2 Weeks Later

  As night started to fall over Poppytown, Ethan was flying on a cloud towards a secluded corner in the industrial district. It was a good distance away from his factory base, so if things went south, Ethan could head straight back so long as he wasn’t being followed.

  Ethan landed on top of an ordinary-looking warehouse. Unlike the one that vampire lady lived in, this storehouse was clearly in use. Ethan peered through the skylight and saw the depot full of scaffolding, big brown boxes, and workers industriously moving around the place. To the outside observer, there was nothing out of the ordinary with this warehouse, and Ethan dearly hoped that was the case.

  Turning into a bug, Ethan crawled through the cracks in the roof and made his way down to the interior’s ground level. Once he found a set of boxes that obscured him from the workers, Ethan returned to his normal form. He discreetly checked to make sure the cost was clear before shrinking his staff to the size of a pin and jamming it under one of the crates' lids. Then Ethan slowly forced his stick to growand pry off the top.

  Eventually, the roof of the box dislodged with a loud and crackly pop. Ethan jumped slightly before checking to see if anyone was coming to investigate. Luckily, the background noise was loud enough to cover Ethan’s break-in, and none of the workers paid his hiding spot any mind.

  Ethan carefully lifted the lid to peer inside. The villain wanted to open the top only as much as was needed to see the cargo, but the light wasn’t good enough that a simple crack was good enough to reveal the contents. It made Ethan nervous, but he had no choice but to fully open the lid. If someone looked his way, they’d see an open box and come to close it, but it was a risk Ethan had to take; he needed to know what he was working with.

  At first, Ethan thought he was looking at some kind of vase. The cylindrical and slightly curvy object looked like it was made of a light grey ceramic with blue highlights. Then Ethan noticed the very long neck of the urn that was nearly a yard in length. And finally, Ethan saw at the tail end of the item, not a round base like most pots had, but instead the bottom looked like it had been molded to resemble the handle of a shovel, with a motorcycle handlebar being jammed on one side.

  Ethan still didn’t know what he was looking at, but like all Americans, he knew a gun when he saw one. That was bad enough, but this thing was clearly made by the Gifted. All manufacturers that operated in Poppytown had to produce only simple and well-known designs to keep their small-minded clients at ease. If anything looked even remotely out of the ordinary, Avers would review bombed to bankruptcy.

  The finer details of why these strange weapons were being housed in this warehouse were irrelevant as far as Ethan was concerned. The villain was more preoccupied with how this revelation affected his plans.

  Ethan wanted to burn this warehouse to the ground and get the company that owned it to publicly denounce him. Exalted Industries, the company in question, was relatively popular, so they’d have the clout to go after him.

  Then he’d counter by saying that Exalted Industries deserved it due to their past misdeeds. What misdeed warranted leveling a storehouse? Ethan didn’t know yet, but given the leeway corporations still have in the states, they’re guaranteed to have done something immoral. Even if he couldn’t find anything, all Ethan had to do was keep his rebuttal vague and the people listening would fill in the blanks themselves.

  Ethan wanted to frame this attack as an act of vengeance, but let the corporation get the first word in. That would dilute any support Ethan gains from issuing a justification, as people are more likely to trust the first accusation they hear. But if it gets out that the warehouse is holding Gifted weaponry, the public would be more inclined to hate Exalted undustries, and that would throw a wrench into Ethan’s plans.

  Luckily, the night was still salvageable; he just had to make sure all the evidence was destroyed. The real question was how would Ethan do-.

  “Hey!” someone shouted. Ethan snapped his head up to see a man standing on a second-floor balcony and pointing straight at him. “Intruder!”

  “So much for being hidden,” Ethan muttered as he slammed the lid closed. He jumped out of his hiding spot, staff in hand, and readied himself for a fight.

  “What’s going on?” one of the workmen asked as he and his colleagues turned to Ethan.

  “Holy shit! Are we being attacked by a villain?!” Ethan perked up a bit as he watched the crowd of toilers slowly morph into a scared and hostile mob. But his good mood didn’t last as the peons kept talking.

  “No, that’s that vigilante guy that’s been showing lately,” a mouth-breather added helpfully. “Ethan, I think his name was. Ethan Sun.”

  “The fuck is he doing here?” Someone asked as he and his coworkers started to calm down. Ethan felt a stab of annoyance at their reaction but decided to focus on more important matters.

  While the villain was miffed that he got caught, he wasn’t discouraged. Being discovered could work in Ethan’s favor since he needed to drive the workers out anyway, and they would witness his rampage, which would help-.

