Since you asked so nicely,

A Revenge with Fresh Blood (A Man of His Word pt. 5)

Villain was letting them plant the explosive.

The smaller one of course, not the bigger one.

Civilian clenched their shaking hands into fists as they moved. It was the day of execution, backpack heavy upon their shoulders and blindfold tight around their eyes.

So close, they could almost taste it.

"Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three," they counted under their breath, still walking forward as instructed. They didn't really know where they were, but they could hear the echoing tap of two pairs of shoes against marble flooring, and they could only hope.

There had to a be a trick, an ulterior motive somewhere, but Civilian didn't care. They let themselves believe that they had convinced him of their necessity, or at the very least that he just found it amusing to humor them. Maybe they were bait, or just a planted casualty. By Civilian's calculations, it didn't really matter. As long as they were here, it was going to work.

"Fifty." They finished, and they reached to pull the blindfold off their head.

Let loose in a vacated hall, they immediately scanned their surroundings the second the pair of footsteps not their own retreated. The ceiling was tall and arched, with wide white columns running up the walls to support it. Wide glass panes filled the spaces in-between, giving an elevated view of the surrounding buildings and a beautifully blue sky above.

Civilian breathed a sigh of relief.

This was town hall.

Carefully, they coaxed the backpack off their arms, trying not to get too eager. It was all coming together, and the plan might just have a chance at succeeding, just so long as it didn't spontaneously blow up in their face.

Literally, or figuratively.

They followed the steps from their crash course in the rigging of explosives, twisting wires and rolling out a substantial length of cord to get them far enough away to manually detonate without blowing themselves up in the process. Checking their watch, Civilian waited for the minute hand to hit the five, following Villain's instructions to the letter.

The footsteps may have ceased, but Civilian had no doubts they were still being watched.

Not that supervision was necessary for them to be trusted to fulfill this part of the plan. It wasn't like their goals diverged at this point. Civilian wanted to lure Hero here just as bad—if not more—than Villain. They both wanted her dead just the same, though they had very different ideas as to how that was going to happen. And even there, they had come to somewhat of an agreement.

Just a tiny compromise: Civilian had promised to let Villain deal the final blow.

And that was perfectly fine with them. A dead Hero was a dead Hero, and they didn't much care what happened other than that.

The alarm on their wrist beeped, and just like that it was time.

When Civilian hit the button, they were thrown back almost instantaneously. They slid across the floor with countless chunks of quartz and marble of varying sizes. Villain must have miscalculated the safe distance—or maybe not. Either way, Civilian found themselves wishing they had been farther from the blast than just around the corner.

Smoke and dust rose, clouding their vision in a complement to their dampened hearing. Civilian groaned and curled up into a ball, wracked by coughing, but they knew they didn't have much time to waste. They were still on a mission, and so as soon as they could they slowly unfolded themselves from up against the wall and got their knees and hands planted on the previously-polished floor.

They blinked away the haze and oriented themselves towards the worst of the damage. Their stomach pulsed as they crawled their way closer to the rubble. They ran a hand under their shirt, feeling it come away wet and seeing it covered in red. Their barely healed cuts must have split open from the force, and shrapnel might have caused a few more. No matter, they just needed to keep going, keep their mind off the pain.

What better times to think of than those that lead them here?

Their thoughts drifted first to that fateful night on their couch, one of the many they spent unable to sleep—instead slaving over the journals their parents left behind until either the sun rose or the melatonin kicked in. They had been just about to call it a morning when they flipped a page and found what they had been looking for. Lazy handwriting and poorly-scrawled diagrams that they scanned with drooping eyelids depicted the very last project their mom and dad had ever worked on: a protein that broke down the protective cellular coating that made Hero so unbeatable.

The reason they had died.

Naturally, Civilian's ecstasy at finally being proven right after all those years expediently gave way to an ice cold drive for revenge. But unfortunately, dreams of easily plunging a syringe into Hero's neck and watching the life drain from her eyes were dashed once Civilian discovered the compound was too unstable to travel in a simple tube.

They had almost given up right then, right up until they pictured their father comforting their mother after a long and frustrating day in the lab, encouraging her to finish what they started using the very same words Civilian had heard him speak to them over and over again. Over scraped knees and a tiny skateboard, over Elmer's glue and a broken piggy bank.

"There's no quitters in this family." A smile and a warm rumbling laugh. "Always keep going. Always try again."

And keep going Civilian did. With access to their university's lab and accompanying equipment, they had picked up right where their parents had left off. They uncovered that the modified protein needed to be kept between 96 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit to keep it from denaturing, and it was happiest when dissolved in plasma. They just needed to try again, try a different method of transport. A different medium.

In present day, Civilian flattened themselves on the floor, yanking up the sweatshirt to reveal an abdomen slicked with blood, fresh running over dried. All they needed was an oh-so-helpful Hero to come along and put pressure to the wounds, try and stop the blood running out.

And Civilian knew she would, because there was a black drone hovering right outside the window, small red light signaling it was recording and most likely live.

