I'm the Bad Guy: Bigger, Badder, and Uncut: A Supervillain LitRPG Adventure

by Simon Archer

  “Come again?” I may have poured out a bit of menace as I asked her that question. “If I was making a suggestion, I would have let you know that you could back out. I made no such distinction this time.”

  “I’m-m-m just t-taking my lap turn!” Kate murmured out. “D-didn’t you s-say it was-s m-my turn next?”

  “Oh, right.” I remembered the agreement between the girls, closing the proverbial faucet on the menace power. “I guess you can hang back for the moment. I’ll call in the other boys to fill your spot in the meantime.”

  “They have already begun to engage them.” Yomura, always multitasking, pitched into the conversation with an update. “I sent them in before the Don deployed this Capone Crew and instructed them only to keep them away from the cuddler drones.”

  I pinged him over the earpiece, not wanting to give away that I was in contact with a master hacker at all times while still in earshot of the Don. He may not have been able to hear Yomura, but he could still hear me thanking him aloud. I really did not pay that man enough money for how above and beyond he went every day.

  “Ugh, we should have done something that I was good at!” Natasha resented the game that decided her fate cruelly. “Like sewing! Or knitting! Or macrame! I can make things better than anyone!”

  “That’s the problem.” Kate stood herself up. “It’d be the exact reverse--”

  “OR COOKING!” Natasha’s scream left her mouth before she herself knew it was leaving. “WE COULD HAVE A BAKE-OFF! IT’D SETTLE THE ARGUMENT, AND WE COULD HAVE DELICIOUS COOKIES AT THE SAME…” The ditzy little resurrected avatar only then realized that her mental voice had leaked out. “Oh, sorry, you were saying?”

  “It’d be the exact reverse of what we have now, with you always winning.” Kate picked up where she left off. “I don’t have a creative bone in my body, and Minou’s tastes are way different from ours. She’s more likely to make a dish that she’d be willing to eat as a cat rather than a person.”

  “I might have taken offense to that if it were not a true statement,” Minou admitted. “My cooking talents would consist of opening a can of wet food for cats and mixing it with matching meats on a plate.”

  “Yeah! And?” Natasha sat upon a small cloud that elevated her into the air. “What’s the problem? We can have a cat food round! Have some adorable cat judges! It’d be a blast! You can get some itty bitty kitties for us, right, Mr. Dantem?”

  “It would help with any rats we might have in our secret bases,” I commented. “Even so, I don’t think you see the point, Natasha.”

  “Yes, my claws do not make for delicate crafting tools for most artistic endeavors.” Minou’s hands grew an imperceptible layer of fur along with long, black claws, a coat of strips clinging to her skin as her feline hybrid form took hold. “Perhaps we could take up a whittling contest of sorts?”

  “That’s not another game you guys know, and I don’t, is it?” Natasha opened the side door to the plane, still simply floating above the clouds. “I think I suck at games unless we DID A COOK-OFF! Think of all the pastries we could munch on! And Mr. Dantem agreed to the other kitties! You could have some cat friends!”

  “We can talk about it after the fight.” Minou postponed the matter for another time. “For now, just know that most animals make for poor conversationalists, even cats. I am a drastic exception to that rule.”

  The tigress wrapped an arm around Natasha’s back, laying her cat hand on the cloud controller’s side while a new cloud formed beneath them both. Carrying them out the door, the cloud shaped itself into a cup seat for the both of them to sit in as they gently floated down towards the carnage below. As they moved downward, the cloud cup seat grew four appendages, two above and two below, each growing a puffy boxing glove fist at the end. Natasha was ready to pummel some gangsters, and Minou would work well in the chaos of all of this fighting to slip out of sight as soon as the fighting started.

  Kate herself closed the door behind them, walking back over to me as she slumped herself over the arm of the chair I was sitting in and nestling her head against my neck. As she settled herself in, playing with my tie, I looked back to Don John, still on the call.

  “Oh, hey, you’re still here.” I sighed through a quiet laugh. “I guess you saw all of that, huh? I guess we keep things pretty informal around here. Probably should have hung up before we started getting into it. How unprofessional of me. You don’t know any good places to buy cookware, do you?”

