Belladonna couldn't have been more excited for her college orientation. Her crimson red hair was all pulled to one side, her black make up was perfectly applied, and her smile was non-existent. She looked absolutely villainous and she couldn't wait to make heads turn at the Gallimore School of Entropy. She was sure no one would look quite as perfect as she did.

Bella stood in front of the mirror, practicing both her scowl and her triumphant smirk. If she ever had the chance to use them, she wanted it to be perfect. She was sure the more evil she seemed, the faster she'd make friends.

"Practicing your evil laugh too?" Jade asked upon entering the room.

"No," Bella sighed with a roll of her eyes. "I'm not crazy. Besides, if I didn't have an evil laugh by now, they shouldn't have accepted me."

"Oh, silly me," Jade said dryly as she grabbed her cardigan.

"It's 85 degrees outside," Bella said with another roll of her eyes. "Put the cardigan down."

"You know I'm always cold when it's warm out," Jade responded. "But maybe if your heart warmed up a bit..."

Bella smiled at her friend's reflection in the mirror. Every once in awhile, Jade would say something incredibly nasty for Bella's sake, and in return, Bella would at times do something exceedingly kind.

"Maybe if you just suffered through it, your body might warm up a bit and learn to adapt."

"I'll do that if you stop using your powers to shield yourself from the rain instead of using an umbrella like a normal person."

"That's not gonna happen," Bella said before walking out. "Have a good first day."

"You too," Jade smiled.

Bella made her way to the Gallimore Square, where the freshman class was to be addressed by their headmaster. She'd never seen her, but she'd only heard great things. According to rumor, the headmaster had killed ten superheroes in her time, including her own archnemesis.

"Watch where you're going," a baritone, rather angry voice said.

Bella almost apologized. After all, she had bumped into someone because she hadn't been looking, but then, she was at a school for super villains. "Sorry," she said sarcastically. "Did I not give you enough time to move out of my way?"

"Who do you think you are?" the slightly taller man asked, his voice almost venomous.

Bella rolled her eyes. "I'm not wasting my time introducing myself to someone like you. Ask again when your presence is worth my time."

Bella walked away and sighed. That was... exhilarating and hard and absolutely everything she'd hoped for when she came to this school. It was a chance to let herself out.

"Wow, I think you might be the only freshman I'll talk to this year," a familiar, rather cocky voice stated from behind her. He walked up next to her and matched her pace. "The name's Hades."

"Your parents named you Hades?" she chuckled.

"What'd yours name you?" he asked, figuring he'd get a similar answer to his own.

"Belladonna," she sighed.

"Oh," he said.

"Like the poison, not the medicine. My mother's got a whole story behind it."

"Well, Belladonna, as I said, I'm Hades. Since you can hold your own already, unlike the rest of your inexperienced cohort, I think it's fair to say that you'll do just fine here." Hades stepped in front of her. "Enjoy freshman year. If you need anything, I'm here."

Hades simply walked away after that, leaving Bella to contemplate his weirdness on her own. "OK," she uttered. "Weird."

Bella continued to walk, hoping to find a good place to stand for the speech. She could only imagine it would be inspiring.

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Jade walked into the Franklin Hall just in time. After walking through Prattlyn campus for several minutes trying to find Tritop Building and then having to navigate the stairwells to find the right one to lead her to Franklin Hall for the freshman address, she was lucky to not have been half an hour late.

"They should have given us a map or something," a guy next to her said. He seemed to be just as out of breath as she was.

"Agreed," she laughed. "Jade."

"Quinn," he said, taking her outstretched hand.

"Nice to meet you. Too bad we didn't get more useful powers for the situation, huh?"

"I say that to myself all the time," Quinn shrugged. "What's yours anyway?"

"Ice queen," she said with a smile, using the first nickname Bella had ever given her. "You?"

"Oh, I got accepted on my technology innovation, not for my powers."

"Oh, a civilian. Cool," Jade said. "I respect that. You thinking behind the scenes work or front lines?"

"Not sure yet. I guess it depends on how the next four years go."

"Well, good luck figuring it out."

"What about you?"

"Front lines, I think, but I guess it depends on how the next four years go."

Quinn laughed. "Touche."

Jade smiled, then pointed when she saw their headmaster walk onto the stage. Quinn looked and smiled back, nodding slightly in acknowledgement before turning his attention to the speaker.

"Good morning future superheroes," the headmaster said. "We here at Prattlyn are excited to see what you become as you advance through the next four years of your college experience. You all have the potential to be rather fantastic superheroes, otherwise you wouldn't have been accepted. You all have the drive and passion to be fantastic superheroes, or else you wouldn't have applied. These next four years will be fun, exciting, intriguing, and adventure filled, but they will also be arduous, stressful, confusing, and tiring. Most of all, though, these next four years will be educational, but you must put in the work..."

The speech went on like that for fifteen minutes, but the entire audience held onto his every word. It didn't matter that he gave almost the same speech every year, because how could they know? It didn't matter that the villains in training were getting a very similar speech, because how could they know?

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

"The work will push you to your limits," the headmaster continued as Bella hung onto each word she said. "You will be broken so that you can come back stronger. You will learn of your own weaknesses and you will learn to embrace them so that they might not be used against you. You will learn how to control, truly control your powers. You will become the best villain you can possibly become before you graduate, and that is a promise."

Bella had never been so inspired in her entire life. There was the day that her mother told her of her destiny. She'd said that she named Belladonna after the poison that killed her husband, Bella's father, and that had been the first time she truly felt inspired to become a villain. When named after a poison that killed her own father, what else could she be inspired to do? Yet today, she felt even more inspired; inspired to be the very best villain she could be.

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Just a little taste to introduce you to some important characters and dip your toe in the water, so to speak.

I LOVE Flyleaf and the song is just to kind of set the mood for Belladonna's character, plus it's the song I was listening to while writing. Well, one of them.