The city of Rottenheim was home to much unrest, with so many supervillains wrecking havoc unopposed. With no superheroes around to put them in their place, the civilians had to turn to the next best thing: Politicians. Obviously a lot more unreliable, but there weren't many other options. No one felt this stress more than Mayor Wendy Witlass, who was currently in the middle of a public speaking, broadcasted live. All the people of her city were talking over one another, desperate to have their complaints heard.
"E-everyone, please, one at a time!" the mayor spoke, trying to defuse the situation as much as she could.
“Mayor, please tell us, has there been any progress on correcting the city’s supervillain problem?” a reporter asked, making Wendy sweat even harder.
“Uh, w-well, yes, slow progress… Which is… s-still progress…” she stammered, clearly showing a lack of confidence that the townsfolk did not appreciate. “But, the situation should get under control if all goes according to plan…”
“Even the Mastermind?” an odd, raspy voice asked from behind her.
“Y-yes, of course!” she answered. “Just because he’s ‘top villain’ or whatever doesn’t mean he has any actual power over the office.”
“Is that so?” the voice asked again as the speaker stepped into the scene, standing right behind the mayor.
Wendy turned her head slowly, seeing a gruesome green face grinning back at her, alongside his three lackeys; One of which was just scrolling through her phone, uninterested in the situation, one of which was shaking nervously and clearly did not want to be there, and one of which was just holding up a sign that read “HI DAD” while he waved to the cameras. As for the Mastermind himself, he only stared back at the mayor for a few seconds, before he finally parted his lips and said:
“Boo.”
In response, Wendy did what any level-headed mayor would do… She immediately went into a panic attack, stammering hysterically and fainting. The Mastermind motioned to Claire for her to get her off the stage, and looking for any opportunity she could to not be on camera, she telekinetically lifted the mayor up and left. The aspiring conqueror took her place at the podium she was speaking at, looking out over the crowd of Rottenheim’s residents.
“Hello, my pitiful subjects. I’m sure you’re delighted to see me again!” he announced, only for the crowd to boo him, which he revelled in. “Yes, yes, thank you. Well, just thought I'd drop in to drop some new commandments on you all!"
The top villain took out a long list from a hatch in his armor and began reciting it from top to bottom, consisting of many ridiculous new commandments. Such as playing polka or country music being punishable offenses, no one being allowed to spit in his general direction, and turning Sundays into "Statue Sundays", where each one would be spent building a statue in his honor, and each one after that polishing it.
As the Mastermind was going over his list of new commandments for the people of Rottenheim, he was blissfully unaware of what kind of people were watching the broadcast at home. One in particular had an eye for the would-be conqueror, as she sat alone in a dark, damp corridor beneath the city, lounging on a blood red couch and stroking a bat she kept as a pet. As she watched the Mastermind on the screen, she parted her lips to reveal a set of fangs, biting her bottom lip sensually.
"Look at him, Colmillo..." the woman sighed to her pet. "Is he not the pinnacle of villainy? Any woman would be lucky to be by his side as their evil queen..."
As the Mastermind was still going over his list, he failed to notice that Marcus was leaning on his podium, absent-mindedly letting his heat melt it. He only took notice of this when his list spontaneously caught fire, causing him to frantically shout and drop it, with the whole stage erupting into flames. This in turn caused Claire to panic, which only made things worse as her psychic powers kicked in and flung debris straight at her boss.
"STOP! STOP IT, YOU IDIOTS!" the Mastermind yelled over the chaos, right before he was knocked unconscious by his own podium, thanks again to Claire's panicked powers. Ellen just stood back and recorded everything with her phone, making for at least one person amused by the dire situation.
"And look! He wastes his time with those three idiotas he's got serving him! When he could have someone like I, ROMANTA!" she proclaimed, standing up and gripping her pet tighter than she should.
In that moment, a DING went off from the next room over, catching her attention. She looked over at her watch to check the time, and cracked a wicked grin.
"And soon, he will."
Travelling from one chamber to the next, she came up to a cauldron of a boiling, hot pink liquid. She carefully siphoned it into a tube, waiting for the concoction to cool. Once it was, she drew her fangs and bite into it, sucking it as if her teeth were straws. Once every drop was drained from it, she motioned her pet bat to return to her, only to forcibly grab it by the scruff of its neck.
