Livewire

Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom OC Application
Player Information
Name: Sparky, Christianna, Allotrios, Hey You
Age: 39
Preferred Method of contact: Journal, Plurk, Email
Contact Info: Plurk: Allotrios
Email: de.allotrios@gmail.com
Number of Characters in the Kingdom: Two
Timezone: Eastern United States

Character Information
Character Name: Alexis Marie Pierce "Livewire"
Age: Somewhere in her late 20s or early 30s. It's not something she could tell you.
Canon: Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Canon Point: Pre-Blog
Gender: Female


Character World
Livewire's world is much like the real one, except more satirical and exaggerated and prone to a little comic and cartoon physics. There are heros and villains, impossible genius contrasted against impossible ignorance superimposed atop an ordinary, relatable backdrop.


Character History
Character History: If you ask Alexis about her past, she'll first wonder who it is you're talking to, and second, be unable to give an answer. She lives primarily in the Now, but as a child, she was an extortionate little capitalist, always assessing people and situations and taking advantage of opportunities. It's not what she was known for, however. She was known for being a tom-boy and a bully's bully, frequently getting into fights and occasionally rescuing the odd nerd from their locker. This wasn't so much to defend them as it was to maintain her reputation and territory.

During her teen years, she developed a novel wasting condition that had only been documented a handful of times, and for which there were only suggested treatments. She was put on a regimen of immunoenhancing supplements, specifically colloidal silver. Around the same time, an international medical equipment developer opened up human testing for a new piece of imaging technology using electromagnetic induction, which they claimed would revolutionize current imaging technologies.

Alexis was among the first treatment groups. The machine experienced what appeared to be a harmless malfunction; whether because of the buildup of colloidal silver in her body or not remains unknown. She emerged gray skinned and sick, but without other obvious symptoms. Soon afterward, her powers began to manifest. Small and easily dismissed at first, like shocking someone if she touched them or a piece of metal they were touching. Shorting out small electronics. Lights getting brighter or dimmer when she passed them. It became impossible to ignore when it escalated to physical expressions, like little sparks appearing around her fingers, unpleasant bathing experiences, and accidentally causing brief episodes of disorientation or nausea. It wasn't long before they became dangerous, and she had to take countermeasures like wearing insulating gloves and boots at all times; occasionally, these measures failed in the presence of heightened emotions or too much ambient electricity. One day, while putting up Christmas lights, it resulted in her father's death. The death was recorded as cardiac arrest, and at her mother's instruction, Alexis stayed quiet. The grief and overwhelming guilt from this incident, along with the depression and emotional distance that consumed her mother, drove Alexis to eventually run away from home. Much later in her life, the remnants of this guilt would translate into a pervasive need for control.

Through trial and error, she gradually learned how to use and control her power, and over time, her memory became worse. She taught herself mechanical and electrical engineering, took up residence in a tattered old hotel building, and went out of her way to build a fearsome reputation for herself. Her powers grew, and her inhibitions waned, and she became more violent and impulsive. Petty crime to survive became major crime for fun. Stealth turned into loud, attention seeking destruction. Stealing food and money was soon joined by stealing technology and raw materials, and she began terrorizing, killing, burning, and stealing indiscriminately.

Her activities eventually caught the attention of someone bigger, badder, and more organized on the other side of the country. He was in a league of his own, had recruited a diverse group of villains to operate on his behalf in the Los Angeles area, and he wanted Livewire for his collection. A cunning and manipulative villain, he planted informants, watched her movements and methods, and arranged for her capture and incarceration. Once she was cornered, powered down, and under the limited security of a transport van, she was kidnapped to be forcibly inducted into his crime syndicate. It was during the cross country trip to California that she mysteriously vanished from the back of the van.


Character Motivation: Her enjoyment of destruction and havoc and loudly fucking things up can mostly be blamed on her hedonistic sense of self-indulgence, partly on an assertion of dominance, and a little bit on a need to be a showman. She isn't necessarily obsessed with being in the spotlight, in the newspaper, or on America's Most Wanted, but if she is, she wants to be center stage, on the cover, and at the top. Related to this, Alexis is very kingdom oriented, be that kingdom her city, her reputation, her lab, her henchman. Whatever it is, it is her kingdom, and she loves, guards, and rules it. Anything can become her territory. She takes what she wants, and it can absolutely be out of sheer spite rather than actual greed.


