System Certified Supervillain

“Ugggghhhhhhh.”

Tiff watched Amy do her best impression of a zombie. Not one of those fast, terrifying zombies that could climb straight up walls or react to the faintest of sounds. This was a shambler. The kind that measured speed in inches per minute and shuffled forward while dragging their legs, arms raised forward, head tilted to the side, inquiring about the availability of brains.

But Amy wasn't acting…she’d simply stayed up too late. Tiff and Victoria weren’t faring much better, having supervised her the entire time she’d taken last night to install their new security program on their computer. Eventually, Tiff had Victoria carry Amy away so she could finally pass out. Now, a mere handful of hours later, they were sitting around the table eating breakfast. Tiff and Victoria hid it fairly well, but Amy was an open book.

“I hope you’re satisfied,” Rick said, quirking an eyebrow as he peered over the morning paper.

Rick wasn’t one of those old dudes who shunned advancements and claimed that original or analog was better. Strictly speaking, he didn’t even have to read the physical paper. Lying next to him on the table was a tablet where he could access any number of news articles at his fingertips…but there was something tangible about a real newspaper that just felt good. Maybe it was the flimsiness of the mass-produced paper, or the way the ink would rub off onto his fingers…or the fact that if he didn’t like what he saw, he could crumple the whole thing up into a ball and chuck it about 8 feet away before it lost velocity.

“Wah yoo mean?” Amy asked with a yawn.

“You think I don’t know what staying up too late looks like?” Rick chuckled. He put his paper down and laced his fingers together as he leaned forward to give Victoria a serious stare. “I hope you didn’t take them anywhere too dangerous.”

Amy froze in the middle of pouring herself some cereal. Tiff slowly turned to face Victoria, who was taking her time while buttering some toast.

“Wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle,” she eventually said.

“I know you’d never intentionally endanger your sisters,” he said, shaking his head, “But it’s the principle of the matter. We love having you here with us, Tori. Please don’t make your mother and me reconsider housing you. You’re a grown woman and you can make your own choices…but Tiff and Amy are still minors. Their wellbeing is my responsibility.”

Victoria hung her head slightly but said nothing. Tiff would have expected her to make some sort of vow like “It won’t happen again,” or something similar. Glancing at her dad and the wry smile he was wearing, it was clear he wasn’t going to push for such an easily broken promise. Tiff definitely couldn’t say she never planned to do anything risky like that again…despite how a week ago, something like last night’s excursion would have never entered her mind. Amy seemed to be the only one willing to push the oblivious act.

“Dad, no!” She panicked. “You can’t kick Tori out! It was just a little drive around town!”

“At 10:30 at night?” Rick turned his sharp eyes on Amy, who bit her lip nervously. He chuckled and gave her a warm smile, tossing a thumb in Victoria’s direction. “While going out in full costume? That was very nice, by the way. Is it new?”

Rick took one look at Amy’s flabbergasted face and laughed.

“What? We have cameras.”

“Yeah,” Amy cried out indignantly, “On the doorbell!”

“You think those are the only ones we have?” Rick asked, amused. “I’m not going to leave the security of my household to a store-bought gimmick.”

“I didn’t know we had other cameras,” Amy groused. “You never told us that….”

“And give up the chance to capture embarrassing videos for future boyfriend blackmail?” Rick laughed. “Not a chance.”

“Dad! That's messed up!”

“As is raiding my surplus electronics storage,” he said evenly. “You think I wouldn’t notice an entire server rack go missing?”

“We needed more parts, okay?”

“Oh, so is that where you snuck off to? I thought it was just a drive around town?”

“It was!”

“I can still ground you,” he said in a level tone. It wasn’t a threat…but it also wasn’t not a threat. He looked at each of his daughters, one by one. Tiff was wearing the most impressive poker face he’d ever seen, while Amy looked close to treason and Victoria looked disappointed in herself. Eventually, Rick decided to let it go.

