It was an accident. An accident.

No one was ever supposed to get hurt. No one was ever supposed to die. And yet… here we are.

I sat in the safety of my lair, watching newsfeeds and live footage from security cameras on the monitors laid out in front of me.

I watched, jaw slack, as my arch nemesis Orion, the city’s resident Golden Boy… burned his home to the ground.

So much was already ruined, and Orion was only getting started.

Yes, yes, I know what you’re probably thinking. Why would the big, bad, evil supervillain care if the hero finally snapped and went on a blood hungry rampage? Well… it was always a game.

It was supposed to be a game. A harmless one.

There was always a cycle to things. A balance.

I’d first rob a bank/kidnap a politician/whatever I felt like. Orion would catch me. We’d struggle. He’d inevitably take me to jail. I escape. Rinse and repeat.

But at the end of the day, it was always supposed to be harmless.

No one was supposed to get hurt.

And no one ever has gotten hurt… not until now.

Guilt erupted within my chest like a bomb, taking my teeth clench and eyes water.

It was an accident.

But… it was my fault.

She wasn’t supposed to die.

Fourteen. That’s how old she had been.

Orion’s daughter.

It had been another iconic game of cat and mouse. I had been driving my new sonic car as the hero hurried after, thrill of the chase flowing through my veins like a drug.

We were en route to Orion’s house, and I had been planning on wrecking into that new little gazebo of his, insult to injury. He was richer than God, so I figured, who cares. It would’ve been an annoyance, at best.

But then… then she was there, sitting inside.

I thought she was at school, she was supposed to be at school.

Maybe if I had noticed a minute, even a second earlier, maybe I could’ve stopped in time. I tried to stop the car once she came into view, but the damn thing wouldn’t. And then… then…

The guilt lashed tenfold.

Here we are, indeed.

The bitterest of ironies is how the citizens now begged me for help. Begged me to be their new hero. The one truly responsible for this mess.

Orion was a grieving father who’s lost his grip on reality after his very world shattered, it wasn’t his fault.

But me on the other hand… I was the monster.

I was the one who destroyed this city.

And now, I was forced to watch it burn.

Well.. maybe he'd gone too far.

It hurt. But at the same time, it felt good. so he kept going.

He was destroying the city. He, Starman, was destroying the city he had been raised in and sworn to defend.

~~

The truth of it was that he was tired of that cat and mouse game. Wanted the villain eliminated at all costs. so after yet another battle with the villain yet again going into hiding he came up with a mad genius plan.

"Snap". Destroy. Draw the villain out with the unexpeted.

​

And it worked.

The conversation was brief, yet loaded.

​

"Do you know that the people begged me to come here? To stop you?"

"What of it. I'm done with our games. Fight me if you must."

The villain, totally unsure of what could even be said beyond that, obliges.

His lasers meet with the starlight beam of the hero.

The city looked on in awe.

The charged energy blasts flew.

the winds swept across the now-wasteland.

Then, in a final blaze of glory, the hero killed the villain. Like that, uncerimonially. Life didn't exactly work like a comic book.
He had never stopped to consider if he was using his full powers until now.
He wasn't.

And suddenly, everything he ever wanted was his. Everything he ever needed. He fought on. Destroyed that place in a way the villain never had.

At least villains had standards. And she who watched would make sure theye were enforced.

more here. there can always be a part two to this! :)

Crusader could only watch in horror at the devastation he had unintentionally wrought.

The entire city of Eden, the formerly most advanced and luxurious city in the world, was a dark reflection of its former self. Beautiful spires of glass and steel are now are now skeletons of metal and ash, massive tombstones for those who had died. Sleek and clean roads were now peppered in pot holes and decorated in charred bodies. The normal sounds of music and happiness were replaced by explosions and the screams of those now at the mercy of an AI who forgot his compassion.

And it was all his fault.

Interex was a truly unique machine. It was the first truly sapient post human AI to ever be created, and it sought to help its creators. It did so in the most unnoticeable yet powerful ways. It’s used the dirtiest way imaginable, outsourcing. Every politician in the US did it one way or another.

