Foray into Villainy

Despite having finished my preparations and despite ma almost giddy excitement to go out I forced myself to eat in the cafeteria to make myself seen. Pretending like I was my moody, miserable and sarcastic self wasn't hard if no one was there to talk with you. I was either to early for the normal shifts or to late, despite it being close to 7 pm. Or there had been another call to arms, I seriously needed a way to get more information, but I even getting a newspaper would take herculean effort in this place. Dusa would have to do the job and get some basic information while outside.

Finally being able to go out, to simply go wherever I wanted was freeing in a way I never experienced before, at least as far as I remembered. Neither my parents nor my foster families had ever cared where I went and I had gotten used to being ignored and allowed to come and go as I pleased. Now that I stood inside the bathroom, Desu illusion cloak around my shoulder in clothes as dark as the night and a black mask covering my entire face, I felt elated to say the least, not just because all my senses had been heightened and strengthened by my mask. A slight extension of my will into the cloak and in the mirror before me stood someone completely different. She was my height and had limbs approximately the same length as me, but with different proportions. Her legs where a little longer and shaped like a super models while her arms where even skinnier than mine. The hair had changed from my normal dark tone to a dark purple, braided in nine shoulder length braids, the same shade some of my snakes had and the pink cloak added a very girly flair, which was enhanced by the rainbow charm bracelets on both wrists and the silver mask with small pink stones in the form of tears on both cheeks, which only left her mouth with pearl white teeth free of the silvery material covering the rest of her face. Her legs were covered in dark purple snakeskin jeans, the same shade as the boots and her shins where hidden behind a dark green shimmering skirt that looked like it was made from living snakes in the way in moved and flowed without any wind. The upper body was mostly covered by a shirt with short sleeves the same color and material as her skirt.

In combination it looked like her entire torso, upper arms and the top part of her legs were wrapped in snakes. I had primarily done this to look cool, but it also conveniently hid any signs of a bust, I didn't want my fake persona to be ugly, but I didn't want her to be a walking pin up model, so I chose to hide and obscure a big part of her body. I had known beforehand that I couldn't give myself a big bust because it would have needed adjustments in the center of gravity and the way I walked. Dusa was a preteen so the lack would draw to much attention, but hiding such a perceived flaw would be in character so I made it easy on myself. Amanda the black king snake was currently wrapped around my illusions neck, careful not to exert too much force, not that she could, the light had prevented me from giving her any ability to strangle anything after all. In her case the light had even forced me to add safeties to avoid damaging sentient beings, but I was willing to pay that price to decrease production time from months to a few hours. The other snakes had already been activated and were stored inside Amanda together with a few emergency teleport charms. There is no such thing as being over prepared after all.

I left the bathroom and stood in front of the only window inside my small bedroom. The Wardrobe was already closed and sealed for the night, if someone came in they wouldn't find anything, not even me. A single deep breath and I crushed a teleport scroll, picturing the roof of the hospital I had woken up in only a few days ago. The transfer wasn't instantaneous, the distance was to far for that and the scrolls had been designed to priorities the safety of the passengers, not the speed of the transfer. Not even five seconds passed before I stood in the cool night air on the edge of the roof of the Brockton Bay General Hospital, the biggest and most renown hospital in the safest area of the Bay. I spent some time surveying my surroundings and just looking at the scenery of night in Brockton Bay. This early in the night, it was still pretty busy in this part of town with people mingling and cars filling the streets.

I hadn't chosen a target for tonight's raid yet, there wasn't enough information for me to get anything but I had a general outline. I needed something which would attract attention and and something that provided information of the current situation in the Bay. Both locations should be very close together for me to fulfill both objectives at the same time. I teleported the short distance to the next building on the right and went to survey the shops all around me. I didn't hide, but people even in the age of parahumans so rarely looked up, which meant I wasn't worried of being discovered. I only stopped my parkour-teleport roof-hooping when I reached the nicest stores in town close to what I assumed to be an artificially raised part of the cost. Even the beach looked inviting here and the clientele was clearly of a higher level in this part of town. This would be sufficient for tonight. I ordered Amanda to get of me to the roof and release the guardian snakes. Five of them were ordered to wrap themselves around my body while the rest was to stay and guard Amanda while I produced a distraction for the smaller snakes to slip into the stores to steal anything that seemed valuable. Some of the small non-combat snakes would also use the time to steal old newspapers and magazines from the local hairdressers while the rest went after everything Amanda fancied in a random pattern.

