I remember the day the boy's in the schoolyard called me a villain. They said it because I liked wearing dark clothing, and the shadows of my minions wrapped themselves around me. They said it because, the only friends I'd ever had were the strange, mysterious monsters that swam like wraiths through the air, cutting darkness into the very foundation of the universe. Of course I was angry, but that would never excuse attacking another student.

"If you really believe me to be a villain," I started calmly, "Than accost me! Attack me directly, and you will see, that I utterly fail to demean myself to your level. I will not attack back, I will not even deign it upon myself to use defense. Well go on then, go on!" Yet when they refused, I continued, "See? Not even you believe me to be evil! If you truly believed it to be such, within that moment, you would've laid me flat on my ass; yet you didn't," At the time, I should've realized the folly of provoking teenagers.

After I got out of the nurse's office, I was back to standing strong. I had proven my point, as I'd failed to attack them at all. When I got back into class, it was with a smirk on my face. In every way, I was superior to them, and their lowly bullying. Perhaps if I didn't already have minions, I might've thought about taking them along.

It was my sixteenth birthday, that I was gifted with a suit of my own. It came from my Grandpa, who'd been a supervillain in his own time. I didn't approve of his methods, or his allegiance, but the suit was rather splendidly done, and fitting of my countenance. I thanked him dearly, and then he tried to kill me. Mom didn't let him come over after that (I still visited in secret).

Dad was the one that got me the cape, it was designed after his superhero identity, and gave a light homage, whilst still being dark, with beautiful blood-red streaks along the sides. When I thanked him, he didn't try to kill me, and I was mildly disappointed; he didn't even think me worth the effort, or perhaps I still had a high ladder to climb.

Graduation came, and I finally got to make my debut. It was during the valedictorian speech (which, of course, was mine), that the gigantic mech robot descended. Only moments were needed to put on my suit, and my wraith-like minions flew from the sky ahead. They had been rising in numbers after I'd looted the graveyard (and why nobody had told me that they actually kept corpses there, I'll never understand; I didn't figure it out until grandpa). Before the mech could attack any of the innocent civilians, my army rained from above, attacking multiple different angles of the monster. Then, with a flip of a switch, my jet boots activated, and I soared forwards. Every superhero should have the finesse that I do, but sadly, they all rely too much on their abilities.

As I flew over the monster, I powered up my favorite superpower, the one that I'd gotten from mom and dad. They called it the Laser Ray, I call it the Demonic Wave. As my palm raises, dark tendrils shoot outwards, mimicking a laser as they slam into the gigantic robot. That, combined with my phantoms, keeps the destruction from hurting any of the people down below. Mom and dad are standing below, each of them giving me a thumb-up. I smile inside of my mask, before scolding myself. I'm not allowed to look happy in-front of them; they know this and accept it.

To my surprise, the people actually like me. Unfortunately for me, this means that I need to change my entire strategy. Mom and dad had grilled me in the publicity of hero life, and I knew that if the people enjoyed my presence, I would need to change the way that I market.

It's with an annoyed sigh that I get hugged by my parents, and even more annoyed sigh when I have to confront the people with microphones. Life...Just decided to become a whole lot harder.

Yeah c'mon, it's just not cool man

Thank you! I tried my best

I blankly stared at the scrawling along my computer. Half of the Earth had ended up destroyed in the Convergence, yet the Mana pools in the National Parks kept the entire planet alive...Somehow; that wasn't something that I entirely understood, and neither was it something that I wanted to. The only thing I needed to understand now, was the fact that, from one second to the next, I had become a God, of sorts.

'The Divinity of Atheism', and doesn't that just sound like the set up to a bad joke? But, what it essentially meant, was that my faith was unnecessarily complicated. Considering the fact that, absolutely everything, down to the most complex of things within the universe, need some sort of explanation, I am now the very abstract and unreasonable concept of Ultra Rationalism. Meaning that even my power, the absolute godhood of which I have achieved, is something that any who follow me might be capable of achieving with the right research (and isn't that horrifying?).

