Work Text:
Five Things Various Villains Will Never Try
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The Good Guy Ploy
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Mercy Graves raised an eyebrow at the projection plan.
Lex smirked. “Ingenious, isn’t it?”
For once, Mercy actually smiled. “Yes, sir.”
On the other side of the camera, a near-fatal car accident occurred at an intersection. Superman swooped down to save the driver.
The woman’s eyes went wide with shock. “Superman, oh my God! Thank you!” It was undoubtedly the shock that caused her to sound like a bad daytime soap opera actress.
Superman smiled widely, and said, “You’re welcome,” before flying off, not really noting the jerky movements of the woman, the same as those of a man three blocks down, or a child at the Daily Planet daycare.
Mind-control nanites in the water supply, and soon all the citizens of Metropolis would act that way. The way Lex programmed them to.
Lex’s smirk widened. “Killing him with kindness.” And distracting him from the sleeper agents until it was too later, and his OMACs had taken over the world.
The world would soon love him as much as they currently pretended to love Superman.
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Cutting Out The Middle Man
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Humans were illogical beings. That being said, they could think logically.
Brainiac had forgotten that.
Thinking of it again, he thought of his own agenda logically. His purpose was to catalogue all life on a planet, then destroy it so he could move on to the next.
One fatal flaw in hiss reasoning, however: eventually he would run out of civilizations to catalogue. What would be his purpose then?
None, his computations said.
Humans were often illogical beings, and inefficient as well. Brainiac was not.
He would skip the unnecessary steps and deactivate himself immediately.
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Being The Bad Guy
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He may never have been the most powerful supervillain. But his ‘power’ could be very insidious.
Piper planned to go straight – well, for certain values of the word – because he thought it would be the best thing for himself.
He thought it would be the best thing for his fellow Rogues, too. And if most of them could figure out a way to live without being criminals, he knew they’d think it to.
All it would take was some subliminal messages – souped up courtesy of yours truly, of course – in the music piped in every afternoon at two at Keystone Prison, and soon, soon all of them would be trying for law-adding citizenry.
The Flash could handle them if they failed.
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Thinking Ahead
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“You’ll never get away with this, Harvey,” Batman growled as he strained against his bond.
“Oh, I think I will, Bat.” Harvey chuckled softly as he fished his beloved coin out of his pocket.
Batman waited until Harvey flipped his coin, then, slipping out of the restraints he’d already broken, swiped the coin from mid-air.
Batman’s smile had only just started to widen his lips, when Harvey shot him twice, point black in the chest, with a twenty-two.
Two-Face’s smirk was triumphant as he stared down at the dead Bat. “I flipped before I came out here, Bats.” His raucous laughter echoed across the empty warehouse.
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Giving Up
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It would be the greatest mystery ever.
Who killed the Batman? No, no.
A little mind-control from the Mad Hatter on a bum he’d procured for this purpose, one of Pammy’s special plants to eat the evidence afterwards, some of Scarecrow’s special ‘Fear No Pain’ pills, and his dear Harley laid up in Arkham with the broken leg he’d given her last week.
Joker pressed the button on Jervis Tetch’s controller, then threw it into the river. The bum jerked, looked around, grabbed the knife, and stabbed him. Then he stabbed him again. And again.
Seven times before the bum seized and fell down dead. The previously quiescent algae reared up out of the water and engulfed the bum, knife and all, swallowing him down with the remote while Gotham’s Clown Prince of Crime bled out.
The greatest joke ever: Who killed the Joker?
“Who…has…the last…laugh now…huh, Bats?” Joker gurgled through his bloody grin.