  Something sturdy collided with Ethan’s body and sent him hurtling towards the floor. The sudden attack caught the boy off guard, as did the sheer force of the blow. Ethan felt powerful arms wrap around his body, pinning his limbs to his torso in a tight embrace.

  “Got him!” a gruff male voice exclaimed as he and the villain he grabbed hit the ground. The sudden attack and collision jarred the boy, but the moment Ethan could think clearly, he started struggling. The villain tried to break free of the hold that entrapped him, but the arms were as firm as steel bands welded to his body. Whoever Ethan’s attacker was, he was insanely strong.

  That left Ethan only one option for escape: shapeshifting. Ethan had managed to keep that ability hidden all this time and didn’t want to reveal it just to get out of a bind. Fortunately, he didn’t have to.

  Over the past few days, Ethan learned a few tricks regarding his powers.

  The boy stopped struggling and waited for his opponent to do the same. Once the man settled down, Ethan shapeshifted into a smaller version of himself. Not enough to be noticed, but enough to create a gap in the man’s iron hold.

  “What the-!” Ethan’s opponent exclaimed as the boy shot out from underneath him. Once freed, the villain whirled around to face his assailant. Ethan had a second to register that he was being attacked by a bald man in a suit before the aggressor was on his feet and charging towards the Wukong. The older man closed the distance with insane speed, and Ethan barely had enough time to raise his staff to defend himself.

  The suit let out a guttural snarl as he threw a punch at Ethan’s head. The villain raised his staff to block the strike, but the force of the blow made him stumble backward. The boy barely managed to keep to his feet. Ethan jumped back to put some distance between them, but it was barely a second after he landed that the goon was on him again.

  It was then, Ethan finally realized that the man was Gifted. He had to be. There wasn’t an Aver alive that could punch his staff without hurting themselves or move at such speeds. The revelation helped Ethan make sense of his opponent's abilities, but he was still at a disadvantage. The villain could barely keep up with the suit as he swung his fists at rapid speed. Ethan needed to get some breathing room, or he was in trouble.

  Ethan’s back hit something solid. A quick glance told him he ran into a stack of boxes. The villain had to move away but where? But, there was no time to think as the goon rushed forward and sent a fist towards Ethan’s head. Acting on instinct, the boy leaped up and tumbled over the tower of crates, letting the suit’s fist crash into them.

  Apparently, the guy also has some enhanced strength, as instead of breaking his hand against the sturdy wooden boxes, the man tore through the containers like they’re made of stirofoam. The blow also caused the stacked caskets to tumble over Ethan’s attacker. The man swore and tried to stop the cargo from collapsing, but it was of no use. The smashed container crumbled to splinters, causing an avalanche of wood and Gifted weaponry to fall over the suit.

  Ethan watched his opponent get buried in wooden debris from behind the fallen crates. He took the opportunity to catch his breath, but didn’t let his guard down. The villain gripped his staff and waited for the Gifted to crawl out of the rubble and jump back into the fight, but nothing happened. The large pile of wood chips and ceramic guns didn’t even wriggle. Whether he was dead or unconscious, the powerful suit was out of the fight.

  But before Ethan could enjoy his stroke of luck, one of the workers spoke up.

  “What the fuck is that?!” a brawny man in suspenders shouted. Ethan turned to face the screamer, and to his dismay, he saw a bug-eyed man pointing an accusatory finger at the scattered weapons on the floor. “Are those Freak Guns?!”

  “Motherfucker…” Ethan grumbled under his breath. Of course, the bigwigs didn’t tell the laborers what they were moving. It didn’t matter if these Gifted-made guns were here legally; the citizens of Poppytown would not want any “Freak Guns” near them. It didn’t matter what Ethan did now; the second those workers blew the whistle on the cargo, the Anti-Gifted would be singing Ethan’s praises, briefly forgetting he was the enemy.

  ‘Unless I silence the workers…’ Ethan mused. But before he could do anything with that thought, more suited men burst into the room. Ethan turned to face the new foes with his staff at the ready. He briefly noticed that they were all bald, just like the last guy, but he was more concerned about the ceramic guns they had in their hands.

  “Freeze!” one of them yelled as they raised their guns. Or were they more like blasters?

  “Hey!” another one yelled, his head snapping over to the laborers who were all frozen in place and either staring at the fighters or the fallen cargo. “What are you doing just standing around?! Get back to work!”

  Now that Ethan looked at the new goons, he saw that they all looked the same. It wasn’t just their dress and smooth heads; their faces looked almost identical, like they were all clones or something.

