Chapter Text
“Villain!”
Virgil sighed, drifted to a stop, and twirled slowly in midair, straightening his shoulders and taking on a threatening pose. “What do you wa—?” He broke off and stared at the superhero who’d challenged him, blinking. “Who are you?” There were a lot of heroes in Sandersville, but he could usually at least recognize them. This person—short, pale skin and a few dark freckles, with a outfit of glittering white material with gold trim and a red sash vaguely reminiscent of a Disney movie, oddly padded in the shoulder and chest area as if to conceal the wearer’s build—was new. Their face was entirely covered by a standard eye mask (but more glittery than the standard) and a second, plainer mask—the only non-glittery part of their outfit, in fact, now that Virgil thought about it—that covered the lower half of their face and had some sort of device built into the front.
The person put their hands on their hips and tilted their chin upward, their sparkling red cape flowing in the breeze behind them. “You can call me Prince Creativity,” they announced, and Virgil came to the realization that the device on their mask was likely a voice modulator. “And I’m here to—”
“What are your pronouns?” Virgil interrupted, bored already, examining his fingernails.
“...What?”
“Mine are he/him,” Virgil offered with a shrug.
“Um.” The person stared at him through their mask—a glittering red affair that matched the cape—seeming bewildered by Virgil’s lack of dramatics.
“You do have the right person, yes?” Virgil gestured towards the logo emblazoned on his chest. “The Nightmare? Scourge of Sandersville? That’s who you were looking for? Cool. Can I have your pronouns before we fight and I hand out your semi-weekly humiliating defeat, or whatever, please?”
“I—he/him,” the Prince said. His tone was hard to read through the voice modulator he spoke into. “Not that you’d care.”
“Excellent, thanks. And actually, I would care, that’s why I asked. Getting misgendered sucks, I don’t want to do it to anyone else. Now that that’s out of the way, I am going to let you know right now that I’m a very busy villain and my services are in high demand, so if you’re going to want to fight me on the regular, I’m going to need you to book those. You’re new, so today can be a freebie, but I do like to know my schedule ahead of—whoa!”
The Prince had evidently not been interested in learning how to schedule an appointment with Virgil; he’d shot a blast of shimmering glittery substance out of his bare hand. That was new.
Virgil ducked, mostly due to instinct, and threw up a shield. “That is not nice,” he said, not bothering to be particularly polite about it. “Not very heroic when the villain has the better manners, now is it?”
“You hurt people!” Prince Creativity snapped, sending another blast of glitter at Virgil’s shield. This one actually held a form, creating some kind of blade that knocked against Virgil’s purple energy shield.
The shield dented, which Virgil had not been expecting. “Not true. I have a strict policy against injuring civilians,” he said, trying hard to play it cool. “It’s actually publicly available. My villainy is perfectly ethical.” He focused on the shield, coaxing its magic back into shape.
“Those two words don’t even belong in the same sentence!” The hero sent another blast, and Virgil swore under his breath, flying downwards a few feet.
“Name one person I’ve hurt outside of the Heroes’ Guild,” he challenged, reaching into one of the pouches on his utility belt.
“Stop avoiding me!” the hero snapped, pushing a blast with two hands this time. It curved through the air as Virgil dodged and clipped his ankle, leaving his entire foot painful and tingly.
Virgil sucked in a harsh breath through his teeth. “Alright. I tried to be nice, but somebody didn’t bring any manners to the table. Don’t you lot have a code of ethics?” He launched the item he’d pulled from his utility belt into the air—a device that dampened shadow- and light-based powers. He wasn’t sure if it would work on the Prince’s glitter bolts—he’d never seen those before—but it seemed like a good first thing to try, and Virgil had more than enough powers to fall back on when his shadows were inaccessible. The device paused at the peak of its arc, high in the air above them, and hovered there, emitting a faint peach-colored glow.
“What is that?” the hero said, a note of trepidation making its way through the modulator. He gazed up at the device.
Virgil took advantage of this momentary distraction to unhook his general superblaster–one he’d equipped with a dozen of the common settings he used. He switched it to scuffle mode. It should land hits, but not dangerous ones. He fired a warning blast at the hero’s shoulder.