"Lo siento, bebe." she said before poking her fang into its neck, injecting a bit of the potion into the tiny creature. She then forced it to look over at a moth trapped in a cobweb.
Not a second after their eyes met, the bat felt a warmness over it's tiny body. It's heart beat faster, and it's face gained a bright red blush, all before it wiggled its way out of Romanta's hands and flew toward its target at full speeds. But rather than feasting on prey, the bat instead began smothering the helpless bug in kisses, to which they couldn't decide which would've been worse.
"SUCCESS!" Romanta boasted with a cheerful laugh. "Mastermind, prepare to meet your betrothed!"
The following day after his ambushed presentation became horribly humiliating, the Mastermind had forced his lackeys for a ride on a hovering vehicle he constructed in his spare time. Marcus was simply content to watch the view out the window, even if Rottenheim didn't really offer anything pretty to look at. He was so lost in thought that he didn’t notice magma dripping from his fingers and leaving a hole in the floor until Claire tapped him on the shoulder and pointed it out. Not wanting to get in trouble again, he looked around for something to cover it up, with Claire quickly offering him her cape.
Soon, the four aspiring villains arrived at their destination: An old factory on the outskirts of the city that was fenced off, covered with signs detailing how it was slated for demolition. While the Mastermind grinned with evil delight, Ellen just looked unimpressed, and the remaining two minions just looked confused.
"Alright, you three!" the Mastermind proclaimed. "Consider this your first big heist!"
"Wow, I'm so honored." Ellen said, the sarcasm in her voice being front and center.
"Uh, why this place, boss?" Marcus asked. "Looks like no one's worked here in years. Thought you always liked a challenge with this sort of stuff?"
"Yes, but some of us have proven they can't quite handle a challenge. Not naming names except for Ellen, Marcus, and Claire." he explained as he got up from his seat and moved towards them. "Somehow, you three need to learn the basics of supervillainy! To be cunning, merciless, and most of all, observa - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH - !"
THUD!
Without much caution of his own, the Mastermind had stepped onto Claire's cape, falling through the hole in the floor. Sucking air through his teeth, Marcus leaned over and looked down, seeing his superior face-planted into the ground below.
"You okay, boss?" he asked.
"Marcus... You come down here first... SO I CAN PUNCH YOU!" the Mastermind answered.
One by one, the three minions dropped down from their boss' ride, and even with Marcus helping the Mastermind back to his feet, he remained true to his word and punched him in the arm. Feeling very irritable now, the Mastermind simply motioned to the three to follow him inside the abandoned factory, all of them unaware of an alluring figure having followed them, watching from the shadows.
With one hearty kick, the Mastermind knocked the doors clean off their hinges, shattering the chains that were keeping them shut, granting him and his minions access to the factory... the decrepit, dusty, worn down factory that not even a cockroach would call home in. It was safe to say that only he was excited to be here.
"Is there even anything worth stealing in this place?" Ellen complained.
"Well, you never know when I'll need some spare parts." he answered.
"Yeah. Like for your head." she retorted under her breath.
"Very funny, Ellen." said the Mastermind, not actually amused. "Now, you two, go start collecting. Claire, you're coming with me."
"D-do I have to?" Claire asked, before she was answered by her boss grabbing her by the wrist and dragging her away. "I guess I have to..."
Marcus and Ellen just exchanged glances, before the shadow woman just rolled her eyes and motioned him to follow. With a clear opening, Romanta came through the doors herself, clinging to the walls and using her cape to remain hidden as a conspicuous black lump on the wall. Thankfully, no one was around to notice her flimsy camouflage. She had one loving eye on the Mastermind, but one less admiring on the minion he was dragging with him, figuring she would have to take care of her before she could get close to him. The romantic villain then glanced over to the side, taking notice of Marcus starting to work on collecting anything he could find, and cracked a wicked grin as an idea came to her.
Speaking of which, the Mastermind had dragged Claire with him up a ladder and to a massive storage unit, where inside laid an old machine, once used to pump out parts for other machines. As Claire looked on with caution, the Mastermind greedily rubbed his hands together.
