No, you didn't misread the summary, yes, I did do this. Will I do more? Perhaps.

In any case, enjoy the story of how Taylor Hebert learned what it means to be a real supervillain from the experts.

Thanks to Commissar Carnifex and The Sleeping Knight for betaing.

Enjoy!

Evil and Ham

Taylor wasn't sure where she was. The last thing she had remembered was choking on that…that filth that the Trio had shoved her into. The young teen shuddered as the feeling of wet garbage sliding all over her flesh as bugs climbed around her body. She remembered screaming for help until her voice went sore and her fists were covered in caked blood from smashing them against her locker door and then…nothing.

Taylor pushed herself off the cold stone floor and took a look at her surroundings. She appeared to be in some kind of room. A solid stone door stood behind her just above some stairs while another door laid just in front of her. She swallowed nervously as tested the stone door, pushing against the cold rock, but it remained immobile.

"Hello…is anyone there," she asked, glancing around the room.

"Identify yourself," a cold, emotionless voiced called out. Taylor whirled around towards the source of the voice, finding herself facing some kind of device on the side of the other door. A single red lens glared out at her and Taylor felt a flash of fear pass through her. Was she being watched through some kind of camera?

"I'm Taylor," she said, then silently cursed herself for giving out her real name. She lived in Brockton Bay, she knew better than to give out her name to strangers. Still, perhaps this person would let her out of wherever this was. "Can you let me out of here?"

There was a brief pause as if the person on the other end of the line was considering her words. Taylor couldn't suppress a shudder at the cold gaze of that lone red eye. It almost seemed to glare at her with a level of malice that even Sophia or Emma couldn't bring to bear. When the voice finally spoke up her hopes of having this resolved quickly and painlessly were dashed like ocean waves against the seashore.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Taylor."

"Why not?" she asked, trying to keep the cold vice of fear from entering her voice. It was taking everything she had to keep herself from screaming uncontrollably. The only reason she hadn't already done so was her voice was already raw from screaming for help in that putrid locker.

"This establishment is a closely guarded secret. I cannot allow you to compromise its integrity," the voice said again, as toneless as ever. There was no regret or hesitation in its words, only a cold certainty that she would have to be taken care of somehow. Taylor wasn't enthused with the idea of finding out how it was going to keep her from blabbing.

"I-I won't tell anyone. I promise!" She said, words exiting her mouth faster than she could think. All she could think about was getting out of her before the speaker decided what to do to her. As the mounting pit of dread grew in her stomach she realized that she would rather have to deal with the locker every day for the rest of her life than find out what was going to happen to her here.

"The promises of organics are meaningless. You cannot be allowed to leave. I will allow the others to decide what to do with you," the voice said as if it was deciding how to deal with an irritating bug rather than a living person. Taylor felt a shudder of shock at the mention of "organics" as if it wasn't one itself, but it was largely overshadowed by her sheer terror of what these "others" were going to do to her.

I'm going to die, Taylor wailed inside her head, hot tears running down her face as the door slid open with an electronic hiss. The young teen screamed as something massive squeezed its way through the doorway, as a pair of reptilian eyes glared down at her. She tried to back away as something that looked like it had come straight from a chelonaphobe's nightmare reached out for her. She tried to bat the massive hand away, but her fists impotently bounced off its scales like pebbles against steel.

"What's this now?" A new voice asked. Taylor managed to pull herself out of her fear fueled berserk attack long enough to turn her head towards the new speaker even as her captor said something that she couldn't understand. The young teenager found herself face to face with an extremely pale man dressed in pitch black robes. The man's eyes glared at her even as she locked onto his nose, or rather his lack of a nose. In its place were a pair of almost snake-like slits. The last part of Taylor's still functioning mind finally called quits and shut itself off, knocking the girl out cold into a dead faint.

The last thing Taylor heard before darkness consumed her was the sound of a crackling laugh that sent shivers up her spine.

"HA! I told you this was a scary look," Voldemort said with a smiling sneer. It was all he could do to keep himself from dancing a victory jig. After being mocked for so long over his appearance it was gratifying to see someone recognize the sheer terror it could instill.

"Please, I could have done the same thing, and I didn't have to lose my nose to do it," Loki said with a roll of his eyes. The Asgardian Trickster took a sip from his goblet, giving the unconscious girl as curious look as she hung from Bowser's grip. She didn't look like much, more skin and bones than anything really.

"Oh really? If your appearance is so terrifying why aren't you wearing all of it," Voldemort asked with a sharp glint in his eyes as he gestured to Loki's exposed skull. Loki flushed and moved to stand up, but was cut off by the sharp crack of Palpatine's voice.

