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Jade was getting herself ready to go, she had packed all her bags the night before, she stood in front of her mirror taking a last look at herself before heading downstairs. Her blonde hair flowed down past her shoulders, and her hazel eyes contrasted nicely with the light blue t-shirt and shorts she wore. Pleased with how she looked she grabbed her small suitcase and backpack and ran downstairs. Her mother was waiting for her at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal.
"Ready to go?" her mother asked.
"Yes!" Jade squealed in excitement.
Her mother smiled, "Alright head outside and put your stuff in the car."
Quickly dashing outside Jade stuffed her things in the truck and rushed to the passenger door opening it quickly and strapping herself in. Her mother came out of the house locking the door behind her and got into the car. Jade had been to many summer camps over the past few years, but this one had a really cool theme that Jade couldn’t wait to get into. It would be just over three hours before they got to the camp, so as they started driving off Jade leaned back into her seat and thought about the camp she was going to spend the next five weeks.
Jade and her mom drove through the massive wrought iron gates of the camp, Jade’s face was pressed against the window trying to catch every detail, to her left was a dense forest with thick trees blocking out the sun from hitting the ground. To her right in direct contrast to the lush green was a vast, sprawling sand-filled desert with dunes rising up and down as far as her eye could see. Obviously, all of it was artificial no natural geography could have formed like this. After driving for more than fifteen minutes, Jade could hardly believe the sheer size of the camp, they started seeing small villages cropping up either side of the road, the hamlets took on many different themes from western wooden styles to stone houses to traditional Chinese designs. None of the villages they passed were much larger than ten or so buildings, and Jade could see that there were at least some common buildings between the villages, most it seemed had small stores, and at least two of the larger ones boasted banks as well.
Over twenty minutes after they drove past the first villages they entered the heart and absolute centre of the camp. While the outlying villages were composed of old-school designs this much larger city was entirely modern in theme, and far larger with easily over fifty small buildings dotted around in a large circle. The largest building Jade had yet seen was directly in front of her with a huge printed sign displaying ‘Governor’s House’. The courtyard here was bustling with hundreds of kids and parents milling about and chatting excitedly.
Jade could see up ahead as older teens were leading campers into the Governor’s House for registration. Jumping out of the car Jade quickly unloaded her luggage as her mom parked and joined her. Walking briskly towards them Jade notices an older boy holding a clipboard, “Hello!” the boy greeted cheerfully, “my name is Josh I’ll show you to the registration desk, please follow me.”
Walking off hardly waiting for a response Josh manoeuvred the mom-daughter pair through the throngs of people towards the large imposing building. Once they reached the door, Josh led them through right past the empty lobby and towards one of the many open doors along the back wall. Inside the room was a small desk with a form for Jade’s mother to fill out as well as two identical cards laid face down on the tabletop. Handing the sheet to Jade’s mom Josh turned to address Jade, “as you know here at Superhero Camp all campers are divided into two groups, with one half becoming heroes and the other villains. These teams are non-negotiable and are not tradable, the team you end up with is the team you are stuck with for the during of your stay here.”
Jade nodded her head swiftly showing she was following, Josh pointed at the two cards on
the table and continued, “you will select one of these cards it will tell you what team you will be joining, it is entirely your choice which to choose the selection is random.”
Jade closed her eyes and hovered her hand over the cards, silently she hoped she ended up in the hero team, it appealed to her a bit more. Reaching down Jade picked up a card and lifted it to her face, opening her eyes Jade sighed sadly, the card front displayed a black and red design with the word ‘VILLAIN’ written across the top. Josh nodded and added Jade to the villain roster, “you’ll be spending the first two days of camp here in Mega City, the teams won’t be divided yet, all campers will get a chance to create their characters and costumes. After the two designing days, all of you will be split into the two teams, and we’ll show you to your home base.”
Josh went on for a bit longer explaining a few extra rules as well as showing them where Jade would be spending the first couple nights. Turning to leave Josh told Jade’s mother, “all parents are required to leave by nine pm please feel free to explore the City with your daughter but please don’t stray outside the borders. We have a no technology policy so please ensure that Jade doesn’t have her phone with her, don’t worry campers with have access to the Governor’s House once a week should they wish to contact their parents. If you want to deliver a message to her, then feel free to send us the mail, and we will hand it over.” With that, Josh walked off to register the next camper.
Jade and her mom had a fun time exploring Mega City together, they discovered that behind the core group of buildings around the Governor’s House there were a lot more. Of these the most interesting was the large ugly grey walled building that stood out like a sore thumb amongst all the other sleek looking modern buildings. Walking inside they soon found out that this was Mega City Jailhouse, a three-story structure with traditional looking jail cells running the length of the building. For now, the building was completely empty; Jade sincerely hoped she didn’t get caught and sent here by one of the heroes.
