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"You won't get away with this, Generator!" Barnaby shouted, as he yanked at the leather straps binding him to a classic tilted metal tabletop. "I'll rescue Kotetsu and the tiara, and get home in time to fix the sink in Apartment 2C!"
He yanked again at the wrist straps—not because he thought he'd be able to break them, but as a matter of principle. It'd be rude not to participate his utmost.
His archnemesis only laughed villainously.
"Good luck, Saint Bernard!" Morgan sneered, half-shadowed on the edge of the spotlight that lit the hero's predicament. "This is my most deadly death trap yet—and your little doggie will be no help at all!"
Morgan waved what may have been their true prize of the night: an open bag of Hill Magic Bizarre Bacon Bits!(TM) (For Paranormal Pets—Now With Real Pork Futures!). Kotetsu, usually the hero Saint Bernard's most loyal companion, sat at their feet and tracked it with his entire shaggy head, the picture of a ghost dog who'd just discovered his new favorite treat and would do anything for the next Bit.
"Heel!" Morgan tossed a Bacon Bit in the air. Kotetsu leapt up to catch it, then followed the bag and the supervillain into the shadows and out of the room at an eager trot.
The door locked behind them with a menacing snck. Barnaby was left alone, cuffed wrists and ankles to the table, in the warehouse room lit only by a single spotlight that pinned him as tightly as the leather bindings.
He tugged at them again, this time checking how well he could still reach the lockpick taped to the inside of his left wrist. Tricky, but doable. But he didn't rush it—judging by the mechanical clamor in the shadows all around him, Morgan had really gone all-out this time. Barnaby craned his head around, excited to see what sort of death trap the clangs and pings were about to turn into.
The clanking crescendo reached a climax as a variety of sharp hooks and spinning saw blades stretched into the light, at the ends of crane-like metal arms—and stopped. New lights appeared in the darkness directly in front of the hero. A pair of glowing eyes, golden like a wolf’s, slitted like a serpent’s, and holding the ill will of every atrocity the world had ever known, from genocide to schoolyard cruelty, re-committed with malice aforethought. For a moment, they lit only a nightmarish silhouette—then Alex Stewart stepped fully into the light.
“Hello, Dog Boy,” said the world’s only S-Tier villain, with a smile sharper than any saw blade. “Morgan ran into some technical difficulties, so I get to be the death trap today.”
Barnaby had gone entirely still. Even the bravest hero, even as far down as D-Tier, doesn’t make it far without very good survival instincts.
“I thought I was on the Do Not Kill List?” he managed.
Alex beamed like a planet-destroying supernova. “Not if you don’t make it out of this room in the next five minutes!”
Barnaby's mind raced. He was already reaching for his lockpick, but his fingers were suddenly clumsy.
When in doubt, banter for time. No villain of any tier could resist it.
“What sort of technical difficulty?”
Okay, not his best banter.
Alex rolled their eyes. “The janitor came in this morning and moved stuff without permission. So now everything keeps jamming or something.”
They prowled forward and circled the table, screeching their claws lightly along the metal edge.
Fighting the instinct to crane his neck to follow them, Barnaby blinked in surprise. “The Janitor? I thought she was cleaning up crime in Quebec.”
“Not The Janitor.” Alex broke off a thick, jaggedly tipped metal hook like an apple from a tree, and tested it idly against one finger. It did nothing, of course. “Literally just the janitor. This warehouse is a rental, and it comes with cleaning services.”
Despite everything, Barnaby almost smirked. He really didn’t know how Morgan lived with this lack of wit. But Alex’s dullness worked to his advantage—knowing that this was a rental meant knowing the electrical draw couldn't be more than 156% of city regulation (without also drawing official FA attention, which Morgan would never do). Which meant even without a jam, no machinery of this size could move faster than three meters a second; so the path to the door—
The hook slammed through the leather restraint and deep into the metal table beneath, gouging with perfectly aimed savagery. Barnaby yelped and dropped his lockpick. A single drop of blood was scraped from the web between his pointer and index fingers.
Suddenly inches from Barnaby's face, Alex leaned on the hook and licked their lips. Bloodlust danced a tarantella in their eyes.
"What's the matter, Dog Boy?" they purred. "You're not scared, are you?"
They twisted the hook a quarter-inch, digging another metallic screech out of the table and more drops of blood from Barnaby's fingers. With the anticipation of a years-long leash finally loosed, they mocked, “I thought ‘nobody ever dies in death traps!’”
Barnaby kept his mouth clamped shut over his pounding heart—which Alex could hear, of course. Alex leaned back a little, to make a show of checking their bare wrist and pursing their lips.
“By the way," they drawled, "should I have mentioned that the five minutes started when Morgan left?”
Barnaby raced for his backup lockpick.