What Kerri most wanted other people to know was that she understood how silly her fantasy was. She knew how immature it made her seem; how childish it made her look. It was all very embarrassing. Yet despite now being a teenager, she still couldn’t set her dream aside. She just loved the idea of being one of the bad guys too much.

She wanted to become an authentic villain.

Her desires weren’t based on any sort of grudge against the world or anything like that. She was simply in love with the idea of becoming so powerful that she could live with impunity. Impunity was a wonderful word; it meant you never had to suffer any repercussions for your bad behavior.

Good people couldn’t do that. They had to be polite and respectful and uphold the status quo.

But villains? Villains could say or do whatever they felt like. People expected it.

Villainy was where true freedom lay.

The appeal to her personality was obvious. Kerri had a nearly uncontrollable urge to troll society, but she didn’t want to suffer any personal consequences for it. That was really all there was to it.

What was it that began this strange fascination of hers? Perhaps it would have been easier to ask who it was? There were many culprits responsible for the inversion of Kerri’s early moral education. Sauron. Darth Vader. Galvatron. Doctor Doom. Lord Soth. Too many to name, really.

Do you know what all those notorious fiends had in common? Aside from being fictitious? They had once been great heroes. But they were each manipulated by outside forces into becoming monstrous versions of themselves: corrupters bearing names like Melkor, Palpatine, Unicron, and the elder gods. Voices that whispered for them to embrace the path of darkness.

Those heroes would eventually give in to their temptations and complete their tragic falls from grace, which transformed them into merciless beasts who rejected everything they once proudly stood for...

To Kerri, that seemed so badass. She wanted to be like that too.

Growing up, she didn’t care for virtuous protagonists who spouted their endless platitudes about honor and hard work. She detested the brave champions who struggled through adversity and built powerful bonds of friendship and love with their companions.

Who cared about any of that sanctimonious crap?

She much preferred the forces of evil. The Empire, the Decepticons, the Cylons, the void, etc.

Those were her people.

She didn’t want to save the world, she wanted to help bring it to ruin.

Kerri had been much humbler back then. Before she truly realized her own worth, she had no wish to personally become a dark lord. Who needed the hassle of being in charge? She didn’t enjoy bossing others around; it made her feel awkward. No, she had no ambition to be a leader of any kind. She just wanted to become the greatest singular servant of darkness.

Well, no, to be more precise, Kerri wanted to be a black knight. An ace of darkness, itself.

She wanted to be the sort of powerful enemy champion that could have ended the heroes whenever she wished but never bothered to, because they were beneath her notice. That secret boss fight you could only attempt on new game plus, at max level with the very best gear you could get.

She essentially wanted to be the character that game developers created as a raised middle finger to the players who thought their game was too easy. That one hateful encounter that would prevent anyone from getting a 100% achievement rating.

Sorry everyone, no platinum trophy for you.

Now die.

Hers was such a specific desire, wasn’t it? Certainly, a much harder path to follow than a more traditional route. But it was all that Kerri’s heart yearned for. To be an aimless but unstoppable evil.

She had to do it. It was who she was.

Some might wonder, though. Why be something as traditional as a black knight? Wasn’t that just a little too old-fashioned?

It was. But it was also an issue of aesthetics. Who wouldn’t look cool in dark armor with a huge black sword and a flowing cape?

Looking cool was very important to Kerri. She was a kid. Things like that matter to them.

__

The mad obsession nested deeply within Kerri’s heart, silently grew in intensity until she could barely contain it. She wanted to laugh maniacally whenever tragic news was broadcasted on television and then ominously proclaim that the flickering light of hope could never match the awesome power of death.

She studied politics and world history to learn how the great tyrants of the past overthrew their leaders to seize power. She even learned of how organized crime manipulated the law and corrupted it to serve their interests. It was very enlightening.