More than that, my very existence kinda threw everything into a loop. The other deities, people of normal flavor the same as myself, were immediately put into this weird stasis loop of impossibility and steady existence. Essentially, I had to stop the entire world from imploding, immediately after I started existing as I am now. In the middle of all of that, I also have to complete my work at the office; apparently you have to keep working for the company for two weeks before your allowed to go off and do...Godfuckery. Hooray for Capitalism!

After I'd created a very complex Wheel, upon which each God is stationed, and delved into the complex mathematics of the universe (none of which I should know, but do now; God Benefits, I guess), I got to get confronted by my own Devil. The Devil, of my religion...Is a pretty chill dude, basically a psychonaut, spouts a bunch of shit about complex geometry and the everlasting impossibility of the universe, but isn't that bad of a dude.

When the headache finally faded, my boss called me in for a meeting, and said he expected me to 'be on my best behavior' and 'just because I was a god now, it didn't mean I got to shirk my duties'. If I were to bet, he'd become the Deity of Corporate Greed, if there wasn't already an entire pantheon of those.

It was only when I got home, that I realized why being a deity would be particularly difficult. Imagine having to deal with people praying to science. It didn't make any sense, but I had a prayer list to answer; which meant I might have to fix the half of the world that's broken, because nobody else wants to do it.

My Advice? If you ever become a God, meet me in a back alley and I'll undo it for you. The stress just isn't worth it. As the god of Atheism, I'm practically the only one that can manage that (Unless you go to Hades, but his process is overly complicated, and takes five hundred years).

It started off as a joke. To be honest, I hadn't even realized that the Uno Deck had what the spell promised it would. Late at night, I was at a diner with a couple of friends. When the waitress came over with the bill, I slammed my Uno Reverse down, not quite expecting anything to happen. To my horror, her body physically started to twitch, mouth opening as she reached one arm down her throat. From the back of her lungs, she pulled out a horrifying mix of saliva and blood. Yet within the very middle, sat the sixty dollars in cash that we needed to pay.

I tried to get rid of the Uno Deck after that. Almost immediately after we left the diner, I set fire to the cards, all still in a pile. Instead, as the deck tumbled within the everlasting burn, four more copies appeared. I tried to rip them apart, but upon getting to the reverse card once more, I watched one of my friends get torn to shreds. Finally, I threw the deck into a fully filled bathtub. Once more, the reverse card activated, and I slammed into the pull of water, body fully submerged. As my body contorted, and strange patterns grew across my body, I heard somebody in the room talking.

"Who leaves a deck of Uno Cards on their bathtub like that?"

"And why did they throw another deck into the water?"

I stared up towards my sister, as her hand slowly started to close around the original deck. I tried to scream, but my mouth had faded. my body was already fractured into thousands of pieces, individual cards streaming within the water. She turned from the room; the screams started six minutes later.

Thanks!

I used to be the best, beyond any other human being. When they managed to replicate the serum that made me, I saw what that meant. The desert is a lonely place for a bleeding man.

After days of travel, I managed to stumble my way into an old gas station. With the lights off, and no traffic in sight, I broke protocol. Chips were shoved into my mouth as I grabbed whatever water I could. It took me what felt like hours to move on.

The heat of the sun failed to loosen, and at least half of my water ended up poured onto my head. I stumbled along the only road I could see. Nobody would appear to save me; that was never how this sort of operation worked.

Days passed, before I made it to the nearest city. My patrol had managed to get there before me, army cars spread across the vast expanse. The town was in ruins, bodies strewn in every direction.

"Am I glad to see you," My commanding officer whistled, "The Supersoldier Initiative went awry, we need you to clean up the mess,"

All I could do was stare towards him blankly. The wound in my side, from the shot he had fired was barely patched.

"You're on your own," I replied with the smallest of smiles.