Comics, Cookies, and Revenge

By Lejindarybunny

A/N: Yes, the title is a little whimsical. I like it. Call it CCR if you must. I intend for it to be long, well written, and hopefully the dominant Syndrome-fic on the net. So I'm arrogant. Sue me. Mary-Sue me even.

Hope you enjoy

Chapter One: Broken Oasis

Buddy Pine was dead, oh yes. His assets? Frozen. His name? Ruined. His dreams? Shattered.

Again.

Buddy Pine was as dead as a doornail.

But Syndrome, on the other hand, was very much alive.

How could that be? Simple. He was a careful man, and one who was not particularly well disposed towards personal injury. Perhaps this stemmed from an innate trepidation, or perhaps it had been instilled there by impressionable years filled with peer abuse. In any case, he knew better than to put himself into a situation that there was a possibility he might not walk out of.

Especially when there was a wicked robot duplicate that needed testing.

That's right, a robot duplicate, controlled by remote from a super-secret location miles away from his island base. His former base, as it was now in the possession of the United States Government.

Why bother with a back-up plan? After all, the first plan had been foolproof, nothing could possibly go wrong.

Syndrome was vain, grandiose, pompous even, but he wasn't a fool.

Okay, okay. Mirage had thought of it. Wouldn't stop nagging 'til he'd implemented it, in fact.

Syndrome had merely been humoring her.

Good thing she did, right?

Wrong.

If it wasn't for her his plans would have worked perfectly. She had betrayed him. Sold him out.

And why? Because she didn't trust him. Didn't have any faith in his prowess.

Sitting now in the stylish penthouse apartment, set aside months ago in a false name, he realized that she never had. Her praising words and admiration meant nothing.

Mirage had been nothing but lip-service and a pretty face, leeching off of his money and power. Power in which she didn't even put any real stock.

It had not been his failure he had witnessed from remote camera and then later on the six O'Clock news only days ago.

He hoped she got what was coming to her. Cast adrift in a cold world that alienated her. Maybe the police would even arrest her as his accomplice, she'd have to spend days in jail before Mr. Incredible could call in the right favors to have her release.

Syndrome enjoyed an evil chuckle at this thought. Yes, he'd been a fool for trusting her, even maybe loving her, a little, but that was in the past. The bigger fools were those spineless heroes, and the law, for thinking he could be beaten so easily. Thinking he could be dead, or if not, that taking away all of the money and property belonging to Buddy Pine would cripple him.

Did they think he was that stupid? Even the most ignorant of villains new about false papers and Swiss bank accounts.

Sitting in the squashy maroon armchair like a throne, the young man began to grin sadistically.

They were unprepared now. No one would be looking for him, and no one would know where to look if they were. They were giving him all the time he needed, and when he had made his plans, Syndrome would rise from the ashes of defeat like a black phoenix and crush them all beneath his heel.

And crush them he would. Grind them, break them, subjugate them even. Gone were his idealistic dreams of economic conquest and a world full of supers. This final humiliation had taught him what he had been trying not to face since he was a small child. That there were people with power, and people without it, and the person with the most power ruled everyone else. That person was going to be him.

That's right ladies and gentlemen, he smirked, eyes twinkling, Syndrome wanted the world. And he was going to have it.

If the world wanted to paint him as the villain of the piece, oh, how he would oblige them.

Syndrome stood up suddenly from the chair, a few stands of red hair falling in front of his face (he hadn't been keeping to up recently, too conspicuous), and strode out of the living room and into the small kitchen/dining room area. He laid a hand on the handle of the fridge door, intending to open it, but instead, just stood there. Doubting.

Yes. He still had his life, his mind, his money, his inventions. But he had lost an empire. Seen it squandered and toppled so easily, so fragile.

He stared at the back of his hands, the freckle-adorned knuckles, hating every inch of them and their weakness. He saw his distorted reflection staring back at him in the door, white sleeveless shirt revealing bare arms, pale and freckled as well, a pair of black sweatpants falling over his toes, and his red hair falling over his face around his chin. At least he had his contacts in, rather than his glasses, he thought. He looked so unimpressive out of his costume, weak and frail.

