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"Favorite Villain"

The current quiet should have been to Jeri's benefit. Left alone to complete the work she had missed during her short hiatus from school following the fall of the D-Reaper, the empty classroom felt like it was starting to close in on her. Telling herself it was all in her head didn't help much either. After all, held hostage by the D-Reaper for as long as she was, the torture had technically all been in her head then as well.

Making the whole experience worse was Jeri's mind trying to fill the space and silence on its own. Shadowy figures surrounded her, right up until they were basically on top of her, all while an unsettlingly familiar voice spoke at her with a sense of cold sadism. Jeri tried to cover her ears, but the voice got through just the same.

"Running away from Destiny?"

Jeri jumped out of her seat, freezing in place once she was able to convince herself the room was actually empty. By that point, though, her heart was racing and leaving her almost unable to catch her breath. She tried to force herself back into her seat, but her legs felt like they had locked themselves to the floor.

The door opening at the front of the classroom jolted Jeri from her trance, though perhaps just a second too late. As Ms. Asaji stepped through the doorway, cup of coffee in one hand while her other massaged her temple, she paused for a moment to glance at Jeri before sitting behind her desk.

Not wanting to spend another second under a microscope, Jeri quickly cleaned up her own desk. Putting on as neutral a face as she could Jeri, she jogged over to her teacher.

"I think I'm all set," Jeri declared as she presented her classwork.

Ms. Asaji hesitated briefly before accepting. "Do you have any questions?"

"None that I can think of." Jeri tried to speak confidently, hoping to avoid dragging out the school day any longer than she already had.

Another pause between them followed, with it seeming like Ms. Asaji was looking back a bit more closely. While she didn't seem frustrated, she did seem uncertain, almost like she wanted to say more but couldn't decide on the right words.

"You know, Jeri," Ms. Asaji said delicately. "If you need some more time, this work can wait."

"I'm fine." Jeri instantly realized she had spoken a little too quickly. "I'm ready to get back to normal."

Of course, Jeri wasn't exactly sure what normal meant in this instance, but she was intent on finding it. She wasn't so naive as to expect that an easy fix would be just presented to her, though she worried that if she kept putting off getting back to her life she would run the risk of missing something important and getting stuck in place.

"Can you at least tell me what happened?" Ms. Asaji asked, causing Jeri to hesitate herself.

The whole world had seen the D-Reaper invasion, from the expanding red biomass that consumed everything in its path to the army of agents spawned to do its bidding. While some information on it still wasn't public knowledge, Jeri wasn't sure there was much she could really say to add any context. Best she could interpret, the D-Reaper had decided for itself that humanity needed to be deleted, and would have destroyed the world had her friends not stopped it.

"We won," Jeri summarized. "It just cost more than we thought it would."

Ms. Asaji raised an eyebrow. "What did it cost you?"

Jeri's eyes drifted around the room, unable to face her teacher. "Do you know what it's like to have someone take your deepest and darkest thoughts, twist them even further, and then spit them back at you in your own voice?"

"No, I don't."

"And I hope you never do." It took a moment for Jeri to realize she was involuntarily smiling. "Funny thing is, for a monster that claimed it didn't understand human emotion, the D-Reaper was pretty good at manipulating it."

"Look..." Ms. Asaji pinched the bridge of her nose, though she spoke with a softness Jeri had never heard her use with any of the other students. "I'm not good at this, but if you ever need someone to talk to, I can put you in touch with someone a little better equipped for this."

Jeri refocused on her teacher, now actively trying to follow her words and mannerisms. It was a subject of debate around school how much Ms. Asaji actually cared about her students, as she never seemed to particularly enjoy being a teacher. One thing Jeri had learned from watching her father after her mother's death, however, was that apathy and sadness were more closely linked than was plainly obvious. Some people weren't as good with outward emotion as others, but that didn't mean they felt any less.

"I'll let you know," Jeri answered, holding just long enough to figure out what else to say. "Thanks, Ms. Asaji. You might not think you're cut out for this, but you care enough to try, which helps more than you know."

"You're... welcome?" Ms. Asaji didn't try to hide her confusion, simply waving as Jeri finally stepped out of the classroom.

Despite its destruction, the D-Reaper had left its mark on all of them. Still, Jeri knew it wasn't her destiny to let it win, and like last time, she knew she didn't need to defeat it alone.

Author's Note:

So I sat down with the intent of writing a chapter about the D-Reaper, though it evolved into this. Fitting in its own way, given how the appeal of this franchise has always been watching a group flawed kids accept and overcome those parts of themselves. A compromise, I guess, using one of its villains as a lens to look at the show's longest lasting antagonist.