Now Kids, naturally I was worried about your Uncle Barney. After he'd left the bar in a mad dash with bits of shot glass still in his hand, I was pretty concerned. So right after the interview with the cops I sprinted all the way to Barney's apartment and made sure he was ok and saw to it that he received the proper medical attention for his hand. Only that's a lie. What I actually did was go home and sleep, then I dragged myself to work the next day, slept after work and didn't make it to Barney's until about seven thirty at night. I should have gone earlier.

"Barney, you home?" Ted asked standing with his hands in his coat pockets outside the door of Barney's apartment. Maybe I should knock again, Ted thought to himself, wondering how much distance was needed between knocks to not seen anxious. He wasn't even sure why he was there. Robin probably. Robin had said that she'd tried to call Barney something like five times and he'd only picked up the second time and given her a really weird answer. Something about not wanting to hurt people and yogurt. Robin had already tried to get Barney to open the door, but to no avail. Now, after an hour of ranting at Ted for answers, it was his turn. Whatever Barney's problem was… it just wasn't right. That wasn't how you treated the person you loved. Whatever was wrong, no matter how big Barney had blown it up; Robin deserved to know what it was.

Ted's thoughts were disturbed as he heard a faint sound from the other side of the door. Was that… singing? Ted stuck his ear to the door. Yup. Definitely singing. He couldn't make out the words but it sounded pretty intense.

"Barney?" Ted asked a little louder now, tapping more affirmatively on the door. "Barney it's Ted, we need to talk. Barney?"

The singing actually got louder. Time for pulling out the big guns.

"Ugh… Barney, I've got…" Oh god could he even say it? "I've got nudes of Kim Kardashian that you wouldn't believe"

Nothing happened. Crap. That sort of thing usually worked. Barney was really upset.

"Barney, Robin's really upset- she's worried about you Barney, and frankly, I am too."

The singing got even louder. Was that fully orchestrated background music? Sheesh Barney wasn't stingy with anything.

"Barney open the door! You can't hide in there forever!"

"Yes I cannnnnn!" Finally. A reply. A sung reply. Well at least that meant he was by the door now, otherwise there was no way Ted could've heard him.

"Barney stop being so… so horrible and open the door!" Ted hissed back, nose to door "Or Teddy Westside is going to become Teddy Ironside!"

The door opened.

"What did you say?"

It took Ted a good thirty seconds to fully understand what he was looking at. The man in front of him was Barney shaped; although the giant double lensed welding goggles obscuring the top part of his face made it hard to be sure. Never mind the red mad scientists smock with the black gloves.

"Whoa." Was the only audible sound Ted could make. The mouth on the bottom half of the face frowned, made an 'o' and then the mans hands came up and pushed up the goggles; revealing Barney.

"What did you say?" Barney repeated, absolute seriousness in his voice.

"That I was gonna turn from Teddy Westside into Teddy Ironside?"

"No before that, what did you say before that?" Barney pressed further, but Ted was still baffled by his outfit.

"I don't remember… were you just singing?"

"What, that? That was nothing. Everyone in San Francisco does it." Barney said turning away from Ted and striding back into his apartment, his black leather boots leading the way.

"Somehow I don't remember Lily saying that when she lived there…" Ted said trailing off as he followed Barney into the apartment.

It was utterly unrecognizable. All of Barney's furniture had disappeared and had been replaced with monitors and blinky panels and intimidating looking keyboards with lots of buttons. Even the storm trooper was gone; replaced by a mannequin wearing a white version of the red smock with it's own pair of goggles.

"Barney. Wow." Ted said, jaw completely dropped. "What did you do with your furniture?"

"Oh I own the apartment the floor below under the alias of 'Mrs. Wiggins'; I've got the entire floor here designed to lower into that apartment and it's floor designed to raise up into this one." Barney explained distractedly, not making eye contact.

Ted whistled, "Barney, what is all this? What's going on?"

"Ted, you've always been my bro, and for the most part I've been open with you about everything." Barney began, looking dramatically out the window, his back to Ted. Sometimes too open, Ted thought to himself, thinking about some of Barney's more vivid stories of his bedroom exploits.

