The Coroner

"Hello, Neighbor!" Ky faked friendliness as his neighbor opened the door. Ky was instantly hit with a stench coming from the inside of the man's home. He was a heavier man with an unkept beard as well as messy hair on his head. Similar to Celcius, he was as pale as can be, likely due to being a shut-in. 

Standing before his neighbor, Ky wanted nothing more than to obliterate him. The filth that littered Ky's brain, the actions of this despicable, subhuman before him forced Ky to refrain from trembling with anger. 'Stay calm. Make sure this is the right guy.'

Snap!

Ky froze time, went behind his neighbor, and cracked the back of his head with a baseball bat. 

Snap!

Time resumed, and the neighbor was immediately knocked unconscious as his body hit the ground like a sandbag. Ky didn't even want to touch him, but if he wanted the truth, he needed to use his Psychometry ability on him. Using just a single finger, Ky touched the man's head and began peering into his memories, finding himself reliving the moment the man got his powers through his eyes.

"What happened to this guy?" The neighbor said as he looked over a mutilated corpse. He was a coroner, inspecting bodies every night to understand how they died before writing their death certificate.

"I don't know. They say he was one of those Hero x Villain guys. Threw himself off a roof after doing a bank robbing spree or somethin'." 

"So a suicide, huh? That'll make things easy for me. You go on ahead, it's getting late. I'll do the paperwork."

"Yeah, well I'll leave you to it."

Ky's neighbor, being left alone, smiled as his coworker left the room. He immediately began caressing the young man's body, feeling down every last inch of his mutilated corpse. This was the coroner's special hobby, the whole reason why he took that job in the first place. He was a sick man, abusing corpses regardless of their age, gender, or ethnicity. He wanted nothing more than to explore the bodies of someone living, but corpses had to do for the time being as they were the only ones who couldn't stop him.

However, as the Coroner was inspecting the body, he noticed something peculiar. The young man's eyes started to glow before contact lenses seemingly expelled from his irises. These contact lenses didn't look like any ordinary prescribed ones. They looked almost futuristic. 'Wait... He said this guy was a Hero x Villain Online player, right? I heard about this. You put on the contact lenses and you get powers.'

The coroner grabbed the contact lenses out of the young man's bloody eyeballs before making his way over to the nearby sterilization station. He cleaned them, though they were still somewhat stained by blood after the process had been completed. Regardless, the coroner took the contact lenses and placed them onto his own eyeballs, one by one. Reminiscent of Ky's experience, the man fell to his knees in agony as the contact lenses burned themselves into his eyeball. 

When the pain stopped, the user interface appeared in his visual field and he could see a marker for the dead young man's phone in his pants pockets. The Coroner walked over, grabbed the phone, and found his way to the Hero x Villain Online app. There, he found the previous player's skill tree and his eyes lit up upon seeing what powers were just bestowed upon him.

"Mind Manipulation..."

[New Player Data detected...]

[Please enter your name]

[The Coroner]

'No way... I got in! I'm in Hero x Villain Online!'

The Coroner rushed through the paperwork, creating the corpse's death certificate before going out into the world with his new abilities as quickly as he could. He started walking the streets, looking for his first victim until he found it; a beautiful young woman sitting all alone at a bus stop. The Coroner sat beside her, though it took him a while to muster up the strength to talk. 

"So, uh... Quite the weather we're having, huh?" he mumbled awkwardly. Despite his awkwardness, the woman responded, "Yeah. It's very odd. Things have been pretty odd in general though." 

'Wow... She has such a nice voice. Such beautiful skin too.' The Coroner gawked at her for a moment before remembering how a conversation works. "How so?" he asked her.

"Well, you know, with all the super-powered people showing up. I heard they get their powers from a mobile app. Isn't that crazy?"

"I don't think it's crazy at all. I believe it. You know, I signed up for Hero X Villain Online but I didn't get in."

"Oh, is that so? I wish I got in too." the Coroner could suddenly feel himself filled with excitement. He'd never met a girl who played video games before. At this moment, he forgot all about wanting to test out his new abilities and went straight to video game talk.

"You play games!?"

"Sometimes."

"Like what!?"

"PockMonsters, Creature Crossing, The Simmies, Super Bruno Bros, Stellehew Valley..." As the young woman continued listing games, the Coroner nearly cringed. 'Tch. Those are all games for babies, she's not a real gamer. None of those require any skill or challenge.'

"What about you?" she asked.

"Oh, me? I like Land of Legends, Galorant, and Overlook."

"Oh, I've played Overlook before! I played the blonde healer lady!"

"Grace!?"

"Yes! Grace is super sick! I've been thinking about getting back into it."

"Maybe we should play together." the Coroner laughed awkwardly. He knew she'd say no, but he took the shot anyway.

"We totally should! Do you have a Discard? I'll add you."

The Coroner couldn't believe it. 'She... She's giving me her Discard? No way!'

The two exchanged contact information and eventually, the bus arrived. The two of them sat next to each other on the bus, talking about video games and such. 'She's amazing! She likes games too! Real ones!' It wasn't until this very moment that the Coroner remembered why he was on the bus in the first place.

He didn't even take the bus, in fact, he'd never been on a bus in his life. He just wanted to follow her home.

"Ah, this is my stop." said the woman as she rose to her feet. The Coroner instantly shot up to his feet as well.

"Oh, me too! Can I walk you home!?"

"No, that's okay. It's right across the street."

The Coroner grabbed her hand and unintentionally gave her a direct order, activating his power. "Let me walk you home."

