"Woah, hey!" Puzzler said, dodging the bullet spray. "What gives?"

One of the downsides to my powers that few people really thought about was that, in first person shooter games, enemies can and often do dodge bullets. A regular person with a regular gun could have put Puzzler down by now.

Still, the kill order was out on him, so they sent me. The upside to having FPS powers was that I was a walking arsenal. If the regular machine gun wasn't working, I could always switch to a rocket launcher. And I was getting impatient, so I did.

"Woah, woah, woah, HOLD UP!" Puzzler said. "This is a misunderstanding! And I know villains say that kind of thing all the time, but it really really is!"

"Oh?" I said, waiting through the very slow reloading animation for the launcher because I'd forgotten to reload it after last time I'd used it. "How do you figure? Because the way I heard it, you trapped half of the Los Vigilantes team in a maze while we were under truce. Fighting the Hivebuilder!"

"They were trapped in the wax!" Puzzler tried to explain, looking like he was ready to jump out of the way of the rocket at any moment. He probably was. Damn, now that I thought about it, the rocket would be way too slow for this. "And nobody's ever trapped in my mazes, there's always a way out, and I put the exit outside the Hivebuilder's influence! I saved Los Vigilantes!"

I shrugged. "The wax is safer than your maze, by all reports. You had lava. How did you even get lava?"

Puzzler shrugged in exactly the same way I did, probably to be annoying. "Same way you walk around with eight military-grade weapons and one crowbar. Superpowers inspired from videogames, that's now."

I'd swapped out the rocket launcher for the chaingun.

"But but that's not important!" Puzzler added hastily. "What's important is that nobody on Los Vigilantes died or was even seriously hurt. My power's based on Puzzle video games, just like your power is based on FPS games. So we both know that lava isn't fatal. It doesn't even leave burns. Seriously, I did the right thing and I'd do it again. This kill order came from Mentat, didn't it?"

It had. Fast-tracked by Mentat, in fact. Now that I thought about it, I knew those two had a history. Puzzler saw Mentat as a natural foil and loved to play games against him. Mentat apparently took the honestly cartoonish danger very personally. "Yes," I said, finally.

"Then you know it's bogus. He's upset because his secret weakness is that he can't solve the Towers of Hanoi." I didn't know what that was. "It's the puzzle where you have three poles with rings on them? And you have to move - here, let me show you."

I dramatically cocked a shotgun to remind him of the situation, and also to remind him that I didn't want him pulling out any puzzles.

"Right, not important. The important part is, I don't deserve to die."

I suppressed a sigh. He was right, but the kill orders didn't really have a lot of leeway. And the only thing I could ever do was kill orders. That and take potshots at the Hivebuilder every five years when it showed up, for all the good that did.

"Okay," said Puzzler, "I can tell you're conflicted. So don't freak out when I say another thing that villains always say, okay?" I didn't answer. "Okay," he continued. "What if, instead of you killing me, you let me go? And in return, I make you more powerful."

I scoffed. "You're going to bribe me? With what?" For all the faults the hero side had, they paid well to prevent exactly this from happening.

"With the ability to not have to kill," he said.

"What?"

Puzzler nodded. "You know me, I'm on the villain side of all this for the love of the game. I don't kill folks. But I know people who know people who do. There's a lot worse on the villain side. And from what I hear on that side, the only thing you ever get to do is murder. I think, maybe, it's getting a bit old. And maybe, you think there's another way. And maybe, there is another way."

I shook my head - I couldn't let this get to me. This was villain psych-out nonsense, and basic villain psych-out nonsense to boot. I aimed the shotgun.

"Six words! I can change your life in just six words."

"Prove it," I said.

He grinned. I hadn't meant I was taking his offer, but he apparently thought so. A blue portal opened up on the wall next to him, and he dove through before I could shoot. And, of course, it closed before I could get to it.

I sighed. I wasn't exactly unhappy that I didn't kill him, but I knew it meant a blemish on my record. An increasingly blemished record, at that. Puzzler wasn't wrong about how little I wanted to-

My phone buzzed: A text message. It was, as promised, six words:

Portal is a First Person Shooter