“Girls. I know you might not think so, but it wasn’t so long ago that I was a teenager myself. Sometimes, you just need to get up to mischief. As long as you stay safe, that’s all I can ask. But your mom won’t see it that way. Make sure you get your stories straight before she gets home.”

And that was all Rick had to say about that. He nodded once with finality and went back to reading the paper.

Breakfast was quiet and a little awkward for the next several minutes before Victoria ventured to ask if anything interesting was happening in the news. Nothing out of the ordinary for their neck of the woods, with the most exciting tidbit being the fact that an NFL team was facing sanctions from the league for using a low-ranking Mind Meta to read plays. The amusing part wasn’t that they got caught cheating; such methods were commonplace and, frankly, expected. What was against the rules was that the team hadn’t declared the Meta to the rest of the league, and as such, teams couldn’t prepare countermeasures. Tiff tried to pay attention, because she did find it interesting, but most of her brainpower was devoted to staying awake.

​

Last night, after returning home, Amy helped Tiff install the new security measures for her TAS. It was more impressive than she imagined it would be, while at the same time still being disappointing. Tiff figured they got a real bargain for what they paid.

But that begged the question: what did Victoria use to pay Haxus? Tiff had never seen a piece of currency so strange before, and she only felt comfortable asking about it once they were safely locked away in her room.

Victoria explained that the glowing blue object was something called a [Luck Coin]. It was rare enough to be uncommon but not nearly plentiful enough to create markets around. It wasn’t a precious metal like gold or silver, but in many cases it was infinitely more valuable. A good majority of the world would never see one, and even if they did, it wouldn’t do them any good; but to the right person in the right circumstances, it was worth a fortune.

Essentially, it manipulated luck.

Of course, one of the first things humans had tested upon discovering [Luck Coins] was trying to rig gambling matches or skew the odds in their favor. It didn’t work. But that didn’t stop them from trying, and there was evidence to support that people had been slipping [Coins] into dice games since civilization had discovered they could paint six numbers on a cube and roll them around. Cave paintings and hieroglyphics in Asia and the Middle East showed that ancient kings and Egyptian pharaohs tried hoarding them and were often buried with them. Even though they couldn’t affect mundane luck like a slot machine or a craps table, most casinos banned them and they’d kick a player out who was caught trying to use one.

Which made Tiff wonder: how did one use a [Luck Coin]? And where did they come from, if they were so rare? Who made them?

Well, they weren’t man-made, which was why they couldn’t be mass-produced or used as typical currency. They were handed out by the System, sometimes through quests, but most of the time they were rewarded for successfully clearing a Rift. In fact, Victoria told her the coin she traded away had come from the Santa Ronda Rift. Tiff’s eyes widened, worried that she made her sister part with something she might consider a treasure, but Victoria laughed it off. In the year and a half that she had been delving, this was the fourth one she had found.

The uses Victoria had for them were very limited. None of her Skills were luck-based, so she didn’t need to hoard them for potentially lifesaving opportunities. It was nice to have one on hand in case the System gave her a probability-based quest, but last night was as good a way to “spend” one as she’d ever come across. It wouldn’t be sustainable, and if Tiff needed to keep buying specialty goods, she’d need to find her own source of income. Not that she expected to need to. Though, it might be nice to pay Amy with something tangible just so the System would get off her back. Maybe ice cream would count.

​

But last night was for installing the new hardware, not diving deep into all the features. So after breakfast, while Amy was whining about catching up with all the homework she put off yesterday, Tiff wandered back into her room to take a closer look.

The first thing she did after sitting down at her desk was pulling up the map.

…technically, the first thing she did was get back up after Victoria followed her inside, cross the room, and lock the door.

Then! Then she pulled up the map.

“Pretty amazing,” Victoria whistled as she stole Tiff’s chair, sat in it backward, and began spinning in circles. Tiff huffed from where she was just deposited on the bed and gave Victoria a deadpan look.

“Do you mind?” She asked. Victoria smiled and eventually vacated the seat, only after the chair ran out of momentum, and placed Tiff back in it. Tiff rolled her eyes. Such was life, living with Might Metas.