  “Nuh-uh, ya ain’t getting away dat easily, my unfortunate friend!” Don assured me that this conversation was still in full swing. “We ain’t done here until I say we’re done, capiche?”

  “Alright, if you say so.”

  “Now, let me ask ya sumtin’, sumtin’ I tink hasn’t been addressed yet, and is jus’ loomin’ over our heads: Really?” Perignon let out one breath of disbelief. “Dose two broads? Da cat lady and da cloud chickie? What are dey gonna do? Huh? Ruin my upholstery? Rain on my boys? Is da cat gonna piss on deir suits? What kinda clown outfit ya take my Capone Crew for, hotshot? Did ya not take dis broad here because you don’ wanna damage her? Cuz dem udda girls gonna get more dan a little scuffed. We might jus’ ruin the warranty on those broads, if you know what I mean.”

  Easy, Dantem, easy. He was going to get what was coming to him in full as long as I kept my head cool. That last comment would have had him crapping out his own skull if we were face to face, though. If I just got him to come on out to play, out of his little hiding place, then we could dance with the devil in the pale moonlight. In this case, I was the devil.

  “How bad can your Pacino people be, honestly?” I shrugged. “A rocket guy and a guy whose mom named him ‘Maxxy?’ Name’s like that just scream ‘my parents thought through naming me about as much as they thought through taking that one last shot at the St. Patrick party that led to my conception.’ Don’t tell me: Maxxy’s parents are divorced young, and he’s an orphan. Not even from tragic circumstances, either. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a voluntary donation after they realized they were going to be raising a child named ‘Maxxy.’”

  I would have to apologize to any ‘Maxxys’ who caught wind of this conversation. The name was an unfortunate casualty of an improvised ploy on my end. I was more worming my way under Don John’s skin than hating on people named Maxxy. I wished no ill will on any such Maxxys, save for the one that belonged to the Capone Crew. He was probably going to die as tragically as the hypothetical orphan Maxxy lived.

  “Ya won’t be so eager to throw ya disrespect around when ya meet ‘im, hotshot.” Don John’s voice grew darker as he absorbed the insult on Maxxy’s behalf. “I tink I’ll pay ‘im double for offing you personally. And he’ll get a bonus for making it last long enough for you to eat ya words. If ya were hoping dat I was gonna show some leniency after all dis was ovah, dat little stunt you pulled cost ya any mercy from me.”

  “I’m quivering in my boots over here.” I mockingly acted scared, quickly changing back to a relaxed slouch to further accent how much I didn’t care. “Those two girls will clean up your fancy crew easily. It’s just a rocket guy and a ‘Maxxy.’”

  “Jus’ a rocket guy and a ‘Maxxy?’” he repeated to me, “dat rocket guy’s got more nuts and bolts than you can shake a stick at, and faster than a Maserati! This lineup’ll slice ya dumb broads open before you can blink! One of them’s a nasty vulture of a man. The boys call him Bone Raptor Sal. His metal beak can rip through a tank’s armor like it was cotton candy! Another one’s called ‘Gatling Gun’ Gunther. Both his hands are machine guns that fire twenty armor-piercing rounds a second! Then there’s ‘Anvilhands’ Mahoney, and lemme tell ya, that name ain’t far from da truth! Finally, my main man Maxxy the Maniac. My pride and joy. He’s got a gun for every situation! Shotgun, sniper rifle, assault rifle, pistols, machine guns, submachine guns, and the best part is, he never misses his mark with any of them! Not a single bullet wasted! Oh, man, you don’t stand a chance! Ya don’t
stand a friggin’ chance in hell!”

  Oh, damn, I think he lost his ridiculous accent halfway through that rant. I was getting to him, though I couldn’t tell if it made me happy that all of my patience in this conversation was being paid off, or sad that he didn’t actually sound like a gangster from a Saturday morning cartoon. Ah, well, c’est la vie. Never meet your heroes.

  “I will inform the intercept team about their targets.” Yomura, listening in to the whole conversation, let me know through my earpiece that my little trick worked in getting the Don to spill about his crew. “If our countermeasures were properly planned out, then we should be able to hold them off long enough for the plan to still work.”

