(Author's Note: Hi hello, thank you for stopping by! I'm Macy, and I'm so glad and grateful to be part of this awesome event again! :) My post is a short story/mash-up of two of my stories, SINGING ON THE ROOF and DIAMOND RED. It can be considered a SINGING ON THE ROOF: VOL.2 teaser, but you don't have to know who anybody is or what anybody's done to read and hopefully have fun. Happy Wattpad Block Party, everyone! *throws confetti*)

Macy_Filia Presents: World-Class Villain

Narrated by:

Axl Ames (aka Anaxagoras Amarados) from DIAMOND RED

Starring:

Yiayia Xenia from DIAMOND RED

Lucian (beep)ing Nyx from SINGING ON THE ROOF

Lucian Nyx and I meet once a year, every year, for the past six years.

It's on the day of Greek Easter.

Our first ever conversation went something like this:

"Hi! I'm Axl!"

"I know. And Anaxagoras is your Greek name."

At this point, eleven-year-old me was already weirded out. "Ooooookay, how did you know how to pronounce that so well?"

"I know things," he said. As I would find out over the years, that was an understatement.

"What's your name?"

"Lucian." I now think that Lucifer would be more fitting.

"Do you wanna dig a hole in the sand with me?" I asked, because I was such a naïve little cinnamon roll.

"Digging holes is for idiots." As is—in Lucian's opinion—many things that require effort.

"Why?"

"The waves will ruin them anyway." Which is his life mantra in general—I mean why try to do something that's going to make you happy since all happiness is fleeting?

"But it's gonna be fun!"

"You will fall into the hole and hurt yourself." Always the eternal pessimist.

"No I'm not!" Always the stubborn dreamer.

"You're dumb. Bye," the eleven-year-old version of him said and then walked away from me.

Safe to say, the waves ruined my hole that day, I fell in it, and I sprained my wrist.

Lucian Nyx.

My nemesis.

It's Greek Easter day today, our family is leaving for the Stamos's house soon, and I am prepared.

"Μη του πας κόντρα σήμερα, έμαθα είναι στεναχωρημένος," Yiayia Xenia says.

"Lucian Nyx?" I scoff. "Why would he be upset?"

Yiayia X shakes her head, cutting the baklava in neat little pieces. "Δε ξέρω τι έγινε ακόμα, αλλά σου λέω έχει θέμα. Μου το 'πε η Κική που της το 'πε η Τίνα που της το 'πε ο Παύλος που του το 'πε ο Φώτης ο Σταματάκης ο γιατρός που 'ναι φίλος του πατέρα του μικρού."

"That's a blown-up rumor, and rumors spread amongst Greeks like chicken pox. Since you don't know exactly what happened, it's all a bunch of lies," I reply.

Yiayia X thrusts her chin up, prideful. "Εμένα δε μου λέει κανείς ψέματα."

"Of course, how could I ever forget that nobody's allowed to lie to you." Rolling my eyes, I start putting the baklava in individual dessert liners. "Let's accept for a second that something bad did happen to him, then. Why should I care? He's a demon sea urchin with no soul!"

Yiayia X stops cutting the baklava and stares at me.

I stop putting the pieces in dessert liners and stare back.

Her eyes are two dark pools of vulnerable sternness, because that's a thing and that's how you do parenting, and of course I get sucked right in.

"Fine. He's not a demon."

Yiayia X is satisfied, but I'm not done. "He's still as prickly as a sea urchin, though."

She sighs. "Axl."

"What!" I squawk. "Hasn't he established over the years that he's a misanthropic brat who has never been through anything traumatic and has a wonderful loving family but still manages to hate the entire world?"

"Εμάς δε μας αντιπαθεί," Yiayia says defensively.

"Of course he likes you and all the other grandmas, you're sassy but adorable and you feed and cuddle him—for a misanthropist, he sure loves grandma hugs!"

She smiles. "Ήταν σα γατάκι μικρός."

