A hero facing off against three baddies with his partner trapped unconscious inside a pod filled with an unknown green goo. Sounded like a pretty cliche climax for a story.

The thing was… I was one of those ‘baddies’, we didn’t want to fight him, and the pod was actually healing his partner!

But hey, try to explain that to a pissed-off superhero. His rage at the moment could have fueled a car. No idea how, but there probably was a way.

“Wait! This is a mis--”

“Shut up!” his voice thundered through the room.

Seriously, I always thought Fissure was the more reasonable and kinder one of the two. But apparently, he was one of those nice guys who completely flew off in rage if you stepped over the line.

Even with the three of us facing off against him, we could only barely contain him. Or rather, it was mainly Fractal and Iron Pack who were teaming up against him, I was just an add-on.

Despite the situation, I was happy that they’d managed to reconcile… Oh god, if they hadn’t made up, how chaotic of a situation would this be?

Shaking off that thought, I continued to do my best to dodge the attacks aimed at me. And by that, I of course meant panic-pressing buttons inside my suit whenever the enraged hero decided to pulverize me.

And it worked. Somehow. He still hadn’t managed to even scratch me once. Somehow. I was beginning to think that maybe the whole joke about me having a superpower wasn’t actually a joke. Maybe luck really was my superpower… somehow.

Back in reality, Fissure had managed to gracefully show that he had always been holding back, by crushing an iron lion in a blink of an eye and shrugging off Fractal’s laser shots as if they came from a pocket laser pointer.

Everyone was getting visibly tired, except for our resident enraged bearman. Just as I thought he was seconds away from getting to us and crushing us like bugs, the machine finally spoke again.

“Relaxation programme finished. Good morning, and have a good day,” it chirped.

The fighting stopped with a snap, and the previously loud surroundings turned silent as everyone stared at the pod. The hatch opened with a hiss and a bit of smoke, making me nervous about having to deal with another hero on top of the unstoppable force man.

One tense moment later, the silence was broken by footsteps and a very satisfied ‘mmm’ sound. Out of the smoke emerged a Nova who was in the middle of stretching. And also, she was… smiling. What. I had no idea she was capable of that.

“Nova! Are you alright?!” Fissure yelled at his companion, clearly concerned.

“Hmm? Oh, hey!” Her expression lit up as she waved at her partner. “This was amazing! I have never felt so relaxed! My shoulders aren’t sore anymore! My back pains are gone! Even that stupid headache disappeared!” She beamed at us.

“Uh… what?” Fissure looked around the room disbelievingly.

He wasn’t the only one shocked at Nova’s attitude change, though.

After a moment of an awkward silence, Fractal nodded and said, “Well… I’m glad it works as intended then.” He walked over to the control panel. “You know… this isn’t some doomsday device. It’s a machine built to heal people.”

“Wait, a healing machine?!” Fissure looked at the pod with his mouth hanging open. “But you’re villains!” he said after a moment.

“And therefore we must want to destroy the world?” Iron Pack asked, heavy sarcasm dripping off of her words.

“I mean…”

“None of us are villains by choice,” she declared.

“But then… why?” Nova joined in on the conversation. “You could help so many people with a machine like this.”

Iron Pack sighed and looked to the side. “Well…” She paused for a second. “For one, I had no choice but to steal to survive after running away from my family…” Another pause. “And yes, I had to run away. They were going to kill me.”

Fissure flinched, before taking a moment to process that information. He then turned his attention to Fractal.

Taking it as a cue, Fractal spoke, “I’m actually the same. I had to become a villain or I would get killed.”

“Really…?” Fissure’s eyes narrowed behind his helmet.

“Yeah.” Fractal and Iron Pack shared a glance before Fractal finished, “We’re actually cousins.”

What?!

“Wait, what?!” a third party decided to voice the surprise everyone else was probably feeling.

I glanced over and once again saw Troy, the ruiner of everything. It seemed like he and the two girls hadn’t left in all that chaos for some reason.

Troy finally noticed everyone staring at him and shrunk down on himself. “Uh, sorry. Please continue.”

“By the way… you weren’t actually hostages, were you?” Fissure asked.

“Uhh, us? Nope. We’re friends, actually. We just kind of… overreacted when she told us she was meeting with villains.”

Fissure, still clearly trying to take in all of that information then glanced at me.

“Oh, uh. I actually got tangled into this by accident,” I said, probably stuttering a hundred times in that sentence, while the voice modulator smoothed it out for me.

“I found Fractal’s base by chance, and he decided to hire me. And I also met Iron Pack by chance… and… uh…” Wait, no, stop. I couldn’t just tell them about our relationship! Confessing to her was one thing, but declaring that it to strangers was another!

An arm found itself around my shoulder. It was Fern’s. “We’re dating,” she declared, while looking at Fissure, challenging him to say something.

Oh, she’d said it for me. Dammit, now I was even more embarrassed!

Not as much as Fissure was getting confused, though. His worldview of ‘villain = bad’ must have been shattered pretty drastically, huh?

He took a deep breath before letting out a sigh that probably encompassed a whole day’s worth of exhaustion. Couldn’t blame him after he’d fought the three of us and then had all of these revelations shot at him one after another.

Finally, he looked at the two veteran villains in the room and asked, “You two…  you are part of the Brimscythe family, aren’t you?”

Wait, what?

The two nodded with a grimace.

I had only jokingly thought about that…

“Then, I’ll ask you. If you were given a chance to come over to the side of heroes, and help us dismantle the family of supervillains… would you do it?”

“In a heartbeat,” Iron Pack answered without hesitation.

Fractal took a second before asking, “Is that even possible?” For the first time I’d known him, his voice was painted with fear.

“Anything is possible,” Nova said with conviction. “We have connections, reliable allies, firepower. All we were missing was information…” She nodded at the two. “Which you two might have.”

The two looked at each other for a second before nodding and answering, “We’re in.”

Well… somehow, it felt like we’d finally reached a happy ending. But at the same time, it felt like something even more dangerous was coming up soon.

Aaah, whatever! It was fine! This was the fate I’d chosen when I’d fallen for a villain!

BottledChaos

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