They call you by many names, some more melodramatic than others. None accurate or kind.
Every death is personal. Every end well-documented and attested to. Impeccable witnesses, unimpeachable evidence.
You’ve been tried in absentia so many times they carved your casefile number on the wooden seat back in the dock. It was impossible to catch you, impossible to stop you.
Granthar, mowed down while he accepted a medal for saving yet ANOTHER orphanage. No one asked him what nightmares he faced from all the kids he hadn’t been able to save. You hope he finds the peace he begged you for when you resettled him on that remote steppe after the furor died down.
Priat, killed along with her mortal enemy Donal while they were locked in another fight in their seemingly unending war. You went to their wedding two months later, pleasantly surprised to see them both enjoying retirement now that no one but themselves expected anything from them.
They said you had no morals. They said you would kill indiscriminately. In a way, perhaps, that was true. Heroes, villains, antiheroes, you would end them all. You had a few lines, though.
No collateral damage. No children left behind. Any family that relied on you taken care of. No one underage without a vetted guardian.
Venerable Mrs. Turner in Alliance, Nebraska had a Roth IRA with a guaranteed minimum lifetime withdrawal benefit that would keep her in style till the end of her days when you were done with her baby boy. And so The Machine exploded while picking up Starbucks for the League of Heroes, before he then retired to a monastery in Nepal.
Inevitable. Obituaris. Murderer.
One journalist had gotten to the truth, connected dots you didn’t think were visible. You’d had a choice; kill or risk the entire operation.
In the end, they asked you to help them as well. Once they saw the entire pattern, they couldn’t betray those who you’d helped before then. They’re raising sheep or something on a Shetland island now, writing books under their new name that sell mildly well. They’re happy, and that’s what mattered.
Their newspaper ran a black banner when you killed them, and has been dogging your trail ever since. One of their own, after all. You don’t grudge them their hate, someone has to stand guard at the door.
No powers, no abilities. Just money, a lot of it. Everyone you helped contributed to the cause, and some of them were very well-off indeed. Buying new lives took money, and good organizational skills. You’d already had the latter, and the former had come easily enough when Dr. Deathwish had been killed, leaving you alone, of all his minions and henchpersons, alive. Bad luck being stuck in traffic just then, you’d thought at the time, but maybe everything happens for a reason.
But people forget that heroes and villains are, underneath the spandex, masks, and makeup, just people. And people get tired.
The sort of tired a red bull and a day at the gym can’t fix. The sort even a month in bed can’t cure. A bone-deep weariness of the soul that no amount of public praise or civic medals can salve. Sometimes they just need to stop, and can’t or won’t explain themselves to the public or their employers.
You’ve always believed no one is owed your labor, so why should heroes and villains be any different? Not everyone will let them go, and that’s where you come in.
You’d started out Nameless Minion #467 in a generic evil lair, and now you were Death Incarnate for anyone who needed your specific brand of help. It was almost admirable, a self-made villain.
Really, you’re still a henchperson. Just helping everyone that needs it, not beholden to one villain or hero. Someone needs to be there for them to kill their pasts so their futures can live.
You stand at the doorway, evil murderer to those looking in, and kindly guardian to those passing through.
A guardian of change. Protector of new identities. That’s why your victims call you what they do, part humor based on the modern misunderstanding of the name, part description.
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