Chapter Text
There was once a time when the world was balanced. Well, more specifically, the city of L’manburg was balanced. Heroes and villains alike roamed the streets as the people battled between order and chaos, a powerful hierarchy that balanced all means of society.
This is how society was meant to function. Good and evil, the two constants in a world of constant evolution. As long as this was true, as long as both sides played their roles, as long as no one side gained the upper hand, then no side would be too corrupt, too unbalanced to function.
It’s too bad that nothing ever goes to plan.
On December 16th, 2017, the heroes put their 3 years in the making plan into action. The goal was to do what was seemingly impossible: trap the villain group known as SBI in a power dampener without the powerful beings even realizing that their powers were being stripped away in the first place.
For the first year of planning, number one hero Dream, along with his best friends and fellow heroes Sapnap and 404, spent night after agonizing night testing every existing piece of technology to see if it could withstand the energy a power dampener possessed.
The results were less than desirable. Every weapon created was simply not big enough, not stable enough, and definitely not hidden enough to fool three incredibly intelligent minds into walking into their impending doom.
Finally, when nearing the one year anniversary of starting the seemingly hopeless project, the heroes had a breakthrough.
“I just don’t get it!” Sapnap exclaimed, falling back into one of his velvet bean bags. “I know it’s just an experiment, but there’s no way he built a whole room with such capabilities.”
“Sapnap,” George sighed as he lazily glanced from his matching bean bag over to Sapnap’s tablet. “It’s Mr. Beast. He can do whatever he wants.”
“I know, I know, but… look at this.” Sapnap thrust his tablet so that the tip of George’s nose barely skimmed it, and George shoved it away with an exasperated huff. “In his newest video, he hypnotized a man just by placing him in only a room. A room! No scents, no words or music, no equipment, nothing. Just a stupid spiral and thousands of dollars in LED technology. How? There’s only one explanation.” Sapnap suddenly leaped forward, his feet firmly planted on the ground as he gave George a challenging state. “He faked it.”
“Oh my goodness. You wouldn’t believe it! A youtuber, clickbaiting!” George smirked, crossing his arms as he looked Sapnap up and down. “No one could ever guess.”
“Like you wouldn’t do the same thing,” Sapnap argued. “I can see it right now: ‘Minecraft, But I’m Not Colorblind Anymore.’ As if you’d ever give up the only bit you have left going for you.”
“First off, that’s not true. I don’t bring it up that much.” Sapnap gave George a pointed glare, but if George noticed, he did not react. “And second, what did you expect? The video is literally called ‘I Psychologically Tormented 50 Random People’. If he actually tormented them, the committee would be riding our asses a lot more than they already are.”
“Still, can you imagine what would happen if I exposed THE Mr. Beast? Instant life boost. Hey, maybe I’d even pass you and become the number 2 hero. Right, Dream?”
Sapnap turned his attention toward the third person in the room, the number one hero they both knew and loved. The man had been uncharacteristically quiet during the conversation, as he typically preferred to egg on each side until the argument ended up in either a full on fist fight or one of them slipping up about a secret that Dream could use for blackmail on another mission.
When Dream was quiet, it typically meant one of two things. One, he was using his powers to get into someone’s head. That option was pretty much ruled out since there was no threat present, but it was always difficult to tell since he constantly wore his signature white mask with a small smiley face drawn just slightly off center. The second option was much more intriguing, as it could entail any emotion and any outcome. The second option meant he had an idea.
“Dream!”
“Wha- sorry, I was just thinking.”
George sunk back into his beanbag. “Here we go again.”
“No, no, I just… I think I figured out how we’re gonna arrest SBI.”
George and Sapnap immediately shot up, their attention immediately on the masked man in front of them.
“What do you mean?” George inquired.
“I was thinking about that room.” It was Dream’s turn to jump up as he started pacing the room, thoughts speeding through his head at 1,000 miles a minute. “The hypnotizing one that Mr. Beast made.”
“You want to hypnotize SBI?” Sapnap chuckled. “I hate to break it to you, Dream, but I’m pretty sure they’re a lot stronger than one of Jimmy’s faked videos.”
