The Wrong Genre

Genre Shift

"Ah, you're awake," a smooth voice hissed as Stravarius began to wake. His head pounded, and his eyelids felt like lead. Ropes bit painfully into the skin of his wrists, and when he tried to move his hands they were nearly unresponsive.

His body felt cold, especially his extremities, as if he had been dunked into a vat of freezing water. Managing to pry his eyes open, he spotted a worrying blue tint on the ends of his fingers and forced his head up so as to glare at the man he knew must be responsible.

And yes, there he was. The nefarious as-yet-unidentified man leaned calmly on the wall of his lair, smirking disgustingly in the hero's direction.

"You," Stravarius snarled, this only causing the smirk on the black-haired man's face to grow.

"So you've heard of me," he said silkily, standing straight and crossing his arms over his chest.

"Only your deeds," Stravarius replied, jerking his head to get his blond hair out of his eyes. "Master of heists, able to stay ahead of the police by two steps no matter how hard they try, you've faced off against several heroes and you're still alive and free."

"Well, as much as I appreciate the sentiment, I'm rather insulted that you don't even know my name," he sighed, almost looking actually sad at the prospect. "Romulus, bring me the ray," he added, directed at another man whom Stravarius hadn't noticed before. He was a good-looking man- Stravarius found himself almost physically recoiling from shock when he turned fully and revealed the other half of his face. It was marred by a large, jagged scar that ran right through his eye. The scar was unlike any knife-produced scar Stravarius had ever seen; it seemed... warped, somehow, like the skin around had... melted. The eye the scar ran across was open, but the milky white quality and the way it didn't look directly at anything made it clear that it was useless.

"I've been looking for a chance to test this out," the main villain said as he took what looked like a gun with some sort of child's light toy stuck on the back. Romulus gave Stravarius a dark glare with his one good eye as he turned and walked away. "And this seems like the perfect excuse- just what will a ray gun do to human flesh?" He asked lightly, lifting the gun and taking aim at the hero's arm. "They call me Maestro by the way."

Stravarius' eyes widened, but he clenched his teeth. Maestro had never been proven a killer- all the heroes he had gone up against before had been let go (harmed, but alive)- so he most likely wouldn't be killed, but it would definitely hurt. He forced himself to stare right into the villain's eyes, refusing to show fear or resignation in the face of pain.

But, just as Maestro pulled the trigger, there was a loud thud and Romulus (eyes widened to an almost comical degree) fell onto his master redirecting the gun arm towards a different minion.

That minion fell over, motionless.

"What?" Maestro asked, confused. He recovered quickly, though, and frowned at Romulus. "You know, that one was almost tolerable. He was quite possibly my favorite version-" Before he could get to the point, which Stravarius was fairly certain would be driven directly through Romulus' good eye, there was a shifting noise. They all looked over and, impossibly as it seemed, saw the previously-thought-dead minion sitting up. Stravarius quickly looked back to Maestro to see how he would react.

He, understandably, looked shocked. But he quickly recovered from that and was confused. Just as he opened his mouth to say something- SNAP!

As the loud sound ended, everyone in the room looked around in confusion wondering where the noise had come from. All but Maestro, who's suddenly tensed arms were inexplicably plastered to his sides while his legs snapped together.