Personality: As a supervillainess who wields power over electricity, she is destructive, dangerous, and unpredictable. She exploits her gifts toward hedonism, preferring the spoils of crime (comfort, luxury, adrenaline thrill, reputation) over the responsibility involved in actually having power over a populace. She's very selfish, but she isn't self-centered: that is, she has her own best interests at heart, and does whatever it is she wants to do, but doesn't have an over-inflated sense of importance, and in fact is easily disgusted at such narcisism.

Her impulse control appears to be next to nonexistent, but in truth, she likes to have complete control over her surroundings, including herself and the people close to her. Often, however, what she interprets as control over her surroundings is really just being more powerful than the other guy. As for self-control, her reasoning is like an addicted smoker's: she allows herself to act on impulse because she sees no reason why she shouldn't, but maintains that she can restrain herself if she wants to - and she ordinarily can, though it isn’t tested too often. While she acts emotionally and impulsively in immediate circumstances, she's very deliberate about it if something requires longer term planning. The only problem is that she frequently misses when something requires longer term planning.

While she has her powers, she's very confident and brash, but if she's caught without them, her intense mistrust of others coupled with the vulnerability of being powerless shuts her up quick, and she'll become far more careful to avoid becoming a target. If she's already in trouble, however, and it isn't worth strategising, placating, bluffing, or begging, she'll revert back to being sarcastic, loudmouthed, and hateful.


Canon Strength/Weaknesses: Physically, she isn't about to win any arm-wrestling matches, which is why she leans so heavily on her powers or the occasional invented weapon. Her personality, however, is quite imposing.

While she is dangerous on her own, she lacks the patience and focus to work toward a bigger endgame. This means that she's dangerous primarily because she's so quick to violent, angry outbursts, but could be much more dangerous if she had the training to refine her powers to their fullest potential or had a careful, thoughtful, conscientious partner. As it is, she's destructive, but defeatable. Her memory also isn't the best, and she's been known to forget even her own name if she's gone long enough without hearing or saying it.

Unsurprisingly, she isn't very good at considering the feelings of others, even if she cares very much about them. She isn't incapable of empathy or even selflessness, but feelings outside of her own have to be spelled out for her in order for her to understand, relate, or empathize with them. This makes her a hypocritical sort, since she often expects more emotional intelligence from others than she offers in return.


Apprentice Sorcerer Application
Class: I would say a toss-up between Warrior and Monster. She hates the idea of being part of a team because she likes to do whatever she wants without taking anyone or anything else into consideration, but she does, actually, work fairly well in one if forced, or if it's the right sort of person. Aside from that, she accomplishes more when taking direction or combining her skills with someone else's. Monster - well, she's a terrible, horrible, awful person and isn't afraid to get down and play dirty. An elemental power would work well for her because she's already familiar with her use of electricity.

Weapon: Some sort of laser induced plasma cannon (a lightning gun)
Element: Electricity, because it's responsible for her lifestyle, personality changes, her whole existence as it stands.

Sample Section

First Person Sample:
9/12 Note to self: Directed tornadoes.
9/22 Note to self: Tornadoes are harder to control than they look
11/18 Nuts and Volts magazine renewal
12/22 Merry Christmas to me!
12/29 turns out government shutdowns don't affect law enforcement.
01/05 But they do affect National Parks services! Time to heat things up.
02/09 Note to self: Carbon nanotubes -> conductive body armor.

Third Person Sample:
Livewire was not having a terrific day. First, her plan to break into the AltruCell manufacturing labs to steal a crate of tennis ball felt (it was graphene superconductors) went sour, with police showing up way too early to be a coincidence. Then, who stumps onto the scene but Mecha-Man, who somehow already knew about and was prepared for the nanotube body armor she'd designed for herself. As if that wasn't enough, the transport van that was supposed to take her into custody was hijacked mid-ride by Who-Even-Knows!

Not a single shout, threat, or frustrated kick to the wall elicited any sort of response, however. Not even a retaliatory smack from the other side, or a 'quiet down back there!'

So there she was, cuffed in resin manacles, knowing full well she wasn't on her way to any police station or prison, and unable to do anything about it except dream up various, increasingly worrying scenarios. It all happened - and failed - so fast, her head was spinning. She'd never been defeated that easily and quickly before. Was she losing her touch? Was it a setup from the start? Who on earth had grabbed her? And why? It had started as such a good morning, too...

Many hours later, when the van finally reached its destination, a man covered head to toe in rubberized protective equipment opened the doors carefully. He immediately radioed his supervisor and waved over several more workers.

