Chapter 13

“Tiff, hold that thought.”

Victoria’s eyes lit up like she’d come up with a real hare-brained scheme and she held up a finger to stop Tiff from complaining as she quickly got out of the car. Victoria took two huge strides, bounding up to their front door, and yelled inside.

“Mom, I’m going out for a drive!”

Melissa’s powerful voice floated back out.

“Are you going to be eating with us?”

“Yes! Oh, and I’m taking Tiff with me!”

“Is she done with her homework?”

Victoria glanced back at Tiff, who blanched. She shook her head and answered.

“No.”

Victoria nodded in understanding.

“Yes!”

“Alright. As long as you’re back by 6!”

“We will be!”

Victoria flew back into the car and slammed her door behind her. She grinned back at Tiff mischievously.

“Are you gonna sit back there and let me chauffeur you around? Or are you going to sit up here with me?”

Tiff rolled her eyes and quickly relocated herself.

“I’m not done, you know,” she sighed, buckling in.

“Yeah, but Mom wouldn’t let you go, and you’re not gonna tell her yes.”

“But Tori, what are we actually doing?”

“I dunno!” Victoria said cheerily. “I just thought it would do you good to get out and clear your head. Tiff, you just Awakened, and you’ve been nothing but a tight ball of yarn.”

“And you think going for a drive will help me relax?”

“You’d be surprised,” Victoria grinned.

​

The thing about Victoria, and now that Tiff thought about it, Amy and her Mom too, was that they were all very free-spirited. She felt a sudden rush of affection for their dad, trying his best to keep a level head in a sea of madness. Tiff must have inherited her stoicism from him.

As Victoria said, they did just…drive around. Tiff really did think her sister had an ulterior plan hidden beneath her smile, but as they turned down random streets and drove through various parking lots, it became clear Victoria was very much going with the flow. She pointed out random places as they drove, either familiar landmarks both of them took for granted, or else something Victoria must have discovered in all her travels. They parked along a shady street next to a golf course and watched a group of four tee off…to very mixed results.

“That guy ain’t a [Golfer],” Victoria shook her head.

“Yes, but he gets to drive the golf cart,” Tiff said sagely.

“True,” Victoria agreed. Both girls stared at the golf cart, more interested in it than the golfers themselves. There was something to be said for golf carts. They were like…magical little cars. Or so they seemed to Tiff.

After a few minutes, Victoria drove them on. They passed by her guild, and Tiff wondered if it was possible to utilize the same cloaking technology the Roughnecks used to hide their office in plain sight. Honestly, Victoria didn’t know. The office had been there for a very long time and she didn’t know who built it. She wasn’t sure whether it was a pioneer of engineering from the mid-1850s or as recent as their parents’ generation. For all she knew, the guild had always been there, but it only got a mundane facelift from the property manager recently. Either way, as fascinating as it was, they couldn’t stick Tiff’s core inside. Not all of her coworkers were as bright on the Greyscale as Victoria was; they’d find it for sure.

Their next stop saw them cruising downtown. In comparison to Downtown LA, there weren’t any towering skyscrapers. The biggest building was actually a vacant, multi-story complex that was supposed to be a hotel, but the owners pulled out when they realized the proposed shopping center around it didn’t quite fit their clientele. Several offices rented out a few of the floors, but strangely, the abandoned look didn’t drive away everyone else. Some hoodlums had taken it upon themselves to scale the 10-story building and graffiti the top 4 floors. Either somebody in city planning was secretly a fan of abstract art, or they crunched the numbers and realized how much money it would cost to clean up, so they left it. The neighborhood rolled with the “urban grunge” look and built a trendy outlet mall full of places that sold ripped shirts and jeans that had gone through the wash one too many times.

Victoria eventually pulled them into the parking lot of the old wax museum. The place had long since closed down, and Tiff couldn’t remember if there was ever a point in her lifetime that it was actually open. Part of her wondered if breaking in and placing her core among the wax dummies would keep it safe…but that would mean she’d need to wander through the terrifying place if she ever wanted to visit it.

“Why don’t they do something with this place?” Tiff asked as she fought off a case of the shivers. Just because she couldn’t be intimidated by other people didn’t mean she couldn’t scare herself witless. “If they can’t reopen it, why don’t they sell it? I’m sure somebody would want to buy it. It’s on the main road! Or at the very least bulldoze it. Just thinking about wax people frozen in the darkness gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

“I don’t really know,” Victoria answered. “Maybe they can’t? It might be a historic monument. Years and years ago, a real-life villain made this place their lair. They had the power to bring their creations to life; they had a whole army of wax soldiers. I think that was back in the 30s. Several horror movies were filmed here from the 50s to 80s; one of them might have started as a documentary.”

“Tori,” Tiff asked hesitantly. “What exactly does it mean to be a Villain? I used to think the Greyscale was very black-and-white, but now…I don’t know what to think.”

“Oof,” Victoria sighed, leaning back in her seat. “That’s a loaded question. Most people would agree with you that Heroes and Villains can be labeled as good and evil. I don’t think it’s so cut-and-dry. I don’t know who said it, if I was reading a book or listening to the tv, but I heard something interesting once. Most Villains think they are doing the right thing. With the exception of legitimate psychopaths like serial killers and people who simply want to watch the world burn, most people are trying to do what they can to make the world a ‘better’ place.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not justifying some of the most atrocious behavior humanity has ever seen. But in their minds, they are doing what they think is right for humanity. And, to some of them, they think they’re the only ones willing to take that extra step and do what typical Heroes aren’t willing to do. You take away the morality of a Hero and a Villain, and really you’re just left with two people willing to fight for their ideals.”