The woman perked up like a machine and her eyes went blank. "Okay." Without another word, she turned and started walking home like a machine. The Coroner followed behind her and once they made it to her apartment door, the woman snapped out of her trance.

"What!? What happened?"

The Coroner didn't know what to do. He stammered and started looking around for an excuse, but he couldn't find one. "You looked dizzy so I helped you home. Are you okay?"

"I was walking... and you followed me." The woman's delirium after being mind-controlled was starting to wear off. The life in her eyes reappeared, causing her confusion to turn into fear. "You followed me home." She remembered telling the Coroner not to follow her, yet there he was standing in front of her door.

"Wait!" the Coroner grabbed her by the hand instinctively. However, his intentions became more sinister once he felt the touch of her hand. He remembered his powers. All he had to do was touch her and give an order. "Invite me inside... And do everything I say."

The woman perked up like a machine once more and began unlocking her door. The Coroner looked around, feeling his heartbeat skyrocketing due to fear and excitement. He'd been waiting for a live experiment for years, and he was finally getting it. The door opened and the Coroner followed her inside.

Hours later, after being the Coroner's first living victim, the woman was seen walking out of her apartment without any of her belongings. With blank eyes and a robotic stride, the woman made her way to the subway and jumped down onto the tracks. So long as no one intervened as Ky did with the boy, the train would strike her down. 

There were multiple spectators in the subway, many of whom were more than capable of stopping her, but all they could do was watch as the bystander effect took over and she disappeared deeper into the dark abyss of the subway's tunnels.

The next morning her body was found, mutilated by the train's tracks. There was no evidence of what the Coroner had done and he got off scot-free, just as he planned.

Meanwhile, the Coroner had already moved on to his next victim. Having such power over someone filled the Coroner with euphoria and he needed to experience it again. Having just one woman wasn't enough, he wanted more. Like a mad scientist, he began experimenting, pulling the same stunt of following people home and using his ability on them before doing unspeakable things to them. At first, it was just women, but then he moved on to men, then the elderly and disabled individuals.

The last thing on his list was a child; the same child that Ky saved from taking his own life, but was too late to protect from the Coroner.

Back in the present, the Coroner woke up to find himself atop a roof, chained to a water tower whose water was dripping into a bucket beside him. In front of him, Tempo sat with his face covered in a black balaclava mask, concealing his identity. However, even if his identity was known, it wouldn't matter in the end. "You're finally awake, Coroner." Tempo slid his metallic bat across the ground before standing up and approaching the Coroner with it trailing behind his back. "You don't know me, but I sure as hell know about you and all of your victims."

"What are you talking about!? Victims?"

"Jennifer Bailey. Kelsey Mackey. Lauren Ramirez. Jonathan Oaks. Steve Ryans. Margaret Hill. Todd Hill. Victoria Bines. And lastly, Jacob Brown. Any of those names ring a bell, Coroner?" The Coroner's heart sank upon hearing the names of all of his victims spoken aloud to him, yet he still played ignorance. "I don't know who those people are."

"Don't fucking play dumb with me! For one, I can peer into your mind whenever I want and see these memories for myself! I saw what you did with my own eyes. And even if I couldn't do that, I have your fucking manifesto right here!" Tempo threw a notebook down at the Coroner's feet, which had the names, locations, and details of all of his victims. His first victim was a mere coincidence, but his next victims were all calculated in some form. Even the little neighbor boy, Jacob. His plans for the future were also marked in the notebook. He planned on creating a cult of people who allowed him to experiment on them whenever he pleased. Whether or not that would ever come to fruition didn't matter to Ky, just the thought of it was crime enough.

"You're fucking sick! I wish I could erase the filth that I witnessed through Jacob's eyes and through yours from my mind. I wish I could reverse everything you did! But since I can't do that, I've decided that I'll do the only thing I can do with my ability instead, one that I've recently unlocked. It's called a Temporal Bubble."

[Temporal Bubble: Allows the user to create a bubble where they have full control over how time moves inside. The size and amount of Temporal Bubbles can be upgraded. Current limit: 1.]

"Inside my bubble, time does not exist. It's pretty cool, right? If I wanted to, I could study here for days and no time would pass in the real world. Our bodily functions pause as well, so there's no need to sleep or go to the bathroom. It's simply a timeless void where you and I exist. I tallied up the amount of time you spent victimizing others, and it totaled up to forty-five hours, but I'm going to round it up to forty-eight hours, an even two days. That's how long you and I are going to be stuck in here."

Ky then opened his arms, showing his entire outfit to the Coroner. "As you can see, I am covered head to toe without even an inch of skin showing and I know that your powers only work through skin-to-skin contact with the palm of your hands. You should be thankful I didn't cut them off. Not that it matters since you're completely bound."

Ky then took his baseball bat and pointed it at the Coroner's body. "But that's not all. I also covered your entire skeletal system with my Temporal Cloak ability. You see, I can only use it on inorganic objects, but it turns out your skeletal system is seventy percent inorganic! That means I can reverse any damage done to your skeleton whenever I please."

"I will put it simply for you. For what feels like forty-eight hours, in this bubble where I have full control over time, you will experience unending pain. When that bucket fills with water and time runs out, I will kill you so you can't hurt anyone else. Do you have any questions?"

"Please... Don't do this."

"Your victims didn't even get the chance to beg for their freedom. You don't deserve the tongue inside your mouth. Now shut the fuck up and endure your punishment."

Tempo gripped the handle of his baseball with both hands tightly in a batter's position. He didn't need the encouragement, but the game offered him points for his participation nonetheless.

[Torture the Coroner until the timer runs out: 48:00:00 - Ten Skill Points +Ten Chaos Points]