"Damn. That's not good. I haven't heard the doomsday alarm in ages!" Mr. Canard said. [A supervillain attack? But why? Saint Mary is just a small town. There’s nothing of value to target here except for that one Superstate bank…]

An SCA emergency broadcast logo flashed on every screen in the diner, including the holo-menus. Even the screen on the pill-shaped robot in the aisle displayed the same thing as it froze in the middle of bringing the kids another order of ice cream.

The logo flickered, breaking up into weird, colorful static.

Martin suddenly felt that something was terribly wrong, as Spiderbro kicked into defense mode, trying to protect his mind from a possible external influence. There was no SNN announcer, no hero on the screens warning them about the event. The screens shimmered with strange, fractal static, patterns of colors simply dancing across them.

The hair on Martin's neck stood up.

He felt something akin to the bank's hypno-pacifier within the static, except it wasn't telling him to be calm.

[Pay attention. This is the most important thing you will see in your entire life,] the fractal pattern whispered. It wasn't intrusive, it wasn't dominating, it simply asked to watch, to hear it out. It didn't force, didn't push, it simply asked for polite observation of what it was about to present as indisputable facts.

The fractal pattern organized itself into the face of Alexa. The four people at the table gasped. Everyone else in the restaurant fell silent.

"Hello, world," she said.

"Oh no," Ember whimpered from her corner of the booth besides Martin.

"You undoubtedly know me as supervillain Cassiopeia Terror Nova, the Doombringer of Saint Mary that was recently sentenced to one hundred thousand years in Tartarus. This little show of mine is being broadcast across every SCA channel around the planet, straight from Titanomachy. This is the Doomsday-Warning Emergency Announcement System. It cannot be faked. It cannot be ignored or blocked,” Alexa made a deep pause and smiled. “I am about to use it to destroy the Superstate from within."

Mr. Canard frowned. He suddenly felt that maybe it wasn't the best idea to help a supervillain get arrested as absurd and contrary as that sounded.

Alexa had a plan and this was seemingly the culmination of it all, the destruction of the SCA. The girl had somehow taken control of the Emergency broadcast system, turning it into a weapon. What was her plan? Was she about to turn every human on the planet into brainwashed zombies? Would she make the world watch her forever, glued to the screens until they all died of old age or...

Mr. Canard blinked, turned his head away and looked at the sun-lit street through the window. He felt no influence, no pressure to keep watching.

“What you are about to see, is what really happens inside the Tartarus simulation. The SCA and the heroes have told the world that there is no pain, no death, no suffering in the simulation. That even centuries of the program take just a day to complete. That the villains within S-stasis get re-educated over many years of pleasant, family-themed and camping-style therapy, able to rejoin society when they reemerge from the simulation. I wanted to experience Tartarus myself, from the perspective of a villain, wanted to see what it was really like,” Alexa sighed, making a pause.

“This is what it’s like. Welcome to the long term Tartarus simulation, featuring me as prisoner and Hero Resonance as long term Warden. You know what I am about to show the world, Resonance. You know what you've done. I suggest you RUN now before her Eminence sentences you to an execution by an Equalizer. Run and hide under the biggest rock you can find, because when the Executioners of Equality find you, it definitely won't be pretty.”

Ember choked. She felt paralyzed with terror, panic clawing at her chest. She knew exactly what she would do just a few days ago if she had absolute power over Alexa in a simulation for thousands of years.

Alexa’s image broke up into fractal dust, reassembling into a picture of Hero Resonance standing over Alexa. The hero was adorned in her suit of gold and red, eyes flashing with golden glow from within.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Resonance poured gasoline over Alexa as the girl stood in some giant pipe, her arms bound. The hero and the villain were on some concrete embankment, possibly inside an abandoned power plant. Storm clouds rolled over the city of Centralia, water pouring from the pipe down the hillside.

"Why did you force my brother into being your minion?" Resonance asked. "Did you make him rob a bank with you so that you could ruin his career as a hero forever?"

"No!" Alexa shook her head. "I just wanted to have a friend for once in my life! We didn't rob the bank, we were protecting Saint Mary from an an alien monster who was laying eggs in the vault!"

