Cottie's steel-reinforced boot sent the wooden door flying inwards with a loud bang.

The group of four teens entered an apartment, stepping over piles of junk, bottles, food delivery boxes and various debris.

"Behold, the residence of all powerful, great nonpareil!" Alexa sang, waving her blue nail gun through the air.

"Looks like a hoarder lives here," Martin commented. "This place is a huge mess."

"Somebody doesn't take care of their place," Alexa said, kicking a pizza box out of the way.

She marched through the numerous rooms one by one, peering into each one.

A noise of falling boxes sounded from one of the rooms. The gang converged towards it.

A pale, round, approximately twenty five year old man was blearily staring up at them. Alexa simply grinned at him. It took a few moments the man's brown eyes to figure out who he was looking at from his drunken stupor.

"Alexa... Terror Nova!" He uttered. "How did you find me?!"

"I dunno," Alexa shrugged. "Just felt like this is where you were existing. I checked all of the lists and..."

"What list?" The fat man blinked.

"List of people and places," Alexa waved him off. "This was a hole in the database, a place that shouldn't exist. A floor not on the list of New York Citadel buildings. I have all of the Titanomachy records, since I took over the station. Anyways, guys, meet Nonpareil. Nonpareil, meet my wonderful minions - Mittens, Cottie and Dimmy!"

"Come on, this slob can't be Nonpareil!" Ember snarled.

"Au contraire, my dearest Dimmy, this is definitely Nonpareil," Alexa said. She marched over to the pale man, demolishing a tower of garbage along the way and pressed her nail gun into his temple. "Confess to your secret identity or I'll nail you through the head!"

"You can't possibly kill me!" The man hissed.

"How are you so sure of that?" Alexa grinned. "I killed your shiny paperclip alter-ego. Pretty sure I could really at the very least deliver a lot of pain into your fat ass too while I'm at it. Tell my unbeliever minion who you really are or I'll press the trigger!"

The man on the couch gulped.

"I'm... Nonpareil," he uttered.

"Louder!" Alexa prodded him with the nail gun.

"I'M NONPAREIL!" Nonpareil barked, beads of sweat forming on his head.

"See?" Alexa declared. "He confesses!"

Ember's mouth fell open. Martin and Cottie looked just as stunned and confused.

Alexa sat on the couch poking Nonpareil with her nail gun in his side.

"Start from the beginning, mon ami," she said. "I want to know the truth."

"What truth?" Nonpareil eyed the teenage supervillain.

"The absolute truth about everything," Alexa said. "Where you came from and who you are. I want you to tell everyone why everything here is fake. Why this floor of this particular building exists and also doesn't exist."

"You... know?" The fat man choked.

"Obviously I know," Alexa said. "But my audience doesn't. Go on."

"NPCs aren't supposed to..."

"Do I look like a God damn NPC to you?!" Alexa barked.

"Nngrrh," Nonpareil stammered out. "You... you're a real villain... I can't get out of the sim, can't wake up! What have you done to me?!"

"I'll keep making things worse for you, unless you tell everyone everything," Alexa offered. "Get it off your chest bud, you know you want to. You can't fester in this apartment forever. There are people who love you. Even if you're a fat blob, I'm sure that they would welcome you with open arms, protect you from the likes of me. Think about that."

"What people?" Nonpareil asked.

"Chalice!" Alexa declared.

"Chalice?" Nonpareil blinked.

"She's a hot girl under all that shiny armor," Alexa revealed. "You should ask her to clean up your pizza boxes and beer bottles at the very least. Tell her that you're depressed about not having your super powers. She'll understand! A hero's downfall arc is a mundane twist. Everyone expects it, since I defeated you and everything."

"I..." Nonpareil exhaled.

"She can make you an armor set like hers," Alexa said. "Don't you want to fly again and be a hero? What your end goal here? To drown in garbage?"

The fat man looked at the mountains of junk around him and sighed.

"Fine," he said. "Fine. You want to know the truth? Here's the truth - nothing here is real."

"What?" Ember sputtered.

"This entire world was made for me," Nonpareil said. "My real name is Bob Proverra. I'm a citizen of Eureka."

"What?" Martin blinked.

"You are all NPCs," Nonpareil added. "Designed to keep me entertained."

"What?" Katherine muttered, her armored hand gripping her railgun.

Nonpareil, or Bob Proverra, continued to unspool his truth, his voice low. "It's 2099," he said. "I'm paying for everything here to exist. This is a subscription-based game made by the Good Directorate Inc... a game that I enjoy whenever I go to sleep."

Martin saw that Alexa's face elongated, eyebrows twitching angrily.

"An error of some sort happened when I tried to kill the man who called himself Agent Three with my eye-lasers," Nonpareil muttered. "I can't wake up. I'm stuck here in my real body, in this damned apartment. My superhero avatar won't load anymore!"

"Pfff," Alexa finally let out a sound.

"This entire reality is tailored to my liking based on my desires," Nonpareil's gaze was distant, his mind clearly adrift in memories of a place far removed from the squalor of his present surroundings.

The once-vibrant spark in Alexa's eyes now replaced by a quiet intensity, remained focused on Nonpareil, her gun still pressed against his side.

"And you, Terrornova?" Nonpareil said, turning his gaze on her. "You think you're in control here, but you're not. You think you've won? You're a part of the game, just like the rest of everyone here. You're just... more aware... somehow. You're... just an error that shouldn't exist!"

Ember choked. Was everything she knew, everything she'd fought for, just a fabrication? Was she just a puppet in some grand, cosmic game? What the hell?! Why did waste her entire life on taking over Titanomachy just to...

"I don't believe you," Ember hissed, breaking the silence. Her voice was shaky, laced with rising panic. "This can't be true!"

"We're not NPCs!" Martin added. "We're real! We're...we're..."

"Human," Katherine finished for him.

Nonpareil just shook his head, a sad, knowing smile on his face. "You're not. You're all just...characters. None of you are real. You're characters in a game, created by artificial intelligence for me..."

"Come on... how can we possibly be characters?" Ember growled. "This is kittening bullshit. I am sapient!"

"Obviously you're sapient, This entire sim is as realistic as possible down to the subatomic particles," Bob uttered. "Except, you know... real life doesn't have any heroes. It's quite boring, really."

The room fell silent. The weight of Nonpareil's words, a harsh reality pressing down on the trio of Alexa's minions. There was horror in Ember's eyes, confusion in Martin's and growing disbelief in Katherine's.

"I'm supposed to be a God, an unstoppable hero, but something broke in the sim," Bob repeated. "Look, if I don't wake up soon... if I can't go to work, I can't pay the sub for the game! The game will get shut down and all of you will cease to exist!"

Alexa looked around the room, at the piles of junk, the peeling wallpaper, the man who claimed to be a god, she realized that her understanding of the world had just been turned upside down.

She realized that she's made a horrible mistake, a miscalculation in her villainous machinations.

And for the first time in her entire life, Alexa didn't know what to do.