Su woke up on a roof beam inside an abandoned warehouse, her back aching and her mood worse. Everywhere pigeon shit and the faint smell of rotting wood.

  "Better," she muttered, stretching her wings. Fernando sat in his pot nearby. "Alright. Yesterday was practice. Today, I escalate."

  She'd been thinking about her granary job. The redistribution had probably helped hundreds of people which was the problem.

  "I need to do something that can't be spun as helpful," she said, pacing. "Something unambiguous." Fernando rustled in the morning breeze.

  "You're not going to talk me out of it this time."

  Silence.

  "Good. Because I've decided. I'm burning down the orphanage."

  More silence.

  "I know how it sounds. But think about it—burn down an orphanage, I'm obviously evil. No moral complexity. No 'maybe he's a hero' nonsense. Just pure villainy."

  Fernando's leaves didn't move.

  "You think I won't do it."

  Nothing.

  "I'll do it. I'm going to march down there right now and—" She stopped. "I'm going to scout it first. Reconnaissance. That's smart villainy. Know your target."

  She picked up Fernando's pot and headed toward the Westgate Orphanage.

  The orphanage was worse than Su expected. She perched on a neighboring building as the sun set, watching through a cracked window. Twenty-something kids packed into two rooms. Holes in the roof. One thin blanket per three children. Dinner was watery soup ladled out by an exhausted matron who looked like she hadn't slept in days.

  Su's claws dug into the roof tiles.

  Just a building, she told herself. Buildings can be rebuilt.

  She pulled out her Lens of Procedural Insight and examined the structure, looking for the best place to start a fire.

  And that's when she saw it. The funding allocation glowed in her vision: 500 gold per month from the city budget. The actual amount reaching the building: 47 gold. The rest vanished through a chain of intermediaries, all connected to one name: Lord Cassius Varris.

  Su stared at the numbers for a long time. Then she looked back at the kids fighting over who got the bigger portion of soup.

  "Fuck," she whispered.

  Fernando said nothing, but somehow his silence felt knowing.

  "I'm not—this doesn't change the plan. I'm still going to—" She stopped. "Who the hell steals from an orphanage?"

  She sat there for another hour, trying to convince herself to light the fire.

  Couldn't do it.

  "FINE," she finally hissed. "Change of plans. I'm burning down Varris's house instead. That's still villainous. Rich people are acceptable targets."

  Fernando rustled in what might have been agreement or might have been wind. Hard to tell with ferns.

  Lord Varris's mansion was the kind of building that made you want to commit arson just on principle.

  Su broke in at 2 AM through a servant's quarters window. The lock was a joke—three seconds with Precise Disassembly and she was in.

  The mansion was grotesque. Marble everything. Gold leaf on surfaces that didn't need it. A chandelier in the bathroom and in the study: shelves of leather-bound ledgers that probably cost more than the orphanage's annual budget.

  Su pulled out her Lens and started reading. Varris wasn't just stealing from the orphanage. He had his fingers in the Hospital Fund, the Veterans' Relief, the Widows' Pension. Every charity in the city, systematically looted for seven years.

  "You absolute parasite," Su muttered.

  She got to work. The embezzlement ledgers? Carefully moved to a location where they'd be "discovered" by tax collectors—tucked into a false panel in Varris's own office, behind his desk.

  His legitimate income records? Burned. Every single page.

  New documents forged (surprisingly easy with Precise Disassembly): showing Varris owed the Crown 12,000 gold in unpaid taxes, backdated three years.

  And then, because she was petty: his imported silk collection, which was definitely smuggled, went up in flames. Just enough to trigger the fire bells and wake everyone up.

  Su slipped out the window as servants scrambled with buckets.

  By morning, she was back in her warehouse, watching the chaos unfold from a distance.

  The problem with carefully orchestrated evidence was that people found it. By noon, the Tax Collector's office had "discovered" the embezzlement records.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  By afternoon, Varris was in chains, screaming about being framed.

  By evening, the city council had emergency meetings about "systematic charity fraud."

  The orphanage got its funding restored. Plus back-payments.

  And Su... Su got absolutely no credit whatsoever which should have been perfect.

  +200 XP

  LEVEL UP

  LEVEL 11

  NEW SKILL: FORENSIC ARSON (NOVICE)

  You can burn exactly what you need to, leaving evidence intact. She felt the warm surge of level-up energy, settling into her bones.

  "Alright," she muttered to Fernando. "That was still villainous. I burned a noble's stuff and ruined his life. The fact that it helped orphans is... incidental."

  Fernando remained silent.

  "I'm serious. Next target, I'm doing something that has zero positive side effects."

  She looked down at the city, trying to think of something evil.

  "This is harder than I thought," she admitted.

  ???????????

  A dock worker, three drinks deep, telling his buddies: "I'm tellin' ya, I saw somethin' near the granary that night. Somethin' with wings."

  "You saw an owl."

  "Wasn't no owl! It was... bigger and it glowed funny."

  "You were drunk."

  "I'm drunk now. I was drunk then too. But I know what I saw!"

  The story spread, mutated. A servant girl swore she saw a "shadow bird" near Lord Varris's mansion the night of the fire.

  A night watchman claimed he heard voices (not human voices, but animal sounds) coming from the Noble Quarter fountain system before it started spraying sewage.