"Liar!" Resonance yelled. She ignited a lighter, bringing it to Alexa's face.

"I'm going to get everything out of you and then I will reset the sim again and again until you don't remember this little interview of ours," Resonance spat.

“Kill me and you will regret it,” Alexa answered with a serene expression. "With each action you only dug a deeper grave for yourself and the Superstate."

“I regret nothing! You’re here because you are absolute evil that needs to be cleansed from the world! I have no pity for the likes of you, villain. I have already broken many of your kind in the sim,” Resonance hissed as she extended a hand with the lighter.

The screen flashed with fire and Alexa screamed.

Everyone watched the TVs.

It was Resonance again. An entire horror-show about the hero and her victim.

Resonance maimed, executed Alexa over and over in the simulation, resetting the world again and again until there was nothing left of Alexa's spunky personality.

Until Alexa was just a normal girl that responded to Cassie who lived in the concrete room in the basement underneath the floor in the house number 8 Primrose Drive.

Even then, Resonance did not stop. The hero wasn't wearing her super suit in the sim, as she pretended to be Cassie's sister, but everyone watching could tell that it was Resonance as her eyes blazed with gold and her hair a brilliant orange, sometimes floating as if held up by an invisible wind.

Resonance kept on attacking the girl, albeit far less brutally and far more insidiously, pretending to be her friend, her sister, to find out her fears and dreams, only to strike her down psychologically. There was a counter in the corner of the screen showing the amount of years passed and the amount of injuries and deaths caused by Resonance. It kept ticking on up and up.

With each action of Resonance on screen, with each broken bone, each insult, each death of Alexa, the real Ember broke down further and further as if it was Alexa who was stabbing at her heart now.

She watched, growing paler and paler and she understood that it really was her - Resonance that was currently doing irreparable damage to the Superstate, Tartarus and herself with her actions. There was no coming back from this show, no erasing memories of billions of people across the world.

Ember swallowed. She had been exposed to the world as a monster and brought the rest of the heroes down with her. In her greed and desire to punish and dismantle Alexa quicker, Ember had destroyed everything.

Titanomachy wasn't destroyed physically.

Alexa had not pulled the station down from the sky, had not murdered a single person except maybe for her digital self. There was no recovery from this, no way back. The reputation of the heroes had been struck a fatal blow, the belief of humanity in the honesty and justice system of the Superstate had been shattered.

No matter if the news stations would denounce this broadcast as fake or computer generated, no matter if newspapers screamed that it was a lie. The seeds of doom, of doubt, had been planted in the fertile soil of human minds tilled with the most basic hypnotic suggestion and nothing would ever be the same again.

The Doomsday Emergency Broadcast had come straight from Titanomachy, from the SCA. The station had signed its own admission of guilt. They would have to declare that the entire station was somehow hijacked, hacked by a villain, or admit that what Alexa had shown the world was true or deny everything and lose all trust.

"Holy shit. She really did it. She embarrassed every hero in the world," Martin muttered.

[Checkmate,] Cottie thought, her emerald-silver eyes wide. [There's no way out of this for the heroes!]

Martin looked at the de-aged, changed, pale face of Ember, her eyes full of tears, her mind full of fear, horror and regret.

While he hated her for what her digital ghost did to Alexa, he also knew that she would never become Resonance now. The final nail had been struck into the coffin of the future Admiral and Resonance had done it all by herself via one of her digital copies.

A final scene flashed into being. It was Alexa running away from a strange super made of lasers. Her silver hair was flying in the wind and part of her skull was missing. Eye lasers burned the world all around her, cutting apart number eight Primrose Drive.

"If I am dead, know this," the voice of Alexa said from the screens. "Division Three will hunt me down in an attempt to silence, to kill me, in order to hide the truth about the SCA and their misdeeds. All of the precogs are being fed lies by the true owners of our planet to hide what is really coming. Prepare yourself. The war for the future of our world begins in earnest and I am and have always been on the side of humanity, trying to save our little, blue Earth."