“Are you kidding me?” Mishi half-shouted, aghast.

“I never kid, ma chèrie,” grinned her arch-nemesis and supervillain extraordinaire, Lolita. She was hanging on to the gate—their gate now, was it? Ugh!—and swinging it back and forth like an impish child, her brown curls slipping out from under her beret.

“You—You’re not even French!” spat Mishi and stormed away. Quite literally. Her weather-controlling superhero ability did not always work to her will, but it could usually be counted upon to whisk her away in a tiny personal storm whenever her anger levels went off the barometric charts.

She was still quivering with outrage as she stalked into her office. “And I didn’t even get the milk,” she grumbled. She’d come downstairs in the morning for that very purpose, only to find the person she spent most of her working hours working against washing her monstrous red car in the driveway. While whistling jauntily.

“What was that, sweetheart?” asked Mrs Kumar from her nearby desk, adjusting her cat-eye spectacles, while her eyes remained glued to her screen as she clacked away slowly but surely. The seventy-year-old took her job as an administrative assistant very seriously.

“Nothing, Mrs Kumar,” Mishi sighed. Company confidentiality clauses meant no discussing supervillain encounters with non-superheroes. “Would you like me to wrap that coffee of yours in some warm air?”

--------

For most of her two years working at Saving The World Ltd, Mishi had lived in a tiny company-provided flat that she had to share with a colleague. Sheryl was a nice enough person, but her superpower of prophetic dreams induced middle-of-the-night screaming a little too frequently for Mishi’s taste. Eyebags had now become a constant feature of her visage.

So when she heard about the first floor of a nice duplex house near Indiranagar being offered for a very reasonable rent, she jumped at the opportunity. The houseowner had told her there would another tenant moving into the ground floor a few days after her, but she couldn’t have cared less. Until now.

Lolita, with her fake claims of French heritage and even faker designer bags. Lolita, with her earth-controlling powers and her monster plant attacks on people just trying to do their job.

Mishi wasn’t going to take this sitting down. So what if she wasn’t allowed to engage with villains outside of working hours? So what if she wouldn’t get paid for overtime? If that infernal woman thought she could simply waltz into Mishi’s home and act all nice and get away with it, she had another think coming.

“I’d watch my step, if I were her,” she mumbled to herself.

--------

The shiny yellow “CLOSED FOR CONSTRUCTION” sign in front of the metro station seemed to smirk slyly at Mishi. Great, there went her daily office commute. If something was under construction in Bangalore, it meant it would never open. Ever.

Dejected, she began to slowly trudge along the sidewalk. 'It’s just a bad week, you can make it through this, it’s just a bad week, you can—' Her silent positive affirmation chant was brought to a screeching halt by a monstrous red car almost crashing into the curb next to her.

A familiar curly-haired head popped out the driver’s window. “Get in, loser, we’re going to work.”

“What are you talking about, you evil basilisk?” Mishi hissed.

“You’re not gonna make this easy for either of us, are you?” drawled Lolita, taking her lollipop out of her mouth, and before Mishi could reply with something intelligent like “what?”, she was wrapped from head to toe in vines and dragged into the car.

“Are you kidnapping me?” Mishi gasped as soon as the vines withdrew from her face.

“Au contraire, mademoiselle,” smirked Lolita as she revved the engine, “I’m taking you to your workplace. Jayanagar, right? It’s on my way. And before you start yelling over my favourite Lana del Rey song, sure, you can go ahead and file a villainous activity report on this if you want.”

Glancing over at her surly passenger and seeing her suspicious expression, Lolita laughed and put the lollipop back in her mouth. “I mean it. All the more fun for me when you’re sent to hunt me down, baby.”

--------

Mishi squinted at the map screen in frustration. All that pinching and zooming had still not resulted in a solution. Or one that she liked, anyway.

“You seem preoccupied.”

Mishi started in her seat. She’d almost forgotten that Lolita was next to her, driving her to work yet again.

