As far as I’m concerned there are a few qualities that every good super villain needs. To be clear, I’m not talking about what it takes to be successful. There are plenty of awful capes that are successful villains. No, I’m talking about what it takes to be the arch-nemesis, the villain that people fawn over. The type of villain that’s always talked about next to their respective nemesis, the ones that practically define who the hero is.

As popular as they are in pop culture, a good villain is never a psycho. Don’t get me wrong, everybody loves the comics about Detective and his nemesis Mad Clown. That type of sicko just doesn’t make a good villain outside of fantasy. In reality, those are the types that might, and I do mean might, pull off one big job before they get killed.

Yes, I know the heroes don’t go around killing. Especially not the real, certified, ones. The vigilantes? It can vary, but killing as a vigilante is a very good way to land yourself on an actual hero’s shit list. The point is ‘accidents’ happen. The types of heroes that don’t have ‘accidents’ generally put these types behind very tight cages. The types of cages that real villains find a way to kill through, and fast. Psychos are bad for business. Period.

Anyways, the qualities that a good villain should possess. First and foremost is a flair for the dramatic. In what world would you want a supervillain that can’t put on a show? If a villain cannot do so, they aren’t a villain. They’re a mercenary, an assassin, someone who does a job. These types aren’t villains, merely criminals. The second is the ability to really hold on to a grudge. That’s how a villain becomes a part of their hero’s rogues gallery. The grudge will, a lot of the time, feed into a true villain’s need for drama, their need to feel superior. It’s why we monologue, why we have to make certain that a hero knows their failings as they come to an inevitable demise. The last one is the reason I broke away from my story, and the reason that those events are so important to my origins. The last, and in my opinion most important, quality that a villain needs is pettiness.

Pettiness is the reason that we will form grudges over the tiniest of infractions. It’s why good villains hold themselves to moral codes. Pettiness is often how us villains can even interact with each other. Always having to walk around on eggshells makes it a lot less likely that someone says something dumb and pisses off the guy with a black hole generator.

Pettiness is also the reason I became a villain.

I certainly didn’t want Rad, Radiant, to see me fumbling around as a hostage in a supremely cheesed bank heist. But I really didn’t want that blockhead Justice to save me. Not only is he simply not good enough for her, but god he’s a douche. I mean have you ever seen an interview with the fuck? I swear he adds an extra syllable to half his words just to hear himself talk longer. Did I mention that he was supposed to be dating Rad? Ugh. Is that petty? Certainly, and that’s the gods damned point.

As most of you know, Justice and I have been nemeses for practically the entirety of my career. I’ve hated that fuck stick of a ‘golden boy’ since before I became a villain. It’s just that the events of that day cemented my grudge with the head-ass.

So, there I was, holding a bag of cash that I didn’t steal. Some wannabe shit-bird in bedazzled spandex of all things was threatening me with being burned alive. Radiant was going to see me being held hostage in a situation both of us knew I could have easily gotten out of. To top it all off, every last bit of the stupid hateful nonsense that lead to this moment, that half-baked boy scout was going to bust in at any second and ‘save’ me. Bah. There’s no way I’d ever ‘owe my life’ to that egotistical prick.

So, the dumbass wannabe needed to die before either Justice or Radiant busted in.

Honestly, it was incomprehensibly simple to kill the little shit. He clearly didn’t have any kind of invulnerability built in with his pyrotechnics. All I had to do was make certain that he took enough volts to put him out. The best way to do that? For me, it’s basically to suit up. Suit up in armor crafted from my famous Dark Lightning and push as much of the energy into him as necessary. Unfortunately, if you recall, I hadn’t spent any time in years working on my powers. I was trying to be ‘normal’ and that meant no lightning.

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To say I was ‘out of practice’ would be an egregious understatement.

I ripped the energy from my core, quickly coating every inch of my exposed skin in crackling black-light energy. Then I pushed the power into him. The energy had been pent up for years, not to mention the fact that I forgot exactly how much it takes to kill a man. In an instant the man’s flesh had boiled, and his costume had turned to ash. To this day I simply do not understand why anyone, even some shit-bird wannabe, would walk around in a fucking flammable costume while wielding fire-based abilities. Fucking seriously.

But of course, the energy didn’t simply stop with boiling that headass alive. Nope, it continued into what most people would now call my ‘Bolt Wave’ (which I still think is a lame name for a truly kick-ass ability). The energy surged out from me in a sphere, knocking all the other civilians unconscious and destroying all the localized electronics. I didn’t find out until later that my ability also conveniently destroyed any evidence of my innocence. Well… mostly innocence. I did kill the wannabe after all, and the legal system doesn’t take kindly to vigilantes killing people.

Seeing the blast wave, Justice didn’t hesitate. There was no longer a guarantee any of the hostages were safe, let alone alive. He took that moment to punch the door in. When the dust from his overpowered punch cleared, I just stood in shock at the gall of a man demolishing the front of a bank. Which was really not helpful considering the scene that ‘Golden Boy’ found himself looking at.

There I was, decked out in full Dark Lightning armor, holding a bag of cash, with the charred remains of wannabe laid down at my feet. Not a single civilian, to his eyes, was standing. There, amongst all the destruction and chaos, was a new villain in a dapper suit and clearly ‘evil aligned’ powers coating every inch of his exposed skin. At least it hid my secret identity from one of the two heroes at the scene.

To be at least a little bit fair to the golden head of all ass-ness, from where he was standing I was clearly the villain in the situation. I can’t blame him for that. I can, however, blame him for opening the fight by throwing rubble at me.

What kind of idiot hero thinks that throwing rubble around in an area filled with civvies is a good idea? The kind with more letters in his cape title than brain cells in his fucking head, that’s what kind.

At the very least, I still had a few of my reactions still ingrained from a childhood of training to save the civilians. Without thinking, I crafted a buckler and a spear from my energy and thrust the spear at the shattered concrete hurtling for my head. The spear cracked into the rubble and sparked along some exposed metal. I threw it to the side, on top of the wannabe instead of anyone alive, and brought my arcing buckler up to defend from whatever came next.

It was a good thing too, because the shining fist of the golden dumbass was already snapping towards my ruggedly awesome face. As soon as his fist touched my shield, I knew I wasn’t going to beat the guy in a straight up fight. Landing thirty feet away with a sore back while staring at the brand-new hole in a wall will make a point like that pretty damn fast.

While I would love to say that I cleverly tricked the bastard (as I’ve done in practically every fight we’ve had since), if I’m being completely honest, I didn’t. I turned tail and ran.

What do you expect? By most estimations, the dude is and always has been a class four works. A-list material practically from the get-go. Not to mention, he had been actively using his abilities to hunt down criminals for a few months at least. Most estimates put me at (very grudgingly) a low tier four manipulator on my best day. On a day when I was out of practice, out of control, and out of my mind? Yeah, let’s not go there.

So… I ran. Or, I tried at least.

As I’m sure everybody knows, somebody that is classified as a ‘works’ super doesn’t just have super strength. Nope, pretty much all of them come with not only strength, but invulnerability and some kind of movement ability at a minimum. Built-in flight is fucking cheating.

I threw my spear back at him as soon as I saw him lift off the ground. Luckily, I was strong enough at the time to at least stun the blonde bullet. Not that it mattered much. With a roar, he picked up speed and flew out the hole he made. I still swear that had she not stepped in at that point that the ‘shining golden embodiment of hope’, Justice, would have taken my head off right then and there.