“So what do we see?” Victoria asked more seriously, taking a seat on the floor next to Tiff. She shook her head.

“I’m not sure. I think you’d be able to tell better than me.”

Victoria reached forward with a long arm and pointed at the monitor. The image was zoomed out, revealing the entire orb of Tiff’s territory. At that size, it was far too small. And yet, Victoria nodded with familiarity.

“Okay, this one’s easy,” she said, tapping on the southwest perimeter. “That’s the ocean. Not a ton; it looks like most of your territory is inland, but…actually, wait. How large was your territory, again?”

“The System said it has a 20-mile radius,” Tiff answered.

“Eesh,” Victoria grimaced. She pointed to the bend of the coast and made a small circle with her finger. “Then that’s gotta be Long Beach.”

“Is that…bad?” Tiff asked. She didn’t get out much, and even if she did, she wasn’t a beachgoer.

“Depends on your definition of bad,” Victoria laughed. “They have fantastic fish markets.”

Tiff gave her sister a judging stare.

“What? I like fish. But it also means you’ve got a Rift and a sizable homeless problem.”

“More adventurers?” Tiff asked, thinking about their conversation when Victoria took her to the Union. Victoria shook her head.

“No. I guess you’d call these ‘typical homeless’.”

“Oh,” Tiff frowned, then a lightbulb went off. “Oh! Is that the Rift we talked about? The one with [Magicoal]?”

“You would remember that, wouldn’t you?” Victoria grinned. “That’s the one.”

“Hmm,” Tiff said. She backed out and checked the Rift menu. “I don’t see it.”

“Let me see,” Victoria leaned in. She elbowed Tiff out of the way and stole the mouse. “I don’t think…ah. I see. There’s a filter. You’re looking at Unstable Rifts. There’s 2. Weren’t there 3 last night? One must have shut down. Crazy that these things can just pop up underground. If we’re adding stabilized Rifts…there’s…6? Huh. That doesn’t sound right.”

“Why?”

“Because there should only be 5,” Victoria frowned. “All things considered, a bubble 40 miles wide is huge for a local zone, but tiny compared to the world. Most Rifts aren’t worth keeping around, and those that are cost a lot of money to do so. Let’s see….”

Victoria clicked on the Rifts and searched for their locations on the map. She quickly spotted the two unstable Rifts because they were so far below the surface. She pointed to the three she expected.

“That’s Long Beach, that’s Chino….”

“What’s in Chino?” Tiff asked.

“Cows,” Victoria grimaced. “Lots of cows.”

“In their Rift?” Tiff gave her sister a flat stare.

“Yes,” Victoria shook her head. “Even in their Rift. Never go there if you value your nose.”

“What else?”

Victoria pointed to the north of the map.

“Wilderness. North of Arcadia.”

“Why would we keep a Rift open in the wilds?” Tiff asked. That sounded like a huge waste of money.

“Because it provides fresh water,” Victoria said grimly. “We live in a desert. The Grapevine Aquifer failed in the 50s. People gotta keep living somehow.”

A completely justifiable usage of money.

“So where’s the last?” Tiff asked.

“I’m not sure,” Victoria squinted. She quickly found the marker displaying the Rift, but it was in an area where no Rift should be. In fact, as far as she was aware, there’d never been a Rift there. Eventually she scrolled in far enough and what she found made her bark out a laugh.

“I’m not sure if I should be surprised or impressed,” she said, leaning back and crossing her arms.

“What?” Tiff asked, elbowing her sister out of the way. “Where is it?”

“Anaheim,” Victoria let out a long breath.

“Okay, so, what’s in Anaheim?” Tiff clarified.

“Disneyland.”

Tiff slowly turned to face her big sister.

“Disneyland,” she repeated. “You’re saying there’s a Rift…in Disneyland.”

“I’m not saying it,” Victoria raised her hands defensively. “Your map is.”

