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

by Simon Archer

  “While I am certain that whatever you need from those files is important,” Minou mused about the situation, “I am left to wonder what we’ll be doing. Freddie can direct the infiltration mission, Yomura can remotely assist the hacker, Nick can detonate the explosives or set them on a timer, and Joe and Crazy Cane are fully capable of directing soldiers in formation. What will your Mistresses contribute to this operation?”

  “In truth?” I addressed the concern. “Eye candy, mostly. You’ll be accompanying me through the front door as my advisors. I’ll need every ounce of feminine wiles and sensual charm you three just throw into the world if I’m going to get these ambassadors to do what I want. If this is what you’ll be wearing to the events, though, then they’ll be putty in our hands.”

  “Wait, you’ll attend the meeting yourself?” Natasha whipped head over, taking advantage of her floating clothing in all of its glory. “Why? How? Won’t they shoot us on sight? We’re villains! And aren’t we going to be bombing their meeting? I’m confused. I don’t want to get bombed. You’re not going to bomb us, right?”

  “Nonsense, my dear,” I chuckled, mostly to myself, “Nothing will happen to us, and no one will attack me. I’m the one who invited them into my Hall. They’ll be civil with their gracious host. Besides, I’m sure they’ll have quite a lot to discuss with me by the end of the night.”

  “Wait, so we’re not going to storm the place with our troops?” Joe asked. “We are not a part of the terrorist attack?”

  “Far from it,” I answered Joe, “you’re a part of my entourage, and acting as much of the security for this particular event against anything that I deem to be a threat.”

  “Oh, that explains a lot.” FrickaFresh nodded as he pieced together parts of the plan. “Still leaves the immediate bodyguards around the ambassadors themselves, but that’s a lot simpler than the whole complex on high alert. The explosions should be more than enough to get past them, though, if our guys are quick about it.”

  “The explosions aren’t even the entire distraction,” I said to reveal another part of my plan. “Once the guests of honor arrive, that’s when things will get really interesting!”

  20

  Hen Tye-Dye Man

  “Holy shit, this is happening!” I clapped my hands together as I bounced in my seat inside the Eagle Jet. “This is really happening! Holy fuck, can you believe this?!”

  Flying with me were some of my fellow heroes, none of whom shared my enthusiasm for this sort of thing. I had to bring one hundred percent of the energy to the mission, which was fine. I was used to this by now. I mean, it wouldn’t have hurt if, say, one of them got into the spirit of things for once. I could understand other times, but now it was special.

  To my right was the king of mystic heroes himself, the legendary Voodood, played by ‘Vulturehead.’ I’d never seen a guy pull off the witch doctor spook feel, with the torn leather hood, the ragged robes covered in holes and dark symbols, littered with all the bone charms hanging off him like tassels, while also wearing a baseball cap on top of the hood. Hey, man, I was vibing it for real!

  And he was a fucking powerhouse, too. Level forty-one, only one of the elite gamers who could pull off all the AoE damage he outputs with his fucking jacked blood magic build. Man, he got so lucky when he paired that up with the Staff of the Taking Tree, this fucking sick, gnarled, rotten tree branch shaped like a whole-ass demon thing with its hand reaching up. He said he got it in a raid, and with its vampire drain and health regen combined, he could spam the blood magic rain spell like it was a weather condition. Fucking jealous, man.

  Across from me was my robot compatriot, the Steel Monarch, piloted by the illustrious Zipperking. Man, I don’t know how he got all those Medievalpunk armor pieces together so damn fast before anyone else, but he looked like a fucking King Arthur Mech or some shit, and it was awesome. Like a metal rook chess piece if it was human-sized, absolutely cut, and kicked some ass.

  Zipperking powerleveled Iron Monarch to just ridiculous levels in a seedy part of Himmersville, one of the shittiest towns in Numania before one of the ghost patches. His whopping level forty-five was easily the highest in the whole Egalitarian League. Place used to just have criminal mobs thrown around the place, and you could force them to respawn by hiding in one of the buildings nearby after you’d beaten them to a pulp. Now he’d gotten more defense than anyone knows what to do with. He just spammed strength for levels for the base stats and used all the cash he’d been saving up to buy the best shield implants for his cybernetic hero. Slow as fuck, but that didn’t matter when he had the Electric Shield implant giving him rebound lightning damage anytime someone attacked him. They couldn’t hit him, and they killed themselves the whole time.