She wasn’t quite sure how this situation had come about. Ever since that day when the supervillain had first kidnapped her into her car, Mishi had come downstairs to find Lolita’s car gleaming ready and waiting at the gate, its owner grinning and waving. It had taken a few days of kidnapping again at first, but now Mishi had gotten rather fond of the plush leather seats and the sound system. Not to mention the convertible top.

The car’s owner was another matter entirely, one she tried to not think too hard about. She’d decided to consider getting her nemesis to drive her to work every day as a victory. The friendly small talk was merely a side effect that she could do nothing about.

“There’s a special assignment. I’m trying to work out the logistics,” Mishi replied.

“After everything we’ve been through you still don’t consider me your logistics partner?”

Mishi gave Lolita the stink eye. “Drop the act. I ain’t spilling confidential mission details.”

“You don’t need to. I already have an inkling what this is about,” said Lolita, enjoying the look of surprise mixed with suspicion on Mishi’s face.

“Let’s just say I haven’t been enjoying encountering more rats across the city in the past week than I have my entire life,” Lolita continued, and Mishi’s silence confirmed her guess. “People are falling sick, aren’t they? In ways that are puzzling doctors.”

“It’s none of your business, you villain,” muttered Mishi.

“Of course, mon amour. But my car is at your service. And to really sweeten the deal, I know where you can find your target—and no, it’s not at that apartment location your company has probably given you.”

With a sigh, Mishi sank back into the seat and resigned herself to her fate.

--------

5PM sharp, the red car pulled up to the curb a block away from the STW office. Mishi looked around furtively for a moment and then quickly clambered into the passenger seat.

“You’re lucky I’m off work this week,” said Lolita. “I gather it’s not easy to find a ride at this time.”

“You don’t have a job,” replied Mishi calmly, fastening her seatbelt.

“A nine-to-five is not the only way to work, you know. Get on with the times. Any day now, your job could get replaced by an app where you can rent superheroes by the hour.”

Mishi groaned, but Lolita was on a roll. “You’re aware your company is funded by the government and is in partnership with the police, right? You run around all day chasing silly miscreants for a paycheck shaved off of bribes—from the real villains, the ones who are above the law. Some saving the world you’re doing.”

There was a moment of silence as Mishi stared at her incredulously, not quite sure what to say. “What do you do?” she asked at last. “My job exists because supervillains like you exist. And all I’ve ever seen you do is create ruckus by attacking innocent people with your crazy plants, which is hardly any more aspirational.”

“I have two points of contention there, madame. First, they’re not innocent. For instance, the last time you and I had a tussle, it was because I’d bound up a policeman who was publicly humiliating an old man instead of helping him with his perfectly reasonable request, except of course you never asked me for explanations. Second, you haven’t seen me do plenty of other things. Who do you think restores all the parks across the Garden City overnight after one of your stormy little battles, huh?”

Mishi was quiet, her mind in a whirl. For the past couple weeks, she had been feeling torn about how she could ride next to Lolita in her car every morning even as she spent the rest of her day fighting supervillains. Now she was unsure if the woman even was evil. It was true that Mishi had always followed a policy of fight first, ask questions later—or never. And now, here Lolita was, helping her find another supervillain, one who Mishi hoped was actually evil.

After what seemed like an eternity of silence punctuated by the never-ending Bangalore traffic, Mishi was shaken out of her reverie by an abrupt braking.

“We’re here,” announced Lolita, shutting off the engine.

“Hey, Lolita,” said Mishi, squinting through the windshield at the expanse of dark and empty road before them, “You sure you haven’t kidnapped me again?”

--------

“If you’d informed me we’d be sloshing through sewers I would’ve worn something less cute,” Mishi sniffed as she lifted her foot and saw slime slide off her boot.

“It’s still a date,” Lolita replied with a grin and a wink, but her sharp gleaming teeth were all Mishi could see in the dark.