  “Damn, that’s a scary team,” I continued talking with the Don, thankful that I had such reliable minions. “Sure hope my people can handle them.”

  “Oh, so now you’re sending out your goons?” Don waved my comment off with a dismissive hand, all but abandoning the persona of the gangster in favor of a tone that highlighted just how whiney he was. “You can’t beat me at my own game, in my own town! You know, I’m glad that an upstart little prick like you decided to stir up trouble today. You know why? Because now I’m going to show everyone around just how far I’ve come since my days with the Ghoul! Yeah, I’m gonna mount your body on a pike off the highway, along with all of your little friends and your robots. They’re all gonna serve as a reminder for any other punk who wants to start something that when you start something in Carmanelo, you don’t finish until I’m done with you.”

  “That last bit sounded oddly sexual,” Kate pointed out, prompting a snicker out of me. “Is he coming on to you? I might take offense to that.”

  “I dunno, I’ll ask him.” I turned back to the Don. “Are you hitting on me?”

  “Oh, I’m gonna enjoy watching your bones break like little twigs, you fucking pathetic excuse for a hero!” The gangster with the failing Boston vibe’s comment about heroes threw me off a bit. “When your little goody-two-shoes squads of spandex fetish men start pouring into my city, they’ll get the same treatment. No one goes against the Don John Perignon and gets to keep a healthy skeleton or a working pair of legs.”

  The last time I checked, I wasn’t a hero in the slightest. Sure, I was creating jobs for working-class criminals like any politician in history wished they could, but that was strictly through black market dealings and illegal economic enterprises only. I was strictly tyrannical and anti-government. Well, maybe not ‘anti-government,’ but still ‘anti-government-not-run-by-me.’ My governing method may have erred towards fair rulership and honest policies, with a pinch of quiet benevolence as long as no one caused any trouble, but still, I was still going for complete global domination. No single entity within this game would be free from my iron grip on every country and its resources.

  I couldn’t help but feel that there was a critical miscommunication somewhere along the way that was hampering his understanding of my recent exploits. Did he not know about the cities I’d taken over in just the past few months? I was starting to make some waves. Not that it was clear to the public news sources as to what exactly happened in each city, but still, the stories were spreading.

  Also, I was literally besieging his city with an army of giant goddamn robots! What part of that sentence sounded like the means of operation for a heroic group? If robots were attacking a city I was living in back in the real world, I might have suspected aliens were invading before I said the automatic militia at our doorstep was the work of a champion of justice, liberty, and national peace. Where, oh where, was he getting this idea that I was here on hero business?

  I didn’t quite know if that mattered now. Knowing that he was assuming crazy theories about me wouldn’t hurt the plan at all. Hell, it might have even helped if I played this right. We’d just have to see how the conversation went.

  “Sorry, I spaced out a bit there.” I returned to the conversation. “I was just so bored by this conversation that I think I passed into the afterlife for a moment. You know, because I was bored to death. Can you repeat what you just said?”

  “Laugh it up, hero.” The mafia boss’s fingers strained as he refrained from crushing the glass in his offhand. “Keep up with your yucks while you can. When the Capone Crew finish up with your infestation of do-gooders, they’re coming after you next.”

  “I’ve yet to see them do anything particularly impressive,” I remarked. “You keep hyping them up like it means something to me, but I’m still just watching this shit, and it seems like things have really just gone tits up for them.”

  “That first robot they destroyed was pretty cool, though,” Kate interjected, “that Rocky guy was moving pretty quickly.”

  “Yeah, but that was, like, minutes ago,” I argued, “the robot’s basically brushed that fender bender off by now, and back in the fight like it didn’t even happen. He basically did nothing. I ask you again; what have these Capone jokers done that should impress or intimidate me?”

  “Boy, you better be trying to pull the wool over my eyes.” He looked down at the war still raging, searching for the truth in my words. “Oh, mother of god, the nerve of these trash cans.”

  To that Capone Crewman Rocky’s credit, the little man-missile had destroyed a couple more robots while Perignon and I were talking. If he kept taking them out like he was, he alone could have cleaned up this automaton invasion in a matter of minutes, and it may very well have been a victory for Don John in the short term. I needed those robots to keep the pressure on for a while longer, or this whole plan fell apart at the seams.

