He laid in front of me, blood oozing from the gaping wound I opened in his abdomen. He was bleeding out, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit satisfied at that.

Not very hero-like, I’m much aware, but why would slaying yet another villain not give me satisfaction?

They had endangered my life, my team’s lives, and they had endangered the citizens. More than just endangered, in the few cases where we arrived too late. Their actions had caused loss of life, and I put an end to that. It was a job well done. Justice served. A good deed. One of many.

I turned my back to them, my bright yellow cape fluttering with the motion, and prepared to take my leave, but a quiet whisper, only audibly due to my enhanced hearing, stopped me short.

His raspy voice rang out, straining to be heard, clawing its way past the blood pooling in his mouth.

“I don’t want to die alone.. Please. Please stay with me, if only for my last moments.”

I let out a long sigh.

They always try things like this. Desperate attempts to take me down with them. Foolish trickery. Not wanting to die alone just meant wanting me to meet my maker as well. It is such a farce, and it really gets annoying quickly.

Nonetheless, I turned back to them. I wanted to see just what this guy came up with.

Would it be a poisoned dart flying at my face? A grenade rolling to my feet? A gun poised to litter me with holes? Or, maybe, he would actually come up with something new, something original?

What met me once I faced him was just what I had left behind: a broken man on the verge of death. His eyes showed nothing but fear and loneliness. Fear of Death and of meeting him without company. The loneliness that only the likes of us could imagine, although his seemed so much worse than my own. It has always been lonely, being a Super. Being someone who was not quite human. Yes, heroes were revered by the public, but we were also feared like no others, and kept on a very tight leash by the powers that be. But hero life was still bearable. I had my family, my team, and I had my fans. They somewhat kept the loneliness at bay. But him? This Super villain in front of me? I’m sure he had no such thing. His eyes told me as much.

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And so, I went to sit down next to this empty, dying husk of a man.

“Thank you..”, his fading voice reached my ears.

I put my hand on his shoulder, almost certain that he could no longer see me with those glassy eyes of his.

“Sigh. It’s nothing. A hero is supposed to be there for the citizens and all that crap, right?”

A wheezing laugh, followed by a crimson coughing fit was his initial response.

“I don’t think my kind is included in that.” was the follow-up.

We went silent for a while, my slow breaths mingling with his shallow ones, before I decided to speak up again.

“How did you end up like that in the first place?”

Another wheezing laugh, as well as some more splotches of red on the ground.

“I had dreams too once, is all.”

“What changed?”, I asked, being left wanting by the vague answer.

“Nothing did! That’s the problem, don't you see?”

I considered that answer for a bit, but couldn’t make much sense of it.

“I don’t get it.”, I said, simply.

“Give it a few more years, and you will.”, he laughed again, and he kept laughing for some time, blood being flung around instead of spittle, covering more and more of our surroundings in that awful color.

I was about to retort, but realized it would have been for naught. He had stopped breathing, his heart stopped pumping out blood, and his body went still. He had drawn his last breath, leaving me with nothing but some bullshit answer that I couldn’t yet comprehend.

But I guessed it didn’t matter. It was, after all, just another day of work, just another villain slain. A good deed. Just one of many.

And yet, it left me entirely too dissatisfied.