"Ooh, yes, there's bound to be something perfect for a doomsday device in there!" he chuckled. He pointed to the machine, turning to his lackey and saying "Claire, rip that sucker to shreds!"
"...I'm sorry, what?!"
"With your powers, Claire. Break it up and get them to the ship!"
"Isn't that illegal?" Claire asked, drawing even more ire from her boss.
"Yes, that's kind of the idea." the Mastermind answered, rubbing his forehead in annoyance.
"Uh, sir, I just don't think I'm comfortable with this..."
"Okay, look, Claire. Where I'm from, the life of evil is something all Dominians strive for! And if you strive for it to, then all good villains have to take the first step somewhere!" he began, despite the fact that she clearly was not striving for anything at the moment. "This is the kind of moment I've dreamed of since I emerged from my tube! To be able to lead minions in glorious conquest, where their spoils are grand, but not as grand as mine!"
The Mastermind started to ramble on, giving a hearty speech about the glories of villainy, none of which made any sense to Claire and failed to motivate her. He got so caught up in his own monologue, that it gave Romanta the perfect opportunity to sneak behind Claire without making a sound, suddenly grabbing her from behind and covering her mouth to make sure she couldn't let out a scream, before fleeing with her to a lower platform. Once in the perfect position, the villainess jabbed her teeth straight into Claire's neck, injecting her formula directly into her veins. She tried to force the psychic to turn her gaze toward Marcus, but it was here where she finally wiggled free and turned around, looking at her instead.
"WHO - WHAT IS WRONG WITH..." Claire exclaimed in shock, before she suddenly found herself unable to take her eyes off the vampire. "...y-you..."
A warm feeling suddenly came over Claire's body as Romanta remained frozen in place. Suddenly, she no longer saw an attacker before her, but instead a beautiful goddess who had blessed her presence. Her pupils grew three times their size as a sparkle lit up her eyes, her face turning a bright red, and her mind turned to mush as all she could focus on was her.
"H... uh... h-hi there..." stammered Claire, who tried to sheepishly twirl her hair, forgetting that she had none.
It didn't take long for Romanta to put two and two together to figure out what suddenly came over her.
"...You're a lesbian, aren't you?" the villain bluntly asked.
"Yeah... Especially for you..." Claire replied, followed by a fit of embarrassed giggling as a bright red blush lit up her face. "I-I'm sorry, that was so corny..."
Romanta just stared back at the psychic, who was now fully under her influence, for better or worse. It was evident this was not the first time this had happened when testing this power.
"Okay, I can work with this." she said as she pulled out an earpiece to hand to her. "A special 'earring' for you, uh... mi amor."
Claire's mind was too foggy to actually suspect anything, clouded with the sensation of love. As such, she gasped in awe and snatched it up, placing it on her own ear.
"Oh, wow!" she swooned. "It's so beautiful-"
"Si si, glad you like it, now let's go, I need you to do something for me." Romanta interrupted as she grabbed Claire's shoulders, shoving her out of their hiding spot.
With the chip in Claire's ear, Romanta swung her back onto the upper platform next to the Mastermind, who was too busy with his ranting to notice she was even gone in the first place.
"-and that is why being the middle child sucks!" he complained. "...Okay, I feel I got off track there, but I hope you got the picture, Claire."
"Remember, you have to get him alone for me. Got that?" Romanta spoke to Claire through the earpiece. Her voice made her feel giddy all over, giggling like a young girl at heart.
"Your voice is so pretty!" Claire said absent-mindedly, causing the Mastermind to pause and stare at her in confusion.
"Quit brown-nosing and get to work!" he snapped at her, again pointing to the big machine beneath them.
Claire held out her hands, emitting her psychic aura from them that wrapped around various points of the machine, ripping out a batch of parts that began floating in the air above them. The Mastermind was pleased, cracking a fiendish grin as he chuckled... only to be cut short when one of the pieces suddenly slammed itself into the floor by his feet, making him quickly jump to the side. This was followed by another, and another, and so on until Claire had used them all to form a heart with something written inside.
"'C + R'?" the Mastermind questioned as he looked up at Claire, only to see her shyly covering a part of her face and giggling again. Frustrated, he grabbed her by the collar of her cape, though she strangely didn't seem perturbed by it. "YOU'RE GOING TO NEED C-P-R IF YOU DON'T TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY! Now get back to collecting!"
