#day 19: villain mentor/in over their head/trembling

[hurtmyfavsthanks]

Whumptember day 19

“You are not a hero. You’re a child playing dress up. Now take off that silly mask and go home.” Villain mentor | In over their head | Trembling

Content warning: drugged drink

Whumpee was nothing short of a fool. They were a child playing in a world they didn’t understand, flaunting their powers as if they were untouchable. It was laughable, it was boringly typical, and Supervillain wouldn’t have paid it any mind under normal circumstances. Whumpee would meet the same fate as most who manifested powers. They’d fly too close to the sun, and then they would burn. Another name in the newspaper.

They'd seen it countless times. Supervillain would have let it happen to Whumpee, if not for their potential.

Supervillain watched Whumpee, who sat opposite them at the dinner table. Their posture was surprisingly relaxed for someone face-to-face with the most feared criminal in the city, an excited grin on their face. Around them was a mess of miscellaneous junk; a toy car the size of a truck, a stack of office pens, a potted plant, a bar of gold. Anything and everything Whumpee had thought of, they had simply manifested with a snap of their fingers at Supervillain’s request. Supervillain had inspected the gold; it was real as far as they could tell.

It was a fascinating ability, so much so that Supervillain hadn’t believed it was real when they’d first heard word of it. Even after they’d seen the now viral video of Whumpee summoning a house-sized cake at a child’s party, Supervillain hadn’t quite believed it. After all, illusionary abilities weren’t particularly uncommon.

So they’d sought Whumpee out themselves. It'd been painfully easy, and Supervillain had gotten a dinner invitation to them within the hour. The fact that Whumpee had actually accepted such an invitation, had brazenly walked past the line of police and bystanders and entered the restaurant Supervillain had closen, had almost been evidence enough. Only someone drunk off of their own power would walk into the lion’s den so happily.

“So,” Supervillain spoke, drawing Whumpee’s attention from the scenery around them. Whumpee had been gawking at the expensive interior since walking in. They’d been simply giddy when their dinner was served, too focused on the expensive meal to care how terrified their waiter appeared to be. It’d been amusing, seeing how utterly amazed they were at what Supervillain would consider humble accommodations. They were so clearly in over their head that Supervillain struggled not to laugh. “An everyday citizen manifests such an…impressive power. It must be quite the adjustment for you. What will you do with it?”

Whumpee hummed, sipping at their wine. “I don’t know yet. I know most people do the whole hero thing, but I’m not really looking for another job right now,” They giggled, laugh carefree and twinged with tipsiness. “I’ll probably just do my own thing, see the world or whatever. Maybe buy a boat? Money isn’t exactly an issue for me anymore.”

Supervillain resisted the urge to roll their eyes. “But aren’t you limiting yourself?” They gestured to the clutter Whumpee had summoned. “You can create your heart’s desire from thin air at the snap of your fingers. You’re potentially one of the strongest people in the city, and you intend to live a mundane life?”

They seemed to consider it for a moment. "I guess? I’m just going to do whatever I want. If I wanna travel, I’ll travel,” They shrugged. “Why not? Who’s gonna stop me?”

“Who will stop you?” It was a laughable question, and Supervillain couldn’t help but chuckle at it. “You truly think you’re invulnerable now, don’t you? Do you think you’re a god, now that you’ve gotten a taste of power? You’re denser than I thought. You would’ve been dead within a week if I hadn’t found you.”

For the first time that night, Whumpee’s smile fell.