To throw off any suspicions about her behavior, Kerri developed a gentle and friendly outward demeanor to disguise her true personality and swiftly became popular at her private school, even as she secretly sneered in contempt at her so-called “friends.”

Meanwhile, in the basement of her home, she obsessively downloaded and studied medieval swordsmanship manuals and strove to master the intricacies of the sword. It was practically a requirement that all true black knights learned to use a sword. Everyone knew that swords were the absolute symbol of authority and strength in fantasy stories. That clearly made them the best way to dispatch any heroic fool who dared to bare their fangs at her.

Oh, the hours she spent sweating and toiling to master all aspects of the blade. Sometimes she practiced well into the early hours of the morning; that was how determined she was to become invincible with her chosen weapon. Just as a proper servant of darkness should.

After years of hard training, she became very confident of her ability to quickly kill with a sword.

She also convinced her parents to allow her to join an after-school mixed martial arts club. “To keep in shape,” she’d explained. “It’s like cardio kickboxing. I want to get toned. Everyone’s doing it.”

Her parents didn’t need much convincing. Thanks to their money, Kerri trained relentlessly for six years and became very confident of her ability to also kill with her bare hands. Her body also became well-toned, but it was her new capacity for unarmed violence that she chose to focus on.

Sadly though, life never presented her with any real opportunities to enjoy her hard-earned skills.

The problem was that life on earth didn’t really require the presence of a black knight. Did it?

Everywhere you looked, there was crime, mass starvation, human slavery, constant pointless warfare, corruption, and selfishness in the highest offices. Didn’t it seem as if scandalous betrayals of the public’s trust had become a daily occurrence? These weren’t even the end of days; this was just human civilization going through its usual weekday routine.

All the nations of the world were filled with injustice and hypocrisy. There weren't any heroes fighting to save the day and build a better tomorrow. No one to foolishly oppose Kerri’s wicked designs, only to struggle in vain before she crushed them beneath her heel.

The world just didn’t need any help in becoming an awful wasteland and that meant that nascent secret villains like her were automatically redundant.

Wasn’t that pathetic? How could any aspiring fiend thrive in an environment as stale as this? Kerri supposed she could always become a private military contractor or something, but those guys all used guns. Guns were lame. Everyone knew wielding swords to slaughter the innocent was much cooler.

Sure, PMCs were immoral scum who profiteered from war, and that was an admirable thing. Kerri wanted to do that too! But their methods just didn’t interest her.

__

As part of her training, Kerri taught herself how to meditate, and she often used it as a means of relaxation. She also hoped that it would allow her to one day connect to the great cosmic forces that surround us all, so that she could fuel her insights with the unstoppable power of darkness. Meditation could be extremely potent; She had experienced some extremely wild visions after gradually altering her perception of reality.

Take the concept of “light” for instance. It was traditionally a resource for the good guys.

Through her intense mental training, Kerri taught herself to view the concept of light means good as arbitrary nonsense. Light was a neutral force that anyone could use and abuse. It wasn’t just a resource for the heroes! It could just as easily be applied to destructive use. For example, skin cancer. That wasn’t a very nice disease. And where did most people get it? From spending too much time under the sun.

Despite examples like that, people revered light as a symbol of holiness. Well, as Kerri saw it, turning on a lamp didn’t make someone an angel any more than turning off a lamp made them the devil.

She envisioned a million different ways that light could be used to cause harm to others. She became very inventive with it. She prided herself on her cleverness.

But, as fun as those meditation sessions were, they didn’t provide her with any solutions to her dilemma. The Earth was just too corrupt to be corrupted. The was nothing she could accomplish here. No meaningful battles to fight. Modern human civilization was already as wicked as it came.

That made Kerri about as symbolically useful to this world as an appendix.

But then one day, in the deepest throes of despair, as she dramatically cursed her fate and struggled to get her homework done on time, the solution suddenly occurred to her. She thought she finally had the answer to her predicament.