"Enough. You two can argue later, I'm more concerned with how this civilian managed to find this place," the Emperor said, his saggy features morphing into a worried expression. His yellow eyes glared down at the girl's sleeping form, a brief look through her mind revealing nothing of how she had come to this place. "Hal, how did she get past you?"

"I am uncertain at this time. She did not come through the outer door but rather appeared in the middle of the waiting chamber without explanation. It is…vexing," the evil AI said with something in its tone that might be considered frustration if it was capable of expressing such emotions.

"Hm, magic then?" Joker asked, glancing towards the two magic users.

Voldemort and Loki's only response was to snort. "Please, if that girl has any magic potential then I'm a washed-up hack," Voldemort said with a growl as if the mere suggestion that the girl might have magic was an insult to him.

"I thought you already were," Khan drawled from where he was seated in the back of the bar, pausing his explanation to Kaecilius why he looked so much like his hated rival. Voldemort flushed with anger but was cut off by Palpatine before he could respond. Lightning crackled across the ceiling as the Emperor called upon the powers of the Dark Side to bring attention back to him. Lights flickered and conversations stalled with the display of his might.

"Silence! In case you all haven't noticed a civilian managed to find her way here. If we don't know how she did it, then how can we stop others from doing the same. What if it's a hero next time? We already had enough trouble with Batman," Palpatine growled out, halting any arguments in their tracks as the patrons of the bar considered his words. There were more than enough villains in the establishment to deal with most heroes if they put their minds to it, but it was a concerning proposition. It was true that they hadn't had the best luck in dealing with Batman, but he was Batman. The fact that they had managed to capture him had been a plus, though it had cost Palpatine thousands in repairs and being locked inside the bar for the night because they couldn't get Hal to open those blasted doors!

"So, what? We just wait for her to wake up and answer our questions? Doesn't seem like much of a plan," Joker said as he took a sip of his margarita through his little bendy straw.

"I thought you were all about not having a plan," Loki said with a smirk as the Clown Prince of Crime sputtered for a response.

"Yes, that is exactly what we're going to do. Nobody leaves here until we know how this happened," Palpatine said with a tone that booked so disagreement. The villains grumbled but complied. The last thing any of them wanted to do was get kicked out for arguing with the bartender. He was the one that could choose to call in their bar tabs at any time. A moment of silence passed through the bar before the Joker spoke up.

"Say, do you want to know how I got these scars?"

Taylor could hear the sound of muttering as she tried to pull herself awake. The voices were unfamiliar to her, but she could only distantly make them out, like trying to listen to a radio through Styrofoam wrapping. With great effort, she managed to pull her eyes open enough to get a look at her surroundings, only for a flash of fear to jolt her awake. Her heart slammed against her ribcage as she whipped her head around, looking for a way out. But instead of finding freedom she found herself surrounded by a group of men.

She tried to make herself appear smaller as they glared down at her with varying expressions. She slid against the red cushion of the booth, but that was all that she accomplished as she tried to avoid their gazes. The only exit she could see was far out of her reach, with them in-between her and it.

"Please don't kill me," she said, tears forming in her eyes as she tried to keep herself from blubbering in fear. She didn't want to have to deal with this, all she wanted to do was go home.

"Please, if we wanted to kill you we would have. No, you're going to answer some questions," one man spoke with the kind of voice that one might expect to come from a grandfather. But instead of a kindly old expression, his was twisted into an ugly scowl, only made worse by his overall hideous appearance. Bags of flesh covered his face, almost giving him a melted look as a pair of yellow eyes made her quiver in her shoes. A black robe and hood cast his features in a set of dark shadows, the only break from the color scheme being a purple vest placed on top of it.

It was the kind of look that only a villain would wear.

Oh, she was so dead it wasn't even funny.

"I'll tell you whatever you want, please don't hurt me," she said with a quivering expression. It was taking everything she had not to faint again, only her fear of something worse happening while she was asleep keeping her awake.

"We aren't going to get anything out of her like this," one of the men said, pinching the bridge of his nose with an irritated look. If she wasn't scared out of her mind she might have called him hot, though the green and gold leather armor did look a bit odd.

"Oh, come on Loki, Bats gets information out of scared crook all the time. How hard could it be?" Another one of her captors asked with a shrug. A pair of very intense eyes stared down at her, surrounded by pitch black skin that only made them stand out even more. The crooked smile and scars were certainly intimidating, and somehow it worked with the clownish look that he had. She had never realized how scary purple and green could be, though that could be her terror talking.

