see who's waiting on the other side. "You're not breakfast at all."



There's no way to fit the context of this vote into the narrative in a way that makes sense (which perhaps means I shouldn't make this the vote, but here we are), so I'll do it here. Either the request you are about to receive will be officially sanctioned or not. If yes, you'll get an as yet undecided something or other, but everyone will know what and where the request will take place. If no, you get no shinies, but don't have the scrutiny on your activities.

[] It's burnt-custard from last night standing at the door. [clandestine option]

[] It's a really-shiny-dwarf with a fancy-looking piece of paper. [official option]


[AN]
Summary: Ciel throws a lit match onto some whiskey-soaked kindling. A riot ensues.