The feeling of regret was overpowering all others.

Talia had barely made it into the hospital before she was instantly wanting to turn back & run out. She was looking over her shoulder every few seconds & as on edge as she'd ever been, though she was barely recognizable beneath an oversized hoodie. Talia wasn't fond of taking chances that could lead to her being locked in an inescapable prison cell when she knew the imminent destruction the building she was inside would face.

Time was most certainly of the essence. Talia didn't know why she was even doing this in the first place. She wasn't going to benefit in any way. She never did anything that didn't directly result in her gaining something. Still, she found herself going through with her l'appel du vide. A call of the void that had evolved into a fully thought out plan after she'd overheard the phone conversation of villains planning to destroy the superhero hospital Mighty Med. But not before they broke in & stole all the computerized records of every past & present resident— otherwise known as just about every superhero in existence.

Talia should have wanted to help them. Heroes had never done anything for her; in fact, they had almost destroyed her multiple times. Perhaps it was her villainous nature, wanting to cause trouble for others. Even if said others were villains. No one said villains had to be allies; they weren't one big team as the heroes were. Talia could make an enemy out of whomever she desired.

At least, that's what she told herself to justify her doing something to help heroes. Talia used the term help very loosely, being that she wasn't going in there to warn them all that the hospital was about to be blown up. She was merely going in to do what she did best. Infect the computer systems with a toxic virus of her own creation, so that the other villains couldn't get anything from it. She was being a pain in the ass; something the notorious villain by the name of Virus took great pride in doing.

The raven haired girl held her breath as she appeared just beyond the janitor's closet entrance of Mighty Med. She didn't know the correct passcode to enter through the door, so she had opted to use her powers to jump past it. The power in the hospital was strong, with all the machinery & such, making it easy for the villain to travel through the unseen electrical currents. She only hoped no one noticed the way the systems faltered during the millisecond she was in them.

Her brown eyes scanned the room for anyone, be it heroes or guards, but found no threats aside from a mannequin— why was a mannequin in a hospital? Talia shook her head as her gaze shifted to the semicircle front desk. Specifically, to the computer on the desk. It didn't matter if the computer was the main one used for the hospital's records, as long as it was hooked up to the same system she could do this in one shot.

Talia glanced around one last time before speed walking over to the desk, slipping behind it to the computer. She glanced over her shoulder towards where the mannequin stood, checking once more for any sign of life but turned back as all remained still. Talia's gaze locked on the computer screen as she read over the log in page, a ghost of a smirk forming on her lips as she knew information wouldn't be needed.

She pressed her hand to the screen of the computer, her brown eyes taking on an electric green glow. The screen flickered black for the same amount of time it took Talia to teleport into the hospital, before reigniting with a mess of code looking to be poured straight from a virtual blender across it. Talia removed her hand from the screen, her eyes dulling back to their usual brown. The villain stepped back & watched her handiwork take hold, the power in the hospital flickering slightly as her virus travelled throughout all the systems & encrypted them with her own indecipherable code.

Talia wanted to stick around to watch the full extent of her virus take hold, but made the decision to jump out of Mighty Med as she heard voices nearing. She would have stayed had it been a guard or hero, but the voices sounded eerily similar to the ones she'd overheard planning the hospital's demise earlier. As much as Talia would have loved to see the looks on their faces once they realized they'd be able to get absolutely nothing from the computers, she didn't want to end up destroyed along with the hospital. Hell, a part of her even wanted to stick around & warn people of their impending doom, but again, she didn't want to get herself blown up in the process.

Her heroism only went so far.

As much as Talia was contemplating the idea of leaving her villainous lifestyle, she wasn't about to put someone else's life above her own. She wasn't a hero. She was simply someone who liked to cause a little trouble; most of the time to benefit herself, but often just for entertainment. Talia wasn't all that fond of being labelled a villain for it, but she certainly didn't consider herself a hero. She considered herself more of an equal force, must to her dismay, one whom walked the line between good & evil but occasionally fell to the evil side because stealing candy from bratty little children was irresistible.