“But you said it’s a stable Rift?” Tiff turned back around. “Why haven’t we heard of one before? There’s no way there’s a Rift in the middle of an amusement park.”

“I think that’s a question better left unasked,” Victoria sighed. “At least for the moment.”

Tiff nodded. She didn’t know if she actually wanted to know. Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride might never be the same. She cycled the map back to its zoomed-out state and had Victoria help her understand the area.

All things told, Tiff didn’t have enough information to tell what was “good” or “bad,” and not in an Affinity sense. The problem lay in the part of her Class description that said she had total control in her domain. She still had no idea what that meant, but now that she had a clearer understanding of the actual land, she was starting to form a picture. Her gut reaction was unease.

Her territory encapsulated all of Downtown Los Angeles. It included some of the famously “bad” neighborhoods, like Compton, but it didn’t quite reach the “nice” ones, like Beverly Hills.

Victoria assured her that, in some ways, Beverly Hills was much worse than any poorer city.

She had two major league baseball teams…and honestly, she had no idea what to do with that information. Maybe start trying to farm autographs?

Tiff tried scrolling for the Hollywood sign, but unfortunately, that was just outside of her zone. Victoria gave her a consoling pat on the back…which made Tiff question why she’d be sad about missing that landmark.

To amuse herself, Tiff zoomed in as far as she could on Dodger Stadium…finding that the function went much, much deeper than she expected.

Not only did the map give her a bird’s-eye view of her entire territory, but it also gave her microscopic details, too. Or so she was willing to say in hyperbole, though in truth that was a bit of an exaggeration.

Tiff could zoom the map so far in, it only stopped when it felt she was standing on the field itself. She watched as the system updated itself…and nearly jumped out of her seat as a still image of a guy riding a lawnmower popped into view. She quickly scrolled away, burrowing into the outfield like some sort of mole. When she realized what she’d done, she retreated above ground, but the lawnmower had already moved on.

Maintenance man jumpscares weren’t the only benefit of such intense magnification, though judging from Victoria's howling laughter, it was one of the premium options. Tiff quickly found several other people standing around, wanting to prove…something to Victoria; she wasn’t sure what. Instead, she found that they were having a conversation.

And a text bubble appeared over their heads like a panel in a comic book.

Tiff and Victoria both leaned in, as if getting closer to her crappy little monitor would help them hear a speech bubble better. They watched, in stunned disbelief, as two men talked about the weather, of all things. To be fair, Tiff supposed, talking about the weather was important for a groundskeeper considering there was supposed to be a game that night, but Tiff felt dirty for eavesdropping. She quickly zoomed out and rolled away from her desk.

“You saw that, right?” Victoria asked. She quickly took up the space Tiff vacated and began scrolling. “I’m not hallucinating? We just watched a pair of dudes have a conversation?”

“Yeah,” Tiff shivered. She wasn’t cold, but understanding was starting to dawn on her and the implications were staggering. In a way, wasn’t this very similar to what a Telepath did? Listen in to private conversations without anybody else’s consent? Granted, it didn’t invade a person’s mind, but this was the perfect way to…

…gather blackmail.

Or spy.

Or any other number of things that fit a Supervillain to a T.

To make it even worse, Victoria pointed out that at the bottom of the screen was a tiny icon that looked like a pair of headphones with a line through it. As if she was muted, but if she wanted to, she could listen along, not content to only read their words. Combining this with the fact that she could see through walls? Terrifying.

Victoria pointed out how amusing that would be to focus on a university dorm room, but even the thought of a rowdy frat house made Tiff feel violently ill. Nothing good would ever come of that, ever. Tiff shoved Victoria aside and abandoned the map.

Like an overdue history report, Tiff was dreading the next section. Dynamics. Victoria remained by her side as a pillar of strength, but she was just as clueless as Tiff when it came to making heads or tails of the most blatantly Administrative section. Once again, Tiff popped it open, and once again it looked like 30 years' worth of neglect in somebody’s spam folder. Notices, requests, admissions, and directives all sat in neat little rows, each marked from a vague sender headed toward an unknown recipient. There was sometimes a small blurb alluding to the subject, and on a good many of the files, there appeared to be attachments.