The only way for Kerri to get an opportunity to participate in the unending war against the forces of justice and righteousness, would be if she left this world behind. She had to pull up stakes and say sayonara to planet Earth, so that she could find a home that was worthy of her. A place that would appreciate her talents.

Yep, the was no getting around it. She was absolutely going to have to kill herself.

If she ended her own life, wasn’t there an excellent chance she’d be reborn in another world? That was what most of the popular media she consumed these days promised. Perhaps a self-inflicted Isekai was her best option for happiness.

What did she have to lose? Life was meaningless. Why not try booking herself a passenger seat on Truck-kun and seeing what would happen?

Kerri felt that her reasoning was perfectly sane.

__

 

Kerri had no doubt that she could achieve her goal. Years of meditation and sword training had expanded her mental awareness to a cosmic level of profound insight. She felt that her mind had become so powerful that she was surprised she wasn’t already able to use the Force.

The Force, the one power, the will, the true magic, whatever you wanted to call it. She was sure it was out there somewhere, just waiting for her to connect to it. Once she did, she’d truly become the planetary menace she secretly aspired to be. She was certain of it.

She was a very determined kid.

But it wasn’t going to happen on Earth. A place as lame as this could never lead to someone like her discovering an awesome power beyond all mortal reckoning. If magic had ever existed here, it must have withered away ages ago. Wasn’t that sad?

Earth sucked. Kerri hated it.

Why was she stuck in such a dull place? Had a mistake been made…or was there something else behind it?

Had her coming been predicted by an oracle? Was there a secret prophecy that she was unaware of? Had her enemies somehow removed her from the world she was meant to be born in and left her to waste away here, far from where she could cause them any harm?

That had to be the case. Ha! Well played, you clever insects, she thought to herself. But she refused to be denied! A true black knight would never let her ambitions be foiled by such petty schemes. If you’ve rigged the game, then I’ll just have to knock over the table. I’ll use two open palms with one big upward sweeping motion! Watch me go! she vowed.

She now knew exactly how to outplay her unseen foes. She would make those merciful fools regret not killing her when they had the chance, by killing herself, instead.

Sometimes, even Kerri was stunned by her own capacity for brilliant planning.

__

 

Naturally, Kerri couldn’t just throw herself off a bridge and be done with it.

Black Knights never self-destructed. They had to be slain in battle or banished to the void. On the rare occasion that one was forced to take their own life, it was only so that their death would spitefully taint the hero’s victory.

Ha, did you really think you could win without anyone dying? Grow up, you naïve fool!

Something like that.

Rules were rules.

The correct way for Kerri to die, would be by challenging a defender of order to life-or-death combat, then deliberately losing the match. Then, just before dying, she would ominously inform her opponent that their victory was meaningless because This is only the beginning...

Ominous warnings were an all-time classic.

Pulling one off would reek of villainous authenticity! She had to try it.

Sadly, Kerri’s scheme didn’t quite turn out the way she envisioned.

Once she was committed to her plan, Kerri decided to bring her sword to school. Since she was a member of the student council, it was easy to slip it in unnoticed. After all, who would ever suspect someone like her of smuggling a deadly weapon into class?

To be sure, it wasn’t as though Kerri planned to harm any of her fellow students. She wasn’t crazy. She just wanted a police officer to fatally wound her while she slashed away at him a few times, that was all.

After all, she was popular and well-adjusted. Only losers went on a pointless killing spree.

The police kept trying to negotiate with her, though. It was so frustrating.

The way the news presented it, cops seemed to be shooting innocent people left and right like they were playing this year’s Call of Duty. Yet here she was, giving them plenty of reason to open fire, but instead of lighting her up, they were trying to talk her down.

Weren’t the police supposed to be bad at their jobs? Was this because her school was in a nicer neighborhood? Or was it because there were cameras everywhere and they didn’t want to look bad? Kerri certainly hoped it wasn’t because of her ethnicity. Wouldn’t refusing to shoot her because she was white be like reverse racism or something?

