King:Okay... There's a story here. I was originally commissioned to write a story based on the Villainous cartoon. I hadn't seen it at the time, but it was a short series so I took the commission, watched the show, and wrote the story as asked.

Then I got ghosted when it came to actually paying for it. That was a year ago, give or take. My frustration manifested by creating this story because I wanted to make and release a story based on this show. So, here we are.

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The city of Aleatorio was a nice little hamlet on the mainland. A quaint city with a powerhouse Hero, Madam Muscle. And, as per usual, the Black Hat gang was on the scene after being hired by a local villain. It was going about as well as one might expect.

"Get back here!" A loud roar cracked through the air. A tall, Amazonian woman ran through the streets of her city. She was dressed in a long sleeve leotard paired with a skirt and knee length boots. Her leotard and boots were both red paired with a blue skirt. The outfit showed off her muscular legs and hugged her arms to stretch the fabric. Each stomp on the ground cracked the asphalt of the street as she ran after the would-be villains.

As she ran past them, a trio of heads poked out from an alleyway. "Okay, I think she's gone." The first of them was a tall, thin scientist with a paper bag over his head and a pair of goggles over his eyes. His blue shirt showed an exploding plane, the design slightly hidden by his white lab coat. His jeans and sneakers were covered in dirt. Kenning Flugslys, commonly referred to as Doctor Flug, sighed in relief as they were safe for now.

A large blue bear creature with a yellow flower sticking out from his head mirrored Flug's motions with a grin. This creature, named 5.0.5., is one of Dr. Flug's previous experiments to create a powerful, evil creature for their master Black Hat. Unfortunately, 505 was meek and kind in nature. The Doctor did succeed in making the bear-being immortal. Somehow.

But not everyone was so happy. "This is bull!" The last member of the trio was a young, slender girl with a very chaotic style and presence. She wore a dark blue vest, black skirt, and a pair of torn, striped leggings along with a single matching glove reaching up to her shoulder. This chaotic energy was further augmented with mismatched sneakers. Her neon-green hair matched with her reptile-head hood along with her dyed red bangs. Even her eyes were mismatched with one being a snake-esc yellow color while the other having no iris with a slit pupil. Demencia growled as they hid in the alley. "We should be out there dealing with that chick! Not hiding like a bunch of losers! We just need to figure out her weakness!"

"Easier said than done." Flug inched to the corner of the building again and looked out into the street. There was no sign of the hero. "She's like a tank. No matter what we throw at her, it just bounces off her muscles."

Demencia scoffed, "Oh please. Just use that brain of yours or something and figure it out."

"I'm trying!" Flug shot back. "Maybe if you stuck to our original plan, we could have trapped her and-"

He was cut off by Demencia again, "That plan was dumb! Just tell me her weakness so I can beat her!"

"I don't know her weakness yet! We need to observe her before we can figure that out!"

"Then let me go in there! I'll figure it out myself!"

"Are you sure about that?" A new voice cut through the scene. All eyes turned to see the heroine as she stepped forward with her fist reared back. Her body pushed forward and a loud thwack rang out over the area.

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On a cold, gray day in a cold, gray city, a young girl huddled herself under her blanket. Her eyes lacked any light as she shivered in the snowy alley. She had no home or shelter as the winter chill bit at her skin. A gust of wind blew through the alley as she hugged herself closer, trying to find warmth in her snow covered blanket.

This is how I die, she lamented. She was alone, freezing, and losing consciousness. She knew if she fell asleep right now, she wouldn't wake up again. Her teeth clacked together in rapid fashion, as if to keep her awake with the noise. But they slowly began to lose steam. She was fading out and swaying slightly. She desperately tried to stay up, but in the end she fell to the side. Her body stopped shivering. Her eyes were getting heavier.

"Well now." A voice broke through her fading mind and gave her something to focus on. Someone was standing in front of her. He wore a heavy white coat with a… bag on his head? His goggles reflected her sorry state. He seemed to tilt his head in interest. "What have we here?"

Was this guy about to try something? Really? She's about to die and he's eyeing her up? She tried to find a little more strength in her and let out a growl. It wasn't much, but she hoped she made her point.

But this just seemed to make him more interested. "Still a bit of fight in you. Good. Homeless orphans make for good experiments. No one bothers to report them when they disappear. Granted, if they're not strong enough they just die off. You might actually survive."

A part of her should see that as a red flag. But all she saw was white snow and inevitable death. This guy was offering a way to live. So, screw it. Why not?

"If you want to live, then say so. Speak up. What do you have to lose but a few bad memories?"

She grit her teeth. Her voice hurt. Her body hurt. But hurt… Hurt meant she was alive. She wanted to live. So, she drew on what strength she still had. She slid one arm under herself and pushed herself back to a seated position. She looked back up into his eyes, or goggles in this case. "I…" Her throat stung to speak. Her voice was scratchy and painful to hear. "I want… to live."

"That's the spirit." The man chuckled, "Now, let's get you on your feet."

He reached his gloved hand to her. She shakily took his hand and let him pull her to her feet.

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A pair of mismatched eyes opened slowly and groggily. Demencia started to look around and recognized her room slash holding cell. She tried to move around, but she was tied down, as per usual. She nodded, knowing this would have been the case. She was always a bit on the crazy side, and had a few nights where she'd gone off and messed up a bunch of Flug's tech.