The inside of the van was empty.

OOC INFORMATION
Name: Sparky or Allotrios
Contact: allotrios, de.allotrios@gmail.com
Are You Over 18?: Yes
Other Characters: None

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Alexis Marie Pierce, "Livewire"
Age: Somewhere in her late 20s or early 30s. It's not something she could tell you.
World Information:
Alexis comes from a world largely governed by cartoon physics and inhabited by anthropomorphic animals. The structure of this world and its societies generally mimics our own, with features such as cities and suburbs, schools, different nations, cultures, and economies, politics, industry, etc. Most of these features are recognizable, such as culturally/geographically specific architecture, clothing, and regional plant and animal species, technology such as nuclear power, predictive analytics, and air conditioning, and relatable problems such as crime, poverty, mental illness, and taxes. The degree to which these features are relatable or recognizable are often stretched: while ordinary scientists exist and make up the majority of the scientific community, a handful of mad geniuses with unbelievable mental prowess and the resources to realize their goals may also emerge. While scholarly pursuits such as archaeological expeditions can be undertaken by and large without incident, the occasional cataclysmic curse may culminate in catastrophe. Most importantly, while petty crime exists, grand, flashy (often ridiculous) gestures of supercrime also exist, and likewise, grand, flashy (often ridiculous) supercriminals. One of the notable things about the feel of this world is that, while there are heroes and villains, they don't all eat, sleep, and shower in their costumes. Among the villains are plenty of regular people with regular problems. Heroes, on the other hand, are largely shallow caricatures of cheesy false grandeur and self-importance, with only a few of them showing any relatable qualities.


Character Information:
Alexis was a shrewd child who hawked things like scented markers and stickers at extortionate prices at school. She was smart enough to skip grades, but tom boy-ish enough to purposely downplay it in order to exhibit a tough image instead. She was something of an anti-hero, occasionally getting into fights with bullies and rescuing the odd nerd from their locker. This wasn't so much to defend them as it was to maintain her reputation and territory. (And sometimes to defend them just a little, but don't tell anyone.)

Most of her life is a blur that she can't remember and doesn't care to. During her teen years, she developed a novel wasting condition that had only been documented a handful of times, and for which there were only suggested treatments. She was put on a regimen of immunoenhancing supplements, specifically colloidal silver. Around the same time, an international medical equipment developer opened up human testing for a new piece of imaging technology using electromagnetic induction, which they claimed would revolutionize current imaging technologies.

Alexis was among the first treatment groups. The machine experienced what appeared to be a harmless malfunction; whether because of the buildup of colloidal silver in her body or not remains unknown. She emerged gray faced and sick, but without other obvious symptoms. Soon afterward, her powers began to manifest. Small and easily dismissed at first, like accidentally shocking someone if she touched them or a piece of metal they were touching. Shorting out small electronics. Lights getting brighter or dimmer when she passed them. It became impossible to ignore when it escalated to physical expressions, like little sparks appearing around her fingers, very unpleasant bathing experiences, and exhaustion if she tried to preempt the problem by draining herself of power. It wasn't long before they became dangerous, and she had to take countermeasures like wearing insulating gloves and boots at all times; occasionally, these measures failed in the presence of heightened emotions or too much ambient electricity. One day, while putting up Christmas lights, it resulted in her father's death. The death was recorded as cardiac arrest, and at her mother's instruction, Alexis stayed quiet. The grief and overwhelming guilt from this incident, along with the depression and emotional distance that consumed her mother, drove Alexis to eventually run away from home. Much later in her life, the remnants of this guilt would translate into a pervasive need for control.

Through trial and error, she gradually learned how to use and control her power, and over time, her memory became worse. Her powers grew, and her inhibitions waned, and she became more violent and impulsive. Petty crime to survive became major crime for fun. Stealth turned into loud, attention seeking destruction. Stealing food and money was soon joined by stealing technology, and she became who the city knew as Livewire, terrorizing, killing, burning, and stealing indiscriminately.