  I tried to do the same thing, get those power levels, but, you know, ghost patch. Fuck, I hated those. The whole town suddenly was super nice and tidy overnight. There was, like, zero criminals out. No, wait, I did find a couple of guys wearing all black, and they were like level forty! I was fucking level twenty-five at the time! What the FUCK, devs?

  On top of that, all the stores in the town, and half the surrounding towns, just fucking skyrocketed their prices for no reason. Nobody could buy shit around there unless they spent all of their fucking money on it. Of course, anything you bought became obsolete as soon as you bought it. Had to fly halfway across the map just to get anything good. Glad I was part of the good hero guild and not with these plebs begging for scraps. I had other ways of getting my levels easy, anyway. At least, I used to.

  Shit, I wished the devs fucking said something before they decided to patch the game. Or said anything, ever. Nope. Just take away all my exploits, why don’tcha! They’d been happening all over the place, but around here was just the devs’ special dumpkin patch. Parts of the game would just suddenly change completely without any warning. Fucking annoying.

  To my left was the best gadget hero ever to grace the game, the music man himself, Bardy Hard, played by Shimiji05798. Fuck, I loved his whole thing. He just carried a dozen different instruments on him, and each one of them did something different when he played them. He was going to go for, like, a fantasy bard look for a while before he found this rasta hat, and now it’s all reggae, all the time. He’d only finished shifting half of his outfit over, so he had the puffy pants from some Victorian nobility set, but with a whole lot of weed green from the waist up.

  I’d heard this rumor that he was killing other music gadget heroes to take their instruments from them, which was how he got so many. To that, I say, ‘Good job, man!’ So what if he’s taking shit from other people? They knew what they were getting into when they turned on their coma helms and plugged themselves into a game with permadeath. Git gud, scrubs.

  If you didn’t want your shit stolen, then fucking suck less at the game. Sure, it’s just level one newbs most of the time, and their gear isn’t even that good, but come on. Crushing newbies is pretty fun. Seeing the looks on their faces, man, was just priceless. Hey, he didn’t get to level forty just by sitting around and letting those newbs ruin the game by playing it.

  I, gamertag Falcata, I repeat, just FALCATA, was the last man here besides our pilot. As far as the primo biological hero was concerned, that was me, or rather the Hen Tye-Dye Man. If you’re wondering what the name’s about, it’s pretty funny, trust me. So I took a bunch of mutations to make me look like a chicken man, right, and I tied a tie around my head like a headband. The tie is tye-dye colored, and I’m a chicken, you get it? But that’s not even the best part! Also, like, I took a bunch of other mutations to make my superpowers all tentacles, man! Right? Fucking hilarious. It’s like a pun or something.

  I could only get Hen Tye-Dye Man up to level thirty-nine right now, but like, it was always a joke character, right, so it didn’t matter. I mean, it wasn’t like it was my whole livelihood to be the best at this fucking game, or I’d lose my sponsors. And it wasn’t like people already confused me with Falcata1, who was also a sponso
red gamer playing a fucking bio hero fucking AFTER I DID! Like with everything else in my fucking life! And it wasn’t like he was already fucking level forty-three or anything!

  Fucking hated this game sometimes. Playing favorites and shit.

  But not today! Today, I was gonna fucking get some shit done! Thanks to that asshole copying me all the time and one little typo, I got notified by the guildmaster about this mission we were on instead of him! Finally, I was gonna get some experience that he wouldn’t steal from me, get up to level forty, and then I could finally go to Moncala City, the Eagle League’s main base, and finally milk some goddamn crime areas, get to level forty-four, and fucking beat the shit out of Falcata1 and permadeath his sorry ass. This would be my fucking game forever.

  “Calm the fuck down, chicken guy!” Iron Monarch shouted at me, his voice ringing like a tuning fork and a synthetic keyboard at the same time. “Your legs shaking the whole damn plane!”

