gaby wrote:Cheerleader
Abigail Greene was always an outcast. She wasn't popular like the jocks, but she wasn't shunned like the nerds. She was a clique of one, and not by choice. She was often sullen and depressed, and never more so than when her parents would tell her "cheer up kiddo, it doesn't rain every day!" Nobody understood her, and she generally didn't understand people, either. Then came the day her parents put her on antidepressants... and didn't tell her. She had a headache, so her mother gave her an "aspirin" which was actually Antidepressenol, which was still in clinical trials (and a likely name change). But, her father was friends with the VP of R&D for Jones-Stein, the pharma company that made Antidepressenol, so his connections allowed him to get Abigail on the testers list.
That day went like any other, except people seemed nicer to her. Like, *really* nice. A random boy held the door for her entering school. Her history teacher didn't care that her homework wasn't done. A popular girl even paid for her lunch when she discovered she left her money at home. For the first time in her life, Abigail was happy. Like that would last.
When she got home, her mother commented on her happy mood, and revealed the medication to her, assuming the medication was responsible. Abigail went through the roof (although not literally, that's a different super.) She told her mother to "go [redacted] yourself!" and so that's what she did... for the next hour until she passed out from exhaustion. The last words her mother said before leaving the room were "If that will make you happy."
Abigail began to realize that the Antidepressenol had altered her brain chemistry, but not in the way it was supposed to. Instead of making her happy, it made others around her want to make her happy. In short, it turned them into her thralls. Abigail began to laugh, as she realized the implications. "Cheer up?! I'm the [redacted] leader of cheer! I'm a freaking cheerleader!" And that's when it hit her. She had the tools to make them all pay, all the idiots who treated her like an outcast or freak. She'd make them all sorry!
The first thing she did was to recruit the entire school cheerleading team to back her up (renaming them the Pep Squad), and then set out to get her revenge. She made girls reject their jock boyfriends, she made teachers give bad grades to the popular kids, she even made the lunchlady eat the school food every day (and take the leftovers home). For a while, she was over the moon. (Again, not literally... that's Lunar Girl.) Then reality sunk in. She could do whatever she wanted... except make people actually like her. Sure, they'd do whatever she said, but that didn't mean they liked her. They just liked making her happy. She'd never find someone to really love her, or get a job based solely on merit, or make actual friends. Life was a shadow of what it could have been, and even though she could do anything she wanted, she couldn't do anything about that.
Abigail cracked. She took the Pep Squad and fled town. She now operates as a villain, striking at the world that did this to her (her first act of true villainy was to make the CEO of Jones-Stein burn the business to the ground), and surrounded by yes men and women at all times. She's the queen of her very own gilded cage.