"Oh YEAH, I could make her a whole monument!" she exclaimed as she reached out toward the machine again.
"You... Make who a what no-?"
The Mastermind released Claire, who immediately started giggling and twirling around in a happy-go-lucky dance, which only added to his confusion. A shadow enveloped the conqueror, and he looked up to see the entire machine being hoisted into the air by Claire's psychic powers, now suddenly being ripped apart and bent in various ways... before they started flying toward him. He tried his best to dodge, shouting at Claire to stop, only for him to get swept up by some metal chunks forcing him inside of a big, metal sculpture of a heart, over where Ellen was just scrolling through her phone instead of working, while Marcus was doing the heavy lifting of the two. Claire was thrilled with her work and wanted to show the target of her affection, but couldn't find her anywhere in sight.
"Where'd you go?" she asked as she started to leave the platform in search of her.
Where Romanta had gone was around the corridor close to Ellen, using her impeccable stealth to remain undetected by the shadow woman. This gave her the perfect opportunity to aim for Ellen's neck, sinking her fangs into it and quickly injecting her serum into her before disappearing back into the shadows, just before she could slap the area bitten.
"Damn mosquitos..." she muttered to herself.
Still remaining hidden, Romanta grinned, hoping she would glance toward Marcus. Instead, the Mastermind punched his way out of Claire's sculpture, which caught Ellen's attention instead. At first she was going to make another snide remark, but found herself lost for thought when here eyes landed on the Mastermind, bursting out of the metal case and shouting profanities in a way she found strangely attractive. Just like that, Ellen started feeling the same symptoms as her cohort, being her face glowing red, her pupils turning pink, and being suddenly unable to think of anything other than the alien before her.
It didn't take long for Romanta to realize what just happened.
And she did not like it.
"Well, that was a bust... as usual..." the Mastermind panted, finally calming down from his outburst. He then pointed to Ellen and motioned her his way. "Okay, Ellen, you're up! Come with me."
"With pleasure..." Ellen cooed in what sounded like a dreamy sigh.
Figuratively kicking herself for this sour turn of events, Romanta actually came out of hiding and tried to get between Ellen and the Mastermind, opening her cape up to appear imposing... only for her to be engulfed by a giant, shadowy hand and tossed over the lackey's shoulder like a discarded chip bag.
The Mastermind had approached a large door that had been blocked off with a metal plate bolted over it. He figured this would be a perfect opportunity for a different minion to realize the potential of their powers... it was a shame then, that he did not see any sign of said minion. This was because Ellen had formed herself into a shadow, molding and materializing her body right behind her boss while gazing at him lovingly.
"Where is she? ELLEN! GET OVER-!" the Mastermind shouted as he turned around, jumping back when he found himself face to face with Ellen. "GYAH! Stop doing that!"
"Whatever you say, stud." Ellen remarked.
"...And don't call me that, either, that's just weird."
"I got lots of other things to call ya anyway." she continued, wrapping a shadowy arm around his shoulders, much to his discomfort.
"Okay, good to know." he remarked, simply pushing her away.
He faced the blocked off doorway again, with Ellen using her shadow powers to slither around him seductively, making him unable to concentrate.
"Okay, Ellen, first you're going to infiltrate that area, then you're going to grab as much as you can hold, and then, you, uh..." the Mastermind began to explain, until he looked back at the shadow woman, noticing she was still giving him a flirtatious look. "And then you're going to stop looking at me like that!"
Next thing he knew, Ellen was cupping his helmet with an enlarged, shadowy hand, bringing herself uncomfortably close to the disturbed alien.
"And you expect me not to look at a stud like you that way? As if." she playfully cooed.
"Ellen, I have no idea what you're trying to do, but it's not gonna work so CUT IT OUT!" he shouted, trying to push her away. All of his attempts were in vein, as her shadow powers made her too slippery for him to fend off, eventually getting wrapped up like the prey of a snake in its coils, seeing her closing in on him with a chuckle. "ELLEN!"