  “Oh, sorry!” I tried to put my leg down, forcing one of my chicken talon-hands on top of it to settle it down. “And my name’s Falcata, but you can call me Hen Tye-Dye--”

  “Nobody cares.” Voodood’s voice modulator spoke like he’d just stepped out of a grave five minutes ago, putting his baseball cap away from his face and more squarely on his head as he began waking up from his nap. “Are we fucking there yet, P0ww0w?”

  “Plane’s flying at full throttle, bro.” The pilot, Murder King, played by P0ww0w, shouted from the front of the Eagle Jet in a heroic and boisterous way. “The mission said that we forfeit the whole damn thing if we fast travel there. We have to go the old fashioned way.”

  Yes, he was that P0ww0w, the Egalitarian League guildmaster, the same guy who organized and led the charge against Mr. Yin in the beta, the same guy who ran the raid against a Ghoul executive boss criminal with just five other heroes and fucking won! The same guy who got permadeathed during the beta and powerleveled his way back to the top! That P0ww0w! And I was in a party with him! This mission was already over, practically. Might as well have collected our experience and loot now.

  “Yeah, I fucking know, P0ww0w!” Voodood held his head in his hands. “Fuck, I should have taken a hit before I logged in today.”

  “Feeling nervous, Vulch?” Iron Monarch laughed at his friend’s weak stomach. “It’s just a mission. No need to freak out about it. What’s your itch, man? Cigs? Mary Jane? Booze? Oh, are you hardcore, man? Is it heroin? Crack? Meth? Oh, fuck, it’s meth, isn’t it? Look at you, you fucking tweaker! It’s totally meth!”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Voodood took a few wild swings with his staff, missing anything even near Iron Monarch. “Nobody asked you.”

  Well, I mean, Vulturehead was a sponsored gamer. If he could afford a small addiction, why not go for it? Just fucking living life, man. Sometimes we all needed a little something to get through a day, or a fucking lifetime. And he had enough sponsor money that he could put himself through rehab whenever he wanted.

  “Look, man, we’re all fucking amped, man.” Bardy Hard let out a powerfully slow annunciation that came with just a little too hot a hotbox just before a game. Or rather, what he thought it sounded like when someone hotboxed a bunch of weed. Guy couldn’t handle a puff of smoke. “We should just chillax, man, just feel the breeze, man. Let it go. I’mma play a song to calm us all down.”

  “Touch one string on that fucking guitar, and I will blood rain your sorry ass right here on this goddamn plane!” Voodood wasn’t having any of Bardy Hard’s shit, while Bardy had already pulled out a ukulele from the many that surrounded him. “Do not mess with me right now. You understand?”

  “Whatever, tweaker.” Bardy just smiled away as he put the ukulele back where it was on his back. “It’s a ukulele, man. Maybe you’d like a banjo better--”

  “What did I just say?” Voodood had the outstretched hand of the demon staff pointed at Bardy’s nose, so close that he could touch it. “You got shit coming out of your ears, Shit For Brains? Put the music bullshit away before I make you.”

  “Now that’s something I’d like to see, man.” Bardy didn’t put away his banjo. “Whatchu gonna do, tweaker man? You gonna fight me?”

  Shimiji really was fucking awful. Bardy Hard’s music was deadly as shit. There wasn’t a ‘casual tune’ to musical gadgets. Every note did something, and every riff was a special way to make those somethings work together to kill. Now that I’d seen that look in his eye, I knew for a fact that he really did just like killing people.

  “Shit, man, can you not just wait until we’re out of the fucking plane?” Iron Monarch stood himself up to get between the two of them. “I don’t feel like walking there after you jackasses crash this damn thing with your piss fit.”

  “Stay the fuck out of this, robocuck.” Voodood whipped his staff over to point at the metal man, slapping him across the face. “Just sit in the corner and wait your goddamn turn.”

  “Oh, I know you didn’t just slap me in the face and try to put my ass in timeout,” Iron Monarch fumed. “You best apologize.”

  “Maybe you do need a timeout, Zipp.” Bardy Hard chuckled, placing his fingers on top of the banjo strings as one finger caught and pulled at one of them. “Might just calm your nerves, needledick.”

