The Reincarnated Hitman

Popularity.

While the government ranks heroes by their Pragma amount and Factor, the HA had a third category of rankings.

How popular a hero was.

Your popularity rank decided whether or not a hero was worth investing in.

Initially, a ranking system was established as an incentive to encourage rescues.

But with the advent of brands and commercials, it had mutated into something else entirely.... a currency in its own right, one that ran parallel to a hero’s actual rank and, more often than anyone at the HA wanted to admit, outweighed it.

A Gamma-class hero with a high popularity score could pull better sponsorship numbers than an Alpha-class hero who preferred to work quietly.

And over time, more and more heroes preferred the rewards brought about by this popularity to just ordinary gratitude from the ones they rescued.

Zero’s current target was one such hero.

According to the file Sable had sent him, Torque was a hero obsessed with popularity, and that very obsession was the reason a contract had been placed on him.

The client was a woman named Hailey who lost her husband and two children in a fire.

Torque had been the hero dispatched to the burning building, and although he had managed to rescue the others in the apartment building, he had unfortunately not made it in time, and a couple of people had ended up dying.

"..."

Or at least that’s the story that the HA and media ran with, but the truth was revealed to be quite different.

An anonymous leak had revealed that while Torque had made it to the scene just in time, he had chosen not to make a move until major media outlets made it to the scene.

Of course this leak was quickly buried, but Hailey had spent every last cent of her savings tracking down who’d actually leaked it, and from them, she got all the proof she needed.

But even then, she was forced to keep her head down since no one was willing to go against the HA....well, almost no one.

Hailey somehow stumbled upon the grey market, and with the compensation the HA granted her, she hired Sable.

***

Torque let out a long, tired sigh as he opened the door that led into his house, before tossing his jacket on a random chair.

He then walked towards his fridge, took out a beer and returned to the dark living room.

Usually, the AI would’ve turned on the lights the moment he stepped inside, but he paid its deactivation no mind since it had been buggy these past few days.

"Rough day?"

The Gamma-ranked hero suddenly froze when he heard an unfamiliar voice in the dark living room.

Click!

A lamp was suddenly turned on, revealing a man in a suit calmly sitting on the smallest sofa with a glass in hand.

"I helped myself to some milk," the man spoke again, "hope you don’t mind."

Torque, although surprised, didn’t seem bothered by the presence of a stranger in his house.

Probably not the first time he dealt with something like this.

"So," he started as he opened the can of beer, "I’m guessing you were also sent to take me out?"

"Something like that," Zero answered with a shrug.

"Which one is it this time?" Torque made himself comfortable on the sofa. "A villain group? Bits perhaps? He seemed a bit pissed that I went to do that commercial instead of him."

"Or perhaps, it was a family I failed to save?"

He calmly looked at the face of the man before him, searching for a reaction, but he was disappointed to find none.

"Warm," Zero muttered before taking a slow sip of the milk in his hand.

"That’s definitely not something new," Torque answered with a smile, "so what is it this time?"

"Why don’t you take a guess?" The hitman leaned back, interested in just how many families the ’hero’ had failed.

"Was it someone caught in a fight between a Villain and me?"

Zero simply shook his head.

"No? Perhaps someone I didn’t rescue in time?"

"Close.... really close," the hitman said with a smile.

"A family member then," Torque realized, "they blame me for not rescuing someone important to them?"

"Bingo."

Torque was silent for a while before chuckling, "Pray tell, which one is it this time?"

"A Fire in an apartment building," Zero simply said.

"Oh, that one," Torque snapped his fingers, more amused than anything, "Yeah, I remember that one. Good footage, if I recall."

"It went viral for like three days."

He then paused and looked towards the white-haired man opposite him, asking, "I’m guessing a family member of the ones that died hired you for this job?"

"Hmm," Zero nodded before leaning forward a bit, "but I’m curious."

"About?"

"Why be a hero when all you’re interested in is the camera?" The hitman calmly asked.

"Isn’t it obvious?" Torque’s grin widened. "Heroes get everything."

"The money, fame, all while being worshipped by unawakened humans."

"Is that so?" Zero asked with a nod.

"You know what I was before I awakened? Nobody," Torque continued, "I was a no-name working in a factory with no bright days in sight, and then, I suddenly awakened, and now everybody wants a piece of me."

"You think I’m gonna go back to being invisible for the sake of some stranger I don’t even know?" He let out a scoff. "Nah. I worked hard to stop being nobody. I’m not giving that up because saving people the ’right way’ doesn’t pay as well as saving them the way that trends."

"..." Zero looked at him with a blank expression.

"And this is why you don’t meet your heroes," Torque said as he leaned into the sofa and took a sip of the beer, "my words were quite unexpected, right?"

"Not quite," the hitman responded, "I was just disappointed since I expected your reason to be a lot more interesting."

He then slowly stood up before asking, "Shall we get started then?"