"Oh, God… I feel like I'm dying…" Seriously. I think I might actually die. "Ughhh… Ugh." The moment I finally reached the bed, I collapsed onto it and was out like a light. "Ouch…" Save the villain, indeed. "Oh, man." I finally opened my eyes the next morning. After sleeping for nearly half a day, I woke up with a body that ached all over and flicked on the TV. The news was, unsurprisingly, all about yesterday’s incident. [Newswide – A Deep Analysis of the Villain Egostic.] Two panelists were on screen, dissecting every aspect of me. They discussed my superpowers, my hacking skills… Then, my face suddenly filled the screen. Black hair, with a gray mask covering the lower half of my face. "Wow! Mom, I'm on TV! Oh, right. She doesn't exist in this world." I wonder how you're doing over there, Mom. I've become a celebrity in this world. A celebrity that everyone is trying to catch. "Oh, my god. I'm completely worn out." I pushed myself out of bed, punching at my sore back. I didn't have time to just lie around. I was still in the same clothes from yesterday: a long, black robe that fell to my shins. It was a wrinkled mess from being slept in, and the sight of it annoyed me. "Right, let's get changed." After switching into something more comfortable, I turned on my laptop. It whirred to life, playing the familiar startup chime. While it was booting, I glanced around my room. It was a small studio apartment, with weak sunlight filtering through the window. "Jeez. I need to get out of here soon, too." I’d been stuck in this room ever since I was dropped into this world. But now that I’d earned some money, there was no reason to stay. An A-class villain should live a life with a little more style. Actually, scratch that. I think I’m more of an AAA-class villain. Why haven't they promoted me to S-class yet? Well, I suppose I haven't done much that was genuinely evil. Speaking of which, I wonder what the public reaction has been. I sat down at the now-on laptop, opened a web browser, and… "Well, let's see… Oh, it's a madhouse." My name was plastered across every major news portal’s headline. [Live Broadcast of Mass Terrorism. Who is Egostic?] "This is the most attention I've ever gotten." As expected, making a massive scene was the right call. If I’d just quietly hijacked some ships in a corner of the Argent River, who would have even noticed? The Hero Association of Astoria would have probably tried to handle it quietly. At most, it would have been a brief mention on the nine o'clock news… [At 2 P.M. today, an act of mass terrorism was narrowly averted on the Argent River cruise ships. Fortunately, there were no casualties.] It would have been a blip, over and done with. They wouldn't be sitting here talking about me around the clock like this. The sheer reality of it is terrifying. Imagine it: you're playing Nintendo with your friends, and suddenly the TV broadcast cuts out. Then I appear. Black clothes, gray mask, and a wicked smile. And I announce I’ve put bombs on ships, but the first person to press their button gets to live? I shuddered watching that scenario play out in the original story, but how much more intense must it have been for the people of Astoria, watching it happen for real? Honestly, it was a huge entertainment spectacle. I should have sold some product placement. Put a Coke poster up on the cabin wall or something. Lost in my own silly thoughts, I started scrolling through the online comments. He’s scary, he’s amazing… and so on. The public was certainly paying attention to the new A-class villain. And why wouldn't they? The impact of a live-broadcasted hijacking and the deaths of two other villains was huge, even I had to admit. I also had to give humanity some credit. In the end, no one pressed the button. Justice prevails, blah, blah, blah. The incident was being spun as proof that human beings aren't selfish, that they're fundamentally good. After a few hours of scrolling to get the general atmosphere, I decided to take stock of what I'd gained from the whole spectacle. First, I'd made my name known across the entire country. Egostic. Honestly, it's not the best name. Considering my black robe, I probably should have gone with something like "Black Robe" or "Persona." Well… too late now. No use crying over spilt milk. Though, I started to regret it again when I saw a comment telling people to catch 'Ego-Static.' Ugh… Anyway, the second gain: promoting Starlight to the nation. Starlight had also become incredibly popular. She was the second most-featured face on the nine o'clock news. In the original work, Starlight was always fairly popular with the public. For one, she's beautiful. Not many heroes have that kind of looks. But as the story progressed, Starlight's public image soured. Her initial fame was based on her beauty, but later on, the villains became more creative. Through various schemes, they succeeded in painting her as incompetent. On top of that, her civilian life as Stella Clark was a train wreck that only led to more destruction down the line. Ha. Just thinking