  With that, Iron Monarch smashed his fists together, activating a powerful pulse of lightning throughout his whole body like a thick aura. At the same time, Voodood was biting at his thumb to draw blood, letting it dribble over the staff as it turned from rotten brown to an intense red. Bardy Hard didn’t get himself up but did put a train whistle in his mouth, taking in a breath of air to blow.

  Oh, fuck, shit, fuck, this was a thing now. We were all going to die. Well, all of us except for Iron Monarch and probably P0ww0w, but this plane wouldn’t survive any of what was going to happen next. We were going to fall out of the sky in less than five seconds. I couldn’t step in at my level. With their power builds, my tentacles would only piss them off and pull me into the fight to die with the plane as it crashed. Fuck my life.

  Could I have jumped out of the hangar door? Maybe if I grabbed the parachute now, I could have made a break for it before they destroyed the vehicle keeping us all in the sky. I needed this mission like hell needed a freezer, but I couldn’t afford to lose Hen Tye-Dye over something so fucking stupid like this! These fucking pricks wanted to beat the shit out of each other because they couldn’t keep their murderboners in their pants. That was their problem! I was out--!

  “I will kill all three of you myself if you don’t sit the fuck down right now,” Murder King calmly told them, his soft voice somehow cutting through all the rising tension like a hot knife through butter. “You’re all here as a convenience, nothing more. Perfectly expendable. This plane is more valuable than all of you combined.”

  And, just like that, just with the fucking machismo of his P0ww0w big dick energy, all three of those fuckers were silenced. Like obedient children in a schoolyard, they politely and quickly returned to their original spots, their torsos perfectly upright as they tried their hardest not to touch anything around themselves in fear of incurring Murder King’s wrath.

  That was the power of the P0ww0w. Iron Monarch was a higher level than him and still didn’t want any of what he was. Hell, P0ww0w could have been my level and still wiped the floor with all four of us at once. That was just how good he was. Just how godlike his gaming prowess was above our own. We were but mortals in the presence of a deity.

  “Sit down, chicken, before I break your legs,” the Murder King spoke to me. “Now.”

  Holy shit, he was speaking to me! I was so flustered, I forgot that he had commanded me at first. As I nervously regained my composure enough to sit down just like everyone else, I couldn’t help but bounce my leg. Hell, man, I was nervous! This was the fucking legend in the flesh! And he was talking to me!

  “Chicken, you’re more ranged control than a melee tank, right?” Murder King spoke to me again. “You don’t really move around in com
bat in order to remain useful.” No sound, but the engine of the plane responded. “Well, chicken boy? Answer!”

  “Oh, um, yeah, totally!” I couldn’t believe my luck. Today was going to be an amazing day. Two times, the legend talked to me. Maybe if I could just borrow some of his mojo, then I could become as good a gamer as he was. “That’s my specialty! I’ve got these tentacles that can--”

  “Good.”

  With a few presses of buttons in the cockpit, a flashing sign showed up in the corner of the windshield and said, ‘Auto-pilot engaged.’ Then Murder King got up from his chair.

  “Because I want a quiet trip for the rest of our flight,” the legendary man’s voice deepened as he cracked his knuckles, “and I’m getting real sick of hearing that leg tapping.”

  21

  Ambassador Anori Rimdalan

  A gathering of such weight, such significance, no one had ever seen before in the living age! Such proud traditions of peace and harmony could not have been graced with such a magnificent and truly brilliant upturn of the norm. Too long had these annual meets been nearly pointless in such times of peace and prosperity for all nations of the globe. I had almost thought to skip this year’s peace council for the Aggregation of Countries due simply to the fact that the discussion would not yield any fruit beyond what had been covered countless times over in countless other peace councils the years before.

  I had retained my position as the international representative of the great nation of Huglain for nearly three decades, and I was to see three decades more if my body allowed. I had served my duties faithfully and had helped to nurture the growing prosperity between all peoples of the world in the absence of the dreaded Ghoul and their nefarious leader, Mr. Yin. With his terrible presence gone from the corners of the world, we were all free to breathe a fresh breath through our lungs without fear of a madman’s rage dictating our lives. We have the heroes to thank for such peaceful times.