Mr. Lorenzo drones on from his position at the whiteboard, his thick italian accent not enough to make his dry lecture bearable. I’m a good student, but even I can’t focus on him talking about the intricacies of metahuman effects on city architecture.

Ignoring his rambling, I chew on the eraser of my pencil absentmindedly. I’m forced to squint as I take in the sprawling schematic I’ve doodled in my notebook. A laser rifle sounds awesome, but a lethal one like this? What was I thinking?

I scratch out the designs for a red-hot laser focus, and start designing another beam. Non-lethal would have to focus on a single attack vector… but that’s still tough. Electricity to make muscles seize? Maybe, but if I accidentally hit somebody in the wrong place, I could cause serious damage. Malleable putty that would harden, locking them in place? All well and good… but if I covered their head, they’d suffocate.

As something in the back of my mind gets louder and louder, my hands instinctively try to swat away the noise, to no avail. I tear my eyes off of the page, looking up at- oh no.

“Megan. Please explain to us why Rith City began building downwards instead of upwards to expand their living space? I’m waiting.” Mr. Lorenzo asks, his tone suddenly sharp as a whip. I fumble for the right words, but something comes to mind. A half-remembered paragraph from one of my favorite comics…

“Uhm, is it because there was so much chaos from supervillains above ground that they had to move downwards for security?”

There’s a pregnant pause between my statement and his answer, his lips pressed into a thin line as I speak. “... No. It was because of territorial disputes with the sky-island above them…” he begins to explain, but I don’t hear a word of it.

All I can hear are the stifled giggles of my classmates around me at my wrong answer, practically jeers with how deep they dig into me. My pencil is left sitting on my table as I stare blankly down at my designs, before the ear-piercing shriek of the bell blots out my upset thoughts.

I push myself up to the ground and shuffle out, my bag slung over my back and my papers sorted into my already filled-to-the-brim folder. The frown on my face is quick to turn around, though, because the school day is over.

The hallway is filled with my fellow prisoners, all clamoring to get to the exit. I am, too, until I see someone out of the corner of my eye. With her long, luxurious jet-black hair and tan skin, she sticks out like a sore thumb amongst everyone else.

When I come into her vision, her dour expression lights up and a smile blooms on her face. “Megan! C’mere, girl- I haven’t seen you all day!” she chirps, wrapping me into a tight hug faster than I can blink. We stay like that for not long enough, the warmth surrounding me like a blanket and fading just as fast. My smile is equally bright now, listening to Kayte talk all about her day in school. “You should have seen my group presentation, Maggs! I totally killed it out there- you doubted me when I said we could do a science presentation about the thermodynamics of making sunny-side up eggs, but Ms. Keller ate it up! Literally, that is- she loved the eggs, you know her.”

I chuckle at her rambling, but I glance towards the exit of the school anxiously even as I’m enjoying our conversation. “Well, you got me there, Katie-” I start, before she interrupts me. “Say it! I was right, and you were…”

“Wrong.” I finish, before we break out into giggling. After we both recover, she springs a question on me. “So, Maggs- that new issue of ‘Professor Terror’ comes out today, right? You gonna tell me how he conquers Z-Opolis?”

My grin widens at the mention of Captain Comet -the actual name, she just jokes that all I talk about is Professor Terror, which is true because he’s awesome- but it lessens when I remember my plans for tonight.

“No can-do, Kayte. I’ve got tons of homework over the weekend- you know how it is. Ms. Keller is a tyrant in Statistics.”

Kayte groans, but holds her hands up when I raise an eyebrow at her antics. “I get it, it’s not your fault, Maggs. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine all alone.”

After she mock-wipes a tear out of her eye, I turn around and make a ‘hmph’ sound for comedic effect. Step after step, I get closer to the exit. When I pass through it, it feels like the air immediately clears- the thick tension in my shoulders lessening heavily. I let out a long sigh, before I dust myself off and prepare for my Plan.

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Plan with a capital ‘P’, because it’s just that important. Today… the most diabolical, evil supervillain in recorded history is about to reveal herself. Today… is the debut of the Mechanism!

Well, more like tonight, actually. With tweaking the AI of my boxbots, making sure my suit is shining, and it being around 3:00 already, we’re looking at maybe… a midnight heist?