Things quickly escalated. Her impatience reached the point where she had to begin carving them up to get the results she wanted.

When she attacked, her speed caught them off guard. One moment, the young officer facing her had been droning on about Kerri not wanting to do this, even after she had clearly indicated that she very much did want to do this. The next, Kerri became so exasperated with the officer’s speechmaking, that she severed his leg below the knee.

It had been an accident! She’d only wanted to lightly wound him. She just hadn’t realized her own strength. Hadn’t she mentioned that she practiced a lot? It was all about developing your grip enough so that contact with bone wouldn’t rattle the sword out of your hand.

Kerri had powerful forearms.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. It’s a clean cut!” she said defensively to the wailing officer. “Besides, I’m sure your insurance will pay to have your leg reattached. If not, there’s all sorts of affordable prosthetics! You’ll be fine.”

Kerri wasn’t worried about the officer’s future. Didn’t they say that nothing intrigued a woman like a man with a scar? Well, maybe there were also chicks who went cuckoo at the sight of a stump knee. People had all sorts of interests. People were kinky at their core. There was no such thing as peak-freak.

You just had to be willing to open yourself to life’s possibilities.

Just her bad luck though, the officer’s partner tried to tackle her from behind. Why hadn’t he opened fire? What was with these goofs? Why were they trying to minimize casualties? Did they really take their oaths of public service that seriously? Why weren’t they behaving like they did on television, damn it!

Kerri found this behavior extremely annoying!

So, that guy, she disemboweled.

It was a complete accident; Kerri would have sworn to it on a stack of bibles! The officer had tried to grab a twitchy kid brandishing a sharp sword from behind. Who does something that dumb? As soon as she sensed his presence, she performed a spinning slash to warn him to stay back, but the officer was committed to his tackle by then, so instead of jumping back to avoid the blade, he walked right into it and had his belly opened from left-to-right.

It was so gross. Stuff fell out of him and landed on Kerri’s shoes.

It was warm.

“W-why?” The officer asked her in shock before the pain kicked in and he started screaming and rolling around.

“Uh, how am I supposed to answer that?” she muttered.

So far, this attempted suicide by cop was turning into a complete hassle. Weren’t there any loose cannons in the local constabulary? These guys were far too concerned with preserving life! Someone needed to tell these officers that no one became famous by caring about the public good!

Come on, people, let’s see some grossly irresponsible behavior, thought Kerri.

As if in answer to her prayers, a rough-looking plain clothes-suited detective rounded the corner with his pistol drawn. He seemed like a figure summoned forth from an 80’s action film. He was even wearing sunglasses indoors while chewing on a toothpick! Finally, Kerri had someone she could work with.

“Drop the sword or I’ll drop you,” the detective growled.

Oh, sweet, he wanted to put on a performance…

Kerri held her sword at the newly stump-legged officer’s throat and said, “I have a better idea. You drop the heater, or this loser’s neck gets some ventilation.”

“You’ll be dead before you so much as flick your wrist, Highlander,” warned the cop.

“You want to take that chance? Because I’m feeling luuuucky,” Kerri replied with a sneer.

This is so awesome! she thought. She had always wanted to banter with a good guy in a life-or-death situation. Who knew she’d be so great at it? Well, she kind of suspected she would be. She did spend a lot of time practicing her lines in front of a mirror.

“This is your last chance, kid.”

“Yeah. My last chance to chop up some piggies.”

“Why do I always get the crazy ones?” the detective asked himself before firing his gun.

The sound of the discharging pistol rang throughout the hallway. Then, the detective said, “What the…hell?” and collapsed to the floor with blood welling from the wound that had appeared in his chest, staining his white shirt red.

Kerri was confused. Why hadn’t the detective done a forward roll and taken another shot at her lower body? After all, wasn’t it obvious that she was going to use her sword to deflect that first shot? Hadn’t the detective been setting her up for a feint?

