My Weekly Gag Villain Job is Pretty Fulfilling: Chapter 2

My Weekly Gag Villain Job is Pretty Fulfilling: Chapter 2

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Commissioned by LiamofOrmonde

Wordcount: 2500

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Small or big.

What do you choose?

I’ll admit, as a young man, I’ve always thought that bigger is better.

Giant robots and monsters are justice, after all.

Hm? Did you think that I was talking about something else? No. I’m talking about how to utilize my Imps and their ability to shapeshift, combine, and be awesome.

Take the average Imp. Three feet tall, lankly limbs, big head with large white “eyes,” and a derpy smile. All accentuated by pointy feet, clown-like hands, and a two-pronged jester’s hat. They’re cute, adorable, and capable of using their large hands to tear through concrete and steel. Anything short of something fired from the main gun of a modern tank can’t hurt them, they stand in a blast furnace without being burnt, and they can walk quite a bit down in the ocean depths before they get squished.

In short, unless the Sentinels of Light were fighting them, I’d argue that having a thousand of them swarm a city would do more damage than the equivalent creature I can make from having a thousand of them combine. Even if the Sentinels were fighting my Imps in that case, if I spread them around to cause mayhem, they’ll do a lot of damage before they were put down. But, if I collected them into one creature worth a thousand of them, then the Sentinels will be able to beat it down.

Lots of power and potential were lost in the combination to simply maintain the skyscraper-sized Imp. Defying the square-root law, producing energy to move all that mass, and then engaging in combat? Yeah, I’ve got magic, but the basic principles of physics still applied. Power had to come from somewhere, mass didn’t just disappear, and a bigger creature meant bigger costs. So, I lost about fifty percent of the Imp-power involved to just maintain the thing and concentrate fire and increase durability.

Now, that’s not a bad thing.

If I give my opponents time to prepare, I’m sure other heroes with lots of power can come in, the army can bring in the right equipment, and the Sentinels can ‘bless’ enough mundane weapons that my Imps will be gunned down. Well, they aren’t at that stage yet, but they’ll be able to do it eventually according Ebb, and I wasn’t going to ignore the eyeball’s advice. At that point, I’ll need to combine my Imps, make them stronger and tougher, like the Giant Ape that Ebb constructed. The 1000 Imp-power titan will be more than capable of taking on anything mundane humanity can throw at me, along with most of the superhuman side, and the Sentinels will be forced to fight and risk their lives.

In theory, I should be looking for the sweet spot between 1 Imp-power and 1000 Imp-power creatures. Hit the point where I can get the most troops without losing out on any firepower due to maintenance costs, make them just effective enough so that only the Sentinels can take them on, and then churn them out.

Theoretically, I should look into finding that sweet spot.

In practice, I found that the most efficient course of action was making them as small as possible.

Because, if you can’t see or hit something with all the Imp’s base physical abilities, you’re pretty fucked if it’s coming to after you.

A forty MPH, near-indestructible, steel-shredding locust is a nightmare.

How about ten?

A hundred?

A thousand?

Ten thousand?

A hundred thousand?

Yeah.

Giant monsters are great, but sometimes going biblical with pestilence is the way to go.

…

I made popping noises with my mouth, while counting money, to annoy Ebb.

Why?

No particular reason.

“I loathe you.”

“I think you’re pretty great, but I guess it can be helped. You feel how you feel.” The floating, batwinged eyeball glared at me, before turning back to the battle. I checked the time. It’s been ten minutes now. My whole ‘menacing’ plan was probably two minutes max of screen time, while the Sentinels had four or five minutes of relationship building and exposition while getting her. Two more minutes of transformations atop all that… and programming nowadays was usually 49 minutes or so with ads. “Let’s go ahead and start turning this place into a good scene for the rest of the runtime.”

I nodded at the Imp in the rafters I had on standby, and the cute, little thing gave a salute before turning into a puddle of pure darkness in the shadows. Moments later, the Imps I had waiting around back at base funneled in. A couple handed me some playing cards, another two gave me some portable gaming systems, and four gave me wireless controllers. I gave them to another Imp to return back to the waiting area.