Supervillain didn't break eye contact as they spoke. Whumpee shivered under their stare. “Do you really think you’ll be allowed to simply run free? Tell me, how many powered individuals do you know who aren’t in contracts with the city or criminals?” They didn’t wait for a response. “None. They're all owned, wanted, or dead. You'll be no different”

“I’m–” Whumpee cut themselves off, swallowing thickly. “I’ll be fine. I’m one of the strongest people in the city. If someone comes after me, I'll just leave,” Whumpee made an attempt to stand, nearly stumbling over themselves as they did so. They rested a hand on the table, tipping their near empty glass over. “I’m leav–”

“You’re not untouchable,” Supervillain cut them off. They stood, movement graceful in stark contrast to Whumpee's unstable stance. “Beneath that power, you’re still human. Still fragile, still as easily killed as anyone else. A gunshot wound, an ‘accident’ at the wheel…” They let their eyes scan over Whumpee. They were trembling, a light sheen of sweat beginning to cover their face. “…A poisoned drink. Did you really not think that this dinner was suspect?”

Whumpee’s face paled, and Supervillain couldn’t help but grin. They didn't rush as they approached Whumpee, watching them stumble over themselves attempting to get away. They saw the moment Whumpee remembered their powers, the moment they lifted their hands to summon some sort of defense. Supervillain was faster. Before they could do anything, Supervillain had them by the wrist.

Supervillain allowed their powers to flare, sending a painful shock of electricity through Whumpee’s bod. Whumpee screamed, and Supervillain relished the sound.

Supervillain’s voice was firm, dripping with condesention. It could barely be heard over Whumpee’s panicked cries. “You’re nothing but a cocky child, drunk on power and the comfortable lies of righteousness the heroes tell the public. Do you really think raw power is enough to keep you safe? Do you think you'll ever be left alone?”

The flow of electricity finally stoped, and Whumpee slumped to the ground, Supervillain’s grip on their limp wrist the only thing keeping them afloat. The only movement they made was a shuddering sob and the sporadic twitch of spent muscles.

Supervillain allowed them to drop to the ground. They leaned over their body, eyes alight. “You’re a diamond in the rough. Be thankful I intend to refine you.”

[iwritewhump]

"you're not a hero, you're a child playing dress up. now take off that silly mask and go home" + villain mentor + in over their head + trembling

day 19 of @whumptember

421 words

warnings: young whumpee, building on fire, cursing, passing out

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Hero’s arms shake with effort, trying to keep the building from falling. The rest of the occupants run outside crying at the sight of their home in flames. Hero grunts and almost falls when someone puts their hands next to his on the support beam. 

“No!” he shouts, “Get out! It isn’t safe for you here.” 

The person almost scoffs, “I’ll manage.” 

Hero turns his head and stumbles back at the sight of Villain. She stands next to him, arms high above her head. “What are you doing here?” 

“Oh,” she says. “I started the fire. But, when I saw you struggling to keep it up, I ran in to save you.” she repositions her hands and rolls her eyes. “Is that what you wanted to hear? I live here, dumbass.” 

Hero shakes his head and coughs, “No, you-you must’ve had something to do with this. Buildings don’t just set on fire.” 

“They do if the landlord doesn’t give a fuck about his tennants and cuts corners to save a few bucks.” she scolds. “Now, get out of here and go home.” 

He shakes his head again and holds the bar up, making no difference on Villain’s weight load. The fire heats the beam and burns his hands, it takes everything in him not to recoil. “I need to do a sweep of the building and make sure everyone’s out.” 

She lets go of the bar with one hand and lifts him off the ground. “Look at me, you are not a hero. You’re a child-" she's overtaken by a coughing fit, nearly dropping him and letting go of the beam- "playing dress up. Now take that silly mask off and go home before you get hurt.” 

She coughs and throws him toward the door before letting go of the beam with her other hand and barreling toward the doors, grabbing Hero’s collar and dragging him out with her just before the building collapses. 

She rolls over and stares at him, searching his chest for signs of breath. After a few seconds, she sees a shallow breath and almost laughs in relief. In a fit of coughing, Villain stands up and waves her burned hands high above her head.

“I need a doctor over here!” she shouts, tearing the mask off of his face and throwing it back into the burning building. “I need a fucking doctor!” 

She sees two people in uniform run up to her, a bag in one’s hand. Before they reach her, she collapses next to Hero.

[whumble-beeee]

Whumptember 2023, Day 19

“You are not a hero. You’re a child playing dress up. Now take off that silly mask and go home.”