But.

There.

Were.

Millions.

There was a section at the top for filters, and Tiff assumed there were ways to help her find what she wanted (if she ever wanted), but she was overwhelmed by the sheer quantity. Each page displayed 100 single-line entries, which she assumed could be opened to view their contents, but there were 238 thousand pages to sort through!

If Tiff decided she was going to open every single email once, and only once, before moving on to the next one, and she was able to open a single email per second…just opening all the emails would take her roughly 275 days. And that was if she was working 24/7 around the clock! No sleeping, no eating, no stopping to use the bathroom…just clicking each of them once.

It would take her years, years to work through all of this!

Suddenly, Tiff felt lightheaded and developed a new appreciation for secretaries. To make things even worse, Tiff assumed these weren’t a static amount. From what she remembered last night when she quickly glanced at this page, the email on the top wasn’t the same as the one that was there right now. That meant that emails (as Tiff was going to staunchly call these) were continuing to add up. With a shaky hand, she clicked on one at random.

​

[C.Diaz RE: PAYROLL 9/12-9/23]

​

[City Clerk] 80hrs … $35.17

[City Clerk] 80hrs … $27.25

[City Clerk] 79hrs … $19.85

[City Clerk] 84hrs … $41

[City Clerk] 67hrs … $32.25

​

The list went on.

Tiff blanched. She had no idea what to do with that. Today was the 24th, and there was a little note at the bottom that said: “Due by 9/25.” Clearly, if Tiff didn’t do anything, there were about to be a lot of angry [City Clerks].

Fortunately, there was a little icon that looked like a U-turn with a hashtag. Hoping this might be something related to past messages, Tiff clicked on it. Relief flooded her; it was a history list. This C. Diaz person sent the same messages over and over, once every two weeks, and it was always the same exact thing. Well, the numbers themselves were slightly different, but there was a general variance and the total didn’t stray too far in either direction. If payroll was to be believed (and if Tiff’s understanding of payroll wasn’t wildly inaccurate), then the numbers matching up sort of made sense. It seemed to be some sort of…System-based accounting. Tiff would be the first to admit she had no idea how the government actually worked, but she wouldn’t be surprised to find out it had System assistance. Figuring she’d already come this far and sunk this deep, Tiff seriously studied the payroll message for a solid 5 minutes, trying her best to understand. She learned she had no idea what she was doing, but when she was going to close the message, she accidentally hit approve.

Tiff froze, almost afraid to move…but nothing happened. The message dimmed slightly, as if letting her know it had already been processed, and the little icon on the main menu turned from a closed envelope to an open envelope with a small checkmark next to it.

Tiff felt herself deflate, relieved that she hadn’t royally screwed something up, and quickly backed out of the program. She really didn’t want to have to deal with thousands and thousands of work emails for the rest of her life. She searched the options and found something that made her optimistic. An automation tab. There were a few options, including manual override, which was currently on, and a dropdown menu that let her set individual permissions based on a wide array of filters. She went back to being incredibly overwhelmed. However, at the bottom, there was an interesting box.

​

[Restore Previous Permissions?]

This will grant authority to users who previously held certain privileges.

Warning: Any decision marked as critical will still require Dungeon Master approval.

​

Oh. Okay, Tiff could work with that. In the small amount of messages Tiff had scanned, she hadn’t seen anything marked “Critical,” so she hoped those cases were rare. She stared at her screen, and after about half a minute, the list began to resolve. Messages started greying out one by one as, presumably, people were able to return to their jobs. Tiff carefully shut the computer down and pushed herself away. She leaned back in her chair, almost tipping over into Victoria’s lap.

“Tori,” Tiff complained. “If I’m supposed to be a ‘Dark Queen,’ why am I reading mundane System emails like a chump?”

Her big sister chuckled and began braiding her hair.

“Sounds to me like you need to outsource.”

¹

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