It was a good thing Villain was so predictable, setting his stage on the most obvious target in town and sticking to the timeline he knew Civilian was aware of ahead of time. News agencies lived for tips, after all. It certainly wasn't Civilian's fault if he had underestimated them, lulled into a false sense of security by the idea that they 'had nothing.'

They didn't need anything to help them kill Hero because they already were what they needed. They had done it two days before pulling back the curtain on Friend's identity: infused the serum directly into their bloodstream. The research their parents never got to see finished, now running through their veins. With the help of some minor manipulation of their kidney functions, they had about a week before their body flushed it out.

All they needed was about another thirty seconds.

As predicted, the city's supposed savior came barreling around the corner and—after a minuscule glance through the glass—rushed to their side to render aid. Fingers splayed across their stomach and Civilian smiled despite the pain as the bare skin of her hands made contact with their leaking cuts.

Trans-dermal transmission hadn't been considered by their parents—at the time, there was no need for transmission of any kind—but Civilian liked to think their mom and dad weren't the only two geniuses in the family. The Achilles' heel enzyme wasn't picky about where it started, it just needed a little help getting to its initial destination.

"Hang in there, I'm gonna get you out of here," Hero assured a touch too loudly, in what could only be described as an overly-friendly customer service voice. She hastily pulled a roll of gauze from a small pack strapped to her thigh and went to work securing it across their body.

Civilian, infuriated by the performance, narrowed their eyes and spat through a groan, "You might have killed my parents," they took as deep a breath as they could get, and it was almost therapeutic to acknowledge the truth they had been hiding for the better part of a decade, "but you didn't destroy everything they made."

Hero's brow furrowed, and she glanced around the desecrated hall before responding, "Shhhh, you've lost a lot of blood."

She might not have been wrong, but that was far from the point. Civilian ignored her empty soothing phrases and instead held her disgustingly faux-kind eyes as they whispered, "It's a shame I can't kill you."

The caveat to their plan. They had promised to leave the ending of her life to Villain.

And they were going to, too. But when they heard the earnest laugh bark out of her mouth at their words, saw the glint of Hero's own blade, they snapped. Their fingers found the top of a sheath and without so much as a second thought they pulled out sharpened metal.

Hero either didn't notice or didn't concern herself with their actions.

"Honey, no one can kill me." She paused. "And I don't know what you're talking about."

An afterthought. Denying their parents' murders was an afterthought.

Strong, seemingly-invulnerable arms lifted them into a standing position. Hero swiped dust off of her brow, smearing their blood across her face in the process. Arrogantly, she still stood close to them, facing chest to chest.

Civilian watched every breath she took with thinly-veiled rage. All that oxygen wasted on someone like her, air better people could be breathing. Breaths their parents could be taking.

Hurt that was countless years old drove them forward. Civilian raised the blade, ready to finally put their parents to rest.

A loud bang froze them in place, and the hilt slipped from their weakened hand. Civilian's eyes widened as they absentmindedly staggered a step back.

Hero looked just as surprised. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. She raised her hand to her chest, touching the red liquid leaking out with the tip of one finger like it was some sort of alien goo.

Civilian stared blankly at the twin spot of blood blooming across their own chest like that didn't belong there either.

A moment of horrible, dragging silence passed before they both collapsed to the ground in twisted synchrony.

Slow rhythmic tapping was the only sound that broke through the ringing in Civilian's ears, but they couldn't be bothered to source it. They rested their head on the cold hard floor, their whole body feeling far too heavy to bother holding it up. Above them, the walls stretched and the ceiling rose up to reveal white puffy clouds.

After an indeterminate amount of time, the tapping crescendoed to a stop, causing them to instinctively turn their gaze upward. A familiar figure hovered over them and something in the back of their mind relaxed at the sight, despite the damning gun he held in his hand.

Civilian felt an overwhelming urge to beckon him closer. They wanted to hold his hand, wanted to feel his warmth. To hear his voice.

Hand half-raised they thought better of it, clarity that had ebbed now returned in an unpredictable wave. Suddenly they were back in their living room, like they had never even left the floor right outside the kitchen. Like his knife had indeed cut their throat three whole days ago.

“Ten seconds?" They rasped, "That’s it? That’s all I was worth to you?”

It didn't have the bite they wished it did.

Friend smiled. It almost looked…sad.

He crouched down, pushing disheveled locks behind their ear with a gentle hand. Leaning in, he whispered into their ear quietly, “I counted slowly.”

He rose from the ground and backed away, placing one foot behind the other towards the corner from which he had come. The drone in the window was gone, and there was only Civilian's fluttering eyelids to watch him leave. They didn’t expect him to speak again, but he did.

“You heard what I said about liars.”

It was an explanation, almost an apology.

Black twinged around their vision, and Civilian figured it wouldn’t be long now.

Two dead, one living. Two promises fulfilled, one broken.

They nodded softly. They knew this was always how it would end.

He was a man of his word, after all.