"But there is one secret, one half of me that I have never revealed to you- to anybody here in New York," Barney continued. Oh this should be good, Ted thought, doing his best to keep from rolling his eyes at Barney's semantics.

"My darker half, the other me, the villain with the same face; Doctor Horrible." On 'Doctor Horrible' Barney turned around dramatically around to face Ted, hands on his hips in a manner that could only be called 'melodramatic'. Ted was not impressed.

"Drop the melodrama crap Barney, what's going on? What's so important that you can't tell Robin? Cause it sure as heck isn't some weirdo costume." Then it hit him, "Barney you didn't."

Barney's face was a mask but his voice was hurt. "Didn't what Ted,? Didn't what?"

"You didn't break open the playbook did you? Behind Robin's back? You- dressing up, playing mad games like this… this is some play isn't it? What's this one called Barney? 'Bride of Frankenstein'? 'The Mad Scientist'?" As Ted went on he grew angrier and angrier, how could Barney do this? How could he risk what he has with Robin? Was it even worth it?

"Ted… no. That's not it." Barney's voice was hollow, his shoulder's slumped and his eyes filled with a haunted darkness that Ted hadn't seen in his friend before. It hit Ted then that whatever this was about, was important. Terribly, incredibly important.

"Barney- I.." Ted fumbled for words, "What is it then? What's wrong?"

"I… I didn't want any of you to know this." Barney said helplessly, slumping down on the one chair left in the place; a high backed leather thing, slinging his goggles off his head and setting his face in his hands Barney said, "There's a reason why I never told you guys what I do for a living. Like really do."

Finding no place to sit, Ted instead stooped down to Barney's faces level. "And that is?"

"Altrucell isn't just a company that makes the fuzzy stuff on tennis balls Ted." Barney moaned.

"Well I could have told you that," Ted said, "They make lots of and they've got that thing with the Koreans."

"They don't just have the thing with the Koreans Ted," Barney said, parting his fingers so that he could peer at Ted with just one eye, "They're a front."

"A front for what?"

"The Evil League of Evil." Barney said, his one visible eye drifting away from Ted.

"Sorry- what?" Ted gawked, Evil league of what now?

"The Evil League of Evil. Based in San Francisco it's a league of some of the most dangerous and powerful villains in the world. And Altrucell is it's source of funding and the name used for the general public." Barney explained, voice still edged with absolute despair.

"So then… are you one of these 'villains'?" Ted asked, trying to figure out exactly what Barney was insinuating.

"Yes. You got me Ted; I'm one of them. I'm Doctor Horrible; most well know for killing Captain Hammer's girlfriend. That was years ago of course.."

If it weren't how serious Barney was sounding, Ted would be genuinely convinced that Barney had lost his mind.

"Captain Hammer, Doctor Horrible… why haven't I ever heard of this before?" Ted asked carefully.

"Because they only report Hero News in specialty magazines only available in San Francisco. I can't even subscribe to them out here."

"Oh." Ted said, "When did you even live in San Francisco?"

"Ted my friend, do you remember the story of my reckoning?"

"Your what?" Ted questioned at a loss.

"Ted do you remember nothing? My reckoning. How I was a hippy, dated Shannon, worked in a coffee shop only to have my heart broken turning me into the suit wearing man that I am today."

"Oh that. Right, I forgot." Ted replied, remembering the video of Barney pouring out his heart to this girl distinctly. "What does that have to do with San Francisco?"

"That wasn't the full story." Barney said, leaning back on his crazy leather seat. Oh boy, here we go. Ted thought to himself, legs cramping from being stooped so long.

"Well go on," Ted said encouragingly.

"Well… while the incident with Shannon had changed me it hadn't made me quite evil enough to woo women. I tried, failed, and in my depression moved to San Francisco and told everyone my name was Billy."

"Billy." Ted said raising a bro.

"Yes, Billy." Barney said agitatedly before continuing, "I was a real mess then. I wanted to change everything wrong in the world and make it right; make it right the way I see it. But I saw no outlet to do so… at least, not until I saw the Evil League of Evil in action. Watching them hold people hostage and threaten to destroy the city made me realize that I did have a way- a way to change everything to make everything perfect and right; I would become a supervillain. And thus Doctor Horrible was born.

