⋆｡𖦹°‧🫧₊˚⊹♡ violet parr : self paras (002)
( this story contains: mentions of kidnapping & people going missing, also getting fired by a horrible, mocking boss who doesn't shut up. )
…And at the end of the day, don’t follow a list copy-pasted biannually. Make your own list.
Violet read the lines three more times. Her finger hovered over the mousepad. Twitching. Unsure. The soft blue of the ‘PUBLISH’ button was doing its job well; the colour assured her clicking it would not mean certain death. It just meant ‘publish’. And wasn’t this her job? To publish lists? To share vital information with people?
Everything was ready. The formatting, the hyperlinks, the photos she’d taken. Even the gift card for Chess was ready in an envelope in her bag. Even the sinking feeling that she would be changing her life by publishing this. But she was ready. She needed this. People needed this. They needed to know good dining spots. They needed to know that there were others out there paying attention, noticing that they were gone. There were holes in the beautiful tapestry that was Elias. They needed to be addressed, they needed to finally be spoken about out in the open, named and declared, sent as a warning, as a reminder —
She rose from her seat, still hovering. Then she clicked it.
The screen blinked at her: Published! Well done :)
Violet stepped away, looking at her laptop screen at arm’s length. She did it. Made the choice. Made the change.
Finally away from her laptop, the bubble around her popped. The rushing sound of Beakfeed employees chatting, typing away, clattering salads within reusable lunchboxes — all of it came towards her in a sharp reminder that there was a world out here waiting for her. She didn’t expect anyone to react so quickly after she published the story; she was only one of several editors and writers in Beakfeed, after all, and their collective goal was to publish hundreds of articles a day. Hundreds. A minimum of two hundred was the last number announced at that week’s meeting. Mark Beaks had been there himself, rolling around the meeting room on a self-balancing scooter, asking everyone in the room to parrot back ‘TWO HUNDRED!’ to him. Then he took a group selfie and posted it.
Mark Beaks was still here. Somewhere. Violet had not seen him for more than a blink this week, other than the editorial meeting. Often he was zooming from place to place, pushing out others in the elevator to have it all to himself, or drawing up all the blinds in his office, declaring he had an important meeting but really he was just scrolling on his phone.
Well. It was better to have an absent terrible boss than a present terrible boss.
In all the rush, Violet was often able to go unnoticed. She had a cubicle in what HR called a ‘bad corner’. No one had any reason to walk by her because it was a corner of the building that had no water cooler, no printer, no supplies cabinet, no communal meeting point. Just windows, a corner, and her desk. It was apparently so bad that HR pulled her aside, her third week on the job, to ask her how best to manage that problem. Violet’s response had been emphatic: It’s totally fine.
She stood in her bad corner cubicle now, three feet from desk, staring at her laptop. It was published. It was done. She went to the bathroom.
On her return, Mark Beaks rolled past her on his self-balancing scooter, flanked by three security guys. He saw her and instantly rolled back. Crap, Violet thought.
“Oh, wait, guys I found her. I found her,” he said, pointing at her with his forehead. “Wait, wait, wait, let’s check.” He lifted his phone to her eye-level, looking from the screen to her face. “Okay, can you like —?” Mark Beaks moved his head to see her from a different angle, then gave a firm nod. “Ah-gotcha, that’s her. Violet, right?” He took a photo of her. Flash on.
Violet blinked. “I…” If people weren’t paying attention to her before, they definitely were now. She looked around, at her colleagues, at the security guards, but no one met her eye. “Yeah. That’s me. Am I —”
He held up a hand to stop her. “Okay, cool, no, yeah, I got it, I got it…”
She waited. She actually waited for him to say something else, to continue the conversation. Violet stood frozen, the object of fifty people’s attention.
“...just…wanted…toooooo…cheeeeeck…” he said, dragging out each word as he continued typing on his phone. Mark Beaks hummed as he set up whatever he was working on, and when he finally seemed happy with it, he turned the screen to show her.
A wall of text greeted her on his phone. Mark spoke slowly: “— so thiiiiiiiiis is your letter of termination.”
Half of the eyes on her kept staring, the other half looked away, as if suddenly ashamed. Of her, or of their participation in this scene?
Mark continued: “I know. Suuuuuuupes quick but I just thought, like, be prepared or whatever. You know a lion taught me that? True story. Be prepared. No time like the present — hashtag YOLO hashtag FIRED-question mark?” Before Violet knew it, he rolled around to include her in a selfie, the flash making her blink, “—flame emoji, question mark, flame emoji, question mark, flame emoji —might be … firing … someone … today … fingers-crossed … first time … L … O … L…” he murmured to himself as he typed out another tweet.