“This might sound ridiculous, but Ratatat actually has a secret laboratory down here,” said Lolita, taking on a more serious tone. “I pulled a few strings here and there, dug around a bit on the dark web, and triangulated a more precise location. Keep an eye out for any signs of… underground laboratories. Whatever that might look like.”

Mishi was suitably impressed. Ratatat was a supervillain of the highest notoriety. He was known for creating a giant animatronic mongoose that had terrorised the city for weeks a few years ago, among other notable achievements. Not many people had actually seen the man behind the machine though, for he was something of a recluse. Mishi wondered what kind of superpowers they might be up against.

Still lost in thought, she bumped into Lolita who had stopped ahead of her. Her flashlight illuminated a grimy metal sign that read “DO NOT DISTURB”, and under it, in smaller letters, “under pain of death by mongoose.”

“Mongoose is not the worst way to die, I suppose,” mused Mishi, and they pushed open the rusty metal gate together and stepped into a dark tunnel.

--------

“Look, all I’m saying is, if it came down to death by rats or mongoose, I’d choose mongoose any day—”

“Not a monster mongoose!”

“Monster or not, mongooses—mongeese?—are eight hundred times cuter than filthy rats!”

“I do appreciate the thematic topic of conversation, ladies, but I would’ve appreciated it more if you’d knocked before sauntering in.”

Mishi and Lolita started at the third voice, a nasty one. A little too late, they realised they’d been bickering too intensely to notice they’d walked down the entire entry tunnel and right into the middle of the villain’s lair.

And the villain’s lair… was interesting, to say the least. Rows of computer monitors lined the cavern walls, displaying indecipherable charts, diagrams and code. Even more processors and servers, whirring noisily, along with Rapunzel-worthy lengths of cable, created a maze across the floor. And at the centre of the maze sat its Minotaur—a giant animatronic mongoose repurposed as a swivel chair.

“Hey, Mr Ratatat, I must say, this is not really living up to the expectations of a secret underground laboratory. Where are all the, you know, test tubes oozing with fuming green potions?” ventured Mishi, while silently motioning to Lolita to start sneaking up on the giant chair.

“Science,” began Ratatat, still without turning around to face his invaders (for dramatic effect, Mishi presumed), “has progressed exponentially in the last few decades. Gone are the days of squinting and poking and mixing blindly, in hopes of getting lucky.”

'Great, at least he’s still got the conventional villain monologue,' thought Mishi. 'He’ll be talking for another five minutes, minimum.' She took the opportunity to also start quietly moving through the maze, behind Lolita.

“Today we have the power of silicon chips and artificial intelligence—all the knowledge that exists and doesn’t yet exist, right at your fingertips. And the best part is, I haven’t even had to develop this system by myself, you know. I’m more of a mechatronics guy, which I’m sure you’re aware of, what with my little pet project becoming quite famous when it got loose a couple years ago.” He gave a high-pitched giggle.

By this time, Lolita had gotten close to the monstrous chair, and was looking for an angle to get a glimpse of the man so she could better target her attack.

“But I realised you don’t need have all the expertise yourself, not anymore. You just need to know how to outsource. Companies will sell anything to anybody these days. I subscribed to an AI service, and got these bad boys”—they heard him tap one of the servers—"physically so I could keep my data to myself. I did a little unauthorised tweaking on the AI to subdue its ‘ethical concerns’ and then ran a few analyses on the publicly available rat genome. And my, oh my! The things I found! The mutations I could create!” Ratatat cackled.

'Any luck?' mouthed Mishi at Lolita, who shook her head. She couldn’t move further without risking coming into Ratatat’s field of vision. Mishi gave a solemn nod, indicating 'okay, then we charge blindly.'

“And from there, of course, it was just a matter of getting a local research lab to stitch together the new DNA fragments I needed, and injecting them into some of my furry little friends down here in the sewers. Ah, being evil really is getting easier,” he sighed in pleasure.