Wait, what if he hadn’t been?

“Holy crud, am I too good at this?” Kerri asked herself.

Irritated, she tossed aside her sword and pulled the cop’s necktie off so that she could use it to staunch his blood loss. She didn’t want to kill anyone here! If that had been her intent, she would have just started hacking the faculty up left and right.

All she’d wanted was a stylish exit from this world!

“God why are these idiots making everything so complicated?” she moaned.

It didn’t look like the bullet had exited the officer’s back, so Kerri assumed that he’d be okay. Or maybe he was internally wounded and was slowly bleeding out where it couldn’t be seen. Whatever, she had done her part. If the cop couldn’t survive his own blunder, then that was his problem.

Kerri turned around to pick up her sword and had just enough time to grunt in surprise when some other chick she didn’t recognize came running towards her and shoved the point of the weapon straight through her gut with the worst looking lunge she’d ever seen.

She felt something inside of herself go pop, and instinctively realized that she was finished. Warm blood began pouring from her wound and puddled beneath her as she slumped to the floor against a nearby locker.

She nodded gratefully at her killer. “Finally, someone makes a winning move! I appreciate this. Thanks.”

The other girl stared at her in bewilderment.

I guess I can’t blame her for being confused, thought Kerri. This is an extreme situation for someone like her.

“What are you talking about? Why are you thanking me?” asked the other girl.

Kerri began to laugh but then coughed up a mouthful of red viscous substance. Not much longer now, it seemed.

“Don’t worry about it. Congrats on being the hero of the day! Were you hiding in that restroom? And you came running anyway despite hearing gunshots and screaming? You’re built different, aren’t you?”

“I thought you were killing those officers,” said the other girl miserably.

“I didn’t! They’re still alive. Just really messed up. All according to plan,” she said with a beaming smile.

(Except not really.)

“Mortal wounds sure freakin’ hurt, though,” she continued while grimacing in pain. “Nice sneak attack by the way. Your character-class must be assassin.”

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” the other girl said, as tears began to leak from her eyes. “I just wanted to get that sword away from you. W-when you turned around, I panicked and-and-and—”

“Hey, hey, don’t be like that,” Kerri insisted. “Feel a little pride in yourself, okay? Your instincts took over. And you know what? They were the right instincts. If it helps, I’m okay with what you did.”

“You are?”

“Yep. No grudges here.”

The other girl sat beside Kerri against the locker, paying no attention to the blood now staining both of their school uniforms. “Aren’t you on the student council? Why’d you do something like this?”

“Hee-hee! It’s a seeeecret,” Kerri said with a knowing smirk.

“You seem like a nice person. Couldn’t you have talked to someone?”

“Probably, but they wouldn’t have said what I wanted to hear.”

“Aren’t you scared of dying?”

“I think I’m more afraid of living in a world that doesn’t need someone like me in it,” she replied after giving the question a moment’s thought.

“That’s selfish. You have a family, you had friends.”

“Yep. I’m a very selfish person,” the dying girl said in agreement. “I always do whatever I want.”

She shivered in pain. She was feeling a lot colder now. So very cold. She was surprised when the other girl held her hand and sadly said, “I really am sorry for killing you. I wish we’d met sooner.”

“You seem pretty cool. I wish we’d met sooner, too,” replied Kerri, surprising herself.

Was she now feeling regret? Really? How interesting.

Sometimes I think I never understood myself at all, she thought to herself in bemusement.

Kerri quietly died a few moments later.

The girl didn’t release her hand until the medics arrived.

 

____________________________________

 

Glossary.

People.

The Police Officers:  Deserve a raise.  Pornstache always wears a vest now, Gutsy took early retirement and Stumpy got his leg reattached in time. Don't sneeze at having insurance!

Breene Collins:  Never got to tell Kerri her name.