  “Why the hell are there Freak Guns in those boxes?!” one worker shouted, pointing at the fallen weaponry.

  “That’s none of your concern!” the guard snapped. “Now get back to work or you're fired!”

  “Screw you!” another crewman shouted. “I didn’t sign up to move around Freak Guns! I’m out!” The workman turned for the exit after throwing down his hard hat. Ethan glanced over to the hired help and watched in stunned horror as all of them left the warehouse in varying degrees of profane outrage.

  “By the Gods,” the guard who shouted at the jobbers grumbled. “This is such a mess.”

  “Yeah,” another suit agreed. This one never took his eyes off of Ethan and the villain watched as they narrowed into slits, making the bald man look like a snake ready to strike. “And it’s his fault! Let’s kill him!”

  Ethan didn’t wait for someone to agree before leaping behind another set of boxes. The goons opened fire a second too late, and strange balls of wispy blue light flew past Ethan and struck the far wall. They left strange marks behind after hitting the structure, and Ethan couldn’t decided whether the area was burning or corroding, but he didn’t have time to worry about that.

  “Seek and destroy!” one of the suits shouted. Three of the men started raining down the blue light blasts against Ethan’s hiding spot, while the other two started moving around the other boxes to try and flank the villain. They moved with military like precision as they swarmed the intruder with the full intention to kill him.

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  None of them realized that their target had already left the building.

  The blasterfire and angry shouts perfectly covered the angry muttering of a fly as it zipped out of the warehouse and flew into the night. In the back of Ethan’s mind, he was thankful for the thugs shooting at him, it forced the boy to focus on fleeing rather than act on his growing frustration. But that didn’t stop Ethan’s fury from growing, so he forced himself to look at things from a different perspectives.

  While this night was a bust, there wasn’t much Ethan lost other than an opportunity. So long as Ethan leaves the scene and lets Exalted Industries handle the AWOL workforce, then he shouldn’t have to worry about this failure coming back to bite-.

  Boom!

  “What the fuck!” Ethan shrieked as the sudden shockwave forced his fly-body to convulse mid-air. The boy was so shocked he almost reverted to his human form, but managed to hold onto his transformation.

  When Ethan got control of himself again, he turned around to investigate that abrupt explosion. Ethan saw a tower of smoke rising from behind him, specifically coming from the place Ethan had flown away from. With a feeling of dread, the villain flew back to the place of his potential crime and took in the new scene.

  Where the warehouse once stood, there was now a smoldering ruin that was only standing up thanks to some stroke of luck or a divine force mocking the owners. The doors, windows, most of the walls, and a good chunk of the ceiling had been blown off, leaving behind the charred frame of what was once a building.

  Ethan didn’t know what happened, and he honestly didn’t care. He just hoped that this wouldn’t be pinned on him.

  “Dammit, Sun!” exclaimed the familiar voice of one of the guards. “You’re going to pay for this!” And to make matters worse, this declaration was immediately followed by the hoots and hollers of a dozen recently unemployed neanderthals.

  “Yeah! Way to go, Ethan!”

  “Oh, screw you…” Ethan groaned as he flew away.

  Ethan ended that night the same way he’d spent the nights of the last two weeks. Lying face-first on his couch and lamenting his circumstances.

  “I hate all of these people,” Ethan muttered into the cushions. “Why can’t they see I’m a villain? Are they blind? Stupid?” Ethan sat up and glared at the dark emptiness above him, as if the entirety of Poppytown’s population hid within his ceiling. “Or maybe they know what I’m up to and are just spitting me.” Given the past month of his life, the idea that all of Poppytown was conspiring against him wasn’t as far-fetched as it sounded.

  Ethan closed his eyes and began breathing deeply as he suddenly had to suppress the urge to run outside and see how hard he had to swing his staff to crack someone’s head open. When he felt the rage subside, Ethan started one of his consoles and began browsing his video game library. Hopefully, playing games will take his mind off the infuriating losing streak he’s stuck in.

  Ethan spent the past fourteen days trying to correct his reputation, and it was just as successful as the stunt with the warehouse. Somehow, every attempt Ethan made to break the law or do something villainous backfired and made him seem more heroic.

  The last time Ethan tried to beat up someone, he somehow ended up in the hideout of a human trafficking ring, and ended up freeing all the victims when the slavers attacked him. Then there was that hat shop Ethan vandalized. Ethan knew the owner was a pompous dick to anyone he saw as abnormal, but he’d never have guessed the old man would kidnap the outcasts to hypnotise them into being normal. However, the peak of bullshit, in Ethan’s opinion, was the rally he crashed in the city center. Ethan had hoped his presence would cause a riot, how he instead ended up foiling an assassination plot against the mayor was anyone’s guess.