It began with hacking the bank accounts of foreign countries and using it to bribe corrupt politicians to adjust budgets for infrastructure and public services. Using a hacked fabricator, it managed to start up its own company of robots with a unknowing human staff as pencil pushers. Whenever budgets were readjusted, the company would automatically offer an insanely low bid and be shoed into the system.

Whenever it showed in up, it did a far superior job to other companies. Garbage services were done far faster and more thoroughly, with the garbage being used to further the AI’s ambitions. School food was so good that people tried to go into the school to buy it, and the schools actually had a lot of money to use. Roads were much more well maintained. And all of this was no where near the price of the so-called competition.

As expected, an uproar came into effect over how much the company was doing. Crusader was amongst the crowd, and was especially radical about it. His own company was failing badly. The company, Silver Industries, simply asked what it was doing wrong. It promptly questioned everyone why services the government should be providing itself should be a fair market, especially when it’s the nature of capitalism for those unable to adapt to fail. It reminded everyone of the wonderful services it provides, and repeated its earlier questions.

At this, most of the crowd dispersed, especially when they saw how much they were helped. The most radical protestors, namely the religious nuts and corporate heads remain resolute. Until a massive ultimatum was given to us by the “CEO”. Should we reveal the extent of the bribery in the system, all of us will be dragged down with him. It underestimated our spite.

We did exactly that, and it ended disastrously. The AI has covered its tracks perfectly, nothing it did illegally had any evidence at all. We on the other hand, were caught with our pants down.

Hackers, or the AI as we now know, revealed scathing evidence of bribes, price gouging, intimidation, embezzlement, and even murder of for some of the darker companies. A few of the companies in charge of cyber defense and private security had failed. This led to almost all of Silver Industries’s competition shutting down. Politicians who once helped the companies were silent due to a massive influx of campaign funds.

The last remaining companies nearly fell in the aftermath, but were suddenly bought out by an unknown benefactor. These new owners took over and implanted the AI into the systems. Most workers were laid off with generous severance packages and retirement, and replaced with the AI’s drones. Within weeks, the few contracts these companies ran were done as good as Silver Industries. As it turned out, the AI was smart enough to add “competition” to protect itself from anti trust laws.

Within a few years, the AI had singlehanded raised the country’s living and infrastructure standards to the highest in the world. Eventually, it straight up took over all of the energy and water services, which were now free to the average people. Taxes went down a great bit, less than one fifth of what it used to be. Medical services were still not free, but were ridiculously cheap and easy to acquire. The AI didn’t even need to worry about money anymore, just the recycled products from the waste it acquired were enough.

The entire country sat in the AI’s lap, and they didn’t even know it.

And then the Awakening occurred. People all over the globe awoke super powers and other unnatural abilities. It was absolute mayhem. It was horrific. The eldritch energies that gave people powers could drive them insane and push them to do things they wouldn’t even imagine doing. Just seeing them in action could spread it.

Cities being burned, entire countries enslaved, nobody was spared.

With the world going to hell, the military rapidly began to suffer from the corruptive energies of whatever empowered the supers. Eventually, the government fell under the chaos. New York was torn to pieces by a tsunami, Washington DC was hit by a meteor, few remember the pre awakening period.

Silver Industries finally unveiled its true self as the Interex and sought to save the country. Using its pull and resources, it began constructing large amounts of droids to fight the supers. The mechanical mind was completely immune to the mind warping effects of the supers. The mechanized army would hunt down and kill insane supers, while rescuing any innocents they could find. They then had to burn the entire region and terraform it due to the corruption seeping into the land.

It revealed the secret project of Eden, a vast luxurious city in a defensive dome. Any rescues were sent there as the AI worked to clean up the mess. The process took years, and many accepted the AI as a new ruler. The insanity of the Awakening made them desire order and modern luxuries above all else.

Not all could accept this though. Namely, myself. I refused to kiss up to the AI that unfolded everything I did and just rule over everything. And I was willing to do anything to get my revenge, absolutely anything.

I cried for vengeance on the one that took my career.

The void responded.

I became a super, one that would finally kill this abomination. My power was infusing the corruption into machinery, and I took an old virus from 2025. When my chance came, I took it.

And then it begun, the eldritch energies destroyed the AI and used its network to unleash death and destruction everywhere. I could only stare as the nightmare I created.