I need to stop the madness. "First of all, comparing a radioactive shark like Nyx to a kitten hurts my brain. Second, stop remembering him as a sweet kid, because he grew up and turned out to be an awful teenager and person."

She tsks me. "Υπερβολές!"

"I'm not exaggerating! The dude is a few steps away from eventually becoming a world-class villain." I start counting with my fingers, because I have a lot of feelings about this. "He's highly intelligent, he's extra manipulative, he reads situations and people's motives like he's some sort of weird live truth detector Sherlock Holmes, and the only thing that holds him back is that he literally doesn't interact with humans or care enough to do anything to actively harm other people!"

My voice is loud, and Yiayia X has been infected and starts kinda yelling at me too. "Oh, stop it! Lucian has his flaws, but it's only because he picks up on and gets overwhelmed by anything that may be negative around him. He's so sensitive."

"Like the tender heart leaves of a lettuce that's been poisoned by pesticides."

"No." Yiayia X frowns, and now there's real yelling. "I mean it, Anaxagora. If I learn you're being mean to him today, we're gonna have a very serious talk!" She's calling me with my Greek name while speaking English, so (beep) just got real.

"You won't tell me what to do, stop trying to control me all the time!" More yelling from me, and then I huff loudly and stomp out of the kitchen.

A minute later, I'm back to help her finish setting up the baklava in the platter that we're taking over to the Stamos's, and she lets me eat all the crunchy delicious corners of the dessert, which are the best part.

That's basically how our family fights.

Which is the exact opposite of how Lucian (beep)ing Sand Hole Hater Nyx would fight, because he would totally hold a grudge forever—again, if he cared enough to get into a fight with someone.

When we get to the Stamos's house—sans Leo because he'll come over later after he's done filming—I see Nyx's awesome family. (Lucian's brother Philip is a gift. I had a very confusing dream about him once, but it was kinda worth it?). I also see Dr. Fotis Stamos, who is Nyx's dad's BFF, and the reason why the Nyxs fly all the way from Arizona to California for Greek Easter.

I don't see Lucian himself out in the yard with everybody else, though. His super nice oldest brother Eric isn't at the celebration either, which is also weird. I casually ask about them both and learn that Lucian is in the house talking on the phone; Eric just couldn't make it for reasons that nobody expands on, because conversations change in the blink of an eye around here.

My nose is twitching, though, and I'm a hound dog that smelled a daisy that just made me sneeze out a whole lot of curiosity. Yes, I know that's a great visual.

The second Yiayia Xenia is occupied with one of the million Cousin's stories about her boyfriend proposing (a Greek grandmother that loves marriage—shocker, I know), I slip inside the house.

I find the problem, Lucian himself, in the living room in the back. He's typing furiously on his phone. He looks so cool that I want to raise my fist at the sky and yell, 'Why God, why?', because he probably has a line of girls pining over his broody ass, and I'll die alone. Before I can even open my mouth to be petty, though, he speaks. While still typing and without even raising his head to see who it is. "What do you want, Axl?"

How does he do that?

"I wondered why you're not out there pouting while everybody else has fun."

He looks up at me. Glowers.

I glower back.

He looks at me up and down. "You got taller. And got the braces off."

I feel so self-conscious I may swivel down to a tiny baby cactus.

He crosses his arms over his chest, and tilts his head to the side. He looks good, but I realize that he doesn't look like himself. He looks so much . . . older. Tired. Almost troubled. Almost sad, like Yiayia X said before.

I can bet that he knows that I just thought that, like a crazy seer he detected the hint of pity in my face, because he immediately attacks.

"Here's what I got for you," he says. "You got taller, you got the braces off, you're physically appealing. More people will start noticing you soon, which means you will be feeling more confident soon, which means you'll let your guard down socially, which means you will fall in love this year. Possibly with a girl for a first love, because you've been brought up idolizing powerful women. It's probably going to end up being be bad, though, because you're a mess. Like where do I even begin."

