The Villainess wants to be a Hero

I take a step closer to the lake of mountain blood, just enough so that I can get a good whiff of the not-good egg smell and also so I can dip my toes in the blood to see if it's nice and warm for a swim. Unfortunately, before I can check the temperature, El yanks at the back of my shirt. She's not actually strong enough to pull me backward since I've got [Superior Strength] and she spends all day making me lift and carry our heavy adventurer-team things instead of trying to carry it herself.

Still, I stop before I can get my foot down the lip of the lake and into the viscous mountain blood. If I had kept going, El might have fallen in, and while I was flameproof and iceproof and acidproof and stabproof and-

My genius mind pokes me and I nod, my teammate wasn't. She was made from people-flesh, not Wyrd, and I'd seen enough charred bodies wandering around the ruins of an innocent [Calamity's] rampages to know that most people weren't flameproof.

Turning, I frown up at my teammate, "I was just going to test how warm the mountain blood was."

El stares at me for a long moment with a… ooh, I know that look. It's the 'I'm so amazed by your genius that I don't actually know what to say' look. Exasperated. That's the word. Eventually, though, she manages to overcome her amazement—as is only fitting for someone awesome enough to be my teammate—and smirks. "Even if you're fireproof, your clothes aren't. Are they?"

I look down at my stained but not-at-all smelly clothes—El made sure to cast a [Cleanse] spell on me every night so that I wouldn't smell like 'the unholy combination of a refuse heap and a charnel house,' whatever that meant—and blink slowly. Weren't clothes supposed to be just as invulnerable as the secret-[Calamity] wearing them? How else were the [Heroes] in my books able to get away with never changing their outfits if they weren't?

My eyes traveled down from a stain caused by exploding spider-guts to where the cuff of my shirt was worn down from the neat edge it'd had when El bought it for me, and it was now leaking little bits of string. I blink again, even more slowly, and look down even further to where the bottom of my pants are suffering the same leaky fate.

A frown forms in my chest, only to disappear a moment later as my genius mind pokes me. Of course my clothes would take damage. After all, I'm only a soon-to-be-[Hero], not actually a [Hero]. This could only mean that making sure your clothes were always fancy and clean and not-leaky must be one of those secret-[Hero] skills that I'd learn once I found a fiery-sword and rescued a [Princess] and-

"Besides, even if you can make it across the lake of lava, you wouldn't leave Markus and me behind, would you?" El's voice cuts off my thoughts. I look up at her, only to see her face twisted in… sadness. That's what the pushed-out lower lip and not-happy-crinkly eyes meant, right? "We are a team, aren't we?"

At her question, my legs suddenly felt twitchy. My eyes flick over to the treasure building hiding in the middle of the mountain blood lake. My fiery-sword could be in there! But… I look back to El, who now has furry-Markus sitting on her shoulder with his paws outstretched as though reaching for the biggest, tastiest pecan in the world. What do I…?

I couldn't just leave them behind. There wasn't a horde of enemies trying to block our charge to the boss-monster that only I could defeat. There wasn't even a building collapsing down on us that my teammates would sacrifice themselves to make sure I made it out safely, only to come back in the next book after everyone thought they were dead. We were just standing on one side of a mountain blood lake, looking at a treasure building. If I just left them now, they'd be so upset that I got to explore the treasure building without them that they'd start planning to betray me and leave me for dead in the wilderness and-

My genius mind pokes me and a grin nearly splits my face in half. Of course. What a brilliant solution.

"El!" she flinches back at the sound of my shout, but I don't have time to worry about that. I had a genius idea to describe and a treasure building to loot. "Cast an [Anti-Fire] spell on us, and we can all go!"

"Chirp!"

"I'm not stupid, you're stupid!"

"Chirp."

"Nuh-uh."

"Chirp."

"Nuh-uh."

A bolt of fire streaks in the space between Markus and me, only to splash harmlessly into the lake of mountain blood. I look over at El, who's staring at us with a scrunched-up face, and… no, wait, that's a scowl. She must be annoyed or angry about something. But what could…

"Why's she so angry?"

