Sitting in a room usually reserved for interrogations, Matthew Gates was sipping on some coffee while waiting for whoever called the emergency executive meeting in such a dreary place. The walls were gun metal grey and the floor was plain, flat cement with deep screws driven in to anchor the stainless-steel table and chairs. It was wildly uncomfortable, causing the Director of the Hero Department's Recruiting Offices to wonder what exactly he was supposed to be learning in such a dismal environment.

A knock at the door alerted him to right himself as two men wearing identical pin-striped suits entered the room, both wearing sunglasses despite the dank lighting. They had identical haircuts, cleanly shaven faces, and could have passed for twins if one of them wasn't a full head taller than the other.

"Director Gates," said the smaller of the two men, placing a file on the steel table just out of the Director's reach, "I'm sorry to have this meeting, but we need to go over your protocol."

"I don't handle protocol," Matthew said, "I have a team for that. What is this actually about? And who even are you two?"

"I'm Jake Hyder from the Hidden Villains initiative," said the smaller man, taking a seat. "My partner is Alexander Meshnik. It is our job to find villains who have hung up their cloak and daggers and decide what to do with them. As for this meeting, to put it bluntly, your team fucked up, and now you need to fix it as acting Director."

"I've never heard of the Hidden Villains initiative."

"Good," said the taller man who stood in the corner where it was darkest. "We're a secret, even within the Hero Department."

"You can think of us the people who find and take care of bad people who went into hiding."

"That doesn't sound like an organization that needs to be secret."

"When you're going after villains from the shadows, everything needs to be secret. But we're not the reason for this meeting."

Jake opened the file in front of him and produced a profile picture of a very boring looking man in his early twenties wearing a suit and awkwardly smiling at the camera.

"This man is Benjamin Daniel Hersh, are you familiar with him?" Jake asked, flicking the photo across the table.

Matthew inspected the photograph for a few moments, then said, "This is the guy we got orders to recruit? You're saying he's a former supervillain? At twenty-five?"

"He's currently a suspect," said Jake, taking out another picture and flicking it at the Director.

It depicted a man wearing a full tuxedo with tails and a top hat, covering his face with an iconic comedy mask.

"You're telling me the man we almost hired was 'The Gentleman'? THE Gentleman?"

"One of thirty suspects that we've narrowed down," Jake answered honestly. "We have a smaller division within our division devoted solely to the identification and location of the true Gentleman, and they have had a hell of a time just narrowing it down to the thirty possible suspects."

"I'm guessing you want all the information we've dug up about this Benjamin Hersh character."

"No," Alexander flatly refused. "Nothing you could have found is something we don't already know."

"According to official Hero Department policy," Jake continued, "there is a blacklist for recruiting. According to my records, all of our Gentleman suspects are on that blacklist, including Benjamin Hersh. Why did your office pursue him despite being on the list?"

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"That list is changed regularly, and with several errors per change, it's become less and less of a factor for our hiring," the Director explained nervously. "The list is also supposed to be reserved for felons, domestic abusers, people on the sex offender registry, and other unsavory characters."

The Director of Recruiting held up the dopy picture of Ben and said, "This man came back clean, if I'm not mistaken."

"Then it was a misunderstanding," Jake said. "Except that you almost got your entire recruiting office, and perhaps the entire Hero Department, wiped from the face of this earth."

The director frowned, then scowled as he compared the imposing picture of the Gentleman with the goofy nobody's profile picture.

"It's been a while since I've seen this man, but wasn't the Gentleman supposed to be a B-class villain? Has he upgraded his arsenal since then? Is he preparing for something?"

Jake turned to his shadowy partner in the corner, who nodded and removed his glasses. A black smoke poured from empty eye sockets and dripped across the floor, then crawled of its own volition up the walls and across the ceiling. The room was suddenly encased in an inky darkness with a single dangling light bulb overhead, horrifying the Director as he tried to imagine what nefarious actions these two men were about to commit.

"Remain calm, Director," Jake said, "my associate here has the power to block out senses with his smoke. This is just a preventative measure, because what I'm about to tell you is classified so high above Top Secret that you were put on a list before this conversation began that will kill you if you try to tell anyone."

The Director shut his mouth and gripped his chair, the smoke draped across the floor making him feel vertigo above the abyss. Jake opened the file and spread some paper across the desk as reading material.

"Four years ago, a strange object entered earth's atmosphere and landed just outside Athens, Greece. Responding heroes found the object and described it as a chariot that radiated with the power of the sun. They tracked footsteps away from the chariot and found a twelve-foot-tall man wearing traditional Greek dress with sandals and a metal cap which bore living wings. The man, despite being much stronger and more powerful than the heroes, pleaded with them to keep it a secret that he had returned to earth.

"The man identified himself as Hermes, the God of messengers from the Olympic Pantheon. The chariot was the sun chariot from his brother Apollo, who let him borrow it as it was faster than his feet could carry him. He was on earth to retrieve some golden apple seeds as the gods had run out of ambrosia and going without it was difficult. The heroes asked many questions, all of which Hermes answered in exchange for a promise of secrecy.

"All the gods of antiquity were real, but they had fled to avoid being caught up in conflict with humans. The reason they wished to avoid conflict was not because of humans themselves, or the heroes we'd proffered, but because one single human who had managed to defy fate. Fate was described as the way the world was supposed to go. Winners always win, losers always lose, with free will creating some variance in the details. When asked why the gods cared, Hermes declared that neither the gods, nor the titans above them, nor the primordials above them, nor the empyreans above them had the power to defy fate. Fate is not so ephemeral a thing that it can be broken by those bound by it, which included all beings in the universe and the universe itself. The heroes asked who, what, where, and how fate was broken."

Jake pushed the document over to Director Gates as he said, "When the one called The Gentleman killed the one called Ymir, one year ago. As to where -- Hermes didn't want to know. As to how-- if Hermes did know, he would not be something so trifling as a god. He was released shortly after, and the gods have never been seen again on this earth."

"So, the Gentleman can break fate? Is that what you're saying?"

"According to Hermes, yes."

"So what?" the Director asked. "Who cares if he can break fate? Doesn't that just branch the multiverse, or something?"

"Fate means that there is no multiverse," Alexander interjected, the smoke still pouring from his face in a nightmarish display of power. "Going back in time changes nothing, the same with going forward in time. All things are as they should be, always. It also means that if someone is fated to live or die, there is nothing that can be done to change it. They will die, or they won't. Even gods cannot kill what fate has deemed alive. An order followed by all things."

"It means The Gentleman's abilities are on par with the entire universe across all time, all at once," Jake said. "Do you really want to go making an enemy of that person?"

The Director considered the implications, then a very important question imbedded itself in the annuls of his mind.

"Have you told Olympia this?"

Jake and Alexander exchanged a look, "We've considered it. But her relationship with Ymir and the Gentleman, it's unknown how she would react. If the situation becomes explosive, we'll intervene. But until then, we'll leave it up to fate."