"Thank you Voodoo Priestess. I fear without you here the situation may have been dire." Arcuturian said gratefully.

"No prob, boss." Voodoo Priestess answered with a whimsical salute with her skull staff.

Jam was seated on a chair, the silver rings holding his wrists above his head. LionHead sprayed a coolant onto the gel on Might Guy's face freezing it and broke it; Might Guy gasped and coughed on the ground.

"What happened here?" Arcturian asked.

"Jam was in the simulation room, acting extremely recklessly so I came in to try to calm him down." Camilla started.

"He attacked her, I came in to try to help and he attacked me as well," Might Guy interrupted.

Jam began to chuckle quietly until it built up into crazed laughter. "Yeah, you thought your lady was in trouble so you decided to come in and save the day huh hero?"

"I should end you right now," Might Guy threatened.

"Go for it tough guy." Jam shot back looking Might Guy in the eye. One pupil was extremely constricted that it barely looked there while the other pupil was so dilated his eye looked black. "You hate me don't you. Kill me! Give it a shot! Be honest with yourself for once and end me!" He taunted before breaking out into crazed laughter again.

"You're not worth it."

"Bullshit," Jam spat. "You heroes are all the same, lying to yourselves. That's why I preferred villians in the first place."

"And why is that?" Arcturian asked.

"They're honest for one. Well at least the villains I work with. Maybe not honest with others, they lie to everyone else of course. With themselves though, they're extremely honest. I didn't work with the woe as me stories, the 'I can't help it, I wish I were good' self hating villains. The people I worked with, we chose this life because we wanted it. We saw there was a role that needed to be filled and we knew we were the right people to fill it."

"What role is that?" Cyprus asked.

"The bad guy. The foil. The antagonist. Whatever word you choose for it. You know. when I was Apex. I rarely hurt normal people, beyond the occasional hostage situation to draw out the heroes, or the bombs. My main focus was the heroes, the people in the capes that believe they're somehow better than the people they're facing off against.”

"We are better than you!" Might Guy argued.

Jam laughed again and the sound sent chills down Camilla's back. "Why is that? Because you have some moral high ground? Please. All you heroes that think you’re so much better because you have justice on your side make me sick. You honestly believe you hate crime? You might have hated crime before it started putting food on the table. All you heroes made a choice as well. You could have used your superspeed to do construction; used your superstrength or invulnerability to work in a mine. Nope, you chose to put on a suit and punch people. I got to this planet and there were five different hero groups and no villain groups at all. Every villain was on his or her own and getting thrashed easily. It started to become tedious. Heroes always won, nobody had to work it. You would have finally figured out how to hold these villains permanently and then you all would have been out of a job. So I fixed it; I built the villains up. You weren't mad that I gave you something to punch, you were mad that I leveled the playing field. I made you work for it and you hated it.

"You know nothing!" Might Guy shouted.

"I know you need people like me."

"Why is that?" Arcturian asked.

What exactly would the heroes be doing if there were no villains? Stopping muggers and bank robbers? Are you trying to put the cops out of business? How long until you became obsolete? Unneeded? Unnecessary? How long until it's illegal to put on those suits you all love so much? No one cares about an army in peace times. People don't trust what they can't contain, and you have the powers of Gods. Why employ a hundred normal people to build a building when a super could do it in an hour. Jobs start disappearing and suddenly everyone hates you. Now you’re a freak. The same people who used to cheer your name now want your head on a pike. How long until you're the villains in the story?

There was a quiet moment as the others all seemed to ruminate on everything that had been said, except Might Guy who still seethed with anger.

"So we should be thanking you?" Arcturian asked calmly and without judgment.

His question broke through the haze on Jam's brain and Jam breathed out a sigh.

[ Skill Used: Calm Mind Lvl 24 - Successful ]

[ Status Alleviated: Unbalanced - The chaos in your mind has calmed ]

"No," Jam answered solemnly. "I'm sorry guys."

SP: 0

Jam slumped, his body going mostly limp save for his arms still above his head.

“He’s out cold,” Camilla stated checking on Jam.

“Can you heal him Voodoo?” Arcturian asked

“I think I have a spell,” Voodoo Priestess answered waving her hand in the air. “Azure winds of Arcanth, revitalize this body with your cooling touch; healing wind.”

A breeze picked up and covered Jam before it dissipated quickly. Jam sat up blinking slowly.

[ Reconnecting A.I. Audrey. . . . Successful ]

“What the heck happened?” Jam asked groggily.

“It’s this skill. It doesn’t sound right.” Audrey answered.

“What skill?”

“It’s called Berserker Fury. Check it.”