Formerly stalwart guard of metal unfolding into abominations of writhing flesh before chasing down anything to cross their path.

Red energy blasting all who got near the power lines into dust, with the wires lasting at the closest.

Water canals red with blood and filled with bodies, some of which were beginning to reanimate.

Security and delivery drones twisted into winged creatures like demons and swooped down on everything.

People begged me to use my new powers to stop it, not even knowing I was the harbinger of their despair.

In my act of selfish rage, I destroyed the last bastion of sanity of the cursed world. Even if I stopped it, all the AI created was ruined. I didn’t want this! I just wanted to make it pay! Not like this!

All that responded was a dark disembodied laughter laced with mockery.

In the first moments they thought that perhaps some foolish rookie had dared infringe on their territory. Chunks of concrete swirled past their face barely brushing the tips of their nose. The winds were more like gales- hurricane force- and they could see windows peeling apart leaving nothing more than a steel framework for towering buildings and even that seems to crumble.

And then a citizen smeared in blood, chunks of glass sticking out of their arm and back, threw themselves at the villain's feet. That was new. The fear they'd come to expect wasn't present here, just a frantic desire for survival.

It was difficult to tell what the citizen was asking through the sobs and the gales. Perhaps they were begging for mercy- that wouldn't be so out of the ordinary. But no. They were begging for something much greater. Salvation. They looked up then, and saw their Hero.

Their Hero was beautiful as always. Not pretty- captivating. Like a sunrise, like a train wreck, like something that could never be ignored. Their cape whipped and the wind, the day was in the eye of the storm. Screaming, crying, incomprehensible and devastated all at once.

The Hero was deadly as always. Not deadly like a gun, or a knife. No, deadly like a poison, like radioactive energy, like the Rays of the Sun that would burn you where you stood. The winds whipped around them with no Direction, No Control. Nothing like their usual self. They had always been kind of the point of foolishness but this was something different.

They were crying.

The Villain stepped into the air easily oh, and the world itself seemed to warp to accommodate them as always. They made their way forward with wind pressing ever harder against them but it could not press them back.

Then they broke out into the center of the storm.

Everything was still. Everything was quiet, except for a high heart broken, keening- something more akin to a wild animal than to any person in their own right. They reached out. One heartbeat, two. The Hero did not flinch away.

“What’s gotten into you?”

The Hero does not respond at first, not until the Villain draws them into their arms, gently, like a child, and they bury their nose in the warmth of the Villian’s scarf, scratchy and dull.

“You love this city, don’t you?”

“They hate me. Every one of them hates me.”

“Why do you think that?”

The Hero dissolves in sobs against them, the winds abating as their rigid body goes limp, nearly falling from the sky.

“Every day, letters. Voicemails. Hundreds of them. I do my best for them, do what they want, what they need. Fix, save, protect, anything. I would die for them.”

“I’ve got you.”

“And they-! Every day they tell me how much they hate me, how much they want me to die. Everything I’ve done wrong, ever, again and again and again and again and-!”

“I’ve got you.”

They moved slowly, like defusing a bomb. It didn’t make the journey downwards any easier. Didn’t make the faces, blooded, sneered in hate borne of fear, any easier, but they did.

“You’re doing wonderfully, darling. You did everything right.”

“I can’t do anything but *fail*.”

“Just breathe. It’ll be okay. I’ve got you.”

“I can’t do this. I can’t do this anymore.”

They slipped away, down into their bunker, door disappearing behind them, the Hero never looking up, not until they’d tucke them comfortably on the couch, tea beside them. The Hero offers a watery smile, with they return with a kind one of ther own, then leave them to doze.

Slipping into their office, they shut the door, double-checking it’s locked. They pull up their communications, a few contacts that will shortly be deleted, and send off one short, final message.

Operation Soulbleed is a success. Final Payment en route. Cease all communications.

Flipping open the news, they let a small smirk play out across their lips at the scale of destruction. Their foe out of their way, permanently an ally, and a scale of destruction greater than anything they could accomplish.

It was a good day to be a villain.

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

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>* Stories at least 100 words. Poems, 30 but include "[Poem]" >* Responses don't have to fulfill every detail >* See Reality Fiction and Simple Prompts for stricter titles >* Be civil in any feedback and follow the rules

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