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The Other Side of the Morality Fence Ryu3, after downing a couple of beer, idly mentioned* how hard it is to be a hero in this multiverse. The fetch quests, the home villages going up in flames, the loved ones' prerequisite tragic deaths or something similar, the fetch quests, the times when the world seem to be at your throat, the occasional emotional and mental instabilities, various other crap that a normal person really shouldn't be facing, and especially the fetch quests. A rousing, drunken cry was the response as Cloud, Fei, Terra, Lenneth, various Tenkai Stars, different Ryus, and assorted others chimed in with varying, sometimes slurred, forms of "Yeah!" Of course, since this was a bar in the RPGDL, many villains there who were minding their own business heard that outburst too. One of such villain was Ghaleon, and he didn't take the comment lightly. Slamming his own rum and Coke against the table, Ghaleon stood and ranted how the villains have it harder than the heroes. All the pansy-wansy hero has to do is brainlessly follow the trail of cookie crumbs or dead people or whatever, and he or she will eventually stumble across the big bad's lair. The villains are the ones who have to do the plotting, the manipulating, the careful choosing of minions suitably fearsome yet incompetent enough to eventually lose to a bunch of kids, and good grief, if you thought walking through the final maze-like dungeon is hard once, imagine how hard it is to walk through that deathtrap every time you need to take a dump! And at least the heroes usually get a happy ending. Villains have to settle for a nasty, messy death, unless there's a sequel where they get resurrected so they can get killed messily again. Or get resurrected and become good...only to get killed again in a more noble way. An equally rousing, drunken cry was the response, only this time, it came from people like Kefka, Sephiroth, Indalecio, Fou-Lu, various divine beings, different demons, and assorted other world-smashers, yelling their own inebriated assent. Tifa, having seen many a bar brawl since opening the Arena branch of 7th Heaven, pressed the button that would call in the superbosses and super-randoms that she'd bribed into working security, and got the hell out of there just as the first Ultimas, Kaiser Breaths, Megids, Madantes, and Hell Waves were thrown. *Being a mute hero, he did this through very creative usage of ellipses. How precisely? We may never know; it was that creative. --- After heads had cooled, statuses had been cured, and dead beings had been revived, an agreement was reached. If both sides were so sure that their jobs were harder than the other's, how about if they both try it out? And thus, it came to be. A group of selected heroes were to design a random evil plot, construct various dungeons, wait patiently in an architect's nightmare of a final dungeon, get killed at the end, and do the other things that villains are supposed to do. This of course includes having one of their team act as the annoying, incompetent, comic-relief minions that keep on coming back to get beaten up like masochists. Meanwhile, a group of selected villains were to go through the process of performing fetch quests, watching their hometowns explode, aimlessly wandering through dungeons and overworlds and all the other fun stuff heroes get to do. Oh, and since they're supposed to emulate the heroes completely, they'll need to follow the stereotypical hero party, meaning one of them will have to be the designated annoying mascot. So, when all is said and done, who will rise up and say "I told you my job is harder"? |
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Otter The hero-villain swap day was going along fine until Fou-Lu finally reached and confronted his antagonist Ryu and soundly defeated him, immediately assuming the ultimate form of the Infini Dragon and obliterating most of the mismatched heroes and villains altogether. With no Bad End screen to get in the way, this form was now canonical and coincidentally almost unstoppable. On the one hand, it was a good opportunity for Lord Blazer, Giygas, and Rhapthorne to set aside their differences and make bold strides in their fledgling careers as protagonists by narrowly defeating the rampaging Infini. On the other hand, their victory might have been more satisfying had Seraphic Radiance not chosen that exact moment to devour Yuri from the inside out and blow up what was left of the world's landmasses. "The only real winners here were those who weren't enough of a hero or a villain to take part in the first place," remarked Zed, scarf billowing in the high winds, in a rare moment of lucidity. "Aye, or jus' the ones weren't stuck on a bleedin' landmass, t' begin with, aye," responded the Captain of the Thames with a sagely nod. The two looked out at the sea from the deck of the Thames. Sure, it might eventually backfire to give Liz and Ard seats at the ship's bar, and it was really only a matter of time before Kahn slipped and fell out of the crow's nest, but it wasn't so bad out here with the others. These guys could get used to anything. Heroes: 13 Villians: 24 Abject failure: 38 Twilkitri
f_f_crazy@hotmail.com
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