Character Sheet, show skill Berserker Fury

[ Skill Name: Berserker Fury ]

[ Skill Type: Active ]

[ Thrown into a blind fury, all physical attributes are multiplied tenfold every half hour while every mental attribute are subtracted. The longer you use this skill the less you will be able to determine friend from foe. After one hour power roulette is halted and replaced with power shuffle. Power shuffle randomizes different powers every 60 seconds. ]

[ Skill Notice: User will be depowered for one day per hour the skill is used. ]

I’m depowered? How long was I using it for?

Powers

{Locked}

{ Time Until Next Power Cycle: 44:53 }

Well shit, man I’m exhausted.

"What did happen Jam?" Arcturian asked concerned.

Jam contemplated the question for a long moment; too tired to fully think, all of his body hurt. Arcturian thought he wouldn't answer for a minute and was about to speak when he finally spoke.

"I used to be a hero, like you guys, in another life." He spoke softly.

"What changed?"

"She died."

"Your friend? Amara?" Camilla asked.

"Yeah."

"Thank you all for your assistance; everything is fine now. You can all leave. Voodoo Priestess please release him," Arcturian commanded.

"On it" She answered tapping her staff against the ground and the silver rings disappeared.

"Camilla you can stay if you'd like." Arcturian offered.

"I would." She answered with a nod.

"I'm not leaving her in here with him." Might Guy argued

"I don't need your help Might Guy. Please leave." Camilla dismissed.

LionHead placed a hand on Might Guy's shoulder and walked out with him. The rest followed suit. Arcturian used the tablet to place chairs for the two to sit in.

"Now, tell me your story Jam. What exactly went on?"

Jam was quiet for a long agitated moment before he spoke again, “I was never really good at making friends. People just never really took to me too well.”

“Really? You seem like a nice enough guy.”

“My charisma attribute is making me better at this. Basically I’m cheating.”

“I don’t think so Jam. Charisma affects your approachability and likability sure but it can’t magically make you a better person,” Audrey disagreed.

“ I’m just a different person here; I have a direction that I’m going in. When I was young, I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t have a personality, even as a child. Amara was different from other people, she was a lot like me but completely different. She was bright, eccentric and full of life. So innocent too. She was my only friend and I was hers. My mom would take me over to her house to play with her a lot at her uncle’s house. One day I asked my mom to take me over to see her, my dad overheard it, and that’s when I found out that my mom was having an affair with Amara’s uncle.”

“Ouch.” Camilla shuddered.

“Yep. It turns out it wasn’t the first time she was caught but she promised it’d never happen again, until it did. My dad was super rich, like private jet rich, but when we got put out after the divorce my mom and I had almost nothing. That’s when I found out that my dad wasn’t actually my dad but rather my stepdad. Which explained why he didn’t bother to try to keep me with him, he kept my sister but she was his after all.”

“You never told me you had a sister.”

“Yeah, Soraya. She was 17 when I ‘died’ so she should be about 22 now. I wouldn’t know, the last time I saw her she was barely walking. So, with one thing I said I broke my family up and ruined my life. My mom hated me after that; every time I spoke it just made her angry, so I stopped speaking altogether. That ticked her off even more getting phone calls from my school, one day she hit me with her phone” Jam explained pointing to his cybernetic left eye.

“Lord, that’s terrible,” Arcturian winced.

“After that I knew I needed to get out of there so I started working and taking extra classes online to finish getting my diploma early. I got out of that house and got into college and when I was moving out was the last time I ever saw my mother. I basically did nothing but go to class and worked but it didn’t matter because I was still the same pariah I’d always been. My third year of school Amara transferred to the same school and that was the first time I’d seen her since the divorce. We picked up like no time had passed at all, she was still the most amazing person I’d ever met,” Jam said a smile spreading across his face. “I spent so much time alone that I didn’t think I could be someone’s friend again but she took pity on me and dragged me through life with her. After we graduated we got a job at this tech company BardenWare that makes cheap, affordable phones and tablets. I was a programmer part of the team working on OS and she worked on hardware. We got an apartment together, she encouraged me to finally make the leap and get the implants. She even bought me Audrey.”

“My voice was a joke, she said that Jam gets lonely when she’s not around so she wanted him to have her voice wherever he went.” Audrey told them.

