#120
When the villains caught wind of a new hero on the team, they’d all taken interest. When someone came back claiming he’s blind, it’d sparked a whole new debate.
Straightforward, they’d all said. He won’t even see us coming. They’d laughed at how easy it’d seemed.
The villain feels like they’ve stumbled on a pile of gold when they come across the hero. He’s running his hand along something on the fence in front of him, something that the villain will later realise is a braille description of the view ahead of him. A white cape drifts around his ankles, an equally white suit flattering against his typical heroic body, the lightest of smiles on his face as his fingers trace the patterns of dots along the railing.
The villain can’t help but grin as they slowly make their way towards the poor hero, so oblivious, so stupid. They’re barely a hair breadth away, their dagger practically unsheathing itself, when the hero spins towards them with a swish of his cape and a flick of a blade.
The villain barely reels back in time. Staying quiet doesn’t occur to them when they’re startled. The hero looks like he’s staring right through them, an arrogant smirk on his face.
“Ah,” he says brightly, “you’re one of those criminals I’m meant to be looking out for?”
The villain sidesteps, careful to keep their footing quiet, but it doesn’t matter. The hero’s head cocks towards them as they try to step out of his blade’s path.
“You’re almost silent,” the hero continues. A smirk adorns his face, intrigued. “Incredible.”
The villain is close enough to strike, the hero looking slightly too far beyond them to be right in his assumptions. The villain shifts in fast, their dagger poised. The hero dodges back and retaliates with a swing of his own.
The villain stumbles out of reach and the hero follows. The villain’s unprepared; they were expecting a hero who’s unsure who they’re looking for, where the villain is. They were expecting an easy plaything that they could stab when they got bored.
But this—the hero is nothing but brazen confidence.
The villain shoves their dagger up to meet his blade, throwing his arm out. They move in for another strike but the hero’s already recovered. His blade easily tucks under their arm and slices into their side.
Something of a strangled gasp escapes the villain before they can stop it. They stagger back, a hand touched timidly to the wound, their eyes flitting back up to the hero. He simply waits, his blade crimson and his eyes blank. How? How?
“Would you do me the honour of telling me who I’ve met?” he asks, as if this is nothing more than a casual meeting between friends of friends. The villain wants to snap him in half for the audacity.
“That’s none of your fuckin’ business.”
“Aha,” the hero says, almost a laugh, “You’re [Villain].”
The villain can only stare at him in horror. The hero seems to feel the tension in the silence, because he continues. “You’ve a bad mouth, favour in the blade, light on your feet.” A teasing smile. “And you’ve a smooth, caramel voice I haven’t heard in many like you.”
“Wh— Excuse me— You—”
The hero just smirks, the stupid smirk of someone who knows he’s untouchable in every sense of the word. “Flustered by compliments, too,” the hero finishes with a laugh. “Good to remember for next time.”
“I’m not flustered!” the villain finally manages, “and my voice isn’t caramel. That isn’t a thing. You sound stupid.”
“I’m happy to be stupid if it means I can recognise you as the villain who speaks in caramel.”
The villain’s side is beginning to really ache. They need to be somewhere that’s not here when it inevitably gets worse. “Do what you want. I’m going home.”
“May I escort you to a prison cell?”
The villain barks a laugh, their side practically splitting with the forced fakeness of it. “As if you know where the agency is from here.”
“I always know where I am, [Villain].” A smile again, softer this time. Knowing. “You underestimate me for a characteristic I think makes me as interesting to you as you are to me.”
The burn in the villain’s skin is an ode to that. “Sure.” The villain turns on their heel before a thought occurs to them. “I’m going to walk away, loudly. Do me a favour and don’t fucking shank me when I do.”
The hero’s face twists back into a smirk. “As long as I hear you moving away. Until next time, [Villain].”
A blind hero! everyone had cried. It’s almost too easy!
The villain scurries away with a gash to the side and a slam to their ego, and they know now to know better than that.
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