It was not normal for Richard Starr to get knocks on the door of his basement apartment. This was just not something that normally happened to him under normal circumstances unless he had invited somebody over. In theory, it could be his landlords, the elderly couple that owned the building, but they rarely left their home these days. Normally, Rick had to be admitted into their secure room to talk about anything.

He unlocked the door and looked outside at the person that had disturbed him from his ultimately super important work that he had been doing. It had been so important that few would understand it but Rick.

"Can I… help you?" Rick didn't know who this stranger was at all. Hopefully, he was not a cop, lawyer, or person from the future.

"Yes." Phase said, and ran a hand through his thick black hair. His hair was undeniably his most handsome aspect, except of course for his face. He had the best face. He knew this because he had read it in a fortune cookie. Fortune cookies were, of course, indisputable. They were the religious texts that Phase lived his life upon.

He held out a hand and smiled. "I'm the Nefarious Professor Phase, and I'm here to be your arch nemesis."

"…Wha?" He raised an eyebrow and considered slamming the door in this guy's handsome face. Though the name did sound kind of familiar but only barely and then it hit him.

"Weren't you a dog?"

"Yes. That was a minor inconvenience, but such is the life of the most nefarious and villainous villain of Metro City." He pointed at Rick.

"And you are the perfect foil! Oh, our battles shall be written about on the great blogosphere, for all the future generations to read, Rick!" He spun around, and wrapped an arm around Rick's shoulder, sending one hand out across the horizon, painting a picture.

"We'll be the biggest names in the City, Rick."

"You seem pretty buddy-buddy for somebody naming me their arch nemesis," he wasn't really sure how to react to Phase. Rick had been doing this superhero thing on and off for almost seventeen years and he never had a nemesis before. "Can you really just name somebody your nemesis? It sounds like there is a lot of emotional involvement in a something like a nemesis thing."

Why is this happening to me?

"Hey, just because we're arch nemesises bent on each other's destruction doesn't mean we can't be civil. We're not animals. Well, not anymore and that was a dog which is barely an animal anyway." He shrugged his shoulders.

"Anyway, I have some paperwork that my lawyer assures me says that we will be nemesises if we sign it."

"I don't know…" Rick began close the door slightly. "We don't really know each other."

Should I ask? Can I ask that? Okay I'm going ask.

"Just between you and me? Am I actually hallucinating this?"

"I kidnapped your girlfriend once. That's enough to be your nemesis once? Hey! And you know what else? I bet she liked it! Oooooh, what now, Rick? WHAT NOW?" He put his hands on his hips and tried to look terribly villainous.

This was not the first hallucination that Rick had wanted to punch to death. It was more like the eight but that still ranked in the top ten. He unconsciously gritted his teeth and began to grind to work off a bit of irritation.

"So you want me to kick your ass, that is the point of this? I gotta say that you're doing a pretty fucking good job of asking me for it."

"Well, yes, except first you have to sign this document and then you have to do it when I try one of my incredibly nefarious and evil plots. There will be a lot of dramatic lighting and maybe some lasers, I don't know, but overall it'll just be a great experience." He pulled the papers out of his bag and extended them to Rick.

"So do we have a deal?"

What if this was real and not a hallucination which meant he was actually fueling some guy's delusional quest to be the best villain in the city. Some guy that apparently had kidnapped Nicki and was a dog for a while.

You can't really judge somebody on how crazy they are.

"Maybe. I don't know, this seems like a deal strictly in your favor. What is in it for me?"

Phase crossed his arms over his chest. "Thwarting evil isn't enough of it's own reward? I thought that was your guys' whole schtick."

Rick crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head at Phase. "I'm going thwart evil without being legally registered as your nemesis which as you said is its own reward. What rewards am I getting from being your nemesis?"

Phase almost glared at him. Almost. "What do you want?"

"You got forty dollars?"

Phase opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and then reached into his pocket.

"Will you take a check?"

He considered it for a second. Checks could bounce but on the other hand not everyone had forty dollars on them.

"Yeah, I can take a check."

Phase pulled out his Hello Kitty® checkbook and his purple pen and quickly wrote out a check to Richard Starr. He made sure to write "Blood money" on the For line.

He handed Rick the check.

"Okay, well I suppose we're whatever the plural of nemesis is now. Pleasure doing business with you."