“Together we discovered World of Heroes Online. She was always a lot better at games than I was. Our heroes were a duo, I was a magician hero named Mister Hat. I had a magical top hat that allowed me to funnel magic spells through it. I basically ran around ripping off Tuxedo Mask. She was the Phoenix, the light to my darkness. We discovered a few more people and joined a guild but it was mostly me and her. We were a perfect team and she was just incredible. Then I started to get more popular at work, we had written a code that really improved the functionality of the OS and my coworkers wanted to go out for drinks. They said it was our team only though so I couldn’t bring Amara. Then we started hanging out more often, and suddenly we were out almost every night. I didn’t even like going out and I spent most of the time completely invisible but I was just so enamored with the thought that people might actually like me for once. I didn’t even notice how much Amara had started to withdraw; every time she wasn’t at work she was on the game. Sometimes she even called out from work to play. I didn’t know that she was being sexually harassed by the company’s owner Brian Barden, and she was being bullied by her coworkers because they all thought she was sleeping with the boss.”

“You can’t be serious. Why didn’t she leave?”

“Jobs were scarce and this job paid really well. Anywhere else and she’d be taking a massive dip, not to mention this was her first job since college. She didn’t have the experience to go anywhere else and Barden surely would have blacklisted her. Or, maybe she just wanted to keep working near me. I don’t know, I never got the chance to find out why. She retreated into the game world but then the trolls on there began to bully her too. They’d trap her with super high level enemies, or keep taking down bosses so she couldn’t complete missions. They targeted our entire group really, and these guys were heroes as well. Most of the others stopped playing but she had dedicated so much time to World of Heroes, she didn’t want to give it up; she loved being able to fly. She begged me to join her again; if I was there I could have helped her out you know. We were supposed to be a team and I told her to stop taking it so seriously and that it was just a game” Tears began to well up in Jam’s eyes but he choked them back. “That was the last thing I ever said to her. When I got home that night, I found her body hanging from the ceiling. Her suicide note said ‘life is a shitty game and I’m tired of playing’. I didn’t see how much she was hurting because I was trying to be someone I didn’t even want to be. I know in my mind that it’s not my fault, that she had stuff going on and that our dependence on each other wasn’t healthy anyway. I know that but somewhere inside, there’s this overwhelming feeling that I could have stopped it. I found out what was happening when I read her diary, and then Barden had the nerve to hold a memorial for her. I punched him in the face and got arrested for assault. They put me on house arrest and I devoted my time back to World of Heroes. I rerolled my character as a villain and Apex was born. The ones who hurt her needed to be punished. I burned them.”

“You’re joking.” Camilla gasped.

“What?” Arcturian asked.

“Burning someone on World of Heroes was basically to put someone on the top of the wanted list. Anytime any other villain comes across that person they would drop everything to kill them. Jam was really good at accruing NPCs to his side too; so it wasn’t just like they could turn off PVP and be safe. World of Heroes was state of the art A.I., the NPCs were basically like other players.” Camilla explained. “It’s usually reserved for the most heinous of user crimes like people who have actually committed real life crimes.”

“My words hurt the people I care about, but in the game, I could hurt whoever I wanted without repercussion. I didn’t have to be anyone else but me. I was good at it. I spent my years waiting for something to happen. Waiting to figure out what I’m supposed to do with my life and I found it. I decided never to treat it like it was ‘just a game’ again,“ Jam concluded.

“I understand. What I don’t understand is what caused today to happen. Why did all of this happen?”

“This person was waiting in my room. Mr. Probably he calls himself.”

“Mr. Probably?”

Jam began to explain everything that happened from when he walked into the room.

"You're boring me." A voice said from behind Jam.

He flipped around, his fists instantly being encased in blue flames. The person waved their hand and the fires dissipated and Jam looked down in horror.

[ Status Ailment: Paralysis - Time Limit: N/A - Your body has frozen in place from the neck down. ]

Jam's eyes scrolled back up and he was completely confused by what, or rather who, he found.

“Shelly Lang?" he asked bewildered.

"Not exactly." The pink haired woman said.

The Shelly look a like appeared to be lounging on Jam's bed but upon further inspection Jam noticed she was actually floating a few inches off the bed.

[ Skill Used: Analyze Lvl 24 - Failure ]

[ Failure Notice: 01100010 01100101 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110101 01101110 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01100011 01100001 01110100 01100101 01100111 01101111 01110010 01101001 01111010 01100101 01100100 ]

A searing pain slid through Jam's head at the failed analyze attempt.

"Oooooh, tingly." The woman shivered in delight. "That's what analyze feels like huh? Warmer than I expected."

"Who are you?"

"That is an excellent question Jamal Wilson." She hummed. "Let's try it again," she invited as she snapped her fingers.

[ Skill Auto Triggered: Analyze+ Lvl 24 - Successful ]

[ Character Type: Admin

Name: Unavailable

Alias: Mr. Probably

Race: Supreme Being

Alignment: Neutral

HP: { X }

MP: { X }

SP: { X }

Power: Probability]

"Mr. Probably?" Jam inquired, the name sounding vaguely familiar but he couldn't place where he'd heard it.

