Chapter Text
"You may have bested us, you heinous villain!" The Chadster proclaimed, valiantly holding his side after Alex had 'gently' elbowed him.
Alex felt a smirk spread across their face. "'May'? Oh, there is no 'may' here, Chadster," they purred, adjusting their cuffed sleeve. "I didn't just 'best' you either. No, this was a complete beatdown," sauntering forward, Alex gestured towards Chadster's companions. "I mean, really, all these heroes, and not one of you was capable of landing a single hit on me?"
"Say what you will, villain, but you haven't killed anyone this time," Chadster grinned triumphantly. He stood tall, poorly hiding a wince of pain. "It may not be today, it might not be tomorrow, but one day, we will stop you!"
Alex clapped slowly, a genial smile gracing their lips.
"Beautifully said," they praised. "If it had been any other hero, I might have even left them with their tongues torn out to prove them wrong," Chadster bristled in indignation, "but you're not even deserving of that."
"How dare you -"
"Oh no, Chadster, how dare you?" Alex frowned in false disappointment. "Reminding me that I haven't quite hit my quota of dead heroes in quite some time. Judging from this gathering, I'd say it's about time to cull the herd a little, don't you?"
The few heroes that were still conscious paled, struggling all the harder to leave. Some of them crawled, others limped, one tried to fly with several teammates in tow. Alex let them get as close as a piece of ruined wall from their once-favorite bar before snapping their fingers and relishing in how the heroes' blood painted the street in wonderful abstract shapes. A beautiful Rorschach in the prettiest red.
"There," Alex said brightly. "Isn't that so much better?"
"You monster!" Chadster cried, still holding his side.
Alex pouted. "Oh, come now, I let the cliché verbiage at the start go, but can't you be even a little bit original?" They sighed and shook their head. "Well, I guess I better get started on next month's quota. You don't mind, right?"
Alex lifted their hand again, looking forward to seeing how Chadster's body flies apart.
"Hey, S-tier!"
"Hmm?" Alex raises an eyebrow, knowing for a fact there isn't another living soul nearby apart from the helicopters circling the 'war zone' like the media vultures they are.
"What day is it?" Asks the disembodied voice.
Alex frowned. "It's Wednesday. What does that have to do with anything?"
"Not the day of the week, you idiot, what day of the month?"
Alex blinked. That was new. Not many were brave enough to call them an idiot straight to their face, whether they were physically there or not.
"It's the first of June," they answered, truly curious as to who would have the audacity to be this blasé with the only S-ranked villain of the world.
"Cool, cool, any chance you know the time?"
Alex huffed, frustrated. This was taking too long, and normally Alex would just kill off whoever thought dragging out a confrontation with them for too long would ever work in their benefit, but Alex still wanted to see where this weird-ass conversation was going. "It's -"
"Don't answer that!" Chadster cried desperately, reaching out with his left hand as if to grab Alex or cover their mouth.
Alex raised an eyebrow. "Well, color me curious, what happens if I tell this mysterious voice that it is currently 12:05, according to the town square's clock?"
"This!"
"NO -"
And just like that, Chadster was gone, just a small pile of clothing to indicate he had ever been on the street at all.
Alex looked around, wondering if the voice had been a new villain looking for a debut by murdering Generic City's own golden boy.
Why not kill off all the unconscious heroes though? Alex wondered. Sure, Chadster alone gets you some brownie points in the villain circles, but these are all B-and-A-tier heroes. The ranking by killing all of them off is practically A-tier all on its own.
Oh, well, Alex shrugged. After all, it wasn't their place to judge how other villains decided to go about their own villainy. It did suck that they wouldn't get to see the bloody aftermath of Chadster's death, whoever this new villain was had a rather interesting power of completely vaporizing a person, but Alex wouldn't begrudge them too much for rudely interrupting them mid-kill sequence.
Teleporting into their lair, Alex adjusted their suit. The fight had been fun but rather lackluster, Alex surmised. "Didn't even need to use my new laser eye beams," they sighed. "Looks like I'm gonna have to test them out some other day."
Changing out of their villain outfit was just a matter of snapping their fingers, and summoning the TV remote from across the room as they flopped onto their couch was as easy as breathing. Flipping through the channels, Alex groaned, bored out of their mind.
"Can't anyone make anything original these days?" They grumbled. "Why would I want to watch a remake of the Gilded Gals? The original had Whitney Black, enough said."
Finally landing on Hero News, Alex settled down to watch how their fight with the heroes that day looked from a bird's eye view, summoning their favorite skull mug filled with the blood of their enemies.
"We have a D-tier hero to thank for the life of our beloved hero Chadster," the news anchor lady announced brightly on screen. Alex spat blood.
"WHAT?!"
"Indeed we do," her partner replied, before smiling suggestively. "And a lot more, Chadster superfans. As we all know, Chadster is more of a traditional-style hero, which means plenty of muscle and plenty of spandex, and while there's already not much left to the imagination, civilians at Town Square got a full, nude view of the hero, as he was teleported out of the way of known S-tier villain 'S' right before he was killed for leading the Fairness Association on a full frontal assault against S, in nothing but his birthday suit!"
Images of Chadster completely nude except for the censoring provided by the news station were pulled up, some of them showing him futilely attempting to cover himself.
"One fan even got a video," the news lady added, before the video took over the screen.
"Why are you in Town Square?!" Chadster asks, desperately holding Leader USA's shield in front of him, as if that shield could cover anything.
"Why didn't you leave when you had the chance?" The random (apparently) D-tier hero snarked back. "I told you what would happen if you didn't follow the plan, we already -"
The video cuts out before the D-tier can finish their sentence.
Alex shut the TV off.
They leaned forward, sighing deeply.
"On the one hand, I'm incredibly pissed that I was, not only robbed of a kill, but also of being Chadster-free," they mused, "but I'm also really happy Chadster got the equivalent of being pantsed in public."
Now the question that Alex wanted answered was this:
Who the hell is that D-tier hero?