  None of it was solid. All of it was dismissed as drunk talk, superstition, or attention-seeking. But the stories started to... connect.

  "What if it's not coincidence?" a baker whispered to her neighbor. "The grain, the water, the fire... what if something's hunting the nobles?"

  The word spread like fog: something in the city was punishing the wicked. Nobody knew what it was. But everyone agreed: the nobles were terrified. And the common folk? They were starting to hope.

  Su, meanwhile, had no clue any of this was happening. She was busy planning her next heist: stealing the city's tax revenue.

  "Okay, hear me out," she said to Fernando, who was sunbathing on a window ledge. "I steal the money, right? All of it. Then I... I don't know, throw it in the river? That's evil. Destroying wealth for no reason, muhahahah... "

  Fernando rustled.

  "What? You don't think I'll do it?"

  Silence.

  "I'll do it. No more accidental good deeds."

  She studied the tax collection building through her Lens. The vault was underground, three guards, rotating shifts. The lock was complex but not impossible.

  "Two days," she muttered. "Two days to plan, then I hit it and this time, nobody benefits."

  Fernando's leaves shifted in the wind, and for a moment, Su could have sworn she heard a very faint, very sarcastic: "Sure."

  "I WILL," she insisted. A pigeon landed nearby, looked at her yelling at a plant, and flew away.

  ???????????

  The problem started three nights later.

  Su was scouting the tax building's perimeter when she noticed: a kid maybe nine years old, huddled in an alley, watching the street. The kid was staring right at her.

  Don't move, she thought. Birds freeze when spotted. That's natural, just... be a normal bird.

  The kid tilted his head. "You're that thing everyone's talking about."

  Shit.

  Su remained perfectly still. "The shadow bird," the kid continued, voice hushed with awe. "You're real."

  Play dead? Can birds play dead? Why don't I know this?

  The kid took a step closer. "My da says you're just drunk talk but I seen you. Near the granary last week. You were dragging something."

  Fernando's pot. He saw me dragging Fernando's pot. FUCK.

  "You helped us," the kid whispered. "The bread came back. My ma's shop didn't close." Su's eye twitched.

  I didn't help you. I was trying to cause chaos. The helping was ACCIDENTAL.

  But she couldn't exactly explain that, being a bird.

  The kid smiled—gap-toothed and genuine. "Thank you."

  Then he ran off before Su could process what had happened. She stood there for a full minute.

  "That doesn't count," she finally muttered. "One kid. Nobody will believe him."

  She picked up Fernando and headed back to the warehouse. Behind her, in the alley, the kid was already running home to tell his friends about the shadow bird who saved his mother's bakery. The myth was starting and Su had no idea.

  Su spent the next day obsessively planning. The tax vault had three levels of security:

  -Two guards (rotating every six hours)

  -A complex lock (pickable with Precise Disassembly)

  -A second, magical lock that glowed with warding runes.

  The third one was the problem. "I can't pick a magic lock," Su muttered, pacing her warehouse beam. "I don't have magic. I have borrowed dragon cancer and spite."

  She pulled out her Lens and examined the ward more closely. The magical lock wasn't actually that complex—it was designed to trigger an alarm if tampered with.

  "It's security theater," Su realized. "The magic is just scary-looking. The real lock is mechanical." She could work with that.

  Fernando, positioned for optimal sunlight, finally spoke. "You're really going to steal the city's tax money and throw it in a river."

  "Yes."

  "The money that pays for roads, guards, and public services."

  "Yes."

  "The same money that doesn't go to orphanages because people like Varris steal it."

  "That's—" Su stopped. "That's not the point."

  "What is the point?"

  "The point is I'm EVIL and I'm PROVING IT."

  "By making life harder for everyone?"

  "YES!"

  "Including the people who can't afford tax increases when the city has to recoup the loss?"

  Su opened her beak. "I hate you so much." She sat down heavily. "What if I just steal from the nobles' taxes?"

  "That's not evil. That's progressive taxation."

  "WHAT IF I STEAL IT AND GIVE IT TO THE ORPHANAGE?"

  "That's charity."

  "WHAT IF I STEAL IT AND BURN IT IN FRONT OF THE CHANCELLOR?"

  "That's performance art."

  Su screamed into her wings. "There's no ethical way to be a supervillain in a broken system!" she wailed. "Every evil thing I try to do just reveals deeper evil that I accidentally fix!"

  "Yes," Fernando agreed. "It's almost like you're not actually evil, just angry at injustice."

  "I DON'T WANT TO BE ANGRY AT INJUSTICE! I WANT TO BE THE INJUSTICE!"

  "That's not really how moral philosophy works."

  Su lay flat on the beam, staring at the warehouse ceiling. "I'm bad at being bad," she muttered.

  "Yes."

  "I accidentally keep doing good."

  "Yes."

  "And now some kid thinks I'm a hero."

  "Probably several kids by now. Word spreads."

  Su groaned. "I need a new plan."

  "Or you could accept your role as an agent of chaotic good and move on with your life."

  "Never."

  "Suit yourself."

  They sat in silence for a while, Su contemplating her failures, Fernando quietly photosynthesizing and judging.

  Finally, Su stood up. "I'm going to rob the tax vault anyway. But I'm going to think about what to do with the money while I'm robbing it. That's compromising."

  "That's called 'having a conscience.'"

  "Shut up."