  ‘What is with this town?’ Ethan asked himself as he started up a racing game. Poppytown was supposed to be a normal sanctuary for Avers, yet Ethan kept finding crazy shit wherever he went!

  On the bright side, Ethan’s violence training had borne fruit. He no longer hesitated or felt guilty about hurting people. He guessed that, after what he did to Cotton, what point was there in feeling bad about putting someone in the hospital when he was fully capable of killing them?

  …

  They still haven’t found Cotton’s body. According to the news, he and his family are reported missing rather than dead and on the run. Whether the cops linked Ethan Sun to Cotton’s disappearance, they hadn’t tried to approach him yet. Not that the villain would let them if they tried.

  Ethan briefly wondered if he should confess to his crime, and let all of Poppytown know he was a cop killer. It would certainly give him the villainous reputation he was looking for. But Ethan decided against it, turning that dark deed into a spectacle for his own ends just felt… wrong.

  However, his lingering thoughts on Cotton had another use. It reminded Ethan of the original intent behind the home invasion. He wanted to attack Cotton to antagonize the local police, people with authority who could denounce Ethan as a criminal. Just because the original plan didn’t work out didn’t mean the idea behind it was a bad one.

  So, that’s what Ethan did. He went from targeting jerks to people who would loudly complain to everyone about him. Ethan was certain this new criteria would work, even though he’s had the same amount of luck as his last batch of victims.

  ‘Seriously,’ Ethan seethed as his thoughts went back to the gas station incident. ‘What was that Karen bitch thinking?! If I had recently murdered my husband and stuffed his body in the trunk of my car, I’d be getting out of town as fast as I could. I wouldn’t be wasting time yelling at the attendant over one of the pumps not working!’

  But despite the setbacks, Ethan kept at his new course of action. The villain believed that if he kept messing with people, he would eventually get the reaction he’s hoping for. Real Heroes had to deal with revenge plots all the time.

  That being said, Ethan didn’t want to wait years for his enemy list to build up before he can start getting his revenge. If the best he could hope for was a sudden landslide of backlash, the villain would have to go bigger to speed things up. But how? Ethan got his answer last week from an unexpected source.

  In between crimes, Ethan would spend time sprucing up his lair. That involved cleaning the place up, exploring any rooms he hadn’t already checked out, and seeing what the Cleaner had left behind for him to use. This included the computer he set up in his room.

  For whatever reason, the terrorist didn’t bother locking the device in any way. The Normalist must’ve thought that no one would have access to it other than him. But the Cleaner’s hubris was to Ethan’s benefit, as not only did the boy have easy access to the criminal’s PC, but it also had plenty of intel on the people and entities of Poppytown.

  Who knows what the Cleaner was planning to do with all the info he collected on the various companies stationed in Poppytown. Ethan couldn’t figure it out but he could use it to his advantage, especially since this info gave Ethan plenty of new targets. Corporations would be perfect for the villain’s needs. All they cared about was money and wouldn’t hesitate to attack Ethan if it served their bottom line.

  And even if they didn’t go after Ethan directly, they had the means to attack Ethan indirectly. They could hire people to conduct a smear campaign against him. Pressure politicians to stand against him. Or they can just spread nasty rumours about him online. They’d be the perfect people to go after, and Ethan knew exactly how to antagonize them.

  According to the Cleaner’s computer, a good number of corporations used the same bank in town. If Ethan went there and destroyed all the money he found, that would make him the archenemy of most, if not all, of corporate Poppytown. Even better, they’d have a legal avenue to do it. It’s illegal to destroy money, and the corporations would be well within their rights to demand his arrest.

  So if Ethan waltzes into the bank, uses a bunch of corporate cash to start a bonfire, then he’d have all the enemies he needs to be seen as a proper villain. It was a foolproof plan in the boy’s opinion, and he pulled it off with relative ease.

  So why weren’t the companies saying anything?!

  It’s been a few days since Ethan’s first heist, and he still hasn’t heard anything from the institutions he’s attacked. That should be more than enough time to at least release a statement condemning Ethan for his crime, yet they didn’t even do that much! Ethan couldn’t even find any rumours popping against him online!

  There’s no way in hell big business would just roll over and let someone attack their very lifeblood. Yet against all logic, that seems to be what they’re doing!