Despite being a product of her own meddling, Romanta was seething with jealousy as she watched from afar, gritting her teeth and squeezing the metal bar with enough force to leave a dent in it. She was so furious over the situation that she didn't even turn to acknowledge Marcus standing right next to her.
"Hey, uh, do you work here?" he asked. "'Cuz, if you do, that makes this really awkward-"
Without even glancing at him, she grabbed his hand and bit him on the wrist, making him yelp in surprise in pain. Marcus was then shoved in the direction of Ellen, who was still trying to make advances on her boss. When he looked at Ellen, he went through the same song and dance as his fellow minions, eyes sparkling pink, face glowing red, and so on.
"Go get 'er, amante!" Romanta commanded as she gave him a shove in their direction. Next thing she knew, she was hoisted into the air by a psychic energy and flung upwards, back in the presence of Claire, who grabbed onto her hands.
"I found you!" the psychic cheered, releasing her telekinetic grip on her, which would've resulted in her plummeting to the ground if she wasn't holding her hands. Romanta was not nearly as happy to see her, as all she did was dangle her feet in panic.
As she struggled, the Mastermind too tried to break free of Ellen's tight grip on him to no avail. A love-stricken Marcus approached them, and with his boss being none the wiser, he turned to him as he kept trying to push her away.
"Marcus! Get her off of me!" he barked. Instead, what he did was take one of her free hands and gaze into her eyes.
"From the moment I laid my eyes on you ten seconds ago, I was suddenly lost in yours, like pools of warm cream." he confessed poetically, showing a side to him never seen before. "May I be so kind as to have your time tonight for a bewitching-"
"Shove off!" Ellen interrupted, enlarging her hand and pushing him away before going right back to cuddling up with her boss. "I got enough of a prize right here!"
"...Okay, whatever that was about, it's NOT HELPING, MARCUS!" the Mastermind scolded.
A sharp pain stabbed itself in the Magman's chest, crushed by rejection and what felt like mockery. But, with the inability to think straight - less so than usual - he channeled these raw emotions into an epic retort.
"No, I refuse to go down before such waste of love toward one who can't give back what he gets!" Marcus proclaimed. "You can't see how luck is on your side, to have her-!"
"What are you talking about, you moron?!" the Mastermind shouted
"I'm talking about how I love her!" Marcus retorted. "More than you ever could!"
"Wh... Love... SINCE WHEN?!"
"Since NOW!" he stated, stomping his foot on the ground to make a statement... and causing a massive geyser of lava to erupt before him, which soon after turned into a wave targeted at the Mastermind, which he only looked upon with a twitch in his eye.
KERSMASH!
The flow of lava effortlessly smashed its way through the closed off area, with the Mastermind screaming in tow before it flung him up against a support beam. With his armor now covered in kiss marks in one area and burn ones in another, the Mastermind just flopped forward, landing face-first into the concrete ground. Thinking he had defeated his boss, Marcus turned to Ellen, who had watched what happened in horror, getting down on one knee as if to propose to her while taking her hand again. Said hand then morphed into a boxing glove and decked him across the face, followed by Ellen suddenly wrapping around him and grabbing at his face, this time not so lovingly.
"HOW DARE YOU!" she screamed at him.
"Ow! Wait! Now we can be together!" Marcus pleaded.
"TOGETHER WITH YOU?!" she kept shouting. "I ONLY GOT EYES FOR HIM, YOU TWIT!"
Suddenly, their tussle was interrupted by a blast of green energy knocking them back. The Mastermind stormed back out in front of them with tattered armor and a furious grimace on his face.
"THAT'S! IT!" he snarled. "I don't know why everyone's suddenly gone insane, but I AM GONNA BEAT IT OUT OF ALL OF YOU!"
Marcus didn't hesitate to get back to his feet, beckoning him forward.
"If we must fight for her love, then so-!" he said, only to be interrupted once more, this time by the Mastermind screaming and tackling him to the ground.
The Mastermind held his minion in a headlock, with him struggling to fight back against his unexpected strength. It didn't take long for him to get the upper hand when he punched into the ground and sprayed more lava out of it, getting on his armor and burning through, causing him to stumble backwards. Marcus tried to get back up, only for Ellen to come in and wrap her arms around his face.