about it makes me angry again. I’m going to get rid of all those trash-tier villains myself. Then our Starlight will only have to think about me. A Sterling City without crime, a Republic of Astoria without terrorism. I'll do it all. I’ll be the only one committing crimes and acts of terror. So, for my first act, I successfully promoted the real Starlight to the public. Not for her appearance, but for her commitment to justice. I established her as a truly 'heroic' character in the public consciousness. …I did establish that, right? Well, browsing the comments and forums, the reactions were overwhelmingly positive. Her speech went over well, and I'm certain my own praise helped. An enemy's praise is the most objective endorsement, at least in the public's eye. "For now, the first step went perfectly." I pushed myself up from my seat. No time to rest. No time to rest. It was time to start the next plan. Now, I was going to assassinate… no, eliminate. Eliminate another A-class or S-class villain… and plan another terrorist attack. A non-lethal one, of course. Nothing is ever easy. "First, I have to go see that person again." Who was I meeting? The one who helped me hijack the broadcast signals. In the original work, she became an S-class villain. But I’d already changed her future, steering her away from the villainous path she was meant to walk. I pulled out my phone and made a call. "Hey, Carter. Yeah, it's me, I just woke up. Oh, you know how it is. I told you it would be draining! Okay, okay. Uh-huh, I'll be there soon. Okay." I hung up, grabbed my coat, and headed out. I could have just teleported, but as you've seen, my abilities are limited. A trip of any real distance and I'd collapse from exhaustion. So, walking it was. The weather was nice today. Rain whispered against the windows, a gentle patter in the quiet air. I walked for a while, an umbrella held over my head against the light drizzle. After about an hour, I reached a quiet residential area and stopped in front of a very normal-looking house. A digital lock was mounted on the door. I keyed in a 4-digit passcode. Inside, there was another door. With another digital lock. A double lock? I thought, just as the second passcode worked and revealed a perfectly ordinary-looking home inside. But this door lock held a secret. You might think the secret was in the passcodes I'd just entered, but it wasn't. The real one was a sequence. A very long, 13-digit sequence. I only knew it because I was a fan of the original work. I'd never have been able to memorize it on my first try. I finished pressing the numbers, and a low vibration hummed from within the walls. At the same time, the floor beneath my feet slowly began to descend, enclosing me. Down, down I went… into what felt like an abyss. An elevator, I guess? A 'foot-lift,' perhaps. Down, down… The thing is… Hmm, come to think of it, I could have just teleported from the ground floor to the basement. Oh well. Better to conserve my energy. After a short descent, the lift stopped. I stepped out into a space with neat, gray-walled interiors. As I walked forward, LED strips on the walls lit up around me, like a scene from a sci-fi movie. Deeper inside, the hallway opened into a large room. Countless displays were mounted on one wall, making it look like a NASA control center, the kind of place where someone would murmur 'Houston, we have a problem.' A child was sitting in a massive leather chair, dwarfed by its size, bathed in the glow of the monitors. This was the one who had helped me hijack the broadcast. In the latter half of the original story, she appeared as an S-class villain. "Hey, I'm here." "You're here, 'bro'?" This was Hannah Carter, the genius hacker. I walked over to the chair where Carter was sitting and ruffled her hair. "Why do you keep calling me 'bro'…? Anyway, what were you up to?" "What else? Fixing this." Carter frowned and shook her head as I patted her white hair. She was short and pretty, undeniably a girl. Yet she insisted she was a boy. Having read the original, I knew the truth, which just made her insistence cute. I wondered if she had some trauma related to being a girl. I didn't think so, but then why… It was a little weird, hearing a girl who was only in her third year of middle school call me 'bro.' Though she certainly didn't look her age. "You did a great job with the broadcast hijack yesterday, Carter. My face is all over the country now." "Tch. Anyone could have done something that easy." She spoke bluntly, but I saw the corners of her lips twitch up in a smile at the compliment. "And bro. That's not the problem. Something just happened." "What? What's wrong?" There shouldn't be any problems. "Here, look at this." Carter pulled up a video on one of the displays. As I watched, my expression stiffened. "What the hell is this?" [Egostic's followers are carrying out a bomb attack in the center of Port Isaac. They claim they will detonate more bombs…] Who the hell were these people? And why were they using my name?

Chapter 5: The Villain's Morning After