Prince Creativity was knocked off balance; he cried out as he went tumbling head over heels in the air, and Virgil noted that his flight ability seemed to fall into the category Virgil had dubbed “invisible floor.” The Prince didn’t lose any altitude as he fell or as he regained his footing. Good to know.
“I tried being nice,” Virgil said once again with a shrug. “But, I mean, if you want to play with the big boys, who am I to judge?” He kicked off of nothing, noting that the foot the Prince had hit a moment ago was almost back to normal, and soared about twenty feet into the air, dodging a retaliatory blast the Prince aimed at him. Hm. So his powers still worked, even under the damper, and they weren’t noticeably diminished. Pity.
Virgil was half of a mind to draw this out and gather as much information on the new guy’s powers as he could, in order to begin properly formulating a decent strategy of defense against him for the future, but he did have a meeting later that afternoon. It was probably best to conclude this now.
That in mind, Virgil shifted into an actual “fight” mindset. He sped forward, dodging the couple of blasts that the hero shot towards him, and zapped the hero with a bolt of static as he whizzed past him.
Prince Creativity yelped, whirling on his heel and flinging up his hand—but Virgil was ready and began shooting nets of the same energy his shields were made of to catch the glittery substance and stop it from reaching himself. This worked out surprisingly well—very little of the substance made it through the net, and once it lost its shape like that, it dissipated into the air.
Virgil shot his blaster again, a burst of energy designed to knock the Prince off his feet long enough for Virgil to get a nice one-liner in and leave.
But the hero nearly dodged Virgil’s blast; instead of hitting him square in the chest like Virgil had intended, it skimmed his face and knocked his mouth mask askew with a rip of fabric and a crunching noise that sounded a lot like breaking electronics.
“Ow!” the Prince cried, his voice no longer distorted by the mouthpiece and much higher than it had been before. His hand flew to his mouth, tugging desperately at the piece—which Virgil was realizing must be a voice modulator—and crying out in pain again when it let out a crackle of electricity.
“You—are you a child?” Virgil pulled back, flying several yards backwards.
“No!” the boy, who definitely was a child holy shit his voice wasn’t cracking because it wasn’t even deep enough to crack, insisted. He lunged forward. “Fight me! I’m a hero, you have to fight me!” He shot another blast, this one desperate and poorly aimed.
“I’m not hitting a child!” Virgil snapped, dodging easily. “Do your parents know you’re out here?”
“I’m not—I’m not a kid!”
“Yeah, pull the other one, it’s got bells on.” Virgil put his hands on his hips. “This is dangerous stuff, you shouldn’t be doing this.”
“You’re not my mom!” The little hero tried once again to tug his mouthpiece back into place, like fixing it would undo Virgil’s new knowledge. He yelped and shook his hand, dropping it almost instantly.
Virgil hesitated. “Hey.” He gentled his voice as much as he could, given that he was still internally panicking. “Let me help with that.”
“No!” Now it was the hero’s turn to scoot backwards through the air, hands flying up into two defensive fists, trails of glitter shimmering around them.
Virgil sighed. “I’m not going to hurt you, kid.” He shoved his blaster into his belt and held out his hands palm-up in what was hopefully a nonthreatening manner. “I just don’t want your voice device thing shorting out right next to your face anymore. Okay?” He moved closer, testing the waters.
“No!” the hero insisted shrilly, backpedaling further. “You’re a villain! It’s your job!”
“Listen, my job is to fight idiots in brightly colored pantyhose. Not kids. You should be”—Virgil paused, trying to think of what kids did in their free time—“I don’t know, building a treehouse, or something. Not fighting crime. And that gadget is clearly not safe for you right now. Let me help.”
“No!” The kid hiccuped, which cued Virgil in just in time to notice the tears slipping from under his upper mask. Virgil was relieved to note that this was still safely in place, concealing the kid’s identity.
Virgil sighed. “C’mere,” he said, done playing whatever this game was. “You can come over here and let me fix that, or I can wait until you change your mind, but I’m not leaving until I know you’re safe. I promise I’m not going to hurt you.”
The boy crossed his arms. “Why should I believe you?”
“Jesus! Because you’re a child, what part of that is hard to understand? Now, are you coming over here?” Virgil pointed at the patch of air in front of his feet.