  Sure enough, though, just like I’d said, all the miscellaneous pieces that had exploded everywhere had already begun pulling themselves together towards the biggest chunks that survived each collision. What had managed to cobble together wasn’t pretty, moving away from the aesthetic of ‘sleek killing machine’ and towards ‘public art.’ Still, they functioned adequately, and still posed a threat to the city with their recovered array of tentacle laser arms. However they were holding themselves together was a mystery even I couldn’t have solved as I watched them keep blasting away randomly at whatever was closest to them like they had been back when they were pretty.

  The emergency protocols I had commissioned for the cuddler drones were performing about as well as I was hoping for, with a few deviations from what I had envisioned. I asked Nick to give the cuddler bots some way to deal with the wear and tear they were going to build up as war droids on a battlefield. Every last available upgrade and function that could ensure that they last as long as feasibly possible was the minimum requirement I had given to him. To my disappointment, he apparently didn’t find a way to implement the ‘liquid metal’ nanotech idea my imagination had cooked up while talking to him about the robot designs. Whatever, maybe the next batch would have the ability to gloop together like it was made of mercury.

  At any rate, we still had robots that wouldn’t stay down after being crushed to pieces, and the frayed metal plates now covering them served to make them look mangy. If a robot could have contracted rabies and mange, it might have ended up looking like the junk cuddlers that now patrolled the streets.

  “Where the hell did my boys go?” The gangster searched whatever screen, window, or viewing portal he was using, with squinting eyes as he failed to find the Capone Crew. “Why aren’t they down there crushing these robots like I told them to!?”

  “They did escape the battlefield faster than I thought possible.” I put on my best face to fake surprise with heavy sarcasm. “And we’ve got the whole city wrapped up in this little scuffle of ours, so the distance they’d have to travel is even more impressive. Is that what you meant when you said I’d be impressed with your elite squad? Very elite, indeed. Masters of the tactical retreat.”

  “Alright, what the hell did you do?” This guy wasn’t happy about what was going on in his city. “You did something, I know it. I’ve never seen a grin that ate as much shit as the abstract portrait
of a face you’re giving me now. What the hell did your robots do to my boys?”

  My robots weren’t the culprits in this caper. It was merely a fortunate coincidence that made them the center of attention. My girls, along with the assault team that joined them, had drawn the Capone Crew away from the battle and the robots, leaving my toys to keep playing war while they safely fought where they wouldn’t interrupt.

  Not only that, but I had a hunch that these elites would probably all be in-game raid bosses in their own rights. Not only would they be stupendously strong just by that fact alone, but their stats would also get all kinds of boosts to them so long as they stayed within the confines of their territories. So, now they were all kited well outside of their zones, and would be much easier to fight off. If they did what they were supposed to do in a situation like this, my boys would have led the Capone Crew towards a specific fighting ground that would count as part of my own territory. Therefore, all the executives in my syndicate would have their pumped stats, and Perignon’s secret ace would be at their weakest, bridging the power gap and giving the boys the edge they’d need.

  “Whaaaat? Meeee?” My sarcastic tone may have been a bit exaggerated in denying any culpability in the recent turn of events. “Whatever do you mean, Mr. Don John Perignon? Where have they gone? Were we wrong to want their brawn? Has it not donned on them to be drawn to the broad lawn we fawn over with our firearms? Rather shoddy and haughty of your pod of demigods to withdraw from the dawn of our conflict so early on, as the heated throng of battle now thaws beyond. Were they not fond of the bronze lawn of sprawling fauna, with its gaudy fonts and yawning swans conned of their unborn spawn to be pawned for blonde wontons and bonbons, along with brawny Shauns and daunted Rons sauntering on the lawn with haunted wands?”

  Look at that. Nick was rubbing off on me. I got a glimpse of what life must have been like for him, watching the vein on Don John’s face thicken with every word I spouted out with a similar vowel to ‘Don.’ Gotta say, being in control of the source of irritation was a little fun. The appeal showed itself in the blood rushing to the cheeks of a man whose head was about to burst from the blood pressure.