Villain mentor | In over their head | Trembling 

The Bee's Whumptember Masterlist 

~2180 words

CW: female whumpee, minor whumpee (15yo), suffocation, blood, stabbing with knife, minor character implied death? (idek if they're dead tbh), fear of death, very very shitty caretaker

(this is a part of the same story as Day 1: Did I Do Good? Takes place quite a bit in the past compared to the other one. You don’t need to read that story to understand this one :))

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“End of the line, little girl.”

The ice villain slowly advanced upon Air-Master with leisurely bravado, a deadly sharp icicle forming in her hands as she closed in on her captured prey desperately fumbling to shatter the ice that froze her legs and arm to the ground. 

“Stay back!” Air-Master screamed, slamming her fist down into the cement hard enough to draw blood and create a solid wall of air between the two. The villain tilted her head quizically at the sudden obstruction before swinging her icicle down into the substance, tearing it to bits with a light woosh. Turns out, air isn’t very hard to break through.

The villain laughed, finally reaching Air-Master and crouching down over her stomach, pinning her only unfrozen arm to the scratchy ground. She positioned the icicle over Air-Master’s heart.

“Alright kid, this has been fun,” The villain mused, enjoying how the young hero's bloodshot eyes stared at her, red with unshed tears and full of fury-riddled terror. “But sadly, it’s time–”

Suddenly, the villain wasn’t on top of Air-Master anymore. She was slamming into the nearby warehouse wall with a sickening smack, held in place by some sort of robotic claw that, like most of its immediate surroundings, was now sprinkled with morbid red flecks of blood. She went limp and didn’t move again.

“Jenna!” a worried voice yelled from Air-Master’s left, its embodiment crouching over her and pushing his fingers to her neck to find a pulse. “What the hell?! Are you okay?!”

Air-Master pursed her lips and squeezed her eyes shut, chest heaving with barely muffled cries. She was not going to cry in front of Destron. It was bad enough that he’d come to her rescue.

“What the hell are you doing all the way out here?” Destron raised some sort of sharp bludgeoning device and slammed it into her ice-laden arm, shattering the ice while still leaving her hand thankfully intact. “It’s dangerous, especially for kids and especially for… well girls. Women. Didn’t your mother tell you that?”

“Yes,” Air-Master spat, rubbing her arms together to warm them as Destron started slamming away at the more mountainous task of breaking out her legs. “And it’s not Jenna, it’s Air-Master. I’m on the job right now.”

Destron paused mid-chisel to raise his eyebrow at her. “Air-Master? One of those workout stair elliptical things? Like stairmaster?” Destron laughed at his own stupid joke. Air-Master ground her teeth. “Pick a better superhero name, kid. Then I still won’t call you it, because you’re not a superhero.”

“You’re one to judge, Destron. Because that’s such a great name…” Jenna hissed. “I am a superhero. I have a superpower and I’m out fighting bad guys. That’s what superheroes do.”

 Destron chuckled. “Is that right? Well then, call me the best and brightest on the force, because I had to save your super-kid butt from a class nothing villain… You’re gonna need a lot more training if you want to be the one saving people instead of making others save you.”

Jenna feltl tears burning at the back of her eyes again, more so than even when she was about to die just moments earlier. She slammed her fists on the ground. “I didn’t ask you to save me!” she cried. “Why’re you so obsessed with me?! You tried to kill my mom, you kidnapped me! We’re supposed to be mortal enemies! Get away from me!”

Destron’s face took on a rare form of shock as he stared at Jenna, just short of shattering the ice off her first leg. Then his eyes narrowed, daring her to say something even more stupid. “Excuse me?”

Jenna’s throat closed up at Destron’s sudden intensity, but her anger refused to let her back down now. “I can take care of myself. I’m a superhero, I don’t need help from villains like you.”

“Jenna–”

“Air-Master.” she corrected.

