"Look at that, she's awake."

Hades face was the first one Bella saw, his voice the first one she heard upon waking up. It came slowly, blurry and far away at first before coming into focus, but that's how it always was when it was a poisoned thorn that caused her to pass out.

"I won, right?" Bella asked. It was a necessary first question since she wasn't completely sure of the results of that fight. It was a bit hazy and it felt a little too good to be true.

"Yeah," Hades laughed. "No one actually saw what happened since you both fell through the floor, which will cost the school a lot of money to rebuild by the way, but you were both stuck by those poisoned thorns and you lasted longer. You kind of won by default, though I think everyone's thinking of it as either you having a stronger body or having hit the headmaster before she could hit you. Either way it's believable. Anyone who knows your modus operandi believes you'd win by outlasting your opponent by just a few seconds and anyone who saw you battle Mitch will believe you'd use someone else's power against them like that."

Bella looked around the room to make sure they were alone before she spoke again. "You know what actually happened, don't you?"

"You mean that you used my sister's gem to win? Yes."

"I mean that I fell... onto the headmaster... We were probably stuck with the thorns at around the same time, but I fell on her and I think she may have hit her head on the ground when we fell or something."

"Wow."

"Yeah, I think that win was almost completely the gem. I did the first half, the gem did the second half." Bella sighed and relaxed into the bed a bit. "I need to practice being a supervillain more. The headmaster has cheating without breaking the rules down. I need to be like that."

Hades laughed as he sat on the edge of her bed. "Well, now that it's over and you won basically on your own, do you want to know how I won?"

Bella sat up so quickly she actually surprised Hades. "You said it was the gem."

"Part of it," Hades sighed. "I also knew that I was fighting villains and villains don't fight fair. Using the gem isn't not fighting fair, it's fighting with an edge. I never beat Kaiya, though, when we fought. I couldn't ever get a handle on the opposite of my power. It was this weird power that healed everything in its path- physically, mentally, and emotionally. Not only could I not win with that power, I couldn't even figure out how to use it. I mean, I don't know if you've noticed, but I don't actually have complete control over my power, I've just got a lot of power."

"And there's that one flaw."

"Yes, the flaw... I can't contain it, something else has to contain it. You used that to your advantage, which I commend. Well, since I couldn't bank on using my powers to win that battle and I couldn't use any 'formalized fighting', I found a way around it all. The government had been working on this power suppression drug. It didn't last long, just five minutes, long enough for them to sedate you and keep you that way if need be."

"Wait, what?!"

"No worries, I destroyed it, the entire lab that made it and all the research. I only knew about it because of Levi. The two of us met when I helped him rescue his girlfriend from that facility. He'd found me because they had information on me, which I wasn't surprised about. He had gained consciousness long enough to teleport himself out of there and find me and we've been friends... acquaintances ever since. That was my senior year in high school, though. I'd taken a few samples for myself in case I ever lost control again like I did with my sister and... that other superhuman I mentioned."

"You kept it for yourself?"

"Just a few vials, ten if I'm being exact. I only ever used two, one with Kaiya to see if it would work and then one in battle with the headmaster. Essencists can only take your power if you have one and, as far as her powers were concerned, I didn't have one. So when she used her powers on me, all that she gained was a look into my personality and maybe a peek into my psyche, but not my powers. Then, about 30 seconds or so after the headmaster attempted to take my powers, I had my powers back. She was already trying to attack me with the other powers she'd stolen that day, but I won pretty quickly. Once I regained my personality, I stopped the attack and was declared the winner."

"You won with your superpowers." Hades nodded and Bella hit him in the arm. "Why couldn't you give me the stupid science concoction that suppresses powers?"

"I destroyed all but one of them a long time ago. I figured I should keep one just in case we need it later for some reason, but I didn't want someone to find and use them. There were so many. Besides, I couldn't give you all the answers on a silver platter. You had to figure it out yourself and for the most part, you did."

"No I didn't."

"Sure you did. The gem just does what you want. You think of what would be a lucky break for you and then the gem makes it happen. It can't work without thought. Crystella thought of what she thought would be lucky for someone and then that happened. I thought that it would be lucky for me if I regained my powers more quickly, and that's what happened. You must've thought it'd be lucky if the headmaster was stuck with her own thorns, either that or how lucky it would be if you fell on top of her."

"I did think it would be lucky if she was the one to get stuck by a thorn."

"There you go." Hades stood up and put his hand out for Bella to take. "Now let's go. We aren't out of the woods quite yet."

"I know... The heroes are starting to forget who they are," Bella sighed as she took Hades hand. She hadn't even thought about it before using her right hand, but once she did, she just stared at it. "The healer healed me too?"

