Cottie's steel-reinforced arm pulled a metal door off along with its hinges, the metal groaning and warping. Having demolished the nondescript "Do not enter - maintenance floor" door she stepped inside, the others following her.

A shimmering shield was ahead, warping the view and blocking access to the next door, which looked a lot more opulent.

"Use Eva to disrupt that shield," Alexa advised. "Keep us within the field and then kick that door open."

Cottie did as she was told. The Equalizer railgun disabled the power of the shield and her steel-reinforced boot sent the wooden door flying inwards with a loud bang.

The group of four teens entered an apartment, stepping over piles of junk, bottles, food delivery boxes and various debris.

"You can turn off the nullification field," Alexa said. "We are inside now."

Cottie released the trigger.

"Where the hell are we? Looks like a dump," Ember muttered, looking at the mountains of junk-food littering the place.

"Behold, the residence of all powerful, great nonpareil!" Alexa sang, waving her blue nail gun through the air.

"Looks like a hoarder lives here," Martin commented. "This place is a huge mess."

"Yeah, somebody doesn't take care of their apartment," Alexa said, kicking a pizza box out of the way.

She marched through the numerous rooms one by one, peering into each one. The penthouse floor apartment was quite large.

A noise of falling boxes sounded from one of the rooms. The gang converged towards it, with Katherine forcefully shoving another door out of the way.

A pale, round, approximately thirty five year old man was blearily staring up at the four teens having been woken up from his nap on a fancy, albeit grime-covered leather couch.

Alexa simply grinned at him. It took a few moments the man's brown eyes to focus on the group.

"Wh-what? Who are you and how did you get through the time field?!" He demanded.

"Supervillain Cassiopeia Terror Nova at your service," Alexa declared with a bow. "These three are my minions - Mittens, Cottie and Dimmy! We got through your pathetic defenses thanks to Cottie - she's an Equalizer armed with the Song of the Void!"

The man on the couch blinked.

"By the way, thanks for putting up like a million contracts on darknet to murder me," Alexa grinned. "That was a mighty clever move, but you've used your real name and address and exposed the fact that you're completely powerless now. Naughty, naughty."

"Alexa... Terror Nova!" The fat man uttered, his eyes growing wide with shock. "How did you find me?!"

"I dunno," Alexa shrugged. "Just felt like this is where you were existing. I checked all of the lists and..."

"What list?" The chubby man blinked. "I shouldn't be on any God damned..."

"The list of people and places," Alexa waved him off. "This was a hole in the database, a place that shouldn't exist. A floor not on the list of New New York Citadel buildings. I have all of the Titanomachy's records, since I took over the station.Yeah, your name and address doesn't show up on lists... but it's still a hole in information, the deepest, darkest hole ever! Anyways, guys, meet Nonpareil. Nonpareil, meet my wonderful minions!"

"What? Come on, this fat slob can't be Nonpareil!" Ember snarled, staring at the obese individual in front of them.

"Au contraire, my dearest Dimmy, this is definitely Nonpareil," Alexa said.

She marched over to the pale man, demolishing a tower of garbage along the way and pressed her nail gun into his temple. "Confess to your secret identity or I'll nail you through the head!"

"W-what? You can't kill me!" The man hissed.

Upon closer inspection, there were questionable stains all over his stretched, grimy shirt and pants.

"How are you so sure of that? Do you want to test this theory out?" Alexa grinned. "I killed your shiny paperclip alter-ego. Pretty sure I could deliver a lot of pain into your fat ass too while I'm at it. Tell my unbeliever minion who you really are or I'll press the trigger!"

The man on the couch gulped. He was already very sweaty so it was hard to tell if he was sweating more or less in this instance.

"I'm... Nonpareil," he uttered.

"No," Ember choked.

"Louder!" Alexa prodded him with the nail gun. "Dimmy doesn't believe you!"

"I'M NONPAREIL!" Nonpareil barked.

"See?" Alexa declared. "He confesses!"

Ember's mouth fell open. Martin and Cottie looked just as stunned and confused.

Alexa sat on the couch poking Nonpareil with her nail gun in his side.

"Start from the beginning, mon ami," she said. "I want to know the truth."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"What truth?" Nonpareil eyed the teenage supervillain.

"The absolute truth about everything," Alexa said. "Where you came from and who you are. I want you to tell everyone why everything here is fake and weird. Why this floor of this particular building exists and also doesn't exist."

"You... know about the floor?" The chubby man choked.

"Obviously I know," Alexa said. "But my audience doesn't. Go on."

"NPCs aren't supposed to..."

"Do I look like a God-damn NPC to you?!" Alexa barked, prodding the man's side with the nailgun. She moved it off to the side, pressed the trigger and nailed a pizza box to the wall with a Thanggg sound.

"Nngrrh," Nonpareil stammered out, staring at the punctured box.

"Lets try an easier question - What am I?" the girl demanded.

"You... you're a bloody supervillain... is what you are!" Nonpareil choked. "You broke something."

"Something?" Alexa's expression became cold, her mind suddenly vanishing from Martin's spidernet. "Do tell my audience what exactly I broke. I don't have a whole lot of patience or time for you to be flapping about, Nonpareil... I have to save the world and I'm really inclined to send a few nails through your fat stomach if you fail to answer my questions."

Nonpareil gulped.

"I broke you," Alexa said. "You have no powers anymore."

"Fffff.... Yes, damn it! I can't get out of the Game, can't wake up! What have you done?!" the man wailed.

"I'll keep making things worse for you, unless you tell everyone everything," Alexa offered, her expression suddenly cheerful. "Get it off your chest bud, you know you want to. You can't fester in this apartment forever. There are people who love you. Even if you're a fat blob, I'm sure that they would welcome you with open arms, protect you from the likes of me. Think about that."

