Post Apocalyptix

Can you do a story where a hero is sent on a mission to seduce a villain or something, but the organization who sent the hero really wants them to be destroyed by the villain instead? And the hero knows this but doesn't want anyone to take their place, so they go as a sacrifice, and once there, the villain puts on a terrifying show of claiming and intimidating the hero, until they get the hero alone and completely drop the facade?

It couldn’t even, really, be called a suicide mission.

A mission applied some aim, some purpose, some quest that one could die achieving. The hero’s only assignment was to die – they knew that – even if no one had actually come out and said it. They didn’t have to. No one in their right mind, after all, went up to Apocalyptix in anything less than a mobile nuclear bunker.

The hero had skinny jeans and two cups of vanilla late. They had never felt so utterly naked in their life.

Apocalyptix was the only Grade 10 villain in the world. The kind that was generally considered a planet-ending threat if they decided planet-ending was indeed what they wanted. But that wasn’t what typically Apocalyptix wanted, mercifully, or the rest of them would all be screwed.

There were currently no Grade 10 heroes.

So, there the hero was, a respectable Grade 7, dressed in their most seductive funeral best, about to die.

Their palms felt clammy as they walked up to the square. It had been cordoned off in preparation for the meeting, a dozen of the organisation’s surveillance cameras set up the observe, but not to interfere. They couldn’t escalate the situation.

Apocalyptix was already there.

The hero stopped breathing.

There were dozens of heroes in the world, even two active Grade 8 heroes - one in New York and one in Hong Kong – and a rumoured Grade 9 that no one was entirely sure actually existed.

They had to go in. They knew that. There was no back up.

If they didn’t go in, the organisation would send someone else, and that poor sucker would die instead and it would be the hero’s fault for being a coward. The Grade 8’s were too important, too needed, and sending a Grade 6 or below to so much as breathe at Apocalyptix was just taking the piss.

The hero closed their eyes, took a few deep breaths and willed their legs not to shake. Then they walked forward.

“Apocalyptix!” They raised a latte in greeting (in surrender) as if the two of them were old mates meeting up for a catch up. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Apocalyptix glanced at them.

The hero swallowed, promptly regretting the chipper approach. Still. Approaching grovelling on their knees wasn’t going to make them any less dead, was it? They cleared their throat.

“Latte?” It came out a squeak. “It’s vanilla.”

“My,” Apocalyptix said, after a beat. “What an adorable little sacrifice they’ve sent to appease me this time.”

Normally, the hero would snap that they weren’t adorable, they were just short, so stop-

Apocalyptix rose slowly to their feet and holy hell they were tall, even taller than the hero recalled from the footage. A smirk curled wicked along their lips as their gaze raked over the hero, and the painful lack of so much as a token bullet proof vest.

The response withered in the hero’s mouth.

It had become a recent trend that, every few years, Apocalyptix would resurface. Every few years, some hapless hero would be sent to face them. The organisation told whatever hero got the short straw that they could take any approach to the villain that they liked.

There had been three before the hero; the first tried offence, the second tried diplomacy and the third simply broken down begging.

The end result was always essentially the same. The attacker was splattered, and the other two vanished with the villain to whatever hell dimension they came from. They were never seen or heard from again.

The hero’s mentor had been the first; a six foot brick of a Grade 9. Everyone had thought that maybe, just maybe, he might make it.

He lasted five minutes.

The hero’s plan – foolish, foolish, foolish – had been seduction. Hence, coffee.

They realised they’d frozen on the spot when Apocalyptix beckoned them closer with the crook of their finger, making a sound like how one might coax a stray kitten on the street.

The hero forced their leaden legs to move. Their heart pounded. They had to tilt their head back to keep Apocalyptix’s face in sight, peering up and up and up the shadowy grace of them until they were only a foot apart. Apocalptix reached out and – the hero flinched.

The villain paused, head tilting, the smirk softening to something lazier but no less dangerous. Chiding.

“Don’t do that.” Apolocalptix murmured. They reached out again, tracing a single finger down the hero’s cheek, beneath their chin. “It’s much too cute. You’ll make me want to keep finding new ways to make you flinch, even as your mind and body begins to break. You’d hate it.”

The hero dug their nails into their palms hard enough to draw blood, just to keep from flinching again. Their shoulders tensed.

It was not, all in all, exactly the seduction they had planned. Flirty dialogue lines had come easier when they weren’t standing in Apocalyptix’s line of sight, able to feel the power rolling off the villain, like knowing something was wrong a split second before something bad happened.

Apocalyptix chuckled, fingers closing firm but not painful. Inspecting the hero.

“Very good.”

The hero would have swallowed again, anything to soothe the abrupt dryness of their mouth, but there was a lump in their throat and they couldn’t quite remember how. Not when they could feel the brush of Apocalyptix’s knuckle, so surprisingly human feeling against their skin and roaring pulse.

They were still clutching the drinks, which just seemed foolish. God. They couldn’t stand there, petrified. They had to at least try for some dignity.