“No, I mean we’ve been thinking about this all wrong. This whole time, we’ve been testing weapon after weapon after weapon to weaken their powers. But what if it wasn’t a weapon.” Dream pushed his mask up just enough that his maniac grin was on display for the two heroes. “What if it was a whole room, a whole factory? What if it was something normal enough to seem like a normal location when really, the location itself is slowly draining their powers? And when they finally realize? It’s too late!”
Dream was practically panting by the end of his reveal, his arms wide and grin wider than that of a clown. His best friends glanced at each other, clearly uncertain of the plan.
“Sure, okay, but I think you’re missing one key factor of this equation,” George stated. “Mr. Beast’s room didn’t actually work. This plan, it’s… it’s impossible.”
“Why?” Dream glanced back at Sapnap’s tablet. “Just because Mr. Beast couldn’t crack it doesn’t mean we can’t.”
“But that technology isn’t available, Dream,” Sapnap pointed out. “We barely even have self-driving cars. How are we going to create a whole power-dampening room?”
“Sapnap, look around us.” Dream gestured around the room. “All of this technology, in one way or another, has been created through the Hero Committee’s brilliant scientists and vast amount of knowledge. If any place in the entire world would be able to come up with technology as advanced as this, it would be the very committee we work for.”
Dream breathed in, ready to argue his point a million times over, when Sapnap spoke up.
“You know what Dream, you’re right.” Sapnap turned around, grabbing George’s arm and pulling him closer to the group. “We are the best heroes in the world.”
“That’s not what I-“
“And I’ll be damned if I let some dumb villains try to prove us wrong.”
“I don’t- you know what, it doesn’t matter.” Dream grinned, reaching out a hand that Sapnap readily took. “George?”
George glanced between the two, silent for nearly a minute before he finally settled on a greedy grin as he grabbed Sapnap and Dream’s free hands. “Let’s fucking do it.”
“Alright, Project Pandora has officially begun phase 2.”
From that point forward, it was time to pick the scientists. For a project as secretive and as important as Project Pandora, the three knew they had to hand pick only the best of the best to ensure that their plan would work flawlessly. Not only this, but they had to be trusted. If the plan was leaked, well, it’s safe to say the world would be a very different place.
For the mechanical lead, the Dream Team chose to recruit technological genius Awesamdude. Otherwise known as Sam, the half-creeper hybrid was a well known engineering expert in the Hero Tower because of his incredibly complex machines that lined nearly every surface of the tower itself. Sam has been working at the tower for nearly 10 years prior to the project and showed no signs of slowing down in his service to L’manburg.
For the scientific lead, the Dream team brought forward Dr. Badboyhalo, though the scientist was commonly referred to as ‘Bad’. Bad, a nine-foot tall demon, was the lead scientist at the Hero Tower, with a whole 5 PhD’s worth of knowledge and his trusty AI nicknamed ‘RAT’ at his service. Bad was a friend of Dream since he was a child, and was immediately accepted as an honorary Dream Team member for his close relations and family-like status with the three.
As the final member of Project Pandora, the Dream team chose Antfrost as the material lead and site planner. Antfrost befriended Bad almost immediately after beginning his work at the tower, and although he was fairly new to the atmosphere, his fast agility as a feline hybrid and many connections as the assassin he was raised to be, Antfrost had all of the qualifications to be just about anything the Dream Team required of him.
With that, Pandora’s Project was underway. By month one, the team had memorized every in and out of the small, hero-branded power damper. By month 3, the team had their very first prototype up and running. By month 8, the team almost blew up the tower.
And by two years, on December 16th , 2017, the team celebrated as the Dream Team officially locked SBI behind bars.
The dampener worked, and it worked flawlessly. But at the end of the day, this story isn’t about the heroes or their greatest accomplishment. In fact, this story goes against all of the praise this chapter just laid out.
Because this chapter is already written all over museums and facebook pages and novels across L’manburg. This chapter already is ingrained into the minds of every young child as they recognize what the heroes have done to protect them and give them the world that they deserve.
But this is only a chapter. It is not the full story. The chapter does not show what the heroes did after they locked the villains away, or what paths they took to get to even fighting crime in the first place.
This story may even leave you questioning everything you knew about heroes and villains. But at the end of the day, everyone has a backstory that led to the path they’re on today. The question is, are they going in the right direction?