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Kite Man invited you to join him on the couch; you’ve had no other offers from the frosty gaggle of supervillains. You walk over to join him, surprised at the lack of sound from your footfalls, you expected your steps to be loud thumps when not overpowered by the potent raging gale outside. Falling into the free spot on the sofa, it shudders under the force. The springs hidden within the furniture throw Kite Man a few inches off his seat. The car on the screen veers off to the left and crashes into a highway barrier, exploding into a violent ball of flames. You are impressed that the couch did not snap under your new weight; likely it was built with Cleave in mind. At some point, you are going to weigh yourself out of simple curiosity.
You aren’t quite sure how to begin the conversation and where then to lead it. Since your sister’s passing, you have withdrawn into yourself more than ever, and you were never a great conversationalist to begin with. But it is more than that, you aren’t attempting to converse with just a random stranger but a supervillain in a lair with the people he calls friends. How should you portray yourself? What sort of character is expected from you? These thoughts gnaw at your mind, stilling your tongue as you overthink the situation. Kite Man gets up to the table that the TV sits upon and opens a drawer. He roots inside and withdraws a second controller, shaking it and then tossing it into your hands.
He joins you on the sofa and takes the game back to the main menu, “Nice, no one ever joins me. Cleave, the poor bastard, has no hands, Grodd is far too stuck up for fun, Ivy would rather make kissy faces at her plants, and Blackfire is the fun police around here.”
“Ha,” You force out a chuckle as Kite Man chooses split-screen multiplayer, “Your friends are an… intense bunch.”
“Ah, well, you know what they are like. Just a bit jumpy from having a new guy sharing the pad. They ain’t great with new people.” He turns to you with a wide, mischievous smile, “So I was watching the Walker fight about a month back at this bar and got talking to a couple locals. We were having a good time, so I invited them back here, you know, to continue the party and all. You should have seen Blackfire. She was raging like a castrated elephant. Haven’t seen those guys since sadly, I guess they don’t regularly go to that bar. That being said, it is quite fun to push her button. Grodd is too focused on the next stage of his continually evolving plans and Ivy couldn’t give a care in the world about anything not involving her precious plants.”
“And Cleave?”
“Eh, I don’t. The whole fucked up experiment that Desaad inflicted on him left some real scars. He’s a good man, just struggles with shit, you know.” Turning back to the screen, the talkative supervillain continues, “Anyway, stop trying to distract me. You are just delaying your inevitable loss to the undisputed, undefeated master.”