“Alright, we’ve had enough, you sewage trash!” screamed Lolita as humongous vines broke through the stone covering the floor, rushed toward the chair and wrapped themselves around it like a writhing anaconda.

She swivelled the chair around, ready to finally come face to face with the mega villain. Except… the chair was empty.

Lolita and Mishi shot each other a glance of panic.

“Did you think I was that stupid, darlings?” the reedy voice cackled, this time accompanied by a figure calmly stepping out from behind the chair and into the soft light bestowed by the computer monitors.

The women shared yet another look, this time one that meant 'are you seeing what I’m seeing?'

A 5’4” guy with floppy hair and chewed up fingernails who appeared even younger than Mishi. Ugh, this is what you get when the country doesn’t have enough engineering seats to go around, Mishi sighed inwardly.

Ratatat straightened his grubby tie and cleared his throat. “And speaking of darlings, have you met my favourite pet?”

He placed his hand on the armrest of the monstrous chair.

And the mongoose came alive.

--------

The world was spinning. No… it must be Mishi’s head that was spinning. She wasn’t quite sure what had happened.

All she remembered was her unleashing a storm in a white-hot rage. Stones crumbling. Rage… Where had that come from? Lolita rushing to her side. Lolita. The mongoose chair had unfolded into a mongoose, reared its mighty head, and struck right at Lolita’s face.

And the rest was a whirlwind. A literal one.

Her entire upper body throbbed. Through the faint ringing in her ears she could hear Lolita’s voice above her. “No… NO! I need you!” it shouted. “Merde! What would I—what would I do…?”

A second face now bobbed into her blurry vision. As it hovered closer to her face, she strained to make it out.

“Mrs… Kumar…?”

And the world went dark once again.

--------

When Mishi came to a second time, the world seemed relatively stable.

She was in bed, in a room that resembled hers, but was not quite the same. Mrs Kumar was sitting next to her with her hand applying a steady pressure on Mishi’s chest, which did not seem to be throbbing anymore.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” the old lady smiled at her. “How are you feeling?”

“Mrs Kumar…” Mishi rasped. “How come—What happened? Why are you here?”

“Hm, how do I keep this brief? What happened is that you had an uncontrolled outburst of your powers, and the cavern exploded. Your upper body got trapped under the wreckage. This young lady here dragged you out, and I healed your broken ribs. Well, I don’t mean completely healed of course, but you should be fine in a couple of weeks.”

“When you say 'healed', you mean…?”

“Healing as in a superpower, yes. As for why I’m here, I knew what you were up to tonight because I read your mind in the afternoon, you see. I followed you in case you needed help.”

Mishi opened and then shut her mouth. Her brain was short-circuiting.

“There are many more secrets at Saving The World than you could imagine, my child,” said the old lady, with a glint in her eyes, and got up to leave. “For now, I’ll leave you in Ms Lolita’s capable hands.”

Mishi turned to see her arch nemesis seated on a chair on her other side, staring at her intensely.

Mishi’s throat went dry as she took her in. Huge scars ran across her face, evidently from the mongoose unexpectedly striking out at her with its claws.

“Lolita…” whispered Mishi, her voice coming out a feeble croak. “I’m so sorry.”

“I think I look kinda cool. Cooler than I always was, I mean.”

Mishi laughed, albeit with difficulty. She made a mental not to do it again in the near future. “Hate to say I told you so, but I did say mongoose over rats.”

Lolita smiled and rolled her eyes, and there was a moment of silence.

“About what you said back there—” Mishi began.

“The swearing? You must excuse my French. Although I am half French—I’m sure you’ve heard.”

“I never believed it.”

“No one does.”

Another moment of silence.

“There were other things you said,” Mishi continued hesitantly.

“I did, didn’t I?” Lolita admitted with a soft laugh. “There’s no taking it back now, I suppose. I never kid, ma chèrie.”