PROMPT: A standard Hero and Villain story, but the person everyone thinks is the Hero is the villain, and the person who everyone thinks is a Villain is a Hero.
Our hero gazes into his crystal ball while twirling his handlebar mustache while petting his fluffy white cat while gently adjusting the collar of his cloak. "I don't know what it is," he says. "People seem to have a hard time seeing me as a good guy."
Toadslime, his faithful and heroic sidekick, rises from the ottoman. "Why do you say that, my lord?"
Our hero turns toward the window while changing his eyepatch while re-greasing his cyberkinetic robo-hand. "Maybe it's my appearance."
Toadslime balks. "No, my lord! Your visage could launch a thousand ships!"
"Yeah, ships of war," our hero replies sadly. He shakes his horned head. "Just once, I want people to see me and recognize me as a hero--a beacon of goodness, virtue."
At this, Toadslime is silent. Air whistles in his deviated septum.
"Toadslime?"
"Yes, my lord?"
In the window, in the clouds cast low over the hamlet below, our hero studies his reflection. "I want to be--pretty," he says.
Toadslime claps his knobby hands. "Yes, my lord! And so you shall be!"
"I want a countenance that inspires hope. That reflects my purest intentions."
"Yes, my lord! Yes!"
Our hero faces his sidekick while massaging his fiery red lightning-bolt-shaped face scar. He wipes a tear from his his prosthetic eyeball which is actually a billiard ball with a tiny laser embedded in the 8. "Can you make me pretty?"
Toadslime hesitates.
"Can you?" our hero asks again. "Don't you have that cousin out in LA? The hairdresser?"
"Well, yes, my lord, but you see--"
Just then, Handsome Carl bursts in, fresh from burning down another orphanage.
Ha! That damn Handsome Carl. Epic. Hilarious.
Sir. I am absolutely undone. How have I lived this long without your writing in my life?! You are a literary wizard! Thank you 😊