“Jenna.” Destron stated. “You’re not ready to be a superhero yet. You’re too young, you’re inexperienced. You don’t have any training, most importantly. And no, whatever your sorry excuse of a mother tried to teach you doesn’t count.”

“But–”

Destron scooted closer to Jenna so he could rest a hand on her shoulder and look her in the eyes, as stern as he could muster. “You are not a hero, Jenna...” He sighed. “You’re a child playing dress up. It’s time to take off that silly mask and go home. Please”

Jenna felt something break inside her. Angry tears started to roll down her cheeks as she threw Destron’s hand off her shoulder with breakneck force

“YOU’RE NOT MY DAD! YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!! YOU’RE A SUPERVILLAIN, I HATE YOU!!”

“Please just listen–”

“I HATE YOU!!”

She conjured up a spear of hardened air in her rage, flinging it at him with reckless abandon. Destron snatched it out of the air and stared at it for a moment. Then broke it in two and slammed it into the ground. The two halves dissipated rapidly.

“Hmm… It seems I’ve made an error. You’re right, little hero.” Destron muttered, a cold calm enveloping his voice like Jenna had never heard before. All of her rage dissipated just like her air weapons. It almost made her dizzy. 

“I– What?”

“I’m a supervillain,” Destron spelled out, eyes firmly on the modified shuriken he now toyed with in one hand. “And you’re a superhero. And the villains always defeat the heroes, no? Either that or the villains do heinous things to the heroes.” Destron threw the throwing star, and Jenna’s eyes followed it right to where it implanted in the red-stained wall directly next to the still unmoving ice villain's head. 

“That's just what villains do, right?”

 “Uh– I… Yes?...” Jenna squeaked.

“Wonderful. Glad we’re on the same page. Defeat me then.”

Jenna shrunk back from the man now standing over her, the ice freezing her legs to the ground suddenly becoming blindingly frigid. “Y–you-you you want me to… to fight you?”

“That's what heroes and villains do, no?”

“Uh, uh, yes, but… but you’re not–”

“Yes, yes, I’m a villain, I know. Not your dad, not a superhero, but a supervillain. You made that very clear.”

Jenna just stared at the man. There was no way he actually expected her, a 15-year-old girl, to fight him, who some people feared even speaking the name of just in case they evoked him. Not to mention she was still iced to the damn–

“Ugh, you’re worried about the power imbalance?” Destron sneered, rolling his eyes. “Fine, you have 30 seconds to do whatever.”

Blood roared in Jenna’s ear, adrenaline making her tremble intensely as she suddenly struggled to take a full breath. “Wait, w-wai-wait-wait, but–”

“It’s 30 more seconds than she gave you.” Destron gestured with some magically appearing mechanical staff over to the villain he had pinned to the wall like a butterfly. “Use it wisely. 26 now. 25, 24…”

Through her adrenaline-fueled haze, Jenna managed to conjure up a small but rock-hard, and most importantly sharp mound that she started bludgeoning at the ice with. Just like the one Destron used. The first casing came away easily. The second took a few hits, but she managed to rip her legs out with only medium amounts of gashes. She scrambled up and conjured a knife of air, taking a defensive position with her blade held straight out at her opponent. She bared her teeth with a trembling body as she hissed out her breath through her teeth and glared at him.

Destron tilted his head at her, slowly spinning the staff around like a twirling baton. “8, 7…”

Jenna conjured up and skipped across newly appearing solid air platforms. She ignored her legs’ screeches of pain and leaped off the platform toward Destron just as he hit “3, 2…” and buried the feather-light knife into his shoulder with a sickening amount of force.

Destron let out a pained gurgling sound as the knife embedded itself just below the clavicle, grabbing Jenna’s wrist to prevent her from pulling it out just as she tried to jump back. He looked up at her through his eyelashes, striking a lightning bolt through Jenna’s heart as she saw the violence in his eyes. “One.”