"What people?" Nonpareil asked.

"Chalice!" Alexa declared.

"Chalice?" Nonpareil blinked.

"She's a REALLY hot, curvaceous girl under all that shiny armor," Alexa revealed, sounding like a popup advert that was marketing singles in Nonpareil's area. "You should ask her to help clean up your pizza boxes and beer bottles at the very least. Tell her that you're depressed about not having your super powers. She'll understand! A hero's downfall arc is a common trope in fiction. Everyone expects it, since I defeated you and everything."

"I..." Nonpareil exhaled.

It looked like he was about to cry.

"Chalice can make you an armor set just like hers, maybe... even better!" Alexa said. "Don't you want to fly again and be a hero? What your end goal here? To drown in garbage? How did you get so much junk in here anyway? How long have you been sulking in here?"

"Five years," Nonpareil whimpered.

"Five years?!" Alexa barked a laugh. "What?! I blew you up just this morning!"

"T-temporal field," Nonpareil sputtered. "This entire floor exists in accelerated time. I... I was terrified that someone would destroy the world while I was stuck like this, so I accelerated time within the apartment. I had to occasionally slow it down to order a year's worth of food deliveries though."

"You can accelerate time?" Martin asked.

"N-no," Nonpareil shook his head. "But this apartment can. While I'm in here, time on the outside is barely moving. I thought that I could just wait it out until... the Game fixed itself, but it didn't! I can't exit! I've been trying everything!"

"Have you tried going outside?" Alexa asked.

"N-no," Nonpareil shook his head. "How can I? What if... I get hurt?! This isn't my proper avatar... its how I look in real life. I cut myself shaving five years ago and the cut didn't heal instantly! It was awful!"

"You're this fat in real life?" Alexa tilted her silver mane, examining the rotund man with sharp blue eyes.

"No," Nonpareil said, looking down at his gut. "I've been eating a lot of junk food and watching old holo-shows... got out of shape. I can't log out..."

"Sounds like you do need help," Alexa said. "Chalice can help you. I can help you, if you work with me, tell me the truth."

The fat man looked at the mountains of junk around him and sighed.

"Fine," he said. "Fine. You want to know the truth? Here's the truth - nothing here is real."

"What?" Ember sputtered.

"This entire world was made for me," Nonpareil said. "My real name is Bob Proverra. I'm a citizen of Eureka."

"What?" Martin blinked.

"You are all NPCs," Nonpareil added. "In a game, created by a GLM AI system. Designed to keep me entertained."

Katherine said nothing, her armored hand gripping her railgun, ready to press the trigger.

Nonpareil, or Bob Proverra, continued to unspool his truth, his voice low.

"It's 2099," he said. "I'm paying for everything here to exist. This is a subscription-based game made by the Good Directorate Inc... a game that I enjoy whenever I go to sleep in the real world."

Martin felt how Alexa's mind vanished from the spidernet once again.

"An error of some sort happened when I tried to kill the man who called himself Agent Three with my eye-lasers," Nonpareil muttered. "I can't wake up. I'm stuck here in my real body, in this damn apartment. My superhero avatar won't load anymore!"

"That... that's not true!" Ember shook her head. "That can't be!"

"This entire reality is tailored to my liking based on my description of the game that I wanted to play while sleeping," Nonpareil's gaze was distant, his mind clearly adrift in memories of a place far removed from the squalor of his present surroundings.

The once-vibrant spark in Alexa's eyes was now replaced by a quiet intensity. Her gaze remained focused on Nonpareil, her nailgun still pressed against his side.

"And you, Terrornova?" Nonpareil said, turning his gaze on her. "You think you're in control here, but you're not. You think you've won? You're a part of the game, just like the rest of everyone here. You're just... more aware... somehow. You're... just a clever, little error that shouldn't exist!"

Ember choked. Was everything she knew, everything she'd fought for, just a fabrication? Was she just a puppet in some grand, cosmic game? What the hell?! Why did waste her entire life on her mission of taking over Titanomachy just to...

"I don't believe you," Ember hissed, breaking the silence. Her voice was shaky, laced with rising panic. "You're lying!"

"We're not NPCs!" Martin added. "We're..."

"Human," Katherine finished.

Nonpareil just shook his head, a sad, knowing smile on his bloated face. "You're not. You're all just...characters made for me! None of you are real. You cannot help me!"

"Come on... how can we possibly be freaking characters?" Ember growled. "This is bullshit. I am sapient!"

"Obviously you're sapient! This entire simulated Earth is rendered as realistic as possible down to the subatomic particles," Bob uttered. "Real life doesn't have any heroes. It's quite boring out there, really."

The room fell silent. The weight of Nonpareil's words, a harsh reality pressing down on the trio of Alexa's minions. There was horror in Ember's eyes, confusion in Martin's and intense dislike in Katherine's.

"I'm supposed to be an unstoppable hero, but something broke in the game's system," Bob repeated. "Look, if I don't wake up soon... if I can't go to work, I'll get fired and I won't be able to pay the subscription for the game! The game will get shut down and all of you will cease to exist!"

Alexa looked around the room, at the piles of junk, the peeling wallpaper, the man who claimed to be their creator.

"Nah," she said with a dangerous grin, tapping the nailgun on her lips. "I'm not an NPC. In fact, I'm your worst nightmare and your new best friend. I'm going to take you somewhere where no Client has gone before."

"W-what?" Nonpareil looked at the clearly insane girl on his right.

"We're going to go on an adventure, Bob!" Alexa smiled widely.

"An... adventure?" The fat man asked with a concerned look.

"To a truly magical place where no mundane roads lead," Alexa nodded. "But first... I'd like you to slow time down in this apartment to match the rest of the universe and make a few calls! You've got an SCA laptop in here, right?"