"Yeah, apparently you managed to dislocate your shoulder, so she helped out."

"Nice. I've never had to be healed before. It's always just been a time thing."

"Today is just full of firsts for you, isn't it?" Hades didn't laugh, but Bella could see the ghost of a smile on his face and glared at him anyway. She didn't need his mocking at the moment.

"Shut up."

*********************************************

Bella walked into Hal & Mal's Diner with Hades following close behind. She spotted Jade and Quinn almost immediately and strutted up to them like she'd just won the presidential election against all odds.

"Based on that confidence and your lack of a scowl and grumbling, you must've won," Jade said happily.

"She did," Hades interjected, taking a seat.

"Well tell us about it! What happened? Was it hard? Easy? Fun?"

"She almost killed me, caused Professor Allistair mental damage, and embarrassed the headmaster."

"So it went... well?"

"No one has to die, if that's your question," Bella answered. "Well, you don't, anyway. We still have to figure out how to save me."

"Yeah, that's still a problem," Jade grumbled.

"Are we taking every option into consideration?" Hades asked.

Jade shrugged and rested her head in her hand as her and Quinn's food came. "Any ideas are appreciated. I've got nothing."

"Can I get anything else for you?" the waitress asked.

Bella and Hades ordered, then waited for the waitress to leave before answering. "Well," Hades offered, "There's always killing your headmaster."

"No!" Jade and Quinn shouted at the same time. Several heads turned their way, but they waved them off with a few apologies and promises that they'd keep their voices down.

"We are not killing our headmaster," Jade said.

"Why not?" Bella asked. "I couldn't. It was mostly because of hierarchy. I knew that even if I managed to kill the headmaster, the new headmaster would make me follow through on the order anyway. It's the way villains work. They'd make me do it just so that they could show respect to the last headmaster and as a way of me showing respect to them."

"Besides, the headmaster is too smart to die easily," Hades added.

"But I assume heroes are different. Killing your headmaster would probably solve the problem. The fact that there's even one superhero at the top who's not just willing to kill, but forcing others to kill is surprising enough. I doubt you'd be unlucky enough to encounter two in a row like that."

"Wait, Bella has a point," Hades said. "Heroes don't kill. Vigilantes do, but they don't get accepted to your school, so they definitely wouldn't get the chance to be at the top of one."

"What are you saying?" Jade asked. "That our headmaster isn't a superhero?"

"Well, actually I'm saying that your headmaster is very likely a villain."

Jade and Quinn simply stared at Hades as if what he said was quite possibly the most insane thing a person could possibly say. Their facial expressions remained frozen in that state even after Bella and Hades got their food. They remained that way as Bella and Hades began eating, talking amongst themselves while they waited for Bella's friends to get a hold of themselves.

"Guys, is it really that unbelievable?" Bella finally asked. "He ordered the same thing of you as my headmaster did of me and it never even once occurred to you that he was more villainous than he was heroic?"

Quinn was the one who responded first. "That might actually make sense," he said.

"Wait, Quinn," Jade responded, "you can't be serious. Our headmaster is a well-known hero."

"So he says, but we've never actually seen him use those powers. We have no proof that says he is that hero. They have the same hair and eye color, but that could be explained by contacts and hair dye or a wig."

"No, it's him. I know it's him. I can... feel the heat radiating off of him since it's in such opposition to my powers."

"But that hero also disappeared years ago. In that time, who knows what happened? He could have become more villainous and no one considered it."

"Or maybe after years of fighting, he gained some knowledge about fighting villains that we don't know. Maybe he has a reason."

"To want me dead?" Bella asked. "I've literally never done anything villainous. The worst anyone could accuse me of right now is being a bully. Outside of fighting matches, I've never even hurt anyone."

"Yeah... wait, really?" Quinn's face showed every bit of confusion Bella would expect it to show, but Hades and Jade weren't surprised at all. Hades knew Bella well enough that this wasn't surprising and Jade had been present for most of Bella's life.

"Still... they're just preemptive measures," Jade explained, ignoring Quinn's confusion.

"If everyone had that thinking, anyone who showed any interest in guns would be put in prison, anyone who showed any interest in fire would be sent to some type of mental institution, anyone who-"

"OK! OK," Jade screamed, once again causing people to stare at their table. "I get it, Bella. I really get it, but... But..."

"And anyone who ever lost control or purposefully hurt someone else would be imprisoned as well," Bella continued.

Bella and Jade locked eyes for several seconds, sharing a conversation that Quinn and Hades weren't included in and of which they were unaware.

"I am not going to a college for superheroes run by a villain," she whispered as she held her head in her hands. "I can't be."

"Come on... we should talk."