"Chirp?"

"That's why I asked you…"

"Chirp..."

"Alright, that's enough of you two idiots," El splits her scowl between the two of us for a moment, which meant she wasn't annoyed or angry at me at all, before it fades away as she looks directly at me. "He's right, Ciel. [Anti-Fire] won't work against lava."

"But…"

I trail off as a squirmy sort of feeling starts squirming through my stomach. If only El and Markus were made from Wyrd rather than flesh and fur. Then we could all run over to the treasure building together and…

That's it! Something warm and hot and fizzy floods through my chest and neck and face and I roar, "Little Calamities Tower!!!"

El flinches back as my roar echoes through the mountain blood cave. "Ciel, what the actual fuck."

I bounce over toward her, the warm fizziness spreading all throughout me in time to the thumping of blood in my ears. I'd never had a genius idea without my genius mind before! "We can make a Little Calamities Tower!"

"Stop shouting. I heard you the first time." El stares at me with that flat stare of hers that says she can't begin to comprehend how much of a genius I really am.

I try to force the words out past the pot full of boiling bubbles in my chest, but they get caught and trip over each other. "No, you don't, I mean, we can, if you just-"

El stares at me a moment longer before muttering something that sounds like 'I'm sure I'll regret this, but,' "Breathe, Ciel. In and out. Just like me."

Despite not having to listen to her commands because she wasn't the team leader, I matched my breathing to hers. In and out. In and out. Ten times, I breathe, just like El, until the fizziness in my chest fades from a pot of water that was boiling and ready for noodles to one of the fizzy drinks Soph won't let me drink at her parties.

When El sees that, she stops breathing slowly and smiles at me—a different kind of fizziness forms in my chest at that, but it's one I'm much more used to. It feels a lot like when my sisters smile at me. "Now, what's this idea of yours?"

"So, you know how I'm flameproof and acidproof and iceproof and-"

"I didn't, but ok."

I grin at her. She must trust my skills a whole lot then to cast [Fireball] spells at bunches of enemies when I'm in range of the explosion. "I'm also super strong…"

"Well, you have been quite the packhorse these past few weeks," she smirks.

"So…" the fizziness starts bubbling up again, but I manage to push through it. "I can carry you and you can carry Markus and we'll be like a team Little Calamities Tower and if I run really fast then I won't sink into the mountain blood and your [Anti-Fire] spell will keep you and Markus from getting too hot and-"

I stop explaining my genius idea as El sighs. "That might be the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

"It's not dumb!"

"Chirp…"

"See, Markus agrees with me."

"Of course, he does. He's an idiot, too."

"Chirp!"

"Yeah! He's a super-smart-squirrel-thief with an ugly-scarf, and I'm a genius secret… person from the Far Planes."

"Chirp!"

"It is too an ugly scarf!"

"Chirp!"

"Is too!"

"Chir-"

"Shut up!" El scowls between the two of us and mutters something like, 'At least death by lava will be quick.' Hmm… she must be really upset that even though I'm not the team planner, I still came up with a genius idea. I'll have to let her do some team leader stuff at some point so she doesn't feel left out.

"Ok." El huffs out a quick breath, and her scowl fades to a look we haven't covered in my people training. I'd have to remember to ask her what a kind of flat face with a head tilted downward and a slump of the shoulders means when we stop to camp tonight. "I'm not saying yes just yet, but if you're sure you'll be fine, then let's see if you can at least stand in the lava without sinking… or burning to death, I suppose."

My grin widens as she accepts the genius of my idea, and I practically leap over to the edge of the lake of mountain blood. Once again, my foot stretches out, but instead of dipping a toe in, I'm going all the way-

"Shoes off, Ciel."

"Ok."