“You’re shorter in the footage.. “You must need, like, a box or something to kiss anyone.”

It wasn’t entirely what they intended to say – practiced seduction and panic blurting blurring together.

Apocalptix raised a brow. They pressed the hand on the hero’s chin up and the hero felt their feet lift clean off the ground, power dragging them up until they dangled in the air at a level closer to Apocalyptix’s face.

The hero yelped, dropping the drinks in an instinctive urge to free up their hands, to defend themselves and – in an instant, their hands were behind their back, held by the same invisible force. As if everything the hero was, was a puppet, a toy, to be manipulated at Apocalyptix’s whims.

“Sorry – didn’t mean to offend you – I babble when –“

“Flinching,” Apocalyptix’s sing-songed. “That’s strike two. Come now.” Apolyptix’s pulled a pout that didn’t reach the terrible gleam in their eyes. “I’m starting to think you’re not delighted to see me.”

They did not want to know what happened a strike three.

The hero’s jaw clenched. They forced themselves to calm down, as much as humanly possible, letting their expression go blank.

“Put me down.”

“Mm, no.”

“You’ve made your point-“

“—why would I put you down,” Apocalptix said. “When none of this is about what you want?

The hero stopped. It was true, of course, but—

“You’re a toy that your boss’s give me, because they’d rather I played with you then broke anything too important. So you don’t want to bore me now, do you?”

The hero flinched a third time.

Apocalptix’s smiled, slow. They leaned in and pressed an unnervingly chaste, undoubtedly claiming, to the hero’s lips.

“You’re mine now, little hero,” Apocalptix said. “And I’m going to break you like a chew toy.”

The hero could taste bile in their throat. They’d never, in all the footage, seen Apocalptix’s put quite so fine a point on it. A helpless sort of embarrassment flickered over them.

The two of them vanished, leaving the square behind untouched, and the hero’s life –

Apocalyptix dropped them on something soft, (a bed? Oh god, was it a bed?) and – sofa. They were on a sofa, and Apocalyptix – Apocalyptix backed away to the other side of the room?

The hero reeled, staring.

“Sorry about that,” Apocalpytix said, in an entirely different tone of voice.  Milder. Different accent. “I had to make it convincing. Not that I don't love doing the voice.”

“What.”

“If they didn’t think me a terrifying, uncontrollable monster, they’d be incessant trying to recruit me! I’d get so annoyed I’d probably actually end the world by accident. I mean, take no for an answer, am I right?”

What?

Their eyes met.

“Right.” Apocalyptix’s held their hands up, placating. “Not going to hurt you, kill you, screw you, or anything that you’ve no doubt spend the last twenty four having nightmares about. I can’t let you go, at least not until a few years have passed and they’ve forgotten about you and stuff, but – like. Sorry. Yay you’re not dead?”

The hero may have made a strangled sort of sound.

“I have a slideshow,” Apocalpytix said. “If that would help.”

“Oh my god,” another, familiar voice sounded. Another hero. Number three. “Stop trying with the slideshow, they’re terrified.”

“But I don’t know how else to be reassuring! It’s so boring.”

“We talked about this-“

“It doesn’t count with you, you know I’m not going to turn you into a mindless slave for my dark horde. Anything I say, they’re so busy trying to remember how to breathe, they don’t hear it. The slideshow,” Apocalyptix jabbed a finger in number three’s direction. “Has soothing music. It was voted most soothing by my control group-”

“—Sorry,” the other hero stepped forward. “They’re a hopeless disaster. I think it’s the amount of time spent communing with legions of evil.”

The hero managed another sound. That one was yet another squeak. They were on great form. 

“You shouldn’t call them that,” Apocalpytix muttered, folding their arms. “The polite term is morally challenged.”

Number three ignored them, as if they weren’t a Grade 10 villain, and they weren’t all going to imminently suffer.

“You’re safe,” the other hero said, voice going soft. “You’re not going to die. Let’s grab some tea, and I’ll explain everything, okay?”

Everything, it turned out, was a lot.

Apparently, all of the powers in the world were finite. The more heroes and villain’s around, the less likely that there would be any particularly powerful supers, because it all got spread around. When a hero died however, that power was released back out and…

“...The organisation is harnessing it,” the hero repeated, flatly. 

“Uhuh.” Apocalptica shoved a chocolate digestive into their mouth. “It’s how they keep their fancy bunker going. But the number of heroes is getting too high, so they had to get rid of a few of you, enter me.”

“It’s a hairbrained scheme,” number three said. “It shouldn’t work.”

“People say that about me a lot.”

The hero blinked. “You’re not…you’re really not going to hurt me? But – your dark horde-“

“Well,” Apocalyptix said. “I need some kind of army to destroy the organisation, don’t I?”

And that, well, that led to a whole different conversation.

“That’s a suicide mission,” the hero rasped.

“Yeah?” Apocalptix raised a brow, and for a second the look in their eyes was horrifying all over again. “What else do you want me to die for? To be someone's chew toy?”

It was a good question, really.

“I’m in,” the hero said.