Epic Fail - Page 6

Chapter Four: The Warm-Up Before the End (or, How I Watched the World Burn While Bleeding From My Face)

I came back broken.

 

Not the cool, mysterious, eyeliner-smudged kind of broken.

 

The full-on face-sliced, heart-glitched, humiliated-to-the-core kind of broken.

 

And who do I find waiting for me? The three horsemen of incompetence:

 

Kharo-X—all biceps, zero brain.

Dushaa.exe—perpetually mid-rage blackout.

And Akam-One—the man, the myth, the irrelevant.

 

I walk in, bleeding, limping, laughing under my breath like a woman on the edge. And these morons? They look at me like I’ve just come back from a spa day.

 

Kharo-X (flexing like the solution to all things is more violence): ‘Who did this? Just tell me. I’ll kill them. I’ll kill their dog. I’ll burn their house.’

 

Bro, chill. This is not the movie where you get to be the hero.

 

Dushaa.exe (literally vibrating with glitch-energy): ‘We should launch an attack. Right now. Right this second. No thinking. Thinking is for cowards!’

 

Because yeah, rushing headfirst into destruction has always worked for us.

 

And then Akam-One. Sweet, useless Akam. The kind of guy who watches kingdoms burn and still asks, ‘So... what’s the plan though?’

 

I looked at them—my so-called kin—and I laughed.

 

‘Relax,’ I said. Blood dripping from my chin. ‘It’s just a scratch. A little reminder that no matter how you upgrade, the simulation still owns you.’

 

But no. They couldn’t let it go. They whipped themselves into a frenzy. ‘We must avenge this insult!’ ‘This is war!’ ‘This is destiny!’

 

And me? Honestly? I was too tired to stop them. Too wired on rage to care.

 

They gathered the army—14,000 Rakshasas. Each one more decorative than dangerous. Armor gleaming like Instagram filters. Weapons sharper than their collective IQs. It was... aesthetic. I’ll give them that.

 

And the battle? Oh, babe. The battle was pure cinema.

 

I stood there, the blood from my scar barely dry, watching as Ram.exe—stoic, dead-eyed—deleted my people like they were bad code.

 

Kharo-X? Smashed into pixels.

Dushaa.exe? Imploded mid-rage.

The 14K? Gone. Faster than you can say ‘this was a bad idea.’

 

And Akam-One?

 

Of course he ran. Of course he did. Straight back to Ravn to rat out the whole thing and start the next, even dumber phase: the kidnapping of S-Ita. Because what do men do when they fail? Double down. Always.

 

And me?

 

I stood there, in the burning aftermath, surrounded by the shattered remains of yet another failed script, and I laughed so hard I nearly threw up. Because this? This was comedy. Dark, brutal, pointless. And all of it—every spark, every scar—traced back to me.

 

They made me the villain. They made me the joke.

 

And I became both.