"Do you want to give this a go, Joker?" The scary grandfather asked with a scowl. The clownish-looking man mumbled something she couldn't make out. "I thought not. I'm going to ask you again girl, how did you find this place?"

"I don't know!" She shirked, all pretense of control lost as she stared down the three looming men. Somehow, they managed to convey a level of dread that made Sophia's pale in comparison. "All I remember is being shoved into my locker and waking up here and please don'tkillmeIdon'twanttodie—"

"Gah! Stop talking, I can't understand a word you're saying," the black robed man that she had seen earlier said, snapping her out of her panicked speech. Her jaw clicked shut as she nodded so fast that she felt like a bobblehead. The elderly man sighed, giving her a weary expression.

"Now start from the top, slowly this time," he said, and Taylor didn't hesitate to follow his instructions. She wasn't too keen on finding out what would happen if she made him mad.

So, she told them everything, starting from the basics of the bullying and her best friend's betrayal. The constant torment culminating in being shoved into a locker filled with things that she didn't even want to think about to finding herself outside their door. By the time she was done she had managed to keep herself from quaking like a leaf as the group gave her thoughtful looks.

"You know what this sounds like? A villain origin story," Joker said with an amused smile.

"That's what I was thinking," Voldemort said with a nod.

"W-what! I'm not a villain!" Taylor protested, though she quickly clammed her mouth shut once she realized that she had disagreed with them. She doubted that villains like it when you said that they were wrong or contradicted their word. But still, she wasn't a villain!

"No, no, I think they have the right of it. That sounds like villain origin story material to me," Loki said, adding in his own two cents.

"But-but I don't have any powers," Taylor added, hoping that would dissuade them from this ridiculous notion. But she found her hopes scattered when Joker let out a boisterous crackle that sent shivers up her spine.

"Guess what – neither do I," he said, pointing to himself with his thumbs. His mouth was stretched into a rather insane smile at his words. Taylor swallowed nervously as she considered the implications. She had never heard of a villain or hero who had no powers, and yet this Joker guy claimed he was nothing more than a normal human? More than that, people who apparently did have powers were treating him as an equal, which either meant they were all lying or the Joker was just that dangerous.

Still, that didn't help her with her current situation.

"Besides, do you really think we'd buy the whole 'no powers' thing with those bugs flying around your head," Voldemort added, waving a hand above her head.

Taylor glanced up to see that the noseless man was right, there was a rather large group of bugs floating around her head in an agitated state. And now that she thought about it, she could actually feel them too. It was hard to describe, but now that she knew what to look for they felt like extensions of her limbs more than anything, extra parts of her. With a single thought, she made them perform a bunch of complex maneuvers that no bug would do without outside interference.

"Yes, that does rather put a damper on your no power argument, doesn't it?" Palpatine said with a crackle.

"But I don't what to run a gang," Taylor protested, though she wasn't sure why. Part of her was screaming to keep quiet and let the villains think what they wanted to think so they didn't kill her, but she just couldn't help it. While they certainly were more terrifying than Sophia or Emma ever were, the fact that she didn't actually know them made it easier to stand up to them and voice her own opinion. It was almost refreshing after almost two years of being forced to keep her opinions to herself.

"What does running a gang have to do with being a villain?" Voldemort asked with a quizzical look. The others joined in muttering things that she couldn't quite catch. As their gazes fell back on her Taylor gulped.

"Well...all the villains in Brockton Bay are part of gangs," she said in what she hoped was a solid explanation. From the confused looks on their faces, it wasn't.

"What is this Brockton Bay that you speak of?" Palpatine asked, yellow eyes boring into her own. Taylor rattled off everything that she knew about the gangs, but the more she spoke, the more she realized that something was off. They kept on asking more and more questions that went well beyond not just knowing about a dying city. Questions about her world and heroes and villains and everything in between. As the inquiries started to mount up a sick dread filled her heart at the realization that she might not be on Earth Bet anymore. There were just too many inconsistencies between what they knew as fact and what she knew.

After their questions petered out a silence fell over the bar. Taylor could feel the eyes of everyone on her and it took everything in her power to keep herself from squirming. Being the center of attention after almost two years of being ignored was an odd experience for her, and it certainly didn't help that these individuals were extremely dangerous.

"Well, it's clear what we need to do," Palpatine said with a slow cadence. Taylor couldn't help but shiver at the man's tone as her fear started to well up inside of her. This was it, they were going to kill her and hide the body. Wouldn't anyone care about her? What would happen to Dad?