Suddenly, Jenna felt… tired. So, so tired. The fight felt so much more impossible now. Destron leveraged the staff up from under his armpit and over Jenna’s shoulder, slamming her onto her back using his body as the fulcrum of the lever. Jenna went down with a yelp, grasping at the air and even managing to conjure her own staff out of the stuff as she slammed into the ground. Destron fell to one knee on her chest, knocking any extra wind she still had in her lungs out of her, and shoved the center of his weapon down at her, eyes dead set on her own as he slammed once, twice, three times against her own weapon until it disappeared under the force and the shank of the staff pressed down straight on her windpipe.

She couldn’t breathe. She actually, literally couldn’t breathe. Her throat itched with a burning cough she couldn’t satiate, her chest heaved against the weight of the villain. She tried to push up against the staff. Gravity and strength both worked against her, and it didn’t budge an inch. Destron’s face was a mask of cold determination. The taste of metal filled her mouth. She squeezed her eyes shut. Destron was going to kill her. 

The weight of the staff suddenly lifted off her neck, as did the knee on her chest. Jenna immediately started coughing uncontrollably, curling up into herself as she was gently pushed onto her side. The entire encounter hadn’t even lasted 5 seconds after Destron started fighting back… She curled even further into herself and let out a loud cry to the heavens. She was never going to be a superhero.

“You’re supposed to tap out,” Destron said from somewhere beyond the haze of looming death. She stayed like that for a long time, lying prostrate on the ground, curled up in her little ball, coughing into her hands as tears soaked into her hair and the cement under her.

“I was going easy on you,” Destron stated, patting Jenna’s back and rubbing circles as her coughs started to subside. “Usually I don’t just turn off the adrenaline response. Usually I make my opponent feel hopeless. Like the world already crashed down around them as they stood by and watched and did nothing. Sometimes they just… curl up at my feet.”

Jenna rolled to her back again with a wheeze, body still spasming with aftershocks as she looked at Destron with half-lidded eyes.

“You got me pretty good, though. In the shoulder.” Destron gestured to his new wound, actively gushing blood all over his sleeveless jacket. “Those air weapons are really something. They just need to be honed so they aren’t so fragile. And good fighting instincts, too, you did better than I thought you would.”

Jenna stared up at the light-polluted sky and squeezed her eyes shut. “You–... You tried to ki-i–” she fell into yet another coughing fit, coughs that painfully rattled through her throat. “You-ou were gonna ki-ill me.”

“I was never gonna kill you, kid. Just had to make it believable so the lesson would make it through all that teenage angst..”

“I hate you.” Jenna cried softly. In the moment, she really meant it too. “I hate you so-o-o mu-uch. So-so much.”

“That’s fair…” Destron conceded. “Tell you what, I could train you. Do a hell of a better job than your mom. Then you could be a real superhero.”

Jenna stared at Destron as her mouth practically fell agape. “Fuck you!”

“Hey! Watch the language! You’re what, like 15?”

“Yes!” Jenna shouted, feeling a second wind finally start to fill her body once again. His power must have finally been wearing off. She sat up to face Destron head-on. “I’m 15! And you, a full-grown man, most superpowered and feared person in the entire city, beat the shit out of me until I thought I was actually gonna die! Then you act like we’re all buddy-buddy again like everything’s normal? No! Normal isn’t almost killing someone just to prove a point! I’m allowed to swear! Fuck you! You’re the worst!”

Destron’s eyes widened at Jenna as she struggled to stand up again after the entire ordeal. Could she really not know? Destron fumbled with his hands. He really was a bad mentor…

“Jenna…” He whispered. “That… That is normal. Almost dying, almost killing people, actualy killing people, feeling every feeling day in and day out. That’s what being a superhero is. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s not a burden to be taken lightly.”

Jenna froze halfway through her standing up. Her shoulders slumped. She took a deep breath.

“...I’m… I’m going home…”

She started walking away slowly.

“You want me to walk you?” Destron called after her.

“Fuck you!”

“Give the training a thought! You know how to call me!”

Jenna didn’t even grace that comment with a response.

@whumptember