Some call you the Phone-Master. Some call you Darkcaller.

Most simply curse at you, and call you nothing at all.

You are the bane of heroes everywhere, disrupting their sleep and interrupting fights at the most inopportune times, causing them to slip up and fail even when they have clear superiority.

When you communicate with anyone, they are compelled to answer. Sure, your power would work just as well against villains, but where’s the profit in that?

You don’t look like much. Hunched at your desk, beside a phone bank straight out of a twenty-year-old call center, the only light the blue gleam of laptops spread out before you. But appearances can be deceiving. Your power, though unusual, is one of the highest-impact in existence. Only a handful can surpass you for sheer reality-warping capability.

Naturally, you auction your services to the highest bidder. It takes roughly twenty calls over ten hours to fully disrupt a hero’s sleep, and each must be made by your own hand. There is no way to automate the process, no way to offload it to subordinates. Thus, slots are limited, demand is high, and your prices higher still.

The results speak for themselves. A week of your attention, and even the greatest of heroes will be off their game. More so when they have to stop fighting to text back curt angry responses to your oh-so-important queries.

How are you today?

Isn’t the weather lovely?

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

How’s your fight going?

Are you typing at super-speed?

Do you think you’ll win?

Are you sure?

Hey, do you think I’ll leave you alone if you destroyed your phone? Please try, it will be amusing for me.

You spend a lot of time coming up with clever new lines. Sure, your job is fun and you’re paid a fortune, but where’s the class in spouting the same thing over and over? You’d die of boredom sooner or later.

Is your jetpack running? Can you catch it?

How long has it been since you slept?

Are you going to throw something at the wall?

I really wish you’d spell out your words instead of using these stupid txt abrvs. Kids these days, amirite?

On the side, you run an advertising business for floundering independent startups with more funding than common sense. Sure, every random celebrity wants their ad campaign to be noticed, but do they really want the whole world responding?

With a single retweet, everyone’s opinion will be made clear.

You’re kind of surprised by how much your account took off there, actually. Millions of people follow you, eager to reply to something - anything, and the fact that you often promo stupid things means they have a legitimate chance to play the critic without feeling guilty about it.

You find that almost as entertaining as keeping superheroes from doing their jobs competently.

Of course, no one has yet connected your online identity with your villain phone service. If it weren’t so much more lucrative you might abandon the Darkcaller identity entirely, but even the mindless masses don’t pay nearly as much as a handful of elite supervillains in pursuit of world domination.

A new commission comes in by the usual routes. It’s an unusual one, with a specific taunt required, but you do that often enough you don’t even blink. You input the number, run the connection, and pick up a handset.

Your phone rings. Sudden understanding isn’t enough to freeze the impulse, inescapable, to pick up and answer.

You ask, as you know you must, exactly what was instructed. Your voice echoes in your ear from the other phone as you speak.

“I need you to answer with a question, can you do that for me?”

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