"Don't hurt him, ya brute!" she cried as she formed into a shadow on the wall, dragging Marcus with her and slamming his face into it. He stumbled back in a daze as Ellen went back to the Mastermind, wrapping him up in shadowy tendrils despite his violent protests. "C'mere, let me kiss it better!"
Romanta watched the chaos unfolding below as Claire was busy cuddling with her, her psychic grip proving difficult to break. She was at least able to wiggle around and reach into her utility belt, rummaging until she finally pulled out a bedazzled, electrically-charged knuckle brace.
"Oh, miel, I have another gift for you..." she said charmingly, making the telepath light up.
"Ooh! I'm sure it'll be even lovelier than the last-!" Claire exclaimed right before being tasered in the gut, making her lose focus and causing them both to drop out of the air. While Romanta landed on her feet, Claire's landing was not so graceful.
The Mastermind was now busy trying to fight off Ellen, blasting more bolts of energy that mostly phased through her shadowy body. He only managed to escape when Marcus joined back into the fight, decking him with a chunk of magma rock, proclaiming "Don't hurt her!" as he did. Seeing an opportunity, Romanta made a mad dash toward the chaos.
Claire had managed to recover from her fall, in just enough time to see the target of her love rushing head first toward a disgruntled Mastermind fighting off both of his other lackeys at once. She gasped in fear and stood up, clapping her hands to disappear in an instant. Romanta leapt into the air and bounded off of Marcus' head, lunging toward the Mastermind from behind while he was busy with Ellen. That was when Claire suddenly reappeared and grabbed the love vampire, clapping again to teleport her to safety.
"That was a close one!" Claire sighed in relief as she continued cuddling.
Romanta, not wasting her time with pleasantries now, immediately went to rummaging through her belt again, pulling out custom made bombs that she threw onto the ground, creating a thick wall of smoke that enveloped the two of them. Claire coughed violently, having accidentally breathed in some of the cloud. When it eventually dissipated, she noticed Romanta was no longer in her arms, seeing her running toward the Mastermind again.
"NO, WAIT!" Claire pleaded as she held out her hands. "DANGER!"
The romantic villain leapt again, this time colliding with a wide sheet of metal that Claire had ripped off a machine using her powers. Quickly recovering, she tipped the sheet on its side and jumped from it, leaving Claire to scramble and keep trying to block her path to the commotion as best she could. Beneath her, the fight was still raging on, and becoming increasingly one-sided as both the Mastermind and Ellen had ganged up on Marcus, the former clinging onto his shirt and swinging his fists at him, and the latter wrapping herself around his body to try and restrain him. But Marcus was no less determined on winning, as he started stamping his feet on the ground, each one shaking it more and more.
"In the name of love..." Marcus declared, raising his foot once more. "I SHALL NOT FALL!"
With one hearty stomp, lava suddenly began bursting through the cracks in the ground, taking aback everyone as they were knocked back by the molten force. Claire stumbled back and fell on her rear, with Romanta shortly after falling into her arms, much to one's delight and the other's annoyance. Ellen wrapped herself around the Mastermind, stretching her body to steer as clear as possible from the fiery wrath of Marcus, who shot out pillars of lava with the intent of burning his boss.
"OKAY! OKAY, YOU ALL WIN! BE AS CRAZY AS YOU WANT!" the Mastermind panicked. "JUST PUT ME DOWN!"
One stray attack from the Magman went straight through Ellen's body as she lifted her "lover" out of the way, instead making contact with the support beam in the room behind them, melting through it in a matter of seconds. Soon after, it wasn't just the ground that was shaking, but the entire factory, as cracks formed in the ceiling with that one beam no longer there to hold the decrepit place up. Everyone's attention was directed at this, especially Marcus, who had regained enough sense to realize his blunder.
"...Oops."
WHAM! SMASH! KERWHAM!
KERSMASH!
Wall by wall and piece by piece, the entire factory collapsed in upon itself, leaving behind a mountain of rubble and a storm of dust in its wake. Sufficive to say, there was no need for a demolition crew anymore.
After a while, the dust had settled, and the rubble began to shift, with Marcus climbing out in a daze, and Claire having put up a forcefield to protect herself and a now unconscious Romanta. Once she came to her senses, she looked down to see the villain on her lap, and let out a startled shout as she pushed her off.