  ‘Maybe Exalted Industries will be different,’ Ethan mused, trying not to get his hopes up. ‘Those suits in the warehouse seemed to be high up in the food chain. With any luck, their bosses will have some of their temper.’

  Though Ethan’s mind tried to reassure him, his heart wasn’t convinced. If the corporations that had their assets destroyed by the Wukong were choosing to do nothing, then there was nothing to stop Exalted Industries from doing the same.

  Ethan let out a huff as he tossed aside the controller and turned off the TV. Video game therapy wasn’t doing him any good, so what was the point of continuing?

  He sat back down on the couch in time to hear his phone buzz. Pulling it out, all Ethan had to do was glance at the unknown number and a few mean words to know one of his classmates had sent him another ugly text.

  Things hadn’t gotten better at school. If anything, they were steadily getting worse. After his bout of defiance, Ebenezer’s classmates were on high alert for any blemish against, accidental or otherwise. With Ebenezer seemingly growing a backbone, his fellow students were working overtime to break it.

  Ever since Ebenezer started his “special detention,” he’d been getting bombarded by texts from the other kids. If they weren’t death threats, they were insults, calling him a worthless loser and a waste of space.

  Ebenezer was still stuck in detention while doing everyone’s homework. That had been both a blessing and a curse. While his civilian self was confined to a room and forced to do a bunch of assignments that weren’t his, his classmates weren’t allowed to bother him while working. Still, Ethan wouldn’t be surprised if one of them tried something anyway. Some of the more vitriolic texts made the villain suspect a couple of his schoolmates were going rabid.

  ‘Maybe I should make a move first,’ Ethan thought to himself as he put away his phone. ‘Maybe I should stop wasting time with this villain nonsense and just go after the bastards.’ It was a thought Ethan kept having as he spent more time working on being a villain over getting his retribution. What was the point of all this if he was never going to get around to giving those selfish jerks what they deserved?

  ‘Because they won’t realize they're being punished,’ he told himself. ‘If you’re not seen as an agent of vengeance, then your classmates won’t see that they're getting what they deserve.’

  That was the argument Ethan came up with to keep himself going, but lately, he had to wonder if it still held any weight after dealing with a certain cop. Even if Ethan attacked them now, what was to stop the kids from pulling a Cotton? He could certainly see a few of them refusing to admit they did anything wrong and doubling down for the hell of it.

  ‘So why shouldn’t I stop with the theatrics and just start hurting them?’ Ethan questioned himself. He closed his eyes and allowed his mind to think over the problem, which gave the boy a couple good answers.

  To start with, it wouldn’t make any sense for the “Hero” Ethan Sun to start attacking school children. It might get the ball rolling on his villainy, but it could also expose him. Why would Ethan Sun start harassing Ebenezer’s bullies if he wasn’t connected to him in some way? That was the practical reason, but there was an emotional one that held more importance to Ethan.

  There was a more vitriolic reason as to why Ethan wanted to be a villain and get revenge. The boy wanted his enemies to suffer. He wanted to hurt them the way they hurt him, and make them so scared of life they had to second-guess every step they took. Ethan couldn’t spread that kind of fear if he attacked them as a “Hero”, but as a villain? He could make his enemies feel all kinds of pain as a villain.

  The idea of Leonora walking through the halls, sweating bullets and glancing over her shoulder every few seconds, pleased Ethan’s bitter heart. He briefly fantasized about Pery walking around hunched over like a bully victim trying to seem small, or Gabriel moving out of town just to get away from him. That was what Ethan wanted to get out of all this, to get his turn to be the abuser of those who he hated.

  The daydreams brought a brief smile to Ethan’s lips, but it faded the second he returned to reality. While the fantasies reset his resolve, Ethan still had Poppytown’s collective misunderstanding to deal with.

  “How am I supposed to get these morons to see me the way I want to be seen?” Ethan asked aloud. “Should I just start killing-?”

  Crash!

  Ethan shot to his feet, mask donned and staff in hand. His head snapped in the direction the noise came from, and he sprinted over to investigate. There was a chance that it was just a bunch of precariously placed junk finally crashing down, but something in Ethan’s gut told him that wasn’t the case.

  When he jumped over a few disused pieces of machinery and rounded into a nook, his intuition was proved right. There, cowering in the corner, was a familiar-looking yellow-furred dog. Before Ethan could question how the thing got into his base or convince himself it was a different creature, the beast spoke.

  “P-Please don’t kill me,” the Werewolf-girl begged.