"When the (beep) did I ask you to do one of your weird ass predictions about my—"

"Why are you here then?"

"So you don't know why I'm here," I scoff. "Are you losing your All-Seeing-Sherlock touch?"

He stares at me, and stares, and stares. "You wanted to find me."

He's scrutinizing again, and I feel the urge to take a step back.

He points at me with his phone. "You looked for me, and you never do, because you hate my cynicism, you hate my pessimism, you hate the stuff I say, the stuff that I believe in. But this time you sought me out, which means you wanted to hear it, which means that there's a part of you that feels I'm right about hating humanity and saying it's doomed, which means that something bad happened in your life since last year, which means . . ." He stops pointing at me, lowers his phone. Lowers his tone. "How's your friend Joy, Axl?"

He has stripped me down, broken me in pieces, in seconds.

I hate it.

Sometimes, I hate him and how right he can be.

"(Beep) you." I turn around to head to the bathroom because this got too much and my skin is buzzing. My skin is screaming to be hurt, to be cut and scratched, to be a distraction, but then he blocks my way. He's still a couple of inches taller than me. He grabs me by the shoulders, makes me look at him.

He grabs me like a brother would.

Lucian Nyx, my nemesis; yet right now, he doesn't feel like it.

"You know why I never wanted to be your friend?" he asks. I feel pinned opposite him. "Before we ever met, I had a friend like you when I was a little kid. Her name was Natalie. She had been through hell."

Hell. Abuse. Philip had talked about Natalie once.

Philip loves her.

"I knew you were in foster care," Lucian says, "I knew Yiayia Xenia had just adopted you, and you reminded me of Natalie. I could feel it when you were covering up sadness, when you were thinking about your past, and I noticed your scars. I couldn't deal with it, with all the feeling. I'm weak, and I can't deal."

Lucian.

This guy who used to be so so certain, so undemolished, so distant toward me is speaking to me like he's cracked open.

What the hell happened to him?

"You're not weak—"

"I don't want to be." He drops his hands from my shoulders. He looks away, and in the second that he does, his face changes. When he looks back at me, he's more. "So I'm gonna be doing things from now on," he says, and he's more than he used to be.

In only seconds, he changed his expression, he's shook and shaped himself, and he's more than himself.

And if he was intimidating and imposing before, now he looks like a carnivore.

"Dude, you're weirding me out." I choke out laughter. "What are you talking about?"

"Just about doing things. Acting. Making a change."

"A change on what?"

He says nothing, and silence is so bad. Almost scary.

"But you don't do things!" I'm full-on flailing, limbs pointing at him and around him. "You judge things, you comment on things, but you don't do things! You don't interact with people enough to do things, you're antisocial, you're an observer!"

He tilts his head to the side again. "I've been interacting with people more these past few months . . ."

I'm blinking at him like he's a blinding harsh light. "Why does that sound ominous?"

"Because it is."

Whaaaaat the hell.

"Did someone do something to you? Did they like sneeze in your direction and you freaked out?"

His expression is raw. "You have no idea."

Earlier, I was telling Yiayia X (mostly jokingly) that the biggest thing holding Nyx back from becoming a world-class villain was that he didn't care enough to do anything and actively harm other people. He by choice had never interacted with other people enough—he had spent his entire teenage life without having any relationships with kids his age, even if he went to school every day.

But now something had changed.

He let himself be part of society, and someone had . . .

Someone had done something to him.

"Seriously, who bugged you?" I ask. The question could've been a joke, this whole conversation could've been a joke, but I am no longer laughing.

Because Lucian's face?

It's menace.

"He didn't just bug me. He crushed me. And he tried to manipulate the one person I care about apart from my family," he says. His next words send a serious 'This Isn't Funny, The Beast Is Unleashed' chill down my spine.

"His name is John, and I will ruin his future."

***********

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