You Were Never Meant to be a Hero (Quackbur Superhero AU)

Chapter 21: The Villain's Summit

Villains were classified by a ranking system. A system that Wilbur had grown steadily familiar with since encountering Quackity more and more while he was a hero.

He had never really paid much attention to it at first, Rescue Hero and all that. He didn't pay attention to the Villain Ranks since it wasn't exactly up his alley at the time. But ever since he had more encounters with The TNT Villain: Ace, he grew more familiar with it.

Villains were ranked based on threat level and general crimes committed. Typically these two numbers were related, but not always. A villain could commit very few crimes, but be considered extremely high level due to their powers. Or a villain could have a relatively weak power, but do a lot of crimes. Sometimes their threat level was determined by other things besides just their power. If a villain seemed to be spouting very 'anarchist' type ideals, typically they were put higher on the rankings than they probably should've been.

But very rarely were villains ever in a good enough position to spout their ideals. Or even share them in the first place.

Quackity, ever the one for villain propaganda, was in the top ranking spot not just for his destructive tendencies. He was actually one of the most well known villains for spreading ideals. It's why he ran a somewhat mafia with his casinos. He had an entire villain organization, or at least he was starting one. But he was also generally considered a very high threat due to his penchant for TNT and mischief. He was chaotic, and his attacks were pretty randomized, which is why the Hero Committee typically put him high on the list.

They really didn't like him, and he was a pain in their ass.

When Wilbur became a villain, Quackity's threat level was shot up slightly because it was clear he had actively corrupted a hero. And one from a known hero family no less. Which had bumped him up to number five.

The reason why this was such a big deal, was because the top five villain ranks were extremely difficult to get into since those ranks are reserved for S-Rank Villains only. Who the top five villains were typically didn't change much as time went on, unlike lower ranks where villains would jump up and down pretty commonly.

S-Rank Villains were villains that were generally considered top public enemies. Terrorists and generally considered 'supervillains'. They were ranked high above other villains, and were some of the only villains who had the 'capture under any circumstances' tag. Of course, apparently the Hero Committee was getting more or less impatient seeing how they had trained Techno to start murdering villains in the top ranks if he got the chance to make it look like an accident or self defense.

Villain Duos that worked really close together would commonly share ranks. Much like what Wilbur and Quackity did, sharing the number five spot as the TNT Duo. Or Tubbo and Ranboo, who occupied number seven together as the Bee Duo (soon to be Trio with Tommy's current plans). But if one member of the duo proved to be higher in threat sometimes they'd be ranked separately. A good example of this would be the Happy Duo, which were eventually reformed into heroes. Demon and Golem were clearly a duo, but Demon was considered a much higher threat thanks to his power. Both were villains mainly because they were ridiculed for their powers, which altered their appearances. But eventually they found their way into the villain reform program and became heroes. Running the Badlands Agency.

Demon had been ranked a few levels above his partner, but they were still a duo nonetheless.

Now, another important thing as it comes to the villain ranks is a villain's title (which relates to how duos were named).

A villain would earn a title once they became well known enough. In a villain duo, the duo would be named after whichever villain had been around longer, or was in a higher rank (hence TNT Duo, since Quackity has been a villain much longer). And the title could be based on a lot of different things.