While I'm distracted by thoughts of my upcoming supervillainy, I idly take in the sleepy town around me. Each house is modeled in its own distinct way, a melting pot of architecture that somehow still stays within a single theme... that being boring. Whether they're made of brick, wood, concrete, or something else, they still manage to fill the air with a sort of choking tepidness. The grass is cut to different lengths in every lawn, every one its own little world. Rocks dot the landscape, pebble paths and sturdy trees jutting out of the ground. Fences block off gardens, and trimmed hedges do the same in a few scant places. But it's still... mediocre, even for the personality it shows. Nothing like... Mantis City.

I snap myself out of my daydreaming. I don't have time for that, not now. Slipping out, and then back into my house undetected will be… very, very hard, though. I gulp as I look at the sprawling mansion in front of me, the Porter family home. Dad and Mom, being who they are, didn’t spare any expense on the house. But more importantly…

They didn’t spare any expense with the security system. Luckily, I’ve got more than a knack for tech. The grand wooden doors open in front of me as I approach, letting me into the immaculately cleaned house. Mom’s vases and flowers dot the walls, at odds with the delicate crystal chandeliers hanging from the multicolored gem-like ceiling. Somehow, the two of them manage to make their eccentric decor styles work, in some odd way. And that’s not even bringing me into the equation.

With a left turn, the twisting of a door handle, and a couple steps, I’m in… The Laboratory! More accurately called my room. It’s a mess, my clothes on the floor and my computer still churning and grinding as it compiles the software I’d stayed up all last night perfecting for my power suit.

The bronze-like helm of said power suit is on the table, wires sticking out from its gutted internals. The headlamps I’ve fastened to either side are painted over with a violet tinge. The face is simply a screen, wrapped around the front- I don’t need to expose my face, since I have cameras carefully concealed on the underside of both ‘cosmetic’ outcroppings on my helmet.

The suit, stored in my closet, is a sight to behold when I swing open the door concealing it. Purple gear iconography dots the suit, over the shoulderplates and where my stomach would be. The suit itself isn’t actually all bronze- some of it is spelter, which was cheaper for me to get, and to make. But the outer shell, and most of the important internals, are coated with aluminum bronze for its toughness. The copper and tin alloy you’d expect to see is actually rather scarce in the design.

Then… there is my mechanical army, the boxbots! I giggle as I look over their silly spelter designs, a small bit of schadenfreude coloring my smile. They’re little cubes with square screens at the front, happily displaying a charming purple smiley face on their monitor. Besides that, they have eight spindly legs on their underside to move around, and a single paintball-gun attachment affixed to their heads like turrets.

It wouldn’t stop anyone for long, but it’d be a pain in the ass to get my specially-mixed acrylic paint out of my foes' costumes.

My mechanical army salutes as I approach them, their little smiling faces turning into ASCII angry faces that glow a menacing red when I snap. They’ve got very little real intelligence, barely at the level of an ant- but they’re still cute, not to mention functional as minions.

Picking up my toolbox and setting it down on my desk, I’m hunched over within a minute, my hands already ablaze as I get everything presentable. The helmet is done first- I went and finished the armor last night, but forgot about the most important stylistic choices for the helmet- and then I screw open the panels on the top of each boxbot and check their circuitry for anything knocked out of place or miswired.

When I’m done perfecting everything, a few hours have already passed. Mom and Dad should be calling me down for dinner, but… they’re late as always.

Now, to get out… the CCTV cameras hidden around and outside the house are set to only record when it detects an unknown person on the premises. That shouldn’t be a problem, though, since I’m on the allowed list.

Luckily… Dad keeps his password on a sticky note next to his computer, so it wasn’t tough to go into the software and remove me from the night-exit silent alarm. I’m honestly shocked he figured out how to set that up, but luckily I triple-checked everything to make sure I don’t get caught.

As for transporting my suit? I already have a plan for that, and it’s… well, it’s not impressive, but it’s effective. There’s a wagon in the garage that I can use to cart it outside, and then I can don my suit behind the fences in a blindspot where our cameras are blocked by neatly-trimmed hedges.

So all that’s left… is to actually do this. I breathe in and out slowly while I glance up at my Professor Terror poster, a faint smile on my face as I calm down. My breathing becomes soft, my roiling emotions simmering down to gentle waves.

I look to the giant bookcase hugging my wall, filled with comics centered around him and other supervillains. I look at the numerous books I have on the history of supervillainy, the most evil do-badders around all cataloged in alphabetical order. And soon… I’ll be among them.

It’s finally happening. It’s time for the rise… of the Mechanism!