Villains High: The Lipsky Driving Tutoring
The first day of summer was finally upon Villainapolis. After all the crazy events that happened last season, Ruby and Martin spent their day off by going to Bergen's and Troll's for Groot Beer floats.
"Where's Feige?" Ruby noticed that Ronilda was the one doing most of the waitress-duties today. The Troll co-owner of the diner was nowhere in sight.
"Dårlig's filling in my baking duty for now," she shrugged.
"You realize you aren't answering the question?" Martin frowned.
"You realize that I'm avoiding saying much because the Bergen boss is stressed out?" Ronilda copied Martin's tone and waved towards the kitchen. Dårlig was in his stress mode, which is usually obvious when he is in multiple task positions. He was chopping vegetables on one counter, then he'd run to check the oven heating up the Seven Deadly Sins Pound Cakes, then he'd boil the painne pasta. Becky Abyss was calmly doing the dishes as if her employer wasn't having a heart attack. (Gilliard was tired of working as a dishwasher, so he quit and got replaced by Becky, Sean Abyss' younger sister.)
"Dårlig and Feige came up with the last minute idea to triple the client numbers," Ronilda explained quickly, "so Feige left this morning to see if she could convince the VSC to let Bergen's and Troll's start a summer food truck program."
"That sounds like a great idea!" Ruby smiled as she drank her Groot Beer float. "The diner's already a success, but a food truck would really promote well! Imagine distributing Groot beer floats at the beach!" She raised her glass.
"Easier said than done, Ruby." Martin said. "The VSC, the Villainapolis Summer Committee, is a tough jury. Statistics have shown that out of thirty folks proposing a profit-making summer activity, only eight get accepted..."
The front door burst open. The opening bell got catapulted right into the kitchen's boiling pot of pasta. All eyes went to the door. Feige was slamming the door back shut. She leaned on it and created a series of creaking sounds as she slipped and dropped on the floor. Her eyes had tired black marks and her hands were gripping on a piece of paper. Dårlig rushed to his darling's side. "Well?" he asked cautiously.
Ruby walked over and took the paper from Feige. She read it and scowled at Feige and Dårlig. "I don't believe it!"
"They refused?" Martin gasped.
"No! The paper says that they can't run a food truck program if one of them doesn't have a driver's license!" She raised her hands in the air. "What were you guys thinking? You expect to start a food truck program when none of you have a license?"
"OK, not the end of the world." Martin got up and clapped his hands to catch their attention. "We're lucky that in live in Villainapolis, the only crazy town that gives a permit after one or two days of learning. All we have to do is find a place for one of you to learn and get a permit. Easy peasy."
"You might want to lower your pees." Ruby rechecked the paper. "The paper says that unless one of them has a paper and steps up to drive the truck by Monday, their offer will be considered invalid."
"And Dårlig can't drive ever since a donkey stampede in Bergen Town banned him from holding any form of wheel in any vehicle!" Feige clutched her hair. "I'll never be able to get my permit in two days! Just trying for the Trolls learning permit made me sick!"
"OK," Martin said grimly. "So we only have the remains of today and Sunday to get Feige a permit..."
"I'm going to regret saying this, but I might have to suggest the LDT," Ronilda sighed. "The Lipsky Driving Tutoring. Very legit and provides legal permits."
"I didn't know Melgo tutored in driving," Dårlig said.
"Not Melgo." Ronilda shook her head. "Her cousin Edina."
Everyone, including the clients and excluding Ronilda, exclaimed: "EDINA LIPSKY?"
Two hours later
Feige gulped. To think that Ronilda managed to get her a reserved tutoring at the LDT was suicide. Even now, she looked like she was sweating all the water out of her body even though she hadn't put a foot in any vehicle. She was already freaked out by the tour of the 'learning stadium' that Edina was showing. Seeing all those monster trucks parking after crushing limousines was scarier.
"Remind me again why we decided to get me a permit in a monster truck stadium..." She croaked.
"Seriously? There's no way I'm putting you in one of my monster babies! Seriously." Edina shook her head. She pointed to a hand-me-down gray food truck. "No, you're going to test with that, and once you get that permit, it will be all yours! Seriously!"
"Why do you even have an unused food truck in a tutoring center primarily filled with monster trucks?" Ruby asked, confused.
"Eh. I tried to see if I could build it into a monster food truck. A wicked, vehicle that could do serious damage on the field while also distributing food. Seriously." Edina groaned. "Naturally, it didn't work."
"Look on the bright side, Feige!" Ronilda gave Feige a rather painful back slap that made the latter wince. "If you put enough effort into the learning, you can turn that old food truck into Bergen's and Troll's first ever summer food truck."