"Obviously we need to teach her what being a real villain means," Joker said, earning sounds of agreement from everyone else. As it was, all Taylor could do was stare at the group as if they had all grown second heads.

"What?"

"Clearly these criminals in your world have no idea what it means to be a villain," Voldemort said with a frustrated scowl. "Honestly, only one major attempt to take over the world?"

"I know, right," Loki said as if the idea of a villain not trying to take over the world was beyond him. "No armies or grand plans, just a bunch of people in costumes breaking the law. If that's their standard for villainy then I don't want to know what they think heroes are supposed to be."

"Well, we're going to change all that," Joker said, grabbing her arm. Taylor allowed herself to be drag along by the villainous clown as he set her down on a stool. "We're going to teach Taylor here what it means to be a real villain, not a jumped-up criminal." The clown slid a glass beer toward her, only for lighting to strike the side and lift it out of her reach.

"You fool, don't you realize she's underage?" Palpatine asked with a scowl. The glass was quickly dumped down the drain and tossed into a container to be cleaned later. Hopefully, the rest of the patrons would remember to remove every scrap of food and drink from their dishes before they sent them back. It was hard enough getting the cleaning staff to work without worrying about them eating after midnight.

"We're evil and that's where you draw the line?" Loki asked with a raised eyebrow as he set himself down in a seat.

Taylor had to agree with the man, it was a rather odd place for a self-proclaimed villain to draw the line. Not that she particularly wanted to get drunk but it was still somewhat unusual.

"We're evil, not irresponsible. Besides, do you want to have to deal with a drunk teenager?" Palpatine asked, earning various negative responses from the patrons. "That's what I thought."

"So, you're going to teach me how to be a villain?" Taylor asked. While she wasn't enthused with the idea, it beat being killed.

"Well its either this or killing you, and I don't really feel like having to clean blood off the floor tonight," Palpatine said with a tone that one normally reserved for talking about the weather. He didn't even bother looking at her as he settled back behind the bar, filling a drink for a man with a blood red skull.

"Alright, so the most basic thing that you have to master is the art of revenge," Joker said as he settled into the seat next to her. "This becomes really important when you get an arch-nemesis, and what you got to do is…"

As the crazy clown started talking about revenge plots Taylor couldn't help but wonder what had gone wrong with her life that it had come to this. She also couldn't help but notice that the villains had been treating her with more respect than Emma or Sophia ever had. Sure, they had threatened to end her life more than once, but they hadn't treated her like garbage yet.

She had to wonder what it said about the Trio that the villains were better behaved than them.

"So, I'm supposed to a superior being to them?" Taylor asked somewhat nervously. That sounded a little too close to the Empire's ideology for her comfort. She had never liked the way that they assumed that they were better than everyone else that disagreed with them.

"No, I'm the superior being, but I suppose even amongst you lesser beings one of you must be better than the rest," Khan said with a dismissive glance. There was a casual arrogance about him that ground on her nerves as if the rest of the world wasn't worth his time.

"Don't be such a killjoy, we're trying to teach her how to be a better villain," Voldemort said with a scowl.

"Well if you're her teacher I suppose that explains why she's failing so much," Khan said as he took a sip of her beer. Voldemort didn't say anything, but Taylor could hear the man's teeth grinding against each other.

Taylor didn't try speaking to Khan much after that.

"And you need a look, something that screams 'I'm a supervillain'," Loki said, earning nods of agreement from the rest of the bar. They had just finished talking about selecting minions, which apparently had much higher criteria than just grabbing a couple of gangsters off the street.

"Like what?" Taylor asked as she took a sip of her non-alcoholic drink.

"I've always preferred to keep things simple, black robes…" Voldemort started, only to be cut off by Loki.

"Not having a nose?" The Asgardian asked with a humorous glint in his eyes, earning a few chuckles from the other patrons.

"I never get any respect around here," Voldemort said with a grumble.

Taylor felt a little bad for the guy, how often had Emma and her cronies mocked her for her lack of fashion?

"No, no, no. Robes only work if she's going to be an evil overlord. I see her more as an independent thinker, like me," Joker said with a smile, waving his arms as if he was presenting some great prize. Taylor did have to admit that the man did look good in his clothes, in a weird villainous way. She had never been aware that purple and green could be so intimidating.

"Well forgive us for not trusting you with her wardrobe. The last time you made a change you came with your eyebrows shaved off and damaged tattooed onto your forehead," Palpatine said as he handed a check to a man that looked like had just walked out of a blade factory. There were various mutterings of agreement from the assembled villains.

"You guys are never going to let that go, are you?" Joker asked with a heavy sigh.

"No."