She taught herself mechanical and electrical engineering, built herself some robot friends, destroyed them, took up residence in a tattered old hotel building, and went out of her way to make a fearsome name for herself. Later on, she was recruited into the Federation Of Evil (FOE), based on the other side of the country. (Which is to say, she was broken out of prison and kidnapped by them.) She resented being displaced and hated being part of a larger organization, but it did come with perks, like regular funding, clean, well equipped lab space, and semi-regular barbecues. They were picky about recruitment, and assigned senior-junior partnerships (which she hated even more). After keeping an eye on one hopeful young wannabe, (a cat, ironically) she requested him as her partner because he looked like he would be easy to push around. He was. But despite his inherent nerdy awkwardness, he was also far more cunning and underhanded than she was, and he often undermined her and manipulated circumstances to his advantage (sometimes at her expense). The two foiled each other well: she was loud and confident and forceful, and he was quiet and awkward and devious. It took a very long time for her to stop actively wanting to kill him, longer for her to actually start to like him, and it wasn't until much later that she managed to trust him. Sort of.

While working for the FOE, she leased an old apartment building under a false name and, with a few dollars skimmed off of heist reports here and there, began excavating a vast space beneath it to build herself an impressive lab/manufactory/tiki bar that she called the Sub Sub. This secret was so precious to her that it took ten years of partnership, love, hate, rivalry, trust, treachery, and inexplicable attachment for her to even consider allowing her partner access to it. Even then, it was only because they had, after being repeatedly manipulated, bossed around, and pitted against one another by the FOE, decided to concoct an intricate and multivariable plot involving kidnapping, time travel, and assassination in a bid to topple the organization.

The plot involved altering past events to prevent future ones, and it hung up and backfired and snagged in multiple places. It got distracted, wandered off and got lost in a corn maze, came back drunk, and switched places with its evil twin. In the end, they succeeded in toppling the FOE, but found that it had been replaced by another organization, headed by Baby Cash's great grandson, Cash Cow.

Other events in her life include getting trapped in a survival training video game, switched with an opposite version of herself from another timeline, interrogated for a month by a shockingly lawless Council of Champions, turned into an actual rat (not an anthropomorphic one), helping her partner plant mind-control nanites in the city's water supply, hijacking the Super Bowl, breaking into multiple government controlled buildings, banging Nikola Tesla, trying to get her partner to bang Nikola Tesla, posing as a pre-Columbian goddess and consequently altering the future, having her own personal timeline disrupted to the point where Livewire never existed and Alexis was just a moody waitress, and drunkenly hacking into the state's government webpage to vandalize it with scrolling marquees in Comic Sans, embedded pop music, a sparkle-trailing cursor, and the words "Fart Museum."

Personality:
Alexis is a rat. Literally and sometimes figuratively. She is a supervillainess who wields power over electricity, and uses it to the greatest destruction and mayhem that she can. She's dangerous primarily because she is so quick to angry, violent outbursts - but she could be much more dangerous if she ever learned the full scope of her power or mastered the patience to hone it. As it is, she's destructive but defeatable.

She's powerful, selfish, and exploits her gifts toward hedonism, preferring the spoils of crime (comfort, luxury, adrenaline thrill) over the responsibility involved in actually having power over a populace.

Her impulse control appears to be next to nonexistent. In truth, she likes to have complete control over her surroundings, including herself and the people close to her. Often, however, what she interprets as control over her surroundings is really just being more powerful than the other guy and able to stop a threat to herself. As far as self-control, her thinking is a lot like an addicted smoker's: she allows herself to act on impulse because she sees no reason why she shouldn't, but believes she could restrain herself if she wanted to - and most of the time, she can, though it isn't tested that often.

While she acts emotionally and impulsively in the short term, she's very deliberate about it if something requires longer term planning. The only problem is that she frequently misses when something requires longer term planning. There was no way for her to know it at the time, but she picked well when she was told to choose a partner: their opposing personalities placed him as the careful thinker and planner while she provided the means and could often see a bigger picture through the details. This made them far more formidable together than they were alone.

While she has her powers, she's very confident and brash, but if she's caught without them, her intense mistrust of others coupled with the vulnerability of being powerless shuts her up quick, and she'll become far more careful to avoid becoming a target. If she's already in trouble, however, and it isn't worth strategising, placating, bluffing, or begging, she'll revert back to being sarcastic, loudmouthed, and hateful.

Her enjoyment of destruction and havoc and loudly fucking things up can mostly be blamed on her hedonistic sense of self-indulgence, partly on an assertion of dominance, and a little bit on a need to be a showman. She isn't necessarily obsessed with being in the spotlight, in the newspaper, or on America's Most Wanted, but if she is, she wants to be center stage, on the cover, and at the top. Related to this, Alexis is very kingdom oriented, be that kingdom her city, her reputation, her lab, even her partner. Whatever it is, it is her kingdom, and she loves, guards, and rules it. Anything can become her territory. She takes what she wants, and it can absolutely be out of sheer spite rather than actual greed.

