AUTHOR'S NOTE: Okay! Listen up, my lovely readers. Within the first hour of this being posted I have received about five different messages informing me about how I am incorrectly writing the Mistress's character, and how readers do not like some of her actions/statements. While I do appreciate the information people have messaged me about the comics, other villains and their personalities, here is my reply.
I have written things this way for a reason. The Mistress's personality, words, and actions are deliberate. It will tie into Trigger's decisions, motivations, and choices that come later on in the story. Trigger's treatment by the guards is also done on purpose. Again, I have plans. Yes, I understand that to people who do not know what will happen, this may appear weird/absurd/etc. But again, I have reasons. You, dear readers, will have to be patient and just see what those reasons are.
Sincerely,
UndiscoveredSpecies
The tall gray stone of the orphanage loomed against the slate-colored sky like a heavy, blocky tombstone; the image wasn't helped by the foreboding wrought-iron gates that stood stiff and straight as soldiers, blocking off the winding road that sloped gradually up to the doors. The whole place had the heavy reek of misery, and the scrawny teenager in the backseat of the black car screwed up his nose in disgust.
"Mistress won't be happy with you." The irritating and nasal voice of the man in the front seat broke through his thoughts with all the warmth and love of a lethal injection. "Mistress has no patience for ungrateful brats who run away from her care."
"Ungrateful brats have no patience for a woman with a fire-poker up her ass," the boy retorted waspishly. A sudden flash of movement was accompanied by an explosion of pain in his cheek as the guard on his left side slapped him hard across the face. He couldn't tell if the man, built like a sturdy ocean liner, was looking at him at all; the mirrored sunglasses that covered nearly half his face gave nothing away about the eyes underneath.
"Careful, now, or Mistress might just cut out that tongue." Through the rearview mirror, the boy caught a glance of the driver's eyes on his face and scowled at him. The edges of the eyes crinkled up with a humorless smile. "It's no wonder that nobody wants to adopt you," the driver commented.
The boy looked away angrily, clenching his jaw and hands in an effort to hide how the cruel remark hurt. For all the sting that the words held, it was the honest pain that came when truth was spoken. Nobody wanted him, not even his own parents. He had been dumped on the step in the rain and watched miserably as his mother and father drove away, tires squelching wetly in the mud. His face throbbed from the slap and the skin of his wrists were chafed by the handcuffs he wore. He had executed his latest runaway attempt four days ago, having decided that slowly starving under the uncaring eye of the Mistress was worse than anything that could happen to him on the streets. Three days and nights of dumpster-diving later, he had been picked up by the police for 'suspicious activity' and returned to the custody of the bastards at the Transformation Orphan Institute (T.O.I. for short).
The car purred smoothly to a halt outside the blood-red double-doors of the entrance and the boy resigned himself to his fate as the backseat's door was opened and another mammoth man took him roughly by the upper arm, hauling him out. The guard who had slapped him put a ham-sized hand on his shoulder, gripping harder than necessary as he led his quarry to the chipped stone steps. The boy could feel every pebble beneath the paper-thin soles of his shoes as he made his glum ascent. His stomach growled loudly.
"Maybe Mistress will show the brat mercy and feed him if he asks nicely," the driver commented with cheerful malice, his cold eyes gleaming. "Maybe she'll let him drink the dishwater again."
It took every ounce of self-control the boy had not to throw himself at the nasal-voiced driver and curb-stomp his weaselly smirk in, his inner anger bubbling dangerously close to boiling point. But he knew that if he attacked, the guards would deal back his violence ten-fold and give him much more than a slap to the face. He would have to bide his time...maybe he could find a mousetrap and put it in his shoe later on, or even better, slide it into his back pocket so that when he sat down...He ducked his head quickly to hide the wistful smile that lifted the corners of his mouth.
He was led inside and into a parlor decorated in hideous shades of moldy-cheese green and the sickening red-brown of dried blood. The guards pushed him into an under stuffed armchair and the boy winced as part of the splintered frame stabbed into the back of his thigh.
"Wait here while I fetch Mistress," Weasel the driver sneered, as if the boy had any other option with a hulking guard standing on either side. He made a face at the scrawny man's retreating back and hunched his shoulders forward in an angry sulk.
"Shouldn't have run," one of the guards said to him in an undertone.
The boy looked up, surprised to hear him talk. "What else was I supposed to do? Stay here until I rot?"
"That's one option," commented the guard that had slapped him.
"Real motivating," the boy snapped back. "And why do you two work here? Did you sign some sort of deal with the devil that says you have to work for Queen Frigid and beat up children?"
"Keep running your mouth and you'll get a knuckle sandwich to eat instead of dishwater," the guard growled, clenching his meaty hands.
The boy scowled and didn't reply. He ground his teeth together in contempt as the Mistress walked in, followed by Weasel. Mistress was a tall woman who was all angles and no curves, with a ramrod-straight spine and steel gray hair pulled back into so tight a bun that it was more a facelift-providing helmet than a style. She wore a wedding ring, but the boy couldn't imagine anyone wanting to wed her chilly demeanor and infuriating arrogance. He had never seen a spouse, now that he thought of it...maybe she had poisoned him for life insurance money.
"So." She folded her arms over her chest, the outline of her bra (so pointy that it would probably impale someone if she hugged them) showing through the lacy red and gray dress she wore. "You decided to run away again. This makes...eleven attempts in the fourteen years you've been with us?"
"Thirteen," the boy muttered.
"I see." She held out a hand and a practically drooling Weasel handed her a clipboard. She removed a pen from behind her ear and made a note, taking a measured step closer. "And what, exactly, did you hope to accomplish upon running away from our Institute?"
"Do you want to go through the same motions?" The boy asked, raising an eyebrow. "I ran away because I hate it here. I hate it here because...gee, let me list the reasons. Beatings. Lack of food. Seven kids sharing a two-person room, and that's considered the Luxury Suite. Your pea-brained lackeys who get off on smacking children around?" He tilted his head coldly toward the glaring men on either side of him.
"Not too rough, were you?" The Mistress raised her eyebrows.
"Just a little light thrashing," the one on the left said.
Mistress reached out and grabbed the boy by the chin, pulling his head up with surprising force for an old lady. The boy bared his teeth and jerked away, but not before she had gotten a good look at the ugly bruise forming on his cheek. "Hm. Be harsher next time. He doesn't seem to have learned his lesson," she sniffed, wiping her hand on her dress. "Solitary confinement. Three month term."
The boy was lifted out of the chair and off his feet as the guards seized him by the upper arms and dragged him out of the room. "Get off me! Let me go!"
His protests, as per usual, fell upon uncaring ears as he was towed down a set of uncarpeted stairs and into the basement—dungeon was a better word, really—and down the hallway that he knew better than any other inhabitant at the T. O. I. Still handcuffed, the boy was tossed unceremoniously into a tiny room no bigger than a broom closet, landing hard on one side. The door clanged shut with cold finality and he was left alone.