The world once had villains.
That's what the old history files said, anyway. The ones no one ever read in class. They were treated like myths, like fairy tales for a bygone era. A time of true chaos and true heroism.
They said villains were the other half of the coin. They soared through the skies with heroes, a dark mirror to their brilliant light.
They were the chaos that demanded order, the shadow that proved the sun was shining.
They balanced power, and when the balance was restored, when the world didn't need them, they disappeared.
However, one day… they vanished for good.
Fifty years is a long time. Long enough for memory to fade into legend, and legend to fade into a footnote in a digital textbook.
Long enough for the earth to forget it had ever needed villains at all.
Without a shadow to fight, the heroes became… something else.
They kept their capes and their powers, but they became brands. Status symbols. Their battles were no longer against earth-shattering threats, but for ratings and endorsement deals.
They lived in sky-high penthouses, their faces plastered on everything from cereal boxes to military recruitment posters.
They enjoyed the luxuries the world had to offer, luxuries often funded by exploiting the very people they were supposed to protect.
And me? I was one of those people. The ones who were forgotten at the bottom.
My name is Luna. I'm sixteen years old. Being an orphan in the foster system of Neo-Olympus City was bad enough.
It put me at a disadvantage in a world that only cared about connections and wealth. But just to make things extra difficult, as if some cosmic entity was trying to win a bet, I was also born mute.
I had a voice, just not one that made any sound. It screamed in my head during the lonely nights in my tiny, state-assigned room.
It cried out when I saw the A-List heroes on the news, smiling their perfect, plastic smiles as they unveiled a new line of hero-branded sneakers that cost more than I made in a month.
And it raged, silently, every single day at Northgate High, a place that was less a school and more a social slaughterhouse.
Being a charity case was one thing. Being the silent charity case? That was like painting a target on my back.
The whispers, the cruel jokes made just loud enough for me to hear, the "accidental" shoves in the hallway—they were a constant.
To survive, to have even a sliver of a chance at saving up enough to escape the system when I turned eighteen, I worked.
My current gig was at a dingy 24/7 Mart, a place that smelled of stale coffee, instant noodles, and quiet desperation.
It was my sanctuary and my prison. No one bothered me here.
The customers were ghosts, grabbing their energy drinks and synth-protein bars before disappearing back into the neon-drenched night.
Tonight, however, my sanctuary was breached.
The bell above the door chimed, a tinny, cheerful sound that was completely at odds with the trio that swaggered in.
Mark and his two cronies. Of course.
They were the lead tormentors from my school, their expensive school uniforms looking ridiculously out of place in my humble mart.
"Well, well, look what we have here," Mark sneered, his voice dripping with the casual cruelty of someone who had never been told 'no' in his life. "It's the charity ghost, working at a ghost-trap. How fitting."
His friends snickered. I kept my eyes down, focusing on the worn-out counter, hoping that if I didn't engage, they'd get bored and leave.
I had learned long ago that any reaction—a glare, a flinch, a frustrated sigh—was fuel to their fire. Silence was my only shield.
"What's the matter, Luna?" Mark leaned over the counter, his cologne an acrid smell that invaded my space. "Cat got your tongue? Oh, wait." He tapped his chin in mock thought. "You don't have one."
More laughter. I could feel my hands clenching into fists below the counter. The silent voice in my head was screaming, a torrent of curses and rage that would have made a sailor blush.
But on the outside, I was a statue.
He grabbed a bag of expensive, imported chips—the kind I could never afford—and ripped it open, scattering crumbs all over the floor I had just swept.
"Oops. Clumsy me. You'll get that, right? It's your job."
I didn't move. I just stared at the mess on the floor. My shield of silence was starting to crack.
His smirk faltered, replaced by irritation. My non-reaction was an insult to his power.
"Hey, I'm talking to you." He snapped his fingers in front of my face. "Look at me when I'm talking to you, freak."
I slowly lifted my head, my eyes meeting his. I made sure my expression was a complete blank. No fear. No anger. Just… nothing. It was the only weapon I had.
For a second, it worked. He was taken aback. But then his irritation boiled over into rage. "You think you're better than me?" he snarled, his face twisting.
Before I could even process his words, he vaulted over the counter. The move was so sudden, so aggressive, that my carefully constructed composure shattered. I stumbled backward, my heart hammering against my ribs.
His friends blocked the exit, their grins wide and predatory. The mart suddenly felt incredibly small, a cage.
"Let's see if we can get a scream out of you," Mark growled, grabbing the front of my work uniform.
He shoved me. Hard. My back hit a metal shelf stacked with canned beans. The structure rattled, and a few cans tumbled down, one of them striking the side of my head with a sickening thud.
Pain exploded behind my eye, a blinding, white-hot flash. The world tilted violently. The bright, fluorescent lights of the store smeared into blurry streaks.
Mark's snarling face swam in and out of focus. The floor rushed up to meet me, the impact jarring my teeth.
I lay there, on the cold, dirty linoleum, amidst the scattered chips and a dented can of beans. A warm, wet feeling started to spread through my hair.
Blood. My blood.
The world was fading to black at the edges. The laughter of Mark and his friends sounded distant, like it was coming from the other side of a long tunnel.
This is it, the voice in my head whispered, not with rage this time, but with a hollow, empty finality. This is how it ends. An orphan, a mute, bleeding out on the floor of a convenience store. No one will even notice I'm gone for hours.
A profound, soul-crushing despair washed over me. It was heavier than the shelf, colder than the floor.
It was the absolute certainty that my life had been meaningless, a tiny, silent blip in a world that didn't care. I was going to die, and it wouldn't matter.
And then, just as the last of the light was about to be extinguished, something new appeared in my sight.
It wasn't the ceiling of the mart. It wasn't the blurry faces of my attackers. It was a screen. A translucent, blood-red screen, hovering in the void of my fading consciousness.
Clean, sharp lines of text began to type themselves into existence, glowing with an ominous light.
[The Evil Villainess System is initiating.]
My mind, what was left of it, struggled to comprehend the words. Was this a hallucination? A side effect of my head injury?
More text appeared, cool and impersonal.
[The heroes forsook their duties and indulged in worldly matters. The cataclysm is nearing; the world can't afford their sloppiness. You, as a villainess, must wake them from their slumber.]
The words pulsed with a strange energy, a purpose that cut through the fog of pain and despair. Villainess? Me?
[Do villainess activities and gain villainess points. You can buy anything with these points.]