The mountain blood was warm and squishy between my toes as I ran as fast as I could toward the treasure building. A couple of times, the lake wooshed and waved, almost like it was trying to slither up and trap my legs so it could pull me all the way down. If I were in my larger form—and not carrying both of my second favorite people on my shoulders—I might have let it. But I didn't need a bath, and every time I stumbled or slowed down even a little, El would shout at me to run faster.

So, I ran. As fast as I could. Because my teammate told me to and she was the planner and because the thought of El or Markus falling into the lake of mountain blood made my heart thumpy-thump in my chest so hard it seemed like it was trying to escape. Until, at last, mountain blood transformed back into regular mountain.

The moment we leave the lake behind, the Little Calamity Tower collapses. I jump to my feet quickly. A moment later, Markus scrambles up to my shoulder, chirping softly to himself in a squirrel-language I don't recognize. El, on the other hand, stays on the ground, her forehead pressed against the stone and whispering something so quietly that even my [Superior Hearing] could only catch the words, 'never again,' repeated over and over again. Eventually, though, she stands up, brushes some cave dust off of her pants, and looks at me and Markus.

"Alright, let's go."

"Yeah! It's looting time!" with a grin splitting my face nearly in half, I step toward the faint outline of a door set into the side of the treasure building.


I step over the bits of broken stone that had once belonged to a door—if you knock really loud, almost any door will open—and into the treasure building. Right behind me, I hear a foot kick at a piece of stone and then say a word I'm not supposed to know. A moment later, El steps up beside me and I turn to her with a grin.

"Look, El! It's a second library! How great is that!"

And it was obviously a library. What other kind of building had paintings of monsters that practically thrummed with dangerous magic or statues that looked so lifelike that they could jump out and attack us right when we walked past or little holes in the masonry where darts of abyssal steel could shoot out?

"Ciel, I don't think this is a-"

"No, it is!" I interrupt with a point to a pile of blood-covered books lying near a pile of dead, not-food monsters. "See, books."

"A library needs more than a dozen books." Oh, I recognize that sort of half-narrowed stare combined with lips almost-twitching-up-in-a-smirk look. That's sarcasm. Or mockery. One of the two, but still…

"No. See. Those are just the books the not-food monsters were trying to read without properly checking them out first. And when you do that, the Library gets mad and tries to eat you or burn you or shoot bolts of metal or magic at you." I should know. I was, after all, an expert on how Libraries liked to attack innocent [Calamities] that got distracted trying to find [Hero] books to read or that forgot to return their books before they were due or-

"That's not how libraries work, Ciel."

"It is too!" Even if El was the planner and thinker, I wasn't going to let her out-argue me this time. "See, that one book that looks kind of like it's drooling blood?"

I point at a book toward the edge of the pile with spatters of blood artfully spattered across the edge of its closed pages. My teammate follows my pointing finger with her head, and a moment later, she nods.

"And?"

"That's a chompy-book!" My grin widens as El's amazed-at-how-awesome-I-am stare turns to me. "It like to pretend to be a normal book until you get really into the [Hero] story and then right when you're busy turning a page… Wham! It snaps down on your fingers."

My pointer finger continues away from the chompy-book to a pair of mashed-up fingers, "see. The not-food monster got too distracted, and he got his fingers chomped off."

"That's…" she pauses for a long moment so she can look up at the ceiling and shrug her shoulders. "Fine. It's a trapped library. Now what?"

"Well…"

I trail off as I look down the three exits from the main hall, which, thanks to my secret-[Calamity] senses, weren't completely covered in darkness and gloom. To my left is a doorway that opens up into a circular room ringed along the edges by statues of dwarf-people in armor and holding stone weapons as though they're about to attack. To my right is a doorway that leads into a long hallway that's completely covered with pictures of all kinds of tasty-looking monsters. In front of us is a swooping stairway that's lined with all kinds of shapes and not-squiggly-at-all lines.

"Let's start with the…

[] The wing with all kinds of awesome-looking monsters.

[] The wing with shapes and runes I didn't recognize.

[] The wing with statues of dwarf-people clad in armor.