Nine o’clock quickly came, and Jade bade her mom farewell, before heading back to her room, earlier there had been no one else in the two-bed dorm upon entering though Jade found herself face to face with a short girl’s brown eyes and the most vivid shade of red hair Jade had ever seen. The redhead nodded at Jade, “Hey! I’m Chantal, I’m a villain! I’m so excited to get started!”
Chantal spoke so fast that Jade almost didn’t catch any of that, returning a small Jade introduced herself and said, “I’m also a villain, but I was really hoping to end up on the hero team.”
Chantal frowned slightly asking, “but why?” Jade gave her a confused glance, so Chantal continued, “the villains get to have all the fun!”
“Wouldn’t the heroes get to have all the fun in a camp literally called Superhero Camp?” Jade shot back emphasising the superhero part.
Chantal waved her hand dismissively, “I was here last year the heroes have to do all the work running chasing villains, guarding villages and all that other boring stuff. While we get to ignore all that responsibility stuff and rob from the villagers and take whatever we want. As long as we don’t get caught, we can pretty much do anything!”
Jade had to admit that did sound kinda fun, “were you a villain last year as well?”
Chantal nodded her head, “and I am so glad I got to be one again, it was loads of fun.”
“Did you get caught?”
Chantal pouted cutely but responded anyway, “yeah three times, I was so good at getting away,” pausing slightly she continued with a happier tone, “but it’ll be different this year I’ve been practising.”
Jade mentally took note that she probably shouldn’t be taking any notes about surviving this camp from Chantal, changing the topic Jade asked, “So have you come up with a character yet?”
“I’ll pretty much use my character from last year with a couple changes,” Chantal posed dramatically and announced in an obnoxious voice, “You have the honour of standing before the great super dastardly… Red Menace!”
Jade and Chantal started at each silently before they both broke down giggling, Chantal then asked, “what about you?”
Jade shook her, “I only thought about a hero character I’ll think of something tomorrow.”
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With that, the two girls settled down for the night with thoughts of heroes and villains racing through their heads.
Jade woke up the next morning with the sun shining in her eyes, Chantal was still peacefully snoring away. Jade climbed out of bed and sat down at the desk, after her standard morning routine, with a notepad in front of her intending to get cracking at her villain persona.
It was after a couple of hours with Chantal’s snores providing background noise that Jade finally had a semi-reasonable character that she didn’t hate. Picking up her notebook she left the room and went to the storeroom where the camp kept all the potential costumes and clothes. Of course, lazier campers can collect a readymade costume but most wanted to be creative, so they pick up individual items to cobble together something that isn’t atrocious.
Jade walked into mayhem with tons of boys and girls running around screaming, picking up and discarding clothes as quickly as they could. Massive pileups of clothes were forming in various places around the room, Jade made her way to the largest of the dump sites in the middle of the room hoping to find something she was looking for quickly.
Unfortunately, she was forced to spend over three hours rifling through the stacks of clothes, but she did walk out feeling very satisfied with her selection. Her primary piece of costume was a very dark blue spandex suit, covering her from neck to ankles, she also selected a black cape to drape over one of her shoulders. For a belt, she choose to loop a long coil of rope, and to top off her look, she selected a thin blue mask to cover her eyes. Jade decided not to complicate her villain name and took a page out of Chantal’s book; Blue Mask.
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Two days following Jade’s costume selection, the camp proper began. Camp Councilors came around and collected all the villains, Jade and Chantal stuck together walking amongst a considerable crowd of campers all dressed in their villain regalia. A massive variety of colours and accessories accompanied the campers as they all collected in the centre of Mega City, the councillors then divided the almost 200 villain campers into two large groups and began leading them in opposite directions.
Jade and Chantal luckily remained in the same group, following the camp councillor as he led the large group out of Mega-City and into the surrounding desert landscape. The other villain group was led away into the forest landscape on the opposite side of the City. Soon the City was left far behind Jade’s group as they trekked for more than an hour minutes in the sand. They passed lots of the small hamlets Jade saw from a distance when first driving through, except now these villages looked occupied, councillors all dressed up in their civilian costumes.