"Depends if I can even manage to go through the test," Feige sighed. She got in the food truck and placed herself on the driver's seat. Edina tossed her the keys. The others went up to the bleachers just in time for Dårlig to catch up with them. He closed the diner as soon as he could to come support Feige. Many of the diner's customers came to form a giant support group, with giant purple #1 foam finger and banners with the painted words GO, FEIGE or THE FEIGE AND THE FURIOUS.
Edina, on her part, placed a microphone and glasses on her head. She proceeded to jump in her precious fiery blue monster truck and turned on the engines. A roar came from its pipes. "Preparing the Lipsky Driving Tutoring Jazz!"
Edina: Slot the key,
Check your seat and mirror.
Then pump up the gear.
You'll feel like a winner.
Red's stop, yellow's slow, and green's go.
Hit your lights when you make a turn.
Respect parking if you don't want a tow.
You see, evil driving can be learned.
Even if you see a hottie,
Your eyes must be on the road.
The radars must not see you act naughty.
Tickets go to disrespected driving code.
Slow down when it's snowing
Or a school zone crossing.
The right lane is what you should be following,
'Cause accidents turn your skin into deep pink.
Strap your belt on
Or kiss the airbag.
If you parallel park, you rock on,
Not so much if your tire's a rag.
If you did all of this,
That means you passed with success,
The Lipsky Driving Tutoring!
"Great. Now I have that song stuck in my head," Martin grumbled.
"I do hope Feige succeeds," Dårlig said.
Monday
Feige succeeded.
Bergen's and Troll's finally had its first ever summer food truck, the B&T's Summer Food Truck, which drove around Villainapolis in one day in one loop. When the overjoyed clients heard that their favorite diner had a food truck, they immediately spread the word on social media and Feige had to deal with at least 500 customers for each 13 stops her truck now had.
It was around the end of the afternoon, at sunset, when they celebrated the new program's successful first day. They ate the new recipe Dårlig came up with, the Monster Sundae, a sundae made of caramel ice cream, grey sprinkles, brown hot fudge, and sugar monster truck figures, all brought together to resemble a monster truck track.
"I'm so proud of you," Dårlig kissed Feige's cheek.
"You know, I still understand why there was a song," Becky said as she wolfed down her sundae. The others were almost disturbed at the amount of ice cream that was covering her mouth. "I thought they only came at the end of the story."
"Must be a special season," Ronilda shrugged.
"Eh. As far as I can care, this season will probably be the most decent one owe ever had so far," Martin said. "What could go wrong?"
"Nothing!" They laughed and raised their glasses.
Meanwhile, at the Darkholme Bungalow
It was just another night for Mystère. Playing video games on the screen in is room, but since it was now summer and his mother was at work, it meant he could play double. What could possibly interrupt him from a good round of Cyborg Karts and eating all the sour cream and onion chips he could eat?
The result of tempting fate came. By his bedroom window, there's a willow tree canopy. And right when he tempted fate, he heard a crashing noise coming from the tree.
Mystère paused his game and went to the window. He opened it and tucked his head out. A mass' silhouette good be seen hanging from the branches like a ragdoll. Judging by the amount of broken branches, Mystère judged right away that he was dealing with something heavy. Using his shapeshifting powers, he changed and copied Sean Abyss' tactic of turning his legs into tentacles. His 'copied' tentacles crawled out the window and grabbed the crashed mass from the tree. Once he cautiously placed the thing on the flat wooden floor, Mystère shifter his legs back to normal and knelt before the thing he picked up.
The mass was actually that of an android's. For an android, it looked like a teenager made of metal but designed to look like he was designed to be a reflection of the human skeleton and muscles without the skin and eyes to hide the monstrosities. After some further inspecting, Mystère judged that the android was made years ago as what was labeled 'technology too advanced for the time period it was built'. Not to mention that it was in poor condition and dusty.
"I should be able to fix you," Mystère spoke out loud. "Sure, it's not like my C+ grades in Technevilology make me a genius, but I knew enough to fix my own toy robots."
He grabbed his tool kit and began fixing the android with the occasion improvised scrap replacements. First came the wiring: completely burned out. After seeing that the inner plugs looked exactly like the plugs he used for his video games, Mystère ripped off the old wires and replaced them with AV wires from his stack of wires (he had bought a thousand of these things in case he needed to replace his video games' wires).
He threw away the broken red 'eyes' and replaced them with the red LED lamps he used for his bikes. He removed the metal shell and worked on either polishing whatever could be salvaged or replacing the hopelessly damaged ones with the old toy robots he didn't use anymore. A good half hour later, he came back up with a jug of car fuel to give the android some oily blood.
Finally came the part when he had to fix the android's 'heart', a DVD player that spit a burnt disk, which most likely held all of the android's data.
"Well that's a lost cause." Mystère picked up the disk and realized that the disk held words. "'Biomimetic Exponential Numericals Transferred into Robot Of Nature.' What a mouthful!" He replaced the DVD player with a system that allowed him to use a USB wire to connect the android's heart with his laptop. Mystère typed and a document popped up.