Deciding it was time to start the show, I jumped from the roof and activated the gravity dampening in my boots. The first person who noticed my slowly falling figure only stared, but the second was more vocal about his surprise and alerted more people to my presence. It was showtime.

The moment I reached the ground a group of people had already formed around me, Brockton Bay natives apparently weren't afraid to meet the newest unknown addition to the parahuman scene, but I couldn't blame them to much. My costume screamed attention seeking teenager and wasn't very villainous. Time to think on the fly and speak:

"Gather around lovely people of Brockton Bay, this is my first show so be kind and give a lot."

I gave a curtsey and despite feeling like went ridiculously wrong somewhere people came closer.

"Thank you dear people. Now spread the word and tell the world, Dusa is here to snake her way to the top!" I proclaimed in my most enthusiastic way, my voice changed by my mask to be higher and more melodious than usual travel far through the streets and lead to almost everyone looking at me. I blushed in my real body, but the illusion me stayed calm and raising my hands I roared in a voice filled with childish glee. "Let there be Amanda-geddon."

And on cue small snakes in the colors of the rainbow and a few more which had never been seen before started falling from the sky, where Amanda had spit them from her inner dimensional pocket. It was instantly full of chaos, people being hit by snakes, people panicking and running away from snakes and people dripping over snakes and other people. It was glorious. I laughed and used my guardian snakes to bully people to run away in directions which would cause a stampede. Having a birds eye view trough Amanda helped immensely and while she directed the smaller snakes to invade the different stores and steal accessories from the downed humans I was busy playing it up for the no doubt dozens of smartphones filming my every action with a villainous monologue:

"Ha people of Brockton Bay, I Dusa have bested you all. As the dastardly villain I am I have brought fear and chaos to the streets. Hear me, cowering fools, I am THE Queen of Snakes and should one of you ever again mistreat on my mine you will PAY. I am hereby declaring this city mine to do with as I wish. Fear me, tremble Brockton Bay for the Queen will not rest until you all have learned the slither."

I ordered my guardian snakes to bring me one human each, which three did by nudging their chosen ones in my direction and practically forcing them to stumble in my direction, while the other two for some reason simply chose to drag two people lying on the ground in my direction. I ended up with 3 adult and 2 teenagers, all shaking from fear. All the while snakes where swarming all around, creating panic and nicking small things here and there. Amanda's small volley of snakes had cleared the alley next to her building and she had lengthened herself to the extend her tail was on the ground of the alleyway while her head still provided me with vision of the entire area. Her body made a perfect bridge that way and while her five guardians distributed themselves up and down her body the first smaller snakes who had gathered their loot used her as an impromptu stairways to feed her their loot. To increase the confusion and because I wanted to I ordered my five volunteers:

"Rejoice, you five shall be the first to learn the slither, follow me to worship the snake gods, or else!"

I gave them my best, you don't want to find out what else, feral smile and began to wriggle my body like a snake while taking a header position. Knees bent, waist swaying with the upper body and hand forming an arrow above my head. It would look positively ridicilous if my clothes didn't already look like coiling snakes where encasing my entire body. This way I still looked ridicilous, but with a certain charm, almost like my whole body was made of dancing snakes, the braids in my hair dancing like the heads of a hydra. Something about my appearance and demeanor must have worked because my five volunteers almost immediately joined me in my impromptu dance and so I sent my guardian snakes to collect even more volunteers.

Amanda informed me after a few minutes that all objectives had been achieved and I left my now almost thirty people strong dance group after a last grandeurs ground slither in midair, thanks to gravity manipulation it looked like I slithered almost vertical along the ground into the allay. Amanda collected the last of my snakes, the guardian snakes where the only ones to still be left outside and I took hold of her tail while the guardians hooked themselves into my illusion to be carried along to the top of the roof when Amanda shrunk herself back to her smaller size. A teleport with one of my scrolls and we where back on the rove of the Brockton Bay General hospital, where Amanda engulfed the rest of my snakes while I prepared another teleport scroll.

Seconds later I was standing inside the bathroom of my apartment, giddy with excitement over the successful heist of what must have been on of the most prosperous areas of Brockton Bay. I hadn't really payed attention to how much stuff Amanda had been fed by the smaller snakes, but I knew there had been at least 5 laptops and a dozen phones. Newspapers and magazines where even more numerous, as were clothes, especially female ones for some reason. There might have been many stores geared towards the female population in that part of the shopping street, I hadn't really payed attention to clothing stores in the vicinity. In any case it had been a successful day and night and for the first time in weeks my sleep that night wasn't plagues with nightmares.