Tiff slumped in her seat and Victoria gave her a wry smile.

“I know that’s probably not what you wanted to hear. The world’s a messy place, and that’s not even getting into how Vigilantes fit into everything. What do you do with a Hero who’s willing to kill somebody to stop a bad guy? Are they really a hero? What do you do with cops? For a profession that, on paper, is supposed to do good, to serve and protect the innocent, there’s a lot of messed-up police out there. It’s not as simple as when we were kids, dreaming about becoming [Fire Fighters] or [Astronauts].”

“I thought the system wouldn’t let a Hero kill people,” Tiff frowned. Victoria shook her head.

“Not all Heroes are ‘heroes’. Not a single person on this planet can accurately be judged on appearances alone. That’s how you end up with labels and stereotypes. Plenty of real-life Heroes are rotten to the core and don’t deserve their lofty title. But when talking about people abusing their power in the worst of ways, the system won’t let them get too far.

“We’ve got laws that allow for ‘sacrifices for the greater good’ during extreme circumstances, and lawyers are really good at muddying the waters between what’s right and wrong. Technicalities and good publicity can take you places. But the System has its own idea for what’s acceptable and what isn’t.

“A Hero isn’t ever going to get away with literal murder. Even if top journalists try excusing it with Pulitzer Prize-worthy sophistry and wordplay, the System won’t care. If a Hero actively makes the conscious decision to kill somebody else, even in a dire situation like facing off against a Supervillain threatening the lives of millions of people, the System won’t let them continue being a Hero after taking ‘the easy way’ out. At best they’d be shifted to a Vigilante, which is the top-end of Neutral on the Greyscale, and at worst their Class would change entirely to ‘Murderer’.”

“So,” Tiff nodded seriously, “What does that actually mean?”

“It means we live in a messy world, kiddo,” Victoria sighed. She ruffled the top of Tiff’s head while they stared at the run-down facade of the Wax Museum, before eventually moving on.

Victoria drove them past several interesting places, such as the small strip of storefronts connected to Knott’s Berry Farm that all had that “Old West” theme going on, before rounding around through Downtown Disney, or at least the small part they could drive through, and calling it a day.

Tiff amused herself with all the places she could stick her core, though none of them were very serious. She couldn’t place it in an amusement park, if for no other reason than that those places hired private security of their own and she’d get sniffed out in a heartbeat. The tallest buildings they passed weren’t skyscrapers, and they couldn’t even really be called “towers”. As a Supervillain, it would not do if her penthouse lair wasn’t the tallest building around.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

They couldn’t even lock it securely in a bank…because Tiff was only 16 and didn’t have a vault. She didn’t even have her own account, let alone a safety deposit box, which was more than she could afford to pay for monthly anyway. She’d need to resort to crime just to pay to keep her core safe.

Now that Tiff was thinking about it, villainy was an expensive occupation. First, she needed a secure place to put her core. That meant a lair protected by underlings. Hired thugs couldn’t be cheap. Where did one find legitimate minions, anyway? Was there a job agency out there helping unemployed lackeys? Maybe they’d give her a discount since she was a Supervillain.

“Hey, how about we pick up dessert for everyone?” Victoria asked. Tiff shook herself from her thoughts and perked up.

“Ice cream?” She asked, hopeful. Actually, how about they skip dinner entirely and just eat ice cream?

“Maybe,” Victoria laughed. “It depends on what they’ve got. I was thinking of swinging by the convenience store down the street.”

Tiff agreed. If she wasn’t allowed to drown her sorrows in a gallon of rocky road, the convenience store was a good second choice.

Sometimes, in the middle of the summer when Victoria had a day off, she would walk her little sisters down to the little strip mall two blocks over. It only took them a few minutes to walk there and they could waste so much time.

Unfortunately, other people also liked to hang around the shop. Their neighborhood had a couple of small-time gangs, nothing worth the authorities cracking down on, but all the stores had bars across their windows and iron shutters they could bring down after they closed.

The convenience store was an off-brand 7-11, called a “24-Heaven.” It was on the corner, sandwiching a laundromat between a tuxedo alteration place and, on the other end, a location that frequently cycled through businesses and was currently a to-go Chinese food place that also served donuts. They were open from 4 in the morning until just after 1 pm, so Tiff wasn’t sure how long they would last.

The 24-Heaven was a bit special because it was more than a simple liquor mart. It really did embody the “convenience” of a convenience store, having a tiny bit of everything. There was, of course, all the booze in the coolers against the back wall and a few sections of tobacco products behind the counter, but it also had an aisle of greeting cards and stationery, as if somebody was really going to waltz in there and find a get-better-soon card to send to somebody after they got mugged.

More importantly, it had a row of pre-made foods like sandwiches, hot dogs, cheap burgers, and ramen that could be tossed into a microwave. And, to top it off, there was a slurpee machine with four flavors and a froyo dispenser that was perpetually out of order. Outside, they had two tables with chairs that were bolted to the ground, and along the wall visible through the window, next to the atm and the scratchers vending machine, were two old arcades. A Street Fighter machine and an NBA Jam.