Pesky Clown

In his starting form the clown sports a frilled collar, puffed sleeves, and ankle-cinched trousers scattered with stars, topped by wild spiky hair and a round red nose. Jagged crimson streaks cross his white-painted face around a broad grinning mouth, and his bulbous shoes carry more stars. He holds a trio of balloons shaped like animal heads and swings a heavy mallet stamped with a star and a small clown face.

Every fresh surge of attention swells him larger and more grotesque. The webcomic draws him a little differently, trading the round nose for red paint smeared across his eyes, nose, and mouth and dressing him in bow ties and polka dots; his final incarnation there sprouts four arms and grows a gaping mouth and eyes across its torso, dwarfing even a transformed Sweet Mask.

Attention is everything to him. Since turning into a monster his craving has curdled into a lust for killing, because every death he causes feeds the spotlight he adores, and he acts with open sadism. The webcomic exposes a coward beneath the paint, however: once Sweet Mask clearly outclassed him, he broke down and begged for his life.

Before his transformