“C-Chief…?”

“I thought I had said ‘shut up’. I didn’t?”

Lawrence slowly turned to face Mika. In his face, there was a charming smile that missed his dead-cold eyes by a big mark. Something akin to an evil miasma leaked from his every pore, and the shadows he cast behind him grew disproportional to the rest of the room.

Mika trembled, and a shiver ran through her spine. This was bad. Really bad. It was a we-ran-out-of-toilet-paper-class catastrophe. Not even the Feline King of Destruction emitted this kind of fearsome aura.

She nodded very, very slowly.

“Great! Now, care to sit down?” Lawrence took his place on the throne-like armchair while pointing Mika to sit down in the couch.

Wondering how someone so dangerous could have such a calm, cheerful voice, as if attending an old friend, she tried her best not to give up on her knees as she did just what she was told. She was feeling some sort of external pressure that made it slightly harder to breathe and move in general.

“Excellent. Care for some cookies?”

“Uhm, no thanks?”

It happened in less than a second. Lawrence jumped out of his armchair and nearly blinked behind of Mika.

“Wrong.” His tone was stone-cold now. He tapped her shoulder, and despite he made not a single attempt to attack her, her alarm bells fired off all the red, telling her her life was in danger.

“You see, nobody refuses cookies. This is a natural law, a rule of society. Just the regular when you visit someone else. You feel me?”

She nodded in silence. Lawrence turned her around slowly until she was looking straight at him.

“It’s also a rule of society that, when in someone else’s house, you will behave properly, and pay a modicum amount of respect to them. Am I wrong?”

She shook her head, and Lawrence nodded.

“Exactly. So, let me ask you, Mikaella. If you know such things… why on the damnablest mother Earth were you sleeping inside my couch? Not only that, but now that I look around, I’m finding plastic wrappers and crumbles all around the house. Several unused lights are turned on, too. So, let me ask you: is there a reason in particular for this?”

Mika said nothing.

“It wasn’t a rhetoric question, Mikaella.”

“…lived in a house...”

“Mind saying it again?”

Mika squirmed uncomfortably, and she spoke once again, embarrassed by her own answer.

“I… Never lived on a proper house.”

“…”

“…”

…

Breaking the abrupt silence, Lawrence smacked his forehead so hard it would probably leave on a mark later.

You stupid, cold, insensitive waste of breathable air!!! Of course that’s the reason! How could you forget?! She had been living on the streets for this long, of course that would be the reason why!!! You are the one who deserves to be scolded, not her!

Ugh, now I feel like shit for rubbing salt on her wound… Of course she didn’t want to speak aloud! Who the hell would be proud of being a homeless?! You’re a jerk, an absolute scumbag who deserves the worst of treatments! She’s practically still a child and you’re behaving like this?! For someone who boasts lots of charisma and an inherent ability to read the room, that’s quite the fuckup!!!

Shit… What can I do?

Lawrence looked at Mika again. She looked ashamed and her cheeks were slightly red, but she didn’t look like she was holding back the urge to cry or something like that.

Thanks the Lord she’s a strong girl… Fuck. I have to apologize, and make it up to her… But I can’t just go back after playing the unfathomable mystic criminal! Shit, why did I choose that from all roles to scout her out?! I should have just played the charismatic villain instead…

…

Hmmm?

Wait a second…

Who said I can’t do both?

At this time, a figurative lightbulb was lightened above Lawrence’s head. A way to save him future trouble, and make it up for Mika, both on one.

He took a deep breath, and then sighed.

“Mikaella. You have experienced the way life feels for me. How did you feel about it?”

His tone now less dangerous, yet equally serious, slightly calmed Mika.

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“Tell me how you really felt.”

How she felt? She herself didn’t know that very well.

With the kind of life she had always lived, she was used to difficulty. Nobody ever lend a hand to her. Nobody ever cared about her, not in the slightest. Having lived like this for her entire life, she couldn’t say hatred or disinterest hurt her any longer.

But…

Even so. Even if the fact of facing the whole world all alone didn’t feel painful. There was always this part, this teeny tiny piece of her who felt disappointed.

Ah, is this life? Is this really what I’m living for?

Live to suffer. Each day a new struggle, never feeling like she was going anywhere. This couldn’t be called living but rather just surviving. Was there a moment of her life that she really enjoyed? She didn’t think so. Getting out of the orphanage was more of a relief, yes, but calling it “happiness” would be inaccurate.

In a word, she felt like it wasn’t really worth it.

This were her honest feelings about the life she had been living up until now.

But yesterday (yes, it felt like a lot longer but it really had been just yesterday) this man had helped her out.

The truth was, she couldn’t understand why.

She had never met him before, except for that time where she stole his wallet. Not that that counted as a really good first impression. Moreover, it was risky to blatantly lie to the police. Even more so if you are a freshly awakened Villain.

For what she had heard, this man had the ability to find others to fill in the spot. Yet, he chose her despite the dangers this meant.

When she asked him about it, this was his answer.

“We are both fellow Villains. I felt a sense of comradeship.”

Comradeship. To help someone else, not because you need, just because you can. This was an alien prospect for her. And yet, even with this half-baked, completely unsatisfying answer, she felt happy.

Someone finally lend her a hand.

Looking back at that moment, she was sure that the fact that she had been treated like a human being for the first time on her life felt one thousand times better than any bed, tasty food or TV program she had experienced at Lawrence’s house.

A sense of belonging. To feel like she mattered, to live instead of survive.

Actually, now that I think about it, there was a name for this feeling, right?

Even if it felt to embarrassing. This was her real answer:

“I felt happy.”

For the first time in her life, Mikaella Brown had experienced happiness, the joy of living.

And now that she knew how it felt, she would do whatever was within her reach to make sure she never lost that happiness again.

Lawrence sighed again, hearing her honest feelings. She wasn’t faking it. This much was obvious. Mika didn’t have much of an expressive face, what with the airhead expression of her, but even so, he could tell she enjoyed all those moments.

“Do you want to keep that happiness?”

“Yeah.”

“…”

Lawrence closed his eyes, pondering. After a short silence, he opened them again, and stared at her, dead serious, a confident grin plastered on his face.

“Understood. I will make sure to protect that happiness of yours. In exchange… You will help me with my goal, and you will follow my rules at all costs. Are we clear?”

Once again, a twitch of happiness ran through her whole self, and Mika met Lawrence’s gaze.

“Aye aye, chief!!!”

This time, unlike the before, her acceptance sounded sincere.

“Great. Then, follow me. We have a lot to discuss.”

And so, Mikaella Brown was spared from a frightening moment, and in exchange, Lawrence Lakewood gained the respect and loyalty of his very first minion.

* ••••

“What I’m about to show you now, Mikaella, is a secret that has passed from generation to generation in my family.”

With a stoic expression, Lawrence stated what sounded like the prologue for an RPG game, as he took an old-looking key from the key rack. It was a silver key with azure-blue wing details, one of them was slightly twisted aside like someone had handled it roughly.

“Why do I feel like I’ve seen this key before” Mika muttered.

“Must be your imagination. Now, follow me… Oh, you would do well in picking a flashlight. The counter at the left, back of the kitchen.”

Mika nodded and, after picking up the lantern, she followed Lawrence to what appeared to be the house’s basement. It was mostly filled with bulking piles of unused things covered in blankets, and some cobweb batches turned really dense here and there. The lamps hanging from the ceiling gave the whole room an overall spooky feeling, but nothing worth someone’s interest.

Lawrence put his ear in the west wall, knocking on it a couple of times before whispering “aha” and confidently putting the silver key in what appeared to be a small bump in the walling. To Mika’s surprise, it fit. He unlocked some hidden mechanism and pushed open the piece of wall, which turned to be a cleverly disguised door.

“Secret basement?!”

“No” Lawrence instantly replied. Shit, memories of my childhood days are flooding in… Once upon a time, Laurent had locked him in this secret room, under the pretext that it was a ‘secret basement’ and he was a ‘spy’ to be interrogated.

“This, Mikaella, is a marvelous room that us the Lakewood family have kept in custody for three generations. It has many names. ‘The Beer Room’, ‘Where you hang out until your wife stops throwing things at you’, ‘A place to bring your girl’…”

Oi, stop it with those judgmental eyes will ya? I didn’t come up with the names myself!

He cleared his throat and ignored Mika’s light brown eyes staring at him, as he turned on a switch and light was made inside the room.

“In any case, we will use this room for any future strategic meetings. I will have to do something about cleaning later… Make yourself comfortable” he gestured to the furniture in the room. There were several comfy-looking cushions here and there, a layback couch, another sofa, and a pair of rocking chairs. Three of the four corners of the room were full of counters, racks and cabinets, some of them empty but, some full of useless stuff. There was a portable cooler in the center of the room, just below a wide coffee table in front of an old flatscreen TV.

Mika laid back in the couch while Lawrence claimed his spot in one of the rocking chairs.

“Very well… Let us begin, shall we?”

“Begin?” Mika tilted her head aside with a zero expression.

Meh, Emma does it better.

“Hmm. Let’s see… Mikaella. We’ve mentioned before the fact that you were a meta. Let’s start with that. What is your alignment, and powers? And features, if you have unlocked any.”

“Oh, that. The sign thingy told me I’m a Villain, though I haven’t done a lot of villain stuff so far. Powers? I can go like puff! and I’m in my cozy home. But I can’t stay there for long. After a few seconds I go baf! and I’m… somewhere else? Depends of what I did in my home. It’s a bit boring though, it’s all in black and white.”

…Was I supposed to understand any of that?

“Care to explain it again? In a way I can understand, please.”

Mika scrunched up her face, and, after a few seconds, made a second try.

“I can disappear in a puff of smoke, and reappear in the same place, but it’s all black and white and everything stands still. And there are these cool shadows everywhere, like mist. After a few seconds, I’m forced back to the normal world.”

… Hmm… So, dimensional gate? Or more like, time stop?

“Wait, you said ‘depends on what I did in my home’? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Mika sighed, as if defeated, and stood up. The couch made a puffing sound.

“Why don’t I just show you?”

…

And the next second, Mikaella Brown had disappeared from The Beer Room.

…

……

………

There’s just no way to make that phrase sound cool, is there?