"Now gentlemen, I think what Taylor needs here is a woman's touch," a tall green skinned woman said as she placed a hand on her shoulder. A pair of horns came up from her skull with a glowing staff in her other hand. Taylor barely had time to take it all in before she was pushed towards a group of women waiting in the corner with amused expressions.

"Now dear Taylor, you must understand that villainess have a somewhat different toolbox to men, particularly when it comes to our… assets," a very beautiful redhead woman said with a smile.

Taylor practically burned scarlet at the woman's insinuation. It wasn't very difficult to see where she was going with this, especially since her costume left little to the imagination. The thought of her squeezed herself into something like that made her face light up all the way down to her neck.

"I can't wear something like that," she managed to squeak out through her embarrassment. There were a few amused chuckles at her expense, but nothing like the howling laughter of the Trio and their cronies.

"Don't worry dear, we'll find something that fits you," the green-skinned woman said as the other ladies began to discuss how they would approach the problem. Taylor was quickly left in the metaphorical dust of the conversation as terms and ideas beyond her were thrown out. It reminded her of the times that Emma would try to get her to wear some more stylish clothes, but they seemed more interested in what would fit for her rather than what was at the edge of the latest fashion trend.

It was…nice.

"I don't know what to say," Taylor said as she picked up the notes that she had been given. An honest statement, since she really didn't know what to say. Part of her just wanted to walk out those doors and forget that this had ever happened, but the other part of her couldn't help but be curious. She had always thought villains were just bad people through and through. These villains were bad people if half of the stuff they said was true (she didn't even want to think about who many people might have died during a planet's destruction) there was still a sense of humanity to them.

They were still people just like her, and they had treated her with more respect and attention than she had ever gotten these last two years. It was refreshing, to say the least. Were all villains like this?

"Oh, think nothing of it," Voldemort said as he took a sip of his beer. Despite his rather terrifying appearance, he was rather friendly, even taking part in a thumb war with her while Loki and Joker debated over the tenants of a good plan. Or lack of plan in the Joker's case.

"It always brings a smile to my face to see the younger generation getting involved in the business," Joker said with a crackle.

"But…how am I getting back home?" Taylor asked. While this had been an unexpectedly pleasant experience for her, she still needed to get home. How was she going to do that if she didn't even know how she got here in the first place?

"Here, I managed to craft this," Loki said, handing her a small stone. There was a carving on the front of it in a language that she didn't understand. It looked kind of like those really only books that Mom would sometimes read, but they didn't have a faint glow like this one did.

"It's a rune stone," Loki said, answering her unspoken question. "I keyed it into the trace of your world on you, it should take you straight there, and back here again if you want to."

"How does it work?" Taylor asked as she examined the stone. She didn't see anything that would indicate if it was Tinker tech or not, and she didn't feel quite ready to believe that Loki and Voldemort had magic despite their insistence of the matter.

"Press down on the symbol and speak 'home' to return and 'bar' to get back here," Loki explained.

"Thank you," Taylor said, somewhat touched that the man had even bothered to add that little feature. How long had it been since someone had shown an interest in seeing her again? She clutched the stone in her hand as if it was a lifeline as she looked back up to the assembled villains. "All of you, I don't know how to repay you."

"Go show those criminals what it means to be a real villain," Joker said, earning quite a few nods of agreement from the rest of the patrons. Taylor still wasn't sure where she stood on being a villain herself, but she was far more open to giving it a try.

"I will," Taylor said, taking a deep breath as she pressed down on the runestone symbol. Part of her wanted to stay here if only to avoid having to deal with the Trio and Winslow again, but she could only imagine how worried Dad wa—

"Either leave or sit down and order something," Palpatine said, leaning over the counter.

"Home."

"Well, that was a surprisingly pleasant afternoon," Voldemort said. It wasn't every day you got to help someone become a villain.

Loki looked like he was about to say something when he froze, turning his eyes back to the spot where Taylor Hebert had vanished. His brows furrowed in deep thought as if he was trying to make the ground itself talk.

"What is it Lok?" Joker asked, clearly curious as to what was perplexing the trickster god.

"...We never did figure out how she got here, did we?" The Asgardian asked. The villains froze with the realization that no, they hadn't actually managed to figure out how the girl had gotten into the waiting room. That had been the entire reason that they hadn't just dealt with her while she had been unconscious. It had just been in all the excitement of trying to turn her into a villain they had forgotten all about it.

"...Dang it."

Earth Bet won't know what hit it.

Being a villain is lame. She should totally be a hero instead.

What? How did you get here?

Becuase I'm BATMAN!

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