Prepare new form of data for BIOMIMETIC EXPONENTIAL NUMERICALS TRANSFERRED INTO ROBOT OF NATURE.
"OK," Mystère said as he typed. "I'll shorten the name to BEN TRON. As for data... as far as I know, I have to be cautious of what kind of data I put in. I wouldn't want to cause another Ultron panic."
Mystère got so occupied with piling up data onto the document, he didn't realize that the new data going into the android's heart was causing it to fidget its fingers.
"Access to the Internet, check. Uploads of my photo gallery, check." Mystère frowned at a certain pop up. "'Do you want your machine to be labeled as 'it' and to become a machine of mass destruction?' Are you mad?" Mystère then boldly typed into the document while speaking out loud. "'Ben Tron is a 'he', not an 'it'. I don't want him to be a mass destruction causer because that's probably what got him to be left behind as garbage! If Ben Tron does survive this reawakening, he'd be my best friend and I'd give him the best life a teenager made of metal could eve have!"
"That is quite sentimental for someone attempting to fix me."
Mystère turned his head to the left. The android had managed to stand up silently, his heart still connected to the laptop with the cord. He turned the laptop towards his direction and finished typing the rest of the data for Mystère. The cord sent an electric wave as the data fully downloaded into the android. The veins of wired glowed in a show of reds and blues like a pure blood system made of currents. "I am... alive."
"You sure are." Mystère closed the laptop and grabbed the shell needed to cover the android's interiors. "Voila."
"Voila. French exclamation term for 'there it is'," the android said.
"Uh, I knew that." Mystère said. "Do you know who you are?"
"I know what I was and what I know am. I was the Biomimetic Exponential Numericals Transferred Into Robot of Nature. My first creator was Ultron."
This caused Mystère to widen his eyes behind the shades he wore to hide them. "You... you are Ultron's kid? Like, he made you?"
"More or less. I don't remember much from my creation. I remember being... awake, while Ultron was working on both improving my physical structure and the drive for my data. He hoped to make me his 'metal evolution for the human youth he wanted to exterminate.' Sadly, he was defeated while creating me. The disk burned when it went into my heart and I short-circuited. The last thing I saw was darkness."
"Dude, I'm sorry..." Mystère said sympathetically.
"But now I am Ben Tron. My new creator is Mystère Darkholme, who was created by Raven Darkholme, also known as Mystique the shapeshifting mutant."
Mystère held his hand up to hide his giggle. "Dude, my mom didn't make me the way Ultron made you."
"I forget." Ben nodded. "You fleshed bipeds call it 'pregnancy'." Ben looked around the room he was in. He even looked at his hands, which he managed to turn by twisting his wrists. "How did you manage to fix my damaged areas?"
"Well, I collect a lot of scraps and play video games for a hobby. I used what I had to fix you," Mystère said. "I'm not a technological genius, but I did my best to fix you through improvised tools. I'm guessing that Ultron managed to program you so that you could finish uploading your data in case you couldn't."
"I think the term that defines your action is 'generous' and the one that defines my current odd current mood is 'gratitude'." Ben twitched his mouth as he struggled to make a smile. "Does this work? I tried to copy the way you smiled in a picture."
Mystère chuckled and gently patted Ben on the latter's metal shoulder. "Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it." Mystère began to search his closet for an inflatable mattress while Ben walked up to the window. "By the way, Ben, where did you come from? I found your unconscious robot body crashing on the willow tree near my window."
"Let me analyze my crashing area." Red beams came out of Ben's eyes they downloaded the crash area. "Based on the debris and depth impact my weight had on your Salix alba, I can conclude that my fall was that from a height of 325 feet."
"How is that possible?" Mystère frowned as he laid out a pillow and a blanket with blue teddy bear patterns. "My neighborhood is full of nothing but bungalows. The only thing that could be of 325 feet is some kind of areal aircraft like a helicopter. Usually, helicopters in Villainapolis aren't allowed to fly below 500 feet in a populated area unless it's a safe one. And you kind of fell in one of the rough neighborhoods in Villainapolis."
"Then it can only go down to two possible theories," Ben said. "Either I was being transferred to another holding place and I accidentally fell out of the helicopter, but judging how I fell rather unprofessionally, it's best to theorize that I was most likely stolen."
*End of Episode
*Characters Introduced:
Becky Abyss, daughter of Ursula from THE LITTLE MERMAID and Sean Abyss' little sister (the eldest in all the eight little sisters he has)
Edina Lipsky, daughter of Motor Ed from KIM POSSIBLE
Mystère Darkholme, son of Mystique from X-Men comics/movies
Ben Tron, son of Ultron from Marvel comics/movies
* Song featured: Edina Driving Tutoring Jazz
* Next Episode: My Android/Mutant Best Friend