Chapter Twenty - Putting the Super in Villain

“We should probably head home,” Emily said. It was going to be a decently long walk back to Sam’s car.

“What?” Teddy asked.

Emily looked down the table and towards her eldest little sister. “What what?” she replied.

“We can’t just head back already,” Teddy said. She smacked the table for emphasis. “We all sat down around the villain table in the villain lair. We can’t leave until we’ve plotted.”

“Yeah, we need to plot things,” Trinity said from where she was squished on her seat.

Emily turned to Athena and Sam, hoping that at least one of them would be reasonable. Unfortunately, both were nodding along. “You have to,” Sam said. “It’s basically a requirement. Plus you look nice and intimidating in that seat. Now, imagine if you were in costume.”

Fighting back a blush, Emily crossed her arms and glared at the table.

“Yeah, exactly like that. You need a cat though, like on your armrest,” Sam said.

“I can be the cat,” Trinity said. “Those are just uptight raccoons.”

“I don’t need a cat,” Emily said. She pretended not to notice the sighs of relief from all of her sisters, because frankly, she didn’t know what to do about them. “And what would we even plot about?”

“Your take over of the city?” Sam proposed.

She received unanimous nods for that.

“I’m not going to take over the city,” Emily said.

“But if you were,” Sam began. She quickly raised her hands in surrender. “No no, it’s a hypothetical. If you were, hypothetically, going to take over the city. What would you do? Come on, no harm in answering a hypothetical.”

Emily shook her head, but there was no harm that she could see. “I guess it wouldn’t be all that easy. There’s the Heroic Response Force to deal with, other heroes, the police, politicians, the school administration and city, and then there’s the Cabal. We have no idea what they’re up to, but I imagine it’s not great.”

“We’ll kick all of their butts, just line them up and bend them over for me,” Teddy said.

“Uh, no,” Emily said. “Some of them... a lot of them, will definitely be stronger than us. And others can’t be defeated with a fight. You need the city government on your side, at least a little, I imagine. The HRT and the heroes can probably be cowed into stepping back if you’re strong enough and aren’t so evil that they’ll do anything to stop you.”

Sam leaned her elbows onto the table. “So how would you deal with it?”

Emily knew what the woman was trying to do. But then... Emily’s feet ached a bit from all the walking, and a few more minutes of sitting down couldn’t hurt. “I guess you’d need to tackle the problem from a, uh, different angle. Do it like a politician would.”

“Whoa,” Athena said. “That’s super evil.”

Emily frowned. “I mostly meant that if you want to take over the city, then you need to have the city want you to take over. You need to be popular or charismatic enough that the people will be happy to see you act. That’s the opposite of how villains are seen.”

“I can be charismatic,” Teddy said. “Real charismatic. Just watch me, I’ll have the people fighting by my side in no time. The common people will know that I am a bear of the people, for the people.”

“Right,” Emily said. “In this hypothetical situation, I guess the most important thing would be to be seen as both more competent and friendly than the average hero. Then, I guess you’d need to start leveraging that into actual political power of some sort. Maybe getting the police on your side by highlighting their efforts over those of the HRT, maybe...”

Emily squinted as she thought. How would she take over a city?

She’d heard of plenty of villains who had tried before, but never successfully. She imagined that those that did succeed did so quietly and subtly.

“I guess you’d need to have a good amount of control over the city’s economy. Maybe whatever the main sources of revenue in the city all need to be under your control, or at least most of them. You’d need to start buying up businesses and homes. You could just legally own a good portion of the city if you snowball things correctly, and by then I suppose you’ll rule the city by dint of the city needing you to function.”

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“Needing you to function?” Sam asked.

“I would make sure to own enough of the franchises and smaller businesses that ousting me would mean costing the city so many jobs that the local economy would collapse,” Emily said. She cleared her throat. “Hypothetically, I mean.”

“Whoa,” Teddy said. “The Boss is so smart! Where do we start though?”

“I think we’ve started already,” Athena said.

“We just need to keep on doing as the Boss says,” Trinity said.

“Wait, no,” Emily said. She waved her arms side-to-side in denial. “I haven’t been leading anyone into a life of villainy. You’re misunderstanding things.”

Sam grinned. “No, I don’t think anyone’s misunderstanding. So, I guess the next step is working hard to become staples of the community. Volunteer work, helping old ladies across the road, knocking down any criminals.”

“No!” Emily said. Then what she heard caught up to her. “Wait, I mean yes.”

“Yeah!” Teddy said. “Doing lame good stuff in the name of villainy.”

“I... okay,” Emily said. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say, but she felt like anything she did say would be twisted around regardless. She bounced to her feet. “Let’s head back home.”

Teddy smacked the table twice. “Meeting adjourned!” she declared.

The other girls scrambled out of their seats, and Emily noted that the dust from the seats stayed on them. She patted down her own pants, then glanced around the train car. “What are we going to do about this place?” she asked.

“Boring thing is nothing,” Sam said. “Smart thing... probably figure out a way to get it closer to the school, then use it as a sort of mobile base?”

“That’s the smart idea?” Emily asked.

Sam shrugged. “You’re going to need a place to stay one day that isn’t the dorm. I don’t know how you’re cramming this many girls in one small room as it is. I find my room a bit small, and I’m alone in there. What’s going to happen when you get even more sisters?”

Emily shuddered at the thought. That was reaching a critical number of knees and elbows that would poke at her while she slept. “You’re right. But I don’t know if this is the best place for that.”

“Well, spruce it up a bit then,” Sam said.

“I don’t mind cleaning if it’s a villain's lair,” Athena said. “That’s the cool kind of cleaning.”

“There’s no such thing as cool cleaning,” Teddy grumped. “Just wipe the dust off the beds, it’ll be fine.”

“That’s nasty,” Athena said. “Why am I the only clean sister?”

“Come on,” Emily said. “We can see about cleaning this place some other time. I think it would be nice to get back home.”

“And eat,” Trinity said.

“And... yeah, we need to grab something to eat too,” Emily agreed. She was a little hungry herself, now that she paid attention. Feeding all of her sisters would be a further drain on her money, but maybe with her new protection racket things would ease up.

She closed her eyes. It was hard enough to convince her sisters not to be villainous without immediately accepting things like protection rackets as viable ways of earning money.

The group left the train the same way they entered it. Somehow, the dark, unlit tunnels weren’t as scary the second time around. They had discovered what hid in the depths, and it wasn’t all that bad.

Climbing back onto the platform proved more difficult.

Sam was the more athletic between herself and Emily. She leapt grabbed the lip of the platform and pulled herself up until she could kick a leg over the side.

Emily grabbed a Trinity and helped her up, then did the same for the next. The two helped her third body up, dirtying the front of her outfits in the process.

Then Emily found herself stuck in the pit until Teddy turned into a bear and hoisted her up by biting her belt from the back.

Once they were all up, they headed back through the station and out the side door. Being in the sun again was blinding, but also relieving. “Okay,” Emily said. “Let’s grab a bite, and then back home.”

That, of course, was the moment where her phone decided to buzz, then start ringing.

Emily picked it up, saw the incoming call from her mom, then noticed the twenty-nine missed messages. “Ah, crud.”

***