He didn’t miss the child’s barely perceptible flinch at the sharper tone. The boy didn’t come closer like Virgil had asked, but he stilled, hanging in midair and waiting, watching Virgil warily.
“Okay, I can come over there if that’s easier,” Virgil said. He made his movements large, slow, and deliberate, easy to track. The boy stayed still, tense, and didn’t speak.
Virgil stopped when he was just within arm’s reach. “I’m going to take the mouthpiece off so it can’t shock you anymore, okay? I won’t touch your mask or do anything else.”
The kid wrinkled his nose. “Whatever.”
Virgil reached out and unhooked the mouthpiece from the ear it was still dangling from, careful not to dislodge the second mask over the child’s eyes. A loose wire sticking out of the broken contraption brushed against his glove and zapped him; he bit the inside of his cheek and didn’t react. “This seems pretty busted,” he said lightly. “You should get Dr. Logic to take a look at it.” He examined the mask until he found the power switch and flipped it off. “See if he can make it sturdier.”
The boy blinked at him, wide-eyed. “You know Dr. Logic?”
“We’re acquainted,” Virgil said with a shrug. “The Doc is pretty much the only hero smart enough to actually be an annoyance to me. He should be able to set you up just fine.” He held out the mask. “Get him to fix it up. Talk about it inconveniencing you and he’ll probably invent you a new one overnight that’s ten times better. Also please stop trying to fight adults, you could get seriously hurt.”
The kid crossed his arms. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Right. Right. Okay, here’s what you’re going to do. I’m going to back up and you’re going to blast me once with your weird glitter stuff, and then we’re both going to leave. Okay?”
“Huh?”
“I need to look like I was incapacitated for long enough for you to get away, since I’m not fighting a kid. Blast me once and leave, I’ll say it was a lucky hit. No strings attached. Okay?” He backed up and spread his arms out.
The boy stared at Virgil for a moment. “You’re sure?”
“I get worse every week. Go for it.”
The kid squeezed his eyes shut and pushed wildly at the air in Virgil’s general direction; Virgil went tumbling backwards in the air, his whole body lighting up with tingly pain.
By the time he righted himself and blinked the glitter away, the boy was gone.
***
When Virgil got home, he didn’t even take off his supersuit before heading to his room and pulling out his personal phone. He pulled up his favorited contacts and hit call.
Logan picked up before the second ring. “Are you alright, V?” he asked. He was alone, or Virgil knew he wouldn’t have picked up, but the use of the nickname indicated he wasn’t sure he’d be alone for the duration of the call.
“I’m fine, L,” Virgil said quickly. He usually didn’t call Logan without warning, certainly not during work hours. “Sorry. Listen, you know the new super? Prince Charming theme?”
“We’ve met.”
“What do you know about him?”
There was a pause. “Dear, you know I am not comfortable having this kind of discussion.” Virgil didn’t need to see Logan’s face to know exactly the startled frown he must be wearing.
“No! Not for work reasons! Obviously I wouldn’t ask you for intel on someone. Listen, how old is he?”
“How should I know?” Logan still sounded irritated. “I don’t make a habit of asking personal questions of my coworkers.”
“No—L—would you just shut up and listen for a second?” Virgil began pacing around the room. “He came at me today—”
“Oh, dear.”
“No, no, I went easy on him, since he’s new. He’s fine. But my point is, he’s a kid.”
“What?”
“His voice thing broke. That, and his weird padded costume? Covering up the fact that he’s a child. He can’t be more than high school age. If that.”
Logan was silent for just a couple of beats. “That makes a lot of sense, actually.”
“Okay, supergenius.” Virgil chuckled. “Okay, but like, he can’t do that. Right?”
“Do what?”
“The whole super thing. You know?”
Logan hummed thoughtfully. “I do not believe we have age restrictions set out explicitly. It’s more of an understood thing. People generally aren’t eager to get involved with The Nightmare, so it’s not been an issue before. I don’t know that we could remove him on the basis of his age.”
“That’s stupid!” Virgil burst out.
He could practically hear Logan’s shrug over the phone. “Perhaps. I will look into it. But I would prefer not to interfere with the personal business of others.”