Violet’s breath became shallow, stunned and frozen. It wasn’t even true. Mark had fired someone just two weeks ago. She couldn’t even remember the reason, only the manner in which it had been done: Mark had sent the guy a cake to his desk, with the words in icing: SUCKS 2 B U. U R FIRED. The guy didn’t even get to keep it, security took it to the breakroom where everyone was encouraged to eat two slices while the guy had all his stuff packed for him and he was escorted out.
Violet would have preferred that — a hundred billion times, she would have preferred that — over this.
“This kind of stuff? Super not fun, a total drag,” Mark Beaks pouted. Then he began to roll on his scooter around her, forcing Violet to turn her head just to keep an eye on him. He continued talking as he rolled: “...but you know what? I’m gonna be okay. I’m gonna make the most of it. I got that selfie, got that post locked and loaded. I’ll get hella numbers with this. It’ll be amazing for my online presence, just showing, like, all the facets of being a billionaire CEO, y’know? Ear to the ground. Walking among the common people. Making the hard decisions! Before I get to all that, though — I gotta ask…like…what — were — you— THIIIIINKING, MAN?!” A spray from his open-mouthed laugh hit her cheek and she winced, wiping it quickly with her sleeve. “You had the best job with the best boss in the whole world — we got Cake Day, everyone loves Cake Day — and you screwed it all up for…? What was it —” He started tapping on his phone.
Everyone collectively exhaled as soon as he was distracted again. Violet felt herself deflate. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream, storm out of the room, but she stood frozen in place. Doing anything would only make matters worse. Mark just needed to let out whatever he needed to. All she needed to do was figure out if she was actually fired or not, or if this was all one big threat.
She chose the moment to interject, willing herself to get something out. “Mr Beaks…”
“— wait, it was so stupid, hang on, I'm looking for it.”
She ignored the sting. “No, I just need to ask —”
“Hang on, Jesus Christ, I have so many tabs— somebody get R&D to fix all the tabs on all my devices, stat —” He kept scrolling on his phone.
Violet snapped. “Look, what did I actually do? What was wrong?”
Someone bumped against a metal cabinet. Mark looked up at her, eyes wide, his smile widening along with it.
He rolled towards her. Violet was already quite short compared to him, the walking pencil, but he stood inches taller than usual now with his scooter. He loomed over her, a shadow passing across the condescending gleam in his eyes.
“Huh?” he asked, so sickeningly innocent-sounding it boiled her blood.
“I’m asking…what was wrong with what I did,” she frowned.
“Wrong? Wrong?” Mark batted his eyes at her mockingly. “Oh, nothing! Nothing at all! No, no, no, all you did was: not do what I asked,” he started ticking them off on his fingers, “not do what I asked, and not do what I asked. I’m sensing a pattern here. Yeesh,” he shook his head. “See, that’s the thing about working here is, like, you actually have to do what I say. It’s the kind of the whole point of work. I’m the boss. I have the office, I have the hat, it’s my brand. You do what I tell you. But instead, you went ahead and wrote about places that you straight-up made up.”
Violet blinked, her brow creasing. “What?”
“Like, okay, I love Bueno Nacho but you liiiiterally made up a new name for a whole section of town that no one but old people give a crap about. Old Elias? Excuse me? That’s never gonna catch on. There’s only one Elias. The shiny part. It’s the only place anyone would care about, but instead you brought your own little social activist agenda to my Beakfeed.”
She scowled. “Old Elias is a real place, idiot.” Okay, she was getting fired for real now. “Half of your employees live there, most of the best places to eat are there, and everyone talks about it all the time but you don’t listen to anyone but yourself. You make us write all these articles for no reason —”
“— ugh, boring,” Mark muttered, looking back at his phone and tapping away once more.
Violet felt her mouth keep moving, keep talking, probably saying things she’ll regret if she ever needed to look for another job and had to ask for a reference from this place. No, she’d be Disgruntled Employee No.1 at this rate. But the one thing she needed to figure out was what he was looking at on his damn phone.
She stepped forward to try and get a closer look but the security guards blocked her way. Mark Beaks had a little chuckle when he saw it, which only made Violet’s temper rise.
“Okay, so anyway,” he waved his hand in the air, dismissing all her words, “— you’re definitely getting fired.” He swiped his finger up on his screen, and she just got the view of an email being sent off. “Bloop, there it goes. Don’t even think about packing up your stuff, it’ll be packed for you. And by packed, I mean dumped in a box, and by dumped in a box I mean thrown in the incinerator. All your work stuff is Waddle property B-T-DUBS, AKA mine. Except for this ‘cause it’s a personal belonging. Gag.”
