Not What I Appear To Be

Image of Long Story Short Award - 2022
Image of Short Fiction
Splatter woke up to her alarm. She sat up and stretched, looking at the time and smiling as she saw she was a few minutes ahead of schedule. Getting out of bed, she headed towards her closet and pulled out her suit. Putting it on, she left her room, grabbing her mask and cape on the way out into her hideout.
As she went over to grab some food, she wondered how her friends were doing. Last she heard of Rewind, he was badly injured by her enemy Inferno a few months ago during a bank heist. She wrote herself a note to check up on him later before biting into the apple she had grabbed, beginning to walk off towards her information room.
Opening the door, she was greeted by a huge red screen. She rushed over to it to see what the problem was.
"Seems like someone tried to hack my system..." Splatter said to herself. Good thing she had a truck load of security on her computers. She pressed a button and the crime statistics flew onto the screens surrounding her. She finished her apple and threw the core in a nearby trash bin as she waited for the statistics to finish uploading.
"Status Update," the computer stated, "crime rates average."
"I'll have to improve on that," Splatter said, pressing a button to make her computers gather more data. She couldn't let Inferno know she was slacking. That would just make him try harder to bring her down, and that would just give her a headache. She was hoping she would have today off, but duty calls. She turned and left, closing the doors behind her and preparing to go out.
As she rounded the corner, an alarm went off. She grinned. The alarm was meant to notify her when her enemy was approaching her hideout. She was surprised by how fast he had managed to find her, but she couldn't complain. She changed direction and marched over to where she knew he would enter and sat down on the chair that faced the door, resting her head on her knuckles. He would absolutely try and sneak in first, but she was ready for that.
She smirked as the tell-tale sound of her traps going off hit her ears, as well as the surprised yelp of her enemy.
He's so predictable, she thought to herself as she crossed her legs and waited for him to either burst through the door or be caught by the traps. Then she could bring him down once and for all.
Oh, how she loved to be the villain.
1