“L, he’s a kid, there is no way it’s safe for him to be doing this! What do you mean, you won’t interfere? Please interfere! Find his parents! Get him grounded! Send them the address of a super school or something!”
“That seems a little drastic.”
“If I hadn’t got the lucky shot that broke his voice modulator I could have hurt him! It’ll only be a matter of time before he doesn’t get lucky with someone else! Please, L. I can’t—”
“I’ll…” Logan sighed. “I’ll keep an eye on him. If he seems to be unequivocally biting off more than he can chew, I will see if he needs resources.”
“He’s a kid! He can’t just—”
“I am unwilling to infringe on another person’s free will unless a clear need presents itself, V. I will fulfill your request to the degree I am ethically comfortable with. I’m afraid I must go, I have a meeting in ten minutes, but we can discuss this more at a later date if you wish. Perhaps over dinner? There’s a lovely Italian place near the river where I’ve been meaning to take you.”
Virgil grumbled wordlessly for a minute, but recognized he was unlikely to get more out of his boyfriend on this front just yet. “Fine. I’m free Tuesday?”
“Tuesday it will be. I love you, dear.”
Virgil closed his eyes and smiled, pretending the phone pressed against his cheek was Logan’s hand. “Love you too, L. See you later.”
He pocketed the phone as Logan hung up and ran his hands through his hair. He’d really hoped he’d be able to get Logan to help him out with this one; Logan was by far the best option. But it seemed like the best option was going to have to wait until he could convince his boyfriend this was a serious problem. In the meantime he would have to explore other avenues.
Making up his mind, Virgil made his way to his office and pressed a button on the wall. “Hey, Thomas?” he said into the intercom.
“Yes?” his head henchman (Virgil thought the job title was pretentious, but he did have a reputation to keep up) responded.
“I need a new intel file started. New hero. Calls himself Prince Creativity.”
“Um…”
Even through the intercom, Virgil could hear Thomas’s obvious discomfort. This was not unexpected.
It was an open secret that, technically, Thomas worked for the Heroes’ Guild and was, technically, a government plant sent to spy on Virgil. Or at least, that had been how he’d started working with Virgil, nearly a decade ago. Once the city had begun to notice that Virgil—despite his startling array of powers—was really more into villainy for the aesthetics and for personal amusement rather than to cause harm to others, and especially once they had begun to notice that Virgil was able to keep all the local villainy under control better than the entire Heroes’ Guild combined, the attempts to genuinely bring The Nightmare down had casually tapered off. Poor Thomas had been somewhat abandoned by his original employers. But by that point Virgil was quite fond of him and the two had worked out a villain/henchperson rapport that worked well for both of them; Virgil had been more than happy to keep him on staff.
This was a good thing 99% of the time, and Virgil knew he wouldn’t hesitate to trust Thomas with his life if it ever came down to it. The only rough patch they consistently ran into was the fact that Thomas seemed to consider himself loyal to both his original employers and to Virgil now, and would panic when he ran into situations that created direct conflicts of interest. Asking for intel on specific heroes certainly fell into that area. But Virgil felt it was justified in this instance. Hopefully he could convince Thomas of this.
“I’m not trying to find weaknesses. I don’t even care about his specific identity,” Virgil said, and he could practically see Thomas’s shoulders slumping in relief to match the sigh that came through the intercom. “I just want to make sure his home life is safe,” Virgil went on. “He’s way too young to be out doing super work. I have serious questions for anyone who’d let a kid try and fight grown adults on his own, powers or no. So either his parents don’t know, or…” Well, he hoped it was just that the boy’s parents didn’t know. He could cross other bridges if and when they proved to be real.
There was a brief silence. Virgil counted down the seconds, wondering how close he could get to the moment Thomas would emerge from his moral quandary with the conclusion that the safety of a child was a suitably heroic motive. Three… two…
“I’ll get that going for you right away, Virge,” Thomas’s voice said over the intercom.
Virgil smiled to himself. “Thanks,” he said. “Also, when you get a chance, make sure that robbery Scorpion’s folks are planning in the south quarter for Tuesday gets shut down. If they complain, tell them—well, first of all, tell them it’s not a request.” Being the head of the Villain’s Guild had its perks. “But tell them I said I’ll find a way to make it up to them. Just keep them out of the area. I have a date.”