At the end of their trek they came up a massive rock wall that dominated the edge of the camp, cut into the rack right in front of their group was a large double door easily three times Jade’s height. The councillor stopped at the threshold of the door and turned to address the group, “this will be your main hideout, inside you’ll find many rooms for you to claim and a large selection of fake weapons for you to use. As soon as I leave you this year’s Superhero Camp will have officially begun, you all know the rules for today none of you can be touched by any of the heroes if you stay out of Mega City. This one-day ceasefire should be used for you all to go out into the surrounding countryside and do villainy things. Tomorrow the ceasefire will be lifted, and warrants for the greatest of the villains will be issued, expect retaliation from the heroes. Of course, make sure you have fun!”
And with that the councillor stepped out of the way and let the villains charge at the door, quickly throwing it open, the kids charged in to see themselves in a massive cave. Looking up Jade could see that the cave rose up in tiers with the ground floor that they were on being mostly wide open space. Above them all the other levels were cut in semi-circles with rooms spaced evenly apart, ahead of them there was a huge scramble towards the weapons displayed along the back wall of the ground floor.
Jade stepped towards the weapons display to get at it before all the good stuff was taken, but Chantal grabbed her wrist and pulled her to the ramp leading up, “come on! We can get those later but we’ve got to claim the better rooms or else we’ll be stuck in the tiny ones!”
As they ran up the tiers Jade could immediately see what Chantal was talking about, all the rooms on the first tier were absolutely tiny, with four bunks to a room and cramped space as well as a large shared bathroom for the whole tier. The second tier mainly looked the same with only slightly more space between the four bunks, the two girls ignored the second tier and kept climbing. The third tier was far better each room just had three beds and a bathroom they only shared with the room adjacent to them, so six people to a bathroom.
As they reached the ramp to the fourth tier, Jade and Chantal were stopped by two burly older male campers. Somehow a hierarchy had already been established, a group of older campers were busy dividing the upper two tiers between themselves and Jade could see behind the two guards that the older campers were huddled over a map of some kind planning out a strategy. Knowing it was hopeless to try continuing up Jade and Chantal claimed a third tier room. Putting away their things, the two girls with room keys in hand locked the door behind them and walked down towards the weapon rack, on the way down it was clear that most of the third tier had been claimed and the second tier was quickly filling up.
Upon reaching the weapon display, it was clear that a lot of weapons were already gone, but they still had quite a decent selection to choose from. Chantal clad in her red shorts, red t-shirt, red fedora and red mask made her choice reasonably quickly, picking up a long plastic sword and a big back bag to carry their loot. Jade picked hers more slowly, but she finally settled on a huge gun at least half her height, it had a shoulder strap, so at least jade didn’t have to lug it around the whole time. The gun didn’t shoot bullets but was instead loaded with a single bolo that Jade could fire at someone to tie them up or trip them over. She also grabbed two extra bolos to hang off the rope on her belt so that she had some extra ammo as the gun only held one bolo at a time.
Finally fully equipped the two girls made their way out of the lair and discussed where they should head. Deciding that all the nearer villages would be overrun by other villains the girls choose to make a long trek following the border wall of camp to a tiny town that they both saw was positioned on the entrance to the desert area. They figured it was too far and too small for anyone else to bother heading there. So the two girls began the long walk to the edge of camp, wading through dunes of sand, even though the landscape was desert like the weather was very mild with a cool gentle wind breezing through.
The two hours it took for them to first spot the village passed quickly for the girls as they joked around and got to know each other better. Finally, though the village came into sight, it was, in fact, tiny with only six little buildings made in the western style. Thankfully for the girls, the village looked untouched by any villains. The girls slowly crept forward sword drawn, and bolo gun pointed up, coming to the first building, a house, they discovered it to be empty.
Creeping past the next two empty buildings the girls finally heard laughter coming from the ‘Beamstown Saloon’ located at the end of the street, it looked like all the villagers had congregated there. The two girls positioned themselves outside the Saloon door and decided to make a dramatic entrance, Chantal kicked the door in charging inside with a ferocious yell. Jade followed at a more sedate pace but entered to with gun pointed forward to find seven cowering civilians with Chantal standing in front of them holding up her sword.
Jade stood there menacingly as Chantal took over since the redhead had more experience she knew what she was doing. Barking out commands she directed the four female villagers and three male villagers to stand against the back wall facing it. Chantal then selected one girl and a guy to help her pack as much stuff into her bag as possible. On her way out she told Jade to make sure the remaining villagers couldn’t go anywhere.
Jade didn’t quite know what Chantal meant, but looking at the villagers in front of her and some of the items strewn around the room Jade had an idea, “Alright everyone!” She shouted, “hands behind your backs!”
