With all these delusions of grandeur brought on by evolutional advantage, everybody sought to be a hero.

Lori, from behind her thick tome Of Method and Madness: A Villain's Tale and reading glasses, supposed that no one really set out to be a villain.

Well, no one but her.

Only problem? Everybody loves a hero. And she did so want to be loved.

No one appreciated the person who united those heroes. Nobody said Thank You to the person, so singularly powerful, that might unite the world and break all barriers between peoples. Villains had magnetism much more powerful than that of a hero. They rallied people behind them as well as people against them. Where heroes reacted to change, villains enacted the change they wanted to see in the world.

In front of her were spread various Gallup polls and terror management theories and theses taken from the Psychology International scientific journal. Most were related to terrorism, but she thought the information might be extrapolated. Lori was researching what scared people across the globe. It was hard to find an over arching theme as most concerns seemed to evolve in parallel based on environment. (She would like to do a study on types of mutation in parallel evolution some day, but that was a thesis unto itself.)

Some frightening things of note: drugs (check), the ability to mobilize an army (check, albeit hers was a small army), more powerful or modern weapons (uh, x-gene anyone? check), cruelty or severe punishment… Lori tapped her pencil against the yellow legal pad next to that last one. She might enact a bit of lethal force now and again, but all in all she thought of herself as less than strict.

And the problem with becoming a super villain was that after revealing herself, she would be hounded constantly as a target. As powerful as she might be, immortal she was not. What if she wasn't powerful enough to unite the people before she was dead?

Her pencil had tapped a dark cloud on the paper. She erased it to keep her notes clean.

It would be stupid to chase after immortality just to become a proper villain. Wasn't that like 75% of all Sci-Fi or Fantasy plots? The bad guy wanted to be immortal so he killed everybody else to get what he wanted. Reeeeal original. She looked back over her notes.

She could possibly set up a villain of her choosing. Lori fished out a report Lisa had prepared of the documents released to them after Mondragon's acquisition. Drugs, access to armies, advanced technologies (they had invented an artificial heart) and cruel punishments all around the world including the execution of governmental leaders in Columbia and the demolition of the Romanian Parliament building. Even she had been a pawn in Romania. She had to hand it to Slate, he made a better villain than she.

And she would pin all of this on Slate, only… nobody was going to believe a dumb kid did all that. Also, she knew he wasn't immortal since she'd killed him once already.

There was only one true immortal that she knew.

Sebastian.

Putting her personal feelings aside, the blonde flipped a few pages. She could divert a lot of the heat for these actions to a regent-like board member who seemed to act at times independent of Mondragon's approval. He was in Romania. And Columbia. This could acquit her newest toy, Mondragon Labs, of blame and set her up a lovely immortal villain. They could take pot shots at him all they wanted, he could survive. And she could stock the flames of hate and fear against him possibly without him even knowing.

Lori could make an unwitting unicorn into the world's greatest villain.

Take away everything a man has and he'll go out in a guttering blaze of glory. Take and hold his life in your hand and you can mold him.

The Order leader needed more information about the unicorn and his family. She needed information in order to make well informed choices. Lori put out the call to Lisa to get the nearest Order member that had subtlety enough to be ale to spy.

Kaitlyn got the call. Lisa said that Lori wanted to see her in the big meeting room in the middle of the Sanctuary. The youngest Orderling knew what this had to mean: an Order mission! The phone line was silent for a moment. Finally, Kaitlyn managed to give her a very professional-sounding "I'll be right there" before flipping her pink, sparkly cellphone shut.

Minutes later, she found herself standing before the door to the War Room. She realized that she barely remembered the first time she went in there. Head trauma wasn't very good for people's memory, the doctor said back then. That was the word he used: 'trauma.' It was a new word for her, a fancy word, one of the few things she actually did remember about her first Order mission. She felt like she needed to prove herself to the rest of the Order after that mission, which she once feared would be both her first and last time working with them.

Now might be a good time to prove herself. After working up a little bit of courage, she pushed her way past the door and into the room beyond.

"Hi, Lori."

Blonde hair twisted up and around before Lori skewered it with a pencil. Hair up. Business Mode engaged. She was just tidying her papers when Kaitlyn came in.

Kaitlyn. Still a child Kaitlyn. Who she had allowed into the Order.

The Order leader opened her mouth to flat out tell the child no, but… she would have hated that if their places were reversed. And besides, who would expect a kid of spying? Kaitlyn was an incredibly brilliant child, not unlike herself at that age. It was only spying and if she was caught out in the wrong place (and didn't explode) she wouldn't get in nearly as much trouble as someone else might, like Hull.

It might just be crazy enough to work.

"I have a very important task for you but it's dangerous. It requires stealth, subterfuge and the ability to get around the city on your own." Lori never dumbed anything down when talking to Kaitlyn. She treated the girl as Lori had always wished people would have treated her growing up: like an adult.

The blonde pulled the glasses from the bridge of her nose. Now that she wasn't reading, they were just in the way. "I need you to be honest with me and think very carefully before you accept this mission. Can you do those things?" And the implied question 'Did Kaitlyn understand all those things?' It was encouraged to ask questions or research. There was no shame in learning.

Kaitlyn looked into Lori's eyes and thought about it.

An important, dangerous task? She already wanted to do it. Those three things Lori mentioned sounded right up her alley, too.

Getting around the city by herself? She already did that all the time.

Stealth and subterfuge? Those was the same thing as being sneaky, right? Lori might not have even known about how Kaitlyn and Deirdra looked through Lisa's paperwork and found out who was in the Order, who was on the Order's 'Mutant Insurance,' and Kaitlyn's adoption papers. She felt like she knew how to be sneaky. Unless something surprised her, of course. But that kind of thing hadn't happened to her in a while. Or, at least, according to most people at the Sanctuary. Another example of her being sneaky: hiding her involvement in a few recent accidents around the Sanctuary.

The Orderling nodded to her leader with resolve. "I can do that."

The blonde waited. The longer she waited and the more thoughtful Kaitlyn looked, the prouder she became. By the time the girl had weighed out everything in her mind and answered, Lori was practically beaming.

"I know you can do that." She was glad that Lisa had sent Kaitlyn. Lori would not have taken that risk on her own. "I'm glad you know it too." The Order leader was loathe to let the girl go, but if you really love something...

"I need you to gather information on a unicorn and his family."

If you really love something, you let it spy.