I couldn’t have rushed into my office faster. Seriously… everything had been going great, and then Troy just had to show up and call the anti-fun police -- also known as the heroes -- on us!

Okay, to be fair, I had just sort of sprung this whole situation on him out of nowhere yesterday, and if I were in his place, I would be curious about the details as well. But still… dammit Troy!

As I was getting dressed for the occasion, I thought about what I would even do when the heroes inevitably arrived. They did think I was a hero myself last time, and it would feel bad to ruin it. But at the same time… I wasn’t going to turn on my girlfriend and my boss! No way in heck! Not even as a pretense!

Ugh, how about convincing the heroes they weren’t really the bad guys? Maybe saying I was trying to reform them? Would they even buy it? Well, I was going to at least try it!

With the powersuit on, I prepared to rush outside again, only to be stopped by a crash and the building shaking.

As soon as I stepped outside of my office, I was greeted by Rob.

“They are here!”

“Aaaargh!” I gracefully said, which was turned into a battle roar by the voice modulator.

Seriously, I needed to ask Fractal how to turn that damn thing off. It’d been cool at first, but then it had just made everything more complicated!

I rushed through the base only to be stopped by the sight of Fissure grappling with an iron lion inside the base already.

To the side, Fractal was exchanging laser shots with Nova through a hole in the ceiling, who was floating above the building.

And then there was me. A useless idiot who had caused this situation and yet couldn’t think of a way to calm things down.

“A-Aster?” an irritatingly familiar voice said from beside me.

When I turned around, I found my three friends staring at me in shock, along with a very tense Rob.

“What are you still doing here?”

“W-we wanted to help!” Kelly said, apparently intimidated by my voice-modified self.

“You’re just gonna get caught up in the crossfire!” I said a bit too forcefully, making them flinch.

I sighed at their reaction and whispered, “You shouldn’t have come here.” Which… apparently the voice modulator decided to turn into a menacing growl heard by even Nova floating up above.

“You! So you were a villain all along! I knew it!”

Aaah, dammit! There she goes jumping to conclusions again!

“Dammit! Fissure! She has hostages!”

Wait, what? Hostages? Did she mean my friends?

Something about that combined with the memory of me being taken hostage by Fern way back then made me wanna laugh. Or rather, made me laugh. And, of course, the voice modulator couldn’t help but turn it into an evil villainess laugh, could it?!

The fighting abruptly stopped as it turned into a hostage situation… Even though it wasn’t one. What the heck was even going on?

Okay, deep breaths. This could still end peacefully.

“Start-up sequence complete. Initiating the near-death programme,” the machine in the other room announced, before transitioning into a series of menacing beeps and boops.

“Shit! Death programme?! They have some kind of doomsday device going on in there too?!”

Oh, come on!

Before I could think of a way to resolve the metric ton of misunderstandings going on, Fissure raised his foot before stomping down on the ground.

The ground shook, cracked, and everyone but him fell over. Before I got a chance to get my bearings I saw the hero charging right at me. And off to the side, Nova flew into the room with the machine…

Wait, no! She was going to destroy it! I couldn’t let her do that!

“Get away from the hostages!” I heard Fissure shout right as I used my jet boots to chase after Nova instead.

“Huh… it worked?” he whispered behind me. I ignored him.

Just as I arrived in the room the spa was in -- by sliding on my face thanks to my amazing flying skills -- I immediately spotted Nova floating by the control panel with her glowing hand pointing at it.

“No!” I shouted, before attempting to tackle her.

She turned around just as I rammed into her. But I wasn’t fast enough to stop her beam from going off and hitting the control panel.

“Warning: opening the hatch will cause a spill. Initiating draining the goo now. Error: cannot drain the goo. Opening the hatch anyway,” the machine said with an almost audible shrug.

As soon as Nova and I untangled from each other, the hatch of the pod opened and violently spilled its contents right in front of us. The goo made sizzling sounds while moving as if it was alive.

“What the fuck?!” Nova exclaimed before charging another one of her shots and aiming it at the goo.

“Stop trying to destroy it!” my girlfriend shouted before joining us in the room, riding one of her wolves.

Nova immediately changed targets and shot the wolf instead. The summon stumbled and its rider fell out.

“No!” I shouted. “Stop it already!”

Nova, of course, completely ignored me and kept charging more beams, leaving me with no choice but to charge at her again.

Unfortunately, this time, she saw me coming from a mile away and shot me in the foot, making me stumble. Fortunately, me being the master button-masher, I somehow managed to keep my forward momentum using my jet boots and flew through the air, crashing into the heroine anyway.

One scream, one beam explosion, and one painful landing later, the machine spoke again, “Initiating the relaxation programme. Closing the hatch. Filling the pod. Good night.”

Once I got my bearings, I noticed the distinct lack of Nova in my surroundings. Deciding to worry about that later, I ran to Fern to make sure she was alright. For some reason though, she was staring at the machine and--

Oh… there was someone inside the pod. Unconscious. A certain heroine I’d just rammed into a second ago.

…

Funny how momentum worked, eh?

“Novaaaaaa!” Fissure charged into the room screaming.

Something told me diplomacy was off the table.

BottledChaos

A friendly reminder that you can read the last two chapters (and four exclusive shorts) on my patreon.