What? Just because they don’t need it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have it.

“Alright, everyone, we’ve got a few minutes before those outside gets wiped. Start chopping the place up and making it nice and spooky.” My Imps were pretty relaxed, but having superhuman strength and durability and being able to shapeshift let them do what I asked pretty easily. More than a few turned their clownish hands into claws and tore into the candy machines. The sweet smell of sugar permeated the factory, while machinery broke and fell onto the floor. If a piece of machinery bounced, my Imps picked it up and drove it into the floor halfway. Menacing. Like tombstones. Their sense for the dramatic was quite good. “Break the lights, turn into fake blood puddles on the floor, hide in the shadows. No spiders this time. Arachnophobia is real and we’re doing our best to be scary, not psychotic.”

The Imps took above five minutes to finish the stage, but it was all behind the scenes, so that didn’t count. They broke through doors and connected rooms together, turned into strands of ragged fabric hanging from the rafters, seeped into cracks of the cleaner areas and bubbled up, and all sorts of things. I was going for a macabre environment, but without any gore. The fake-blood puddles were as far as I was going to go with that. PG-13 max, y’know?

I was eyeing up the right area for the final confrontation when Ebb spoke to me.

“They are rapidly approaching.”

“Dang, they did get a lot stronger.” I looked over my shoulder through the window. Still in my disguise as a factory working, I willed one of my Imps to turn into a ‘Help’ sign. Though I considered turning it into a puddle and palming the windows with bloody handprints, that was definitely too scary. Help sign was far more appropriate. That got the Sentinels to start moving quickly, with Scarlet leading the charge, only for Azure to hold her back.

Yes! Success!

Team building scene setup has been made, and hopefully some relationship build-up next episode. With that done, I feigned seeing something running. Time to tease the audience… and three Imps turning into a large monster that goes through the same window should do the trick! I let it chase me into the factory, before giving the construct a high-five at the end.

“Good job, guys. Go ahead and go back. Everyone else should be back home and resummoned already.” The large construct I made to look like a giant lizard melted back into my adorable Imps, and they slunk into the portal that led to my base. Just as they got out, a few Imps arrived on the railing I was standing at and stood at attention. Ebb floated close to me and I could feel the eyeball’s glare at the back of my skull. “Alright, alright. You guys’ll be under Ebb’s command for the rest of the day. Have fun, alright?”

They all gave me nods, before Ebb swooped in in front of me to take control.

“Five of you are to act as ranged attackers. Create bows and arrows of yourselves. The remaining ten will engage in melee. Once four of you have fallen combine into the creature that Hayes ran from.” Sounded like a load of overkill to me, but Ebb wasn’t the sort of eyeball to play around. No, this eyeball had a stick up his non-existent butt and solely desired to win. If I gave Ebb fifty Imps, the batwinged emissary of darkness would most certainly try to destroy the whole town. So, I curtailed him. Veto power is go! “Don’t you dare—

“Don’t care. Already gave you three Imps to play with already. I’m taking over again.” Ebb sputtered out some incomprehensible curses my way in a language I didn’t know, while the Imps looked back at me. “Five lizardmen each. One with sword and shield. Two ranged archers. The remaining with spears. Use ambush tactics, retreat instead of being attacked, and teach them to be more careful about entering corrupted areas. The guys making up the decorations will help you out by slowing them, throwing light attacks from the sidelines, and whatever else comes to their mind.”

Ebb floated forward and tried to fly against me to push me away. The crowd of Imps stared at us and we were obviously in a contest.

“Attack with intent to kill!”

“Nothing serious that they can’t heal from.” That was cruel in a way. Hurting them so that I could hurt them more in the future. It sounded messed up, right?

The fifteen Imps gave me thumbs up and none to Ebb.

“Take off their limbs!”

“Nothing permanent or gruesome. To let their guard down.” Uh, make them underestimate me in the ultimate battle when I pull out all the stops.

Again, all fifteen representations of the power of Darkness itself gave me the thumbs up.

Ebb spluttered and forgot to flap for a second, almost falling, before recovering and spitting out another command.

“Ensure the victory of the forces of Darkness over the Light on this planet!”