"That's what they call me, Jake. Well that's what they would call me, if anyone knew I existed." She said whimsically. "Hi Universa," she continued as an aside.

"You're a guy?"

"I'm so far ahead of your silly genders. I can't even begin to express to you exactly what I am."

"A supreme being."

"That's what we call ourselves, my siblings and I. I am the lord of probability; everything in this world has a probability. I can decide whether to keep a probability intact or to flip it. To leave things at 60/40 or change them to 40/60 if you get my meaning."

"Ok, so why are you here?"

"Always straight to the point aren't you boy."

"Don't call me boy."

"Oh hush now. I've been alive longer than your planet has had creatures on it; I'm so far above your petty racial divides. In comparison to me you're still a sperm cell." She dismissed with a wave of her hand.

"Sure. What do you want with me?"

"Entertainment. You used to be far more interesting."

"What are you talking about?"

"I've watched you for a quite a long time Jamal Wilson. You see, this world became quite boring some time ago; it all became routine. The villains would run amok and the heroes would put them down; eventually they'd break out of jail and rinse and repeat. It all became quite dull, this world of gray colors." She floated up to the ceiling standing up. "These villains were so boring, they had no real ambition, they had no direction. The ones that did, were too weak to do anything. My brother the lord of order saw to make sure everything stayed neat and tidy, I hated him for that." She explained as she paced back and forth on the ceiling. "I decided it would be more fun to throw in a monkey wrench; you know, spice things up a bit. One impossible task made possible and suddenly the status quo is shot to hell; bring in a whole new status quo."

"So I'm here because you were bored."

"Partially ,yes. I can agree with that. Honestly, it's mostly your fault Johnny. See, I just wanted to see what would happen; it's your fault for being so good at it. I watched the game quite closely and there were so many people just did the same things they always did. Everyone thought so small; like you did when you were playing as that silly hat character. But Apex," she stopped pacing and turned to Jam. "Apex was a stroke of genius Jimmy, such magical ingenuity. You decided to rule in hell and you were determined to take as many people with you as possible. It was then that your true colors shone and I finally some decent entertainment."

"So you've been watching me since I was on Earth?"

"Yep."

"So you were Shelly Lang the whole time?"

"Oh no Jan, she is just a familiar face for you. Plus I like her body, it's real nice. Curvy," she said her hands sliding over her hips.

"Right."

"Yep, so you can tell I was watching you closely. Now, imagine my surprise when you suddenly died; blown up in some crazy accident. I couldn't control probability on your Earth you see, which made things even more entertaining to watch because I didn't know the outcome. Luckily, the Lunar King kept his thing going; your bloody legacy continuing on." She took on a solemn expression, "but of course, I'm not allowed to have any fun. My siblings got all up in arms about my activities and how I was 'throwing off the balance of power'" she finger quoted. "So, when the heroes decided to summon a hero that could finally defeat the Lunar King for good, I decided to let it happen and bam! The villain king Apex didn't die in that explosion. It was quite impressive; I mean past me was watching that explosion not even knowing that future me was part of the cause behind it. It was a quite thrilling bit of drama," she chuckled.

"You gonna get to the point of this unexpected visit?"

"Gosh, you're so rude to me Jamie," she pouted running a finger across Jam's jaw which he pulled away from. "Its simple boy, you're boring me. I'm bored. You were supposed to be fun again and yet you're just not being fun at all. Where's the drama? I mean you fought 21 and I thought, finally. Something interesting but then you bitched out against Might Guy again. You're Apex. How many times have you destroyed him and now you're just being a good little lapdog. I thought you made your own rules, Jim?"

"I'm doing what I need to do. Might Guy is of no consequence, a temporary hindrance; nothing more."

A hearty chuckle from Mr. Probably, "no need to beat your chest Jack. You talk a big game, and I'm sure ordinarily you'd be able to back it up, but I have to say that right now you're just kind of boring."

"Sorry to disappoint."

"Aww, its not me you should be bothered by disappointing Jamison. I mean, what would poor Amara think or your treating this like some kind of game?"

"Don't say her name." Jam growled, anger wracking his face.

"You looked into the abyss. You saw the darkness of the world; how cold and uncaring it was. Watched it eat your best friend and you ignored it. Now you're ignoring it again; you know the Lunar King is planning something and you're playing scout. Amara's dead and that's your fault, now more people are going to die and that's your fault too. How many bodies are you planning to collect boy?"

"You don't know me!" Jam raged, blue fire bursting from his hands as he dragged forward to punch Mr. Probably; as if he were trying to walk through water.

Only a sardonic chuckle was left behind as Mr. Probably faded away.