"Who's that?!" Claire exclaimed. She then slowly looked around herself, taken even more aback by the destruction that surrounded her. "And... what the heck happened?"
"I dunno..." Marcus groaned. "Why do I feel like I just got out of a poetry slam?"
Next to appear as Ellen, who formed herself out of Marcus' shadow and sat herself up against the rubble, moaning in a groggy matter. She heard a steady string of notifications ringing from her phone. Checking it, she saw her Chitter app had blown up, with over 900 alerts. Having no memory of posting anything recently, she opened the app out of curiosity, and...
...then she had to fight the urge to vomit.
Suddenly, the Mastermind burst from his own pile of rubble, grunting and whining in pain as he did so. He noticed in his hand, he had one of the parts he had intended to make off with, which was now battered, bruised, and burnt by lava. Having recovered much quicker than his lackeys, he fully stepped out of the pile, now ripe with anger as he glared down at the trio.
"MORONS! IDIOTS! NINCOMPOOPS!" he berated. "I KNEW YOU THREE WERE INCOMPETENT, BUT THIS? THIS IS A WHOLE OTHER LEVEL!"
As he ranted and raved, Romanta managed to come to, blinking her eyes open as she woke up on the cold, hard ground, staring upwards. The first thing that caught her attention was the sight of the Mastermind standing above her, too busy scolding his minions to notice. Seeing the burnt off bits of his armor exposing his weird, green flesh underneath, the villainess grinned with wicked delight, thinking she had finally found her opportunity, and so opened her maw to extend her fangs, and...
"OW!" the Mastermind suddenly shouted. "What the-?!"
Romanta wasted no time getting back to her feet, grabbing him by what was left of his helmet and forcing him to gaze into her eyes.
"Finally!" she proclaimed. "Let my love flow through you! Make me your queen, tu semental villano!"
"...Even if I could feel love, you wouldn't be top ten, sister."
"...Huh?"
While her plan ultimately failed, this moment allowed the Mastermind to finally put two and two together as he glanced back at his minions. Realizing who was actually behind all the chaos, he furrowed his brow and forcefully grabbed the vampire by the collar of her cape, hoisting her into the air with ease.
"So, this was all your doing, huh?" the Mastermind said, generating a pulse of green electricity from his fingertips as he held her up by the cuff of her cape. "Well, in that case, I am gonna 'love' this!"
"Si, papito, punish me!" Romanta pleaded, as if actually desiring what was coming to her. The Mastermind grinned devilishly as the charge of electricity in his fingers grew...
...and then he cut it off, much to her surprise.
"Yeah, no, you just took the fun out of it." he said bluntly.
To even more surprise, Ellen actually raised her hand to interject. "Mind if I punish her if you're not?" she asked.
The Mastermind thought for a second, looking back at the vampire-themed villain, and then simply tossed her in her direction, saying "Knock yourself out."
Romanta hit the ground chest-first with a grunt. After shaking her head, she slowly looked up, seeing the shadow woman standing over her, and showing more emotion than usual as she glared back down at her.
"So you're telling me you made me simp over his ugly, green ass?" she said, forming one of her shadow hands into a giant, spiked ball that she held over her head.
Romanta's only response?
"Oh, mierda..."
WHAM!!
She had narrowly dodged Ellen's attack, slamming the shadow construct into the pavement with enough force to leave a tiny crater in its wake. Seeing no way to talk her out of this, Romanta scurried back to her feet and began running off, with Ellen giving chase as she swung her weapon above her head.
"I KISSED HIM ON THE MOUTH! AND POSTED THEM ONLINE!" she screamed at her. "I AM NEVER GOING TO LIVE THIS DOWN!"
The Mastermind and his remaining two minions just watched as Ellen and Romanta disappeared into the city.
"Well, this was a day I'm never going to get back." the Mastermind complained before heading back to his ship. "Come on, you two, we gotta get ready for tomorrow."
"Why, boss, what're we doing tomorrow?" Marcus asked.
"...Nothing to do with 'love', that's for sure." he answered, storming away from the scene. The two lackeys stayed behind for a few seconds longer, watching a giant, shadowy hand demolish a building in the distance, and actually agreeing with their superior's sentiment.
END.
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