Today's word is: Axis!

               The room was dark, that was for sure. Not badly lit… just… dark. It looked as though someone had poured Vimto over everything, and then added skulls and spikes to whatever remained. The curtains had little bones hung in them, and a box beeped sinisterly in the corner.

               “Tell me again why you want the position?” That snapped my attention back. The interrogator had a pointed black beard that could’ve been made from plastic as easily as it was from hair. His moustache bristled whenever he spoke, and occasionally the air was punctuated with a sneeze as his facial fur tickled his nose. I felt a little let down. A wall chart to my right denoted how many evil deeds they had done, each one marked with a tiny sad face.

               “Well, I want to provide the world with my power. We are the true leaders, after all.” The line was rehearsed, and I hastily shook my sleeve over my arm to cover up the biro. The man in the middle leant back, pressing his fingertips into a chapel. “You think you’re that good?”

               I know I am, but you obviously don’t. The woman to his right arched her drawn on eyebrows. “Well, prove it then.” Ah balls, telepath. I’d forgotten that. Her head was big enough, I’d totally forgotten. I couldn’t even see her scraped back hair behind that huge forehead.

               “Prove… how?” I blanked. I didn’t think my audition would involve a practical exam.

               “If you want to join our organisation, you’ve got to show your worth! Prove to us your intent for mayhem!” Her voice was like a cat with a chainsaw up its arse. Profoundly annoying.

               “Please, I don’t deal in mayhem.” I stood up, my lab-coat falling into place. I straightened my goggles upon my head and drew back my left sleev-.. No! the right one, that one was still covered in scrawlings.

               “This is a crowd controller.” I said simply, showing off the device on my wrist. It looked like a regular watch, except about three times bigger, and I had designed the ‘face’ into a one way reflective mirror. Sound-waves come out, but anything that could foil my plans would be bounced back. “I designed it myself, it’s state of the art, and cuts all that mucky ‘making people panic’ crap out.”

               The last of my three judges stayed silent… well, as silent as you could behind a respirator. The mask was shaped like a tube, almost like a gas-mask, but a foul-smelling gas eroded at my nostrils each time he came close. It smelled like a mixture between toe-goop and an unclean kitchen. Anyway, he leaned toward my arm for a closer look, and I seized my chance.

               I sharply flicked my wrist, and the coalesced sound wave spun from behind the mirror into the face of the masked man. The other two recoiled suddenly, covering their ears. My masked puppet stood up, and I laughed a high, false laugh.

               “He’s more or less completely redundant now. Observe.” I moved my wrist back, and he stumbled forward, his arms swiping clumsily for my controller. He missed, obviously, and crashed into a cheaply reformed table from Ikea, knocking over a globe pricked with tiny black flags in the process. It’s not exactly an evil looking shop, after all.

               The bearded man stood up, and cast his hand forward, as if throwing dice. “Enough, let him go.” Oh really? I don’t really think so. I raised my wrist and shot another sound-wave, this time at the bearded man, who immediately lost consciousness and collapsed in a heap.

               The woman raised her arms, giving up. “Fine, what do you want from us then? Are you from the good guys, or something?” I swooped down and placed the bearded man back into his chair. Mask boy was still fumbling on the floor, dragging himself like a zombie toward my wrist. I shut the crowd controller off and grinned, brushing my hair out of my eyes.

               “I’m taking over. The Murky Brothers is just so…. Ugh.. It sounds like we’re doomed to fail.” I walked behind their bench, and eyed the flag, a purple splodge on a black background, before tearing it down, and replacing it with my own, which I produced from inside my coat. It was the only white thing in the room besides my own coat, the centre reflected with silver thread to shape a seven pointed star.

               “Henceforth,” I said, shaking the bearded man back to life, “We are the Axis of Brilliance. And we will blind humanity with our glory."

               "But why "Axis?" Big-head asked, while Beardy still attempted to make sense of what was happening. I walked to the globe, now on the floor, and spun it on it's poles. "Because, my planet-headed lady, humanity will revolve around us. Now, who wants me to use my crowd controller to make some business executives perform a scene from Twilight in their underwear?"