Mark waved his hand and a security guard conjured her handbag out of nowhere, throwing it at her. Violet fumbled the catch but held on. She quickly checked that everything was inside — thank goodness it was, which meant only her work laptop, water bottle, and a few pens would be left on her desk. No point in mourning them now. Bag in hand, she just wanted to get out of here now, but the sea of people around her hadn’t parted yet.
“— oh, guys! Guys, guys, I found it.” This time, Mark addressed the room, showing his phone screen to all the people around him. He whizzed it around way too fast but Violet could just make out what it was: her listicle. The listicle.
“So the thing I was talking about earlier, I had a really good bit I wanted to finish but you’d so ruuuuuudely interrupted me, but anyway here it is — hold on,” he pressed his lips together as if suppressing a laugh before dropping the sickest joke, “so YOU, Violet Parr, blew up your entire career for: I would say try the pies, but she would say try the fries…oh, jeez.”
Violet’s once boiling blood began to run cold.
“...Mavis has also gone missing,” Mark continued to read out, now in a baby voice, “presumably around… blah,blah, blah — If you’ve seen something, or heard something, please share it. It could save her life.” He pretended to wipe a tear from his eye. “Awwwwww… everyone, do it, do it: AWWWWW…”
And everyone did. All around her, a chorus of hesitant and confused ‘awwww’s.
Her hands balled into fists, already fizzling and shaking with rage at her force-field ready to burst forth in a millisecond. Violet’s fields had only ever protected her, they’d never been the offense type, but something in her had to explode and if it didn’t in the next ten seconds, then she didn’t know what she’d do with herself.
“I’m new to Elias — ugh, no one cares — I’m new to Elias, but I think I’m making it my home now…”
The purple glow began blinking into existence around her hands. The security guards flinched, their hands going to their waists.
“...so maybe my words don’t hold as much weight as someone who’s lived here for much longer…”
But if she did this now, the others would be hurt. The other workers, even the guards. Her will faltered.
“...but here are some last thoughts…you’re FIIIIIIIIRED!” Mark yelled in a sing-song.
The room exploded. But not with purple force-fields.
Confetti exploded at her. Her field energy dissipated, her hands flying up to cover her face as the first of her tears fell. Colleagues hastily pulled poppers, Mark Beaks beckoned for a group in the corner to do something, and they became an orchestra of kazoo players. They played Auld Lang Syne. Any willpower she had left disappeared.
“Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew —” Mark Beaks’ voice followed her all the way out the door, even as she turned invisible, a flapping coat dashing down the emergency stairwell and bursting out of the foyer.
The coat ran to the nearest clump of trees and it stayed there, sobbing and hiding its already invisible face behind a handbag. She was glad she was fired, she told herself. She was glad she was out of there. That awful place, no friends, no heart. No truth, no bravery.
But the kazoos. The 'awwww's. The way no one wanted to look at her. For once, she didn't want to be invisible. The way Mark Beaks kept talking at her, talking, mocking, making fun of her in full view of everyone, so in love with the sound of his own voice. All she needed was one gesture, one expression, to let her know they thought this was wrong too. But no one said goodbye, or tried to stop her.
Her parents had been so happy for her to find a job, her first writing job, and the thought of them finding out — especially the nature of her termination — made her heart wrench.
Surely they’d understand. They’d get it. They'd be mad at how they treated her, they'd be proud of what she did, however small it was compared to everything they'd achieved in their lives. She’d tell them and they would get it. What she did was...could it be...something kind of heroic?
But would they really get it? Were they too busy with their own lives now, making Avengers Campus their own, Dash out doing who knows what, Violet being too old now to come back crying to her mom and dad. And would her parents really want her to be making waves like this when they’d been given this wonderful chance to live freely, openly?
But Mavis. Mavis, who she barely knew. But it was the ‘barely’ part that had pained her so much. They were meant to get to know each other more, they were meant to see if they could be friends. Any hope she had of making a friend — hopefully, finally, a friend she could trust and be herself with — went out the window the night she figured out that Mavis hadn’t just been late to their dinner at the Pit Stop. She’d been kidnapped. Gone missing. Just like all the others on her list.
“I did the right thing,” she whispered to herself. “I did the right thing.”
There was no way of knowing if it was truly right. If it even mattered. She only knew that the opposite (making the list the way Mark Beaks wanted, not taking a risk with stating her opinions and questions like that) felt wrong. It mattered to her that she did something in her own way. A small way was better than no way at all. It was wrong to stay quiet. It was wrong to not try. It was wrong to not remember and remind others of what was happening. That, in their small city, it was wrong to ignore the danger.
“I did the right thing,” Violet kept whispering, as she flickered back into existence, and she said it to herself until she calmed and was halfway to believing it. “I did the right thing, I did the right thing…”