While all the villagers placed their hands behind them, Jade collected a couple short lengths of rope from other sections of the Saloon. Walking back over she started at one end of the line, with a tall black haired guy wearing a loose white shirt. At first, Jade was slowly trying to get the rope adequately looped around his wrists, she kept fumbling the line, and the knots were just a bit too loose. However, she soon started to recall some of her girl scouts experience, and before long the teen had his hands securely tied behind him with the knot far out of reach of his fingers to make sure he couldn’t untie them if he tried.
She proudly stood back and took in her handiwork, but she quickly realised that she wouldn’t have enough rope to tie up all of them similarly. She moved on to the next person in line deciding she would do as many as she could. The girl that she approached was only slightly taller than Jade herself with long blonde hair that had a purple streak down one side, Jade didn’t hesitate this time nor did she take as long with the binding. Soon the girl had her wrists securely bound like the guy before her, Jade figured that she might have enough rope for one more person but just as soon as she was about to get to the next one Chantal walked back in.
The red-clad villain pushed the villagers ahead of her at sword point, ordering them to join the rest of them on the wall. Turning to Jade, she said, “Emptied all the houses got us a good selection of loot. I see you’ve been busy,” pointing at the two teens that Jade tied up.
Jade smiled, “Yeah but I don’t think I have enough rope for the rest of them,” she said as she held up the remainder of her rope.
Chantal smiled, “don’t worry we’ll just take the two with us.”
Jade frowned, “what do you mean?”
Chantal ignored her and barked out at the villagers, “all of you turn around and get on your knees!” pointing at the two that Jade had tied she said, “expect you two, stay right there.”
As the other six teens got down on their knees Chantal went and stood behind them, she grabbed the head of the brunette at the end of the line and pulled her head back exposing the girl's neck. Chantal then placed her sword against the girl’s neck and sliced it across the girl’s throat. Jade was surprised when the sword dripped out a thin trail of red paint, it was obviously not blood, but the intention was clear. Jade was suitably impressed with the gurgling the girl made as she flopped to the ground as well as the shrieks and screams of the other villagers as they saw someone ‘murdered’ in front of them. They were all undoubtedly talented actors.
Chantal didn’t stop with the brunette, she moved down the line slicing her sword across the remaining villagers’ throats until all but one of them were splayed out across the floor in various position acting dead, the red paint even slightly staining the floor. Chantal pulled the last male to his feet, before telling Jade, “hand me your extra rope,” she then proceeded to loop the rope around his wrists cinching it tightly, her actions far quicker and more efficient that Jade’s could ever hope to be. Chantal then stood on a chair and threw the other end of the rope up and over a bannister forcing the boy to stand on his toes as his wrists were pulled high above his head. She tied off the rope and forced him to remain in that position.
She then walked over to the ‘dead’ bodies and pulled off one of the girl’s shoes and long black socks. Heading back over to the boy she told him, “When they come looking for you, tell them that Red Menace and Blue Mask were here understand?!” She shouted in his face, as he opened his mouth to reply Chantal shoved one of the black socks deep in his mouth filling up his cheeks completely, she then deftly tied the other socks around his head cleave gagging him with it and ensuring he couldn’t spit out the disgusting footwear.
When Chantal turned around her job done, she found Jade gawking at her, shrugging Chantal said, “had a lot of practice last year.”
Jade chuckled softly at her new weird friend and simply decided to go with it, she asked pointing at the two remaining villagers that still had their wrists tied behind them, “what do we do with these two?”
Chantal still had a bit of rope left in her hand, walking up to the blonde girl she threw a loop of rope over the girl’s head and tightened it just enough that it wouldn’t slip off her shoulders. The other end of the line she held in her hand and very quickly had a makeshift collar and leash. Chantal pointed at Jade’s waist and said “using your belt to do the same for the other one.”
Jade looked down and blushed having completely forgotten that she had way more rope just hanging off her waist. Quickly untying the rope belt, she walked over to the black haired teen quickly emulating Chantal’s collar and leash. With their two hostages in tow, the villains exited the Saloon for the long trek back to their lair, leaving behind four dead villagers and one boy in a very uncomfortable situation.
Unknown to the girls, when the warrants go up in the morning their heist would become known to the heroes as the ‘Beamstown Massacre’, and the two perpetrators are going to become two of the most wanted villains at camp.
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That's the first part, let me know if you guys would like to read more, and if so what exactly? Cause I can continue Chantal and Jade's story or I switch over to another area of the camp and tell a different story. And do let me know if I've adequately explained things I don't know if I got everything across properly.
Anyway have a great day!
Yeah that sounds like what I might do, one maybe two more post with Jade and Chantal and then switch over