Human frailty.

There was no justice in the world.

He ripped open the fridge and pulled out a can of coke; hooking his finger under the tab he opened it with that gratifying tchss-thock that meant that sharp, vital caffeine was forthcoming. He took a long drink of the dark liquid as he leaned broodingly against the cool, white appliance. The lights in the room were at an attractively dim, orange glow that suited his ominous mood.

Yes. He could and would start again. But it would be different this time. Before he hadn't quite known what he was doing, it had all been touch and go, his own ideas, mixed with what worked in the comics.

He hadn't even intended to make Mirage his lieutenant. She had just been some girl he'd picked up in a bar one night, years ago. He'd gotten extremely drunk and told her his plans as a come on. Oddly enough, it had worked. After they'd been involved for a while, she'd decided she wanted to help him, and he decided to humor her. But by the end he'd somehow let her gain an awful lot of power over both him, and his plans. All the while she had never really understood him or what he wanted, or why he wanted it.

And that, in the end, was what tore them apart, and brought him to his knees.

If she had understood him at all, or if she had understood the mentality of a super hero at all, she would have known that she was in no danger. She would have known that he was using the moment to hurt Incredible, not her. To throw it in his teeth that he had just witnessed the death of his family and still didn't have the spine or the ruthlessness to hurt the person responsible the same way and never would.

Of course he cared about her! Or at least he had then. She should have known that. But she didn't. At her heart she would always be pretty cheerleader Maggie Jenkins.

He should have known. He had known. He just hadn't accepted it. And why not? Because they had met before that night at the bar, though she never remembered, and he had never told her. They had gone to high school together, and not just for one year either, but from freshman year, to graduation. He had had the biggest crush on her, and she had evidently not even known that he existed.

He shouldn't have done it. He'd thought he had finally become a person worth noticing when she'd gone with him. Having her around was a constant ego boost, telling him he had finally overcome the powerless geek he had been as a child. But in reality it was only more proof of how shallow and deceitful she was in the end.

Buddy Pine had been beneath her notice, and she had proven herself an unfit companion for Syndrome.

The first step in rebuilding what he had lost, the first part of his new and improved plans, would be to replace her. And he knew just the girl.

Or rather, he knew the type of girl, and where to look.

He needed someone who was everything Mirage was not.

He needed someone who was reasonably intelligent, who understood what made super heroes tick almost as well as he did, and also understood where he was coming from, and why he was doing it, and sympathized with him. He needed someone who was both willing, and in possession of loose enough morals, to do anything that was required of her as his lieutenant. And foremost he needed someone who was completely loyal to him and trusting in the utmost, preferably bordering on the fanatical.

He needed a fangirl.

But not just any fangirl. No, most of them were squealing little blondies with posters of fairy boys and pretty cartoon heroes, who wrote bad fanfiction and beat you with a spork at the mere suggestion that their fandom wasn't the be all and end all of civilization. But there were a few, a sort of subspecies within the group, which would be perfect for his intentions. Sneaky little creatures, with a taste for the darker things in life, who had posters of super villains, and evil elves. Who wrote bad fanfiction, and beat you with a spork for looking at them funny. It was a light-side of the force/dark-side of the force thing. The same, but opposite.

A dark fangirl was exactly what he would need and they were easily available due to the miracle of the internet. He already had a plan to choose, and abscond with, his new lieutenant.

He set down his empty coke can and got another out of the fridge, then headed back to the living room. But this time he sat down at the swiveling chair in front of his Mac.

The best place to start his search, of course, would be fanfiction. net. From there he would establish a pool of candidates who fit his criteria, which was simple; they had to be above the age of 16, not be physically self destructive, an unfortunate habit of dark fangirls.

Then, once he had found a few girls, he'd IM them, and pick the best one.

Simple.

To be Continued...

Please note, this is not interactive fanfiction. The story is set, all characters are fictional. FFnet just happens to exist in Syndrome's world as well.