"Which is where the costume and all this stuff came from, right." Ted said thoughtfully, "But how did that lead to you freaking out last night?"

"I'm not finished with the story Ted!" Barney whined, almost back to his normal self for a second.

"Anyways, as I was saying. I became a villain. I got a nemesis; Captain Hammer who made my life miserable. I met a girl. Hammer found out and started dating her. I got pissed. I wanted to get into the Evil League of Evil and had to kill someone so I made a death ray. I was going to kill my nemesis, Captain Hammer only when it got down to it I didn't have the guts and instead he turned the death ray on me. Only in the fight it'd gotten damaged so when he fired it-" Barney stopped now and Ted caught his breath. He had a feeling that crazy as this was, it was real. Barney had been doing that thing where he tells a hard story as choppily as possible, only apparently it wasn't choppy enough, he'd broken from the emotion. "It…it…" Barney got caught on the word and Ted realized that he was actually crying.

"Barney-" He began, only to have the blonde man raise a hand to stop him.

"It killed her." Barney whispered. "It killed Penny. I killed Penny."

"Barney- no. You didn't… kill her… just because you made the weapon, you didn't fire the shot- you didn't-" Ted said hastily, trying to reassure his friend, while still not certain why he believed any of this. Barney had loved someone this much? Barney? And she'd died? This was a whole lot more intense then what he'd been expecting.

"Ted, Ted please, I've been over this more than a thousand times in my head. Let me just continue the story." Barney said looking him dead in the eye; a thousand emotions that Ted couldn't even comprehend running around visible in his eyes.

"I was accepted into the Evil League of Evil; as far as they were concerned I'd defeated Captain Hammer and killed his girlfriend. They knew nothing about me and… Penny. And for a short while I was content to rob banks and be treated like a super villain celeb but my heart wasn't in it. My heart had been turned to stone Ted. Stone. So I applied for one of the leagues desk jobs in New York; I wanted to go back home and see my mom. I wanted to get out of the field work that had well, ruined everything for me. I got the job. I moved to New York. Went back to being called Barney and started banging chicks. Only this time successfully; I was stone now."

Now kids, you can imagine that at this point I was pretty freaked out by everything Barney was telling me, and let me tell you something: I was. But little did I know, it was only going to get freakier.

"So how does all of that tie in to last night?" Ted asked cautiously.

"Rick Castle is Captain Hammer." Barney said simply. And then Ted understood everything. Hammer had led to the death of the last girl Barney had dared love, and then he'd been hitting on Robin last night. While helping to investigate the murders of a bunch of men who match Barney's description with a B name ending in a Y…

"Barney!" Ted said suddenly, mind leaping to conclusions, "What if Hammer- er Castle killed all those guys who look like you?"

"Way ahead of you there Ted," Barney said, casually pushing a big red button. Rising, up and out of the floor came a pedestal with a raygun on it. 'Death Ray' emblazoned on the side. Oh no. No no no… no.

"You see Captain Hammer knew my secret identity, by now of course he'll have figure out that that was an alias. I was the only person to ever defeat him. To ever publicly humiliate him. So it only figures that now he is coming after me for revenge." Barney continued, picking up the Death Ray.

"Because you see Ted, I plan on making sure that Mr. Castle's life is going to be Horri- wait for it- ble. Horrible."

As he said this he started cackling, true to the bone evil maniacal laughing and Ted felt a horrible sinking feeling inside of him, a feeling that chilled him to the bone. Barney planned on killing a man.

~~~~~authors note~~~~

HOLY COW I UPDATED

So confession time: I wrote the first chapter to this over a year ago and uploaded it without any proofreading or anything. Naturally I re-read it later and hated it. I MADE BECKETT BLONDE ON ACCIDENT. OH GOD TYPOS. THE TIMES OF DEATH AND STUFF DON'T LINE UP. But I liked the story intself.

And people kept following and commenting

So I finally sat down and wrote a new chapter, not even bothering to keep it in the same style/level as last time.

So its long, a lot more wordy but I think far better xD

enjoy? xD