by I'm Not Mister Mxypltk
My name is John Smith.
Oddly enough, that is my real name and not some alias. Some years ago, I was as dull as my name is. I used to be a little man, not in size, but in spirit. I used to work in an office doing routine activities, like any other modern-age slave.
I used to walk home every day fearing the people in the street would hurt me. I used to avoid dark alleys and cross to the other side of the street whenever shadowy figures came in front of me.
All that changed about six years ago. I didn't know it, but people all over the world were suddenly finding themselves able to do things out of the ordinary. Months later, the term metahuman would be used to describe them. But back then, nobody knew what was going on. They were just confused people, and I was one of them.
One day, walking home, I was assaulted by an armed man. When he found out I wasn't carrying much money, he took his knife, pulled me closer to him and started getting the knife closer to my face. I was sure that would be my end. The natural fear inside me was magnified a thousand times that moment.
But then something unexpected happened. Just before the knife reached my skin, he opened his hand, letting the knife fall to the ground. I looked at his eyes and noticed that the look on him had changed. I didn't see any more fury or hate. He simply turned back and ran away.
I attributed this to luck. I thanked God for saving my life. I didn't know God had nothing to do with this.
The next day I realized I felt more confident than ever. It took me a while to figure out what had really happened. I formed a crazy theory in my mind: maybe the night before the man didn't kill me because I somehow took his confidence away from him and stored it inside me.
Thanks to my new confidence, I decided to do something risky to try this theory. I went to all the places I avoided before and made myself an easy target for criminals. When one tried to assault me, I was shocked when the same thing as before happened: he ran away from me like a little, scared kitten.
I did the same thing several times that night. I went from criminal to criminal and transformed all of them into scared children. I also felt my confidence growing every time I did this.
I decided this was a gift from God. I felt it was my duty to use this gift to help people, protect the innocent.
What a fool I was.
I did precisely that for over a year. I looked for evil and neutralized it, making myself better as I did that.
But then came the torture. I realized that all that evil didn't simply go away. It was stored inside me, and I was starting to feel the effects. I started feeling incredibly guilty for no reason at all. Sometimes I even considered killing myself, but I didn't, because I had a mission, and the mission was more important than me.
Then I reached my limit. Absorbing evil became incredibly painful, and the unexplainable guilt grew ever day. Yes, I felt stronger every time I did it, but that strength was nothing compared to the agony of letting more evil inside my soul. I decided to give it a rest. I told myself I would never do it again.
But I did. One night, I saw a man attacking a helpless woman. I was the only one around. I had to help her. The mission was more important than me.
And did it. I absorbed evil. And, that night, the evil spoke to me.
When I first heard its voice, felt its presence, I must admit it scared me. But, at the same time, and though I didn't want to admit it, it also seduced me.
When the initial shock had passed, I listened to what it had to say. It told me that in the past only a few mortals had ever had the honor of being in its presence. Those other mortals had formed cults and religions based on what they learned from the Evil, giving it many names. However, none of them had the resources to do anything significant with that knowledge. I did.
The Evil offered me power in exchange for my services. The feeling I got after using my power was only a taste of what the Evil had to offer. At first I told myself I had to resist the temptation, be strong, don't let it break my will.
But then I realized I had nothing to resist. This was my destiny. Fighting myself made no sense.
I accepted the offer, and so I was instructed on evil... by Evil itself. That night, in mere hours, I learned more than I had ever learned in whole life. And so my mission started.
Since then, I have been travelling around the world, gathering evil, transforming it into power for myself, power I would use to bring a new order to this Earth. The reign of Evil. My reign.
As powerful I began to be, I still had my limits. I couldn't hope to store all the evil of the world inside only me. My body is still human, and very fragile because of that.
This situation forced me to look for allies. After all the time I spent in the company of evil, I became sensitive to it. I could detect its presence continents away, and, if I concentrated hard enough, I could even absorb evil from distance.
One day I felt a strong presence, a very simple mind focused on one thing only: hate. Almost pure evil. This made him a perfect ally for my plan. When I found him, I learned he was a being from another dimension called K'tl. I offered him revenge over the enemies that had recently defeated him, and he was mine. From that same moment, I started storing evil inside him, without him knowing.
Then I looked for another ally. The desire for revenge of another man in the same country called me. When I met this man, Dr. Knell is his name, I became aware of a curious fact: one of the people he wanted revenge over was related to K'tl's hated one. In fact, K'tl's M'xy and Knell's Eurostar were part of a newly formed group of metahumans.
I decided to keep an eye on that group, just in case. Apparently, their line of work made them a lot of enemies, enemies thirsty for revenge. And so they supplied me with four more allies to store evil into. These Revolutionaries or MBL also gave my little group something in common, something they all hated, making it easier for me to keep them together.
My only foolish decision so far has been giving them the opportunity to get their revenge. I allowed the evil stored inside them become power, making them better in case the MBL was more powerful than it seemed.
And, even with that advantage, they couldn't use this opportunity. They are allowing themselves to be defeated by their enemies. If they die, they will cost me a precious amount of time and energy. All the evil stored inside them would dissipate.
This is why I had to take a bold decision. I left them under the impression I was gathering more evil from the world, when in fact what I'm doing is taking back what I stored inside them.
Maybe they will die. Maybe the spell Aurochs created to keep the MBL distracted will start failing when the mage is weakened, freeing the heroes. I don't know.
The important thing is that right now I'm doing what I didn't dare doing when I started looking for allies: store all the evil inside me.
Right now... I can feel my limits... breaking...
So... much... power...
The... pain... is...
Delicious.