Talia didn't like not fitting into a category. She didn't want to be a villain. She couldn't be, because as good as being bad felt, there was always a small part of her that regretted the bad she did— it was Talia's understanding that villains didn't feel that. When she had been made aware of the all powerful Arcturion by her guardians, she felt no desire to hunt it down & take all the power for herself; the only desire Talia felt was to continue binge watching the new season of Lucifer & to crack open another bag of cheetos.

She was bad, there was no denying that. Talia had a pretty incriminating history regarding how she dealt with heroes— she may or may not have tried to destroy a few in the past, and aided in successfully destroying a few. There was no doubt if she had gotten caught in Mighty Med by security, she would have been thrown in jail. Talia was without a doubt a villain, but the problem was that she didn't feel like one anymore.

She felt like she wanted to help. She also felt like she wanted to throw up. A small part of her hoped it was some sort of villain sickness, causing her to feel strangely heroic, because she was going to be the joke of the villain world. The infamous Virus, turned good— now helping what little is left of the superheroes. Talia could feel her lunch coming back up at that last thought. The internal conflict & the garlic bread she had for lunch were really duelling it out.

Absolute chaos erupted around her before a winner could be determined.

One second the heroic villain was on the sidewalk, walking away from the normo hospital she had just struggled to find her way out of after jumping from Mighty Med. The next, she was standing on the roof of a warehouse two streets over, watching as the building she had previously been standing in front of crumbled to the ground. Teleportation had become somewhat of a reflex for Talia as soon as something startled her, in this case the sound of the initial explosion— it had saved her life on more than one occasion & especially came in handy when she was being shot at. By the time the bullet entered the space she had previously been occupying, Talia would be long gone, albeit there was an internet connection nearby for the personified virus to travel through.

Luckily in this case, the block had flawless service, allowing the girl to quickly jump from harm's way just in time to watch the hospital start to crumble, collapsing into a mound of dust & debris. Smoke soon followed, a fire now beginning its quest to destroy every last bit of evidence that Mighty Med had ever existed in the first place. Talia almost wished she'd grabbed a souvenir or something, perhaps it would be of value— but the thought quickly slipped from her mind as she remembered there had been people in that hospital.

There had been people in both hospitals. It didn't occur to Talia that the normo hospital filled with innocent people would also be destroyed, but as the realization fully dawned on her she couldn't deny the feeling of heaviness holding her down. Whoever had blown up Mighty Med had not only killed heroes, but they had claimed the lives of countless innocent humans, none of whom deserved the untimely end they'd just met.

It upset her more than it should have. She stole candy from little children, and occasionally money from adult sized children, but Talia had never killed someone she didn't fully believe deserved it. Talia had never directly killed anyone— but admittedly she had stood by & watched the demise of many.

She couldn't help but feel as though she had indirectly caused a little of this too. The feeling felt strange to her, foreign & uncomfortable. As much as she wanted to blame it on the garlic bread, this type of sickness wasn't acquired from some expired freezer food— it was the type of sick you felt when you had the power to alter the outcome of a situation but chose not to. Talia didn't want to call it regret, because the stereotypical "ugh, I shouldn't have come here" type of regret didn't do it the justice it deserved.

Talia had felt it before, she could recall the vague memory. She didn't know how to describe it then, either. She didn't exactly try, being that she was feeling a lot of things at the time. It was a peculiar thing to her, to feel the strange form of regret again but without the searing agony that had previously accompanied it. The feeling reminded her of the incident, but at the same time it didn't; perhaps what was truly reminding her of it was the way she'd subconsciously moved her hand over the metal implant in her side.

Talia crossed her arms, swallowing hard as she took one last glance at the wreckage of Mighty Med. She couldn't stay here & regret her life choices any longer; police were going to be arriving on the scene, and nothing would be more suspicious than a girl standing on a roof watching over them. Talia wanted to make this sickening feeling go away as fast as possible, and she had a pretty good idea of where to start— she was going to find some heroes, and she was going to help them brutally slaughter the villains who'd destroyed Mighty Med & the hospital above it.

That was the heroic thing to do.

—

UNEDITED.

free baguette if you can guess how many times i accidentally typed herpes instead of heroes. it's 4am & i'm out of it but i wanted to get this up. i hope you all come to love my horrible little hero, i'm so excited to write her story :-) let me know what you think of it do far!