She isn't very good at considering the feelings of others – even if she cares very much about them. She isn't incapable of empathy or even selflessness, but feelings outside of her own have to be spelled out for her in order for her to understand, relate, or empathize with them. This makes her a hypocritical sort, since she often expects more emotional intelligence from others than she offers in return.

She historically did not work well with others nor did she enjoy being part of a team. Being part of a team means taking others' actions and opinions into consideration, and that gets in the way of doing whatever she feels like. Worse, it usually means there's someone to take orders from, and that really gets in the way of doing whatever she feels like. Her induction into the FOE, however, resulted in resentful cooperation while she took advantage of advanced lab space, quietly skimmed off the top, and sneaked around installing cameras in the men's bathroom under the guise of repairing the duct work. (While this behavior was characteristically pervy, it was also uncharacteristically sneaky for her, and illustrated an ability to adapt to changing situations when confronted with someone more dangerous than herself.) All that said, she does have one long-time partner from the above mentioned crime ring with whom she successfully(?) plotted the destruction of said crime ring, and an on-again, off-again henchman in the form of an enormous white dog resembling a husky or polar wolf who comes in awfully handy when brute strength is needed.



5-10 Key Character Traits:
Violent
Impulsive
Leery
Logical
Autocratic
Inexorable
Narcissistic
Overconfident
Uncouth
Sybaritic

Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION?
Preferably FITS, but whatever the mods think will be the most fun and challenging.
Opt-Outs: please no giant spider

Roleplay Sample:
It had been a month since her return. No one knew exactly what had happened to her. Only that she answered any questions with vague references to 'capes,' and dismissive jokes about how she'd been a real 'hit' with them or that they'd gotten a big 'kick' out of her. Her reputation had kept her afloat so far. She'd filled out the questionnaire promising that she hadn't been compromised, even though she knew she had been, and clammed up or retreated to her lab if anyone tried to pry. Even when it was her own partner, Dr. Dreadful.

That was the worst, for him. The silence. How she could go on about trust and then keep secrets from him. Important secrets. (I mean, come on, it was super obvious. Something happened that scared her and she wasn't spilling.) And it was making him paranoid and mistrustful, himself. Resentful, even. That was why the heist went so badly, in the end, she would reflect later. It was all his fault, stupid, suspicious, backstabbing little turd. Not because the Council booby-trapped her powers, or because she couldn't bring herself to just tell him and ask for help. No, it was because he was a slimy little traitor.


“How long's this gonna take, Doc?”

Dr. Dreadful had stopped halfway down the stairs of the financial institution, and slumped over the railing. “I don't - come on, it's star-five-eight-six-three-two. Do you guys even look at the Powerpoints I send?” He paused. “Any of them?!” He squinted his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don't know. We're looking at five minutes and thirty-eight seconds. Police should be here in four minutes and forty-two seconds.” He shouted at the henchmen scurrying around on the ground floor, “Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture?!”

“Hey – HEY! Back it up, pencil neck! Yeah, I see you there...” Livewire suddenly froze and cocked her head, hearing approaching sirens. She glanced up at Dreadful, who was tugging his hair and gritting his teeth. No help there. She turned toward the efforts of the henchmen with a decision. “That's it. That's enough, pack up. Ergot! Go run out in front of the flashing cars.”

An enormous dog, who had been snarling at a small crowd of hostages, sat up straight as if in salute, her collar chirping a mechanical, “SIR!” and then bounced out the front doors. A minute later, there was a screech and a crash from outside. Livewire holstered her gun and grabbed a money bag in each hand. “That bought about twenty seconds. C'mon, we gotta jet.”

“Gotta - gotta wha? Gotta huh? WHAT.” The terribly inconvenienced look on Dreadful's face might suggest that he'd intercepted email communications from the higher ups again and discovered that this heist money was earmarked for his lab upgrades. “No. NO. We can stay another mmnnnnnten seconds. Bo! Hugh! What's going on?“

Bo's tinny voice came through their earpieces, "Fine! We're in! Just give us a couple'a-”

Outside, the slamming of doors and cocking of guns were a symphony of clicks and clacks.

“Put your hands up! Come out onto the steps of the bank and put your hands in the air!”