Demencia had long since figured out how to get out of these restraints. She pulled her body to the side, then the other. She did so for a while before hooking her shoulder under a strap and pulling her body hard to the other side. With a painful pop, she dislocated her shoulder and let her arm go limp. With the extra room to move, she was able to free her other arm and undo the restraints.

Once she hit the ground again, she moved to the side and up against the wall. After setting her arm in just the right angle, she reared back and slammed her arm into the wall and popped her arm back into place. She had to take in a hard breath as her nerves ran riot from having to do that. Once it stopped hurting, she shook it off and looked back up from the holding cell. She hopped up onto the wall and started to climb. Thanks to her lizard DNA, she could climb this wall without an issue.

Hopping up over the side, she started to move through the manor toward her target. Normally, she'd have run through and knocked any of those minion robots out of the way. But she didn't have it in her to run right now. She was tired, hungry, and introspective. That last one in particular was new. With a growl, she moved around from hall to hall, eventually arriving at her destination. She hopped into an old crashed airplane and made her way through the compartment to the cockpit. She stared at the makeshift door for a moment, trying to formulate her words. She wasn't acting like her usual self, but she had to get this out of the way. Normal people would knock. Demencia was far from normal.

As the door was knocked off its hinges, Doctor Flug jumped and fell onto the ground by his bed. With a scream, Flug scrambled around and grabbed one of his ray guns, pointing it at the intruder. He then noticed who was now walking into his room, "Demencia?" He lowered the gun and stood up, "What are you doing out of your room?"

A bowling sound grabbed both their attention. They turned to see 505 quickly moving from a wall and to the door. Once he noticed Demencia, he had a big grin and stretched his arms out as he moved closer. He was clearly intent on giving the lizard woman a bear hug.

But Demencia didn't even turn to dignify him. She swung her arm up with a thumb pointed off and away from them, "Beat it, bear. I've gotta talk to the Doc."

Her statement caused both Flug and 505 to pause. They took a moment, as if they thought they'd be jolted from the scene. But no, Demencia was there and actually asked to talk to Flug. 505 just nodded once, glanced at Flug, but ultimately turned to return to his own bed further in the plane.

"Okay then," Flug placed his gun on his desk. "What did you want to talk about?"

Demencia moved into the room before plopping down on Flug's bed as a chair. She groaned before letting out a sigh. "How did we get back?"

"What?"

"How'd we beat that muscle head? Or wait…" She then started to have a panic moment, "Did we fail? Is Black Hat mad at us?!"

"No! No." Flug held his hands up in a placating motion, "It's fine. It turned out Madam Muscle's weakness was a lack of stamina. She tried to beat up 505. It took a while, but she tired herself out."

Demencia nodded, taking a breath to calm her panic. "Good. I don't know how I'd handle Black Hat being mad at me."

Flug, at first, thought that was it. Demencia was borderline obsessed with Black Hat. But when she didn't stand back up, he raised an eyebrow. "Is there something else?"

Demencia silently nodded. After a couple seconds, she spoke up again, "After I got knocked out, I had a flashback. To the alley."

Flug blinked before the weight of everything crashed down on him. Demencia hated that part of her life. She never wanted to think about it, let alone talk about it. Any time it gets brought up, she dodges it. So to bring it up, at all, must have been something big.

Since Flug didn't respond, Demencia continued, "I remembered you saying something back then. That all I had to lose were 'bad memories.' But I still remember that back then. What did you remove?"

Flug looked down for a moment, as if he had to think about what to say. Or if he should say it at all. But he eventually looked back up to her, "I manipulated a few things in your head when I was experimenting on you. I needed to ensure your loyalty. I removed any memories of your old life before I found you. And I made sure you looked up to Black Hat using subliminal manipulation techniques. Everything together seemed to break you somewhat and made you crazy. But, all around, I considered it a success given your loyalty and abilities."

Demencia looked like she had to consider what that meant to her. She looked back to him with narrowed eyes, "How much of my love for Black Hat is natural and how much was your subliminal stuff?"

Flug gave a so-so hand gesture, "Eh, about fifty-fifty."

Demencia took a moment before nodding, "I can live with that." She seemed to relax and leaned back on Flug's bed, propped up on her hands as she looked at his ceiling. "One more thing…"

"What's up?"

"I just wanted to say thanks. For picking me out of the snow that day." Demencia was deliberately avoiding eye contact. "If you hadn't, I'd probably be dead. I hated who I was and I'm more than happy where I am now." She pushed herself back up to her feet and looked back to Flug, "Don't get used to hearing that. That was a one time thing." She moved to the door with her arms held up behind her head, relaxed. "Did we get anything good to eat? I'm hungry."

Flug seemed too stunned to answer at first. But he eventually shook off the shock, "Uh… We did capture another wannabe hero trying to infiltrate the base. He's being interrogated, but he should be ready for your breakfast."

Demencia nodded with a grin, "Cool. Then I'm heading back to bed. Wake me up when breakfast is ready." She walked out of the room with a lightened spirit and a more certain mind. She'd wake up just as mad as she usually was, but right now she had a little piece in her mind.

All the while, Flug went back to bed, expecting this all some kind of vivid dream he'd forget as soon as he wakes up.

Just another day in the life of the Black Hat Organization.