The Imps all stared at me.

I shrugged.

“A slow and steady victory while enjoying ourselves in the process is better than suffering and possibly losing?” That was how I really felt and my true intentions, so I expected a draw from the gathered Imps. Maybe one in favor of me, since I was nice to them.

I was wrong.

All fifteen, once again, gave me a thumbs up.

Nice.

Ebb reacted by falling onto the railing with a dull thunk.

"I give up.”

I picked Ebb up and tucked the floating eyeball under one of my arms.

“Don’t worry, you’ll win one of these contests one day.”

“Jump into a septic tank and live forevermore amongst your kin, Hayes.”

With that parting shot, Ebb closed its massive eyelid and wrapped its batlike wings around itself, effectively secluding from reality completely.

Neat trick.

I turned back to my Imps and gave them a thumbs up myself.

“Alright, guys! Go down there, have fun, and learn all that you can before going home!”

With that said, and this just being my second encounter with the Sentinels, I made my exit.

Big bads shouldn’t introduce themselves until the fourth episode at minimum!

…

Things would be a lot easier if I could look through the eyes of my Imps, but I was pretty sure that trying to integrate my mind with that of Darkness itself was a bad idea.

I mean, Ebb was literally the emissary it sent out with its basest intentions and desires.

Kind of a bad idea to attach myself to an unfathomably powerful entity with an alien mind that desired death, destruction, and Go Fish.

Yeah, the card game.

The Imps loved playing Go Fish.

Anyway, since I didn’t link my consciousness with the vast, unknowable, but kinda cute entity that supplied me with power and saved my life, I had to make do with watching the outcome of the situation from afar.

It was actually pretty boring.

Only a smoking crater remained of the place, and the people rescued by the Sentinels were telling everyone it was necessary on national television.

“Y-you don’t understand! The things could become anything, they can turn into things that look like people! They’re even in the freaking walls!” Mhmm, seems like the Imps got into the holding area where I was keeping all the workers and administrative staff. Loads of them were nodding along with the speaker. “Th-those girls did the right thing! The factory was done for. Who knows what those would’ve been able to do, if we rebuilt, didn’t find one, and made food for everyone!”

I looked over at Ebb, who was moping, but was still eating the plate of chicken-and-rice that we’d ordered for takeout straight from that Michelin Star place in Singapore. It was his favorite, so he was already cheering up.

The only thing that could cheer him up was testing more ways to make people suffer.

“Hey, why don’t you look into that?”

“…That’s not going to work.”

Ebb turned away, but I noticed the mouth elongating from the spherical body via tendril started eating from the plate a bit faster.

“C’mon, you love finding out ways to kill things, and I’m going to take a while with the support of the Darkness right behind me. Instead of looking to get the job done quick, why don’t you put your energy towards finding out a different way to do what you want? We’re aiming for at least ten seasons and a movie, before we lay low after getting beat, and then getting up again for a remake.”

The Light didn’t confer immortality to the Sentinels, but it did make the power hereditary, or at least travel along the bloodline and strengthened itself while it did.

Ebb wanted to avoid that, since in the last world, the next generation won it for them.

“It will only be a waste of time, if it is not used.”

Ebb budged, and I took that as my cue to push forward and stop it from moping.

“Only if you keep making lethal stuff. But, if you look into less lethal stuff and go with the flow, you’ll figure things out that’ll help in all future battles and see them in action.”

“Essentially surrendering to your brand of idiocy.”

“Hey, the Darkness is agreeing with me since it likes what’s happening. You’re part of the Darkness and hate that you’ve been losing loads for a long time… think of this as a change of pace, being more sneaky, and all that.”

Ebb floated a bit ‘straighter’ at that and started eating at its usual pace.

“Hmph, I shall consider it, then.”

I didn’t press any farther than that, but I gave the Imp eating next to me a low-five and it gave it reciprocated it quickly, while we both retreated our fingers from under the table wiggling at each other.

Yep.

That’s pretty much a win when it comes to Ebb.

Moving over the warcrimes and genocide of the human race into theory and research meant we could have loads more fun on the weekends.