The doctor stood perfectly still, but his expression was that of one who was having a myriad of tantrums all at once.

“Hey – hey listen, lookit me, Doc, focus. It's not too late, we can still get outta here without having to play tag with these bozos.” No reaction. “Hey!” Livewire clapped her hands together loudly. “C'MON!”

Dr. Dreadful looked slowly down at Livewire, and through his goggles, it was impossible to read what he was thinking. However, through the beauty of narration, one could guess that he was thinking something along the line of how different she seemed than when he was under her tutelage before. She didn't know anything. She at least didn't know about the trap doors; true, most had been discovered a few years ago, but last month's surveillance definitely showed at least two that had yet gone unnoticed. This was his show. His reputation. His funding. And he wasn't leaving without it. When he spoke, his voice was low and dangerous. “I'm waiting.”

Looking back up at him on the stairs, Livewire made a face that suggested the sudden arousal of suspicious confusion: a frowny, squinty sort of expression with lips pursed as if about to say 'what' - but then she turned back toward the front of the building at the sound of another announcement.

“The building is surrounded. Repeat, the building is surrounded.”

She whipped back around, scowling and gritting her teeth, “I am low on power, Doc. Unless you got a TARDIS up your ass, we gotta leave, now, before there's too many.” There was a hint of strain in her voice, now, but Dr. Dreadful seemed suddenly unconcerned. He hoisted himself up and slid down the railing, hopping off at the old-fashioned rail-topper and landing among the fearful faces of the hostages.

“Mm. Yeaaah, no.”

Livewire looked as though he had sprouted a pair of arms from his face. “N- … NO?! Wesley, I swear to God-”

“Yeah! No.” He repeated forcefully, interrupting - interrupting her - before sweeping his eyes over the floor, looking for any telltale seams from old trap doors. “It's just a matter of knowing your enemy.” When he didn't see any, he pounded his fist on the counter with a frustrated growl and one of the tellers squeaked and jumped.

“Sweetheart.” He said. “Not your fault. They were filled in two years ago.”

This was quickly becoming a very frustrating predicament for Livewire: she hated not being in control of a situation, not knowing what to expect from the next five minutes, and wanted to get into it with her idiot partner for going rogue and publicly undermining her. At the same time, it looked bad and put them at a disadvantage if they quarreled during a 'team exercise'. Well...more of a disadvantage than he'd already put them at. Failing that, she'd have liked very much to have simply left him there, but that was sure to get her into trouble with the Federation.

“Are you out of your mind?!” She hissed. “Mecha-Man will be here soon!” This time, there was a definite tinge of fear in her voice, but then she added, as if to try to cover it up, “Or, y'know, King Fisher or someone. They're never far behind the police, and I can't take everyone at once!”

Dr. Dreadful paid her no heed. “Hugh! Bo! Are you quite done?”

“Yeah, almost! You gotta plan to get outta here?”

“Oh, you'd better...” Livewire grumbled, still training her gun on the frightened hostages.

Ergot suddenly slipped and stumbled around the corner from the back of the building, “Boss boss boss boss boss, there's a parade outside and flashing and people and-”

“I KNOW. Well, Mr. Invincible?”

“I don't know.” Of course he didn't. There was a long pause and then an exasperated sigh. “I DON'T KNOW. Bo?!”

“We're still on the outer pulses, but – oh, wait. Never mind. We're on the internal network.”

“Just gotta switch the frequencies, and –“

“Yeah, that!”

“Livewire.” Dreadful glanced her way, but there were at least five seconds during which she pretended to inspect her nails through her gloves instead of answering him. “LIVEWIRE IF YOU ARE ABLE, GIVE ME SOMETHING!”

“I'm sorry, what? I was thinking about being at home playing Tetris, which is what I'd be doing by now if it weren't for you.” Dreadful gaped at her. “WHAT?! This is your shit, now, and you want me to shovel it? Again!? Why do I always have to shovel your shit!?” But yelling at him didn't do any good in the end. All at once, there was a thunderous commotion outside, like everyone yelling at the same time, and then it died down to almost nothing. She froze, listening hard. “What...”

A knock on the door.

A horribly familiar voice calling out, “Yoo hooooo? Anybody home?”

Both villains' eyes widened. Dreadful took a step back, keeping his eyes on the door while scuffing his boots against the floor, trying to find the trap door he knew was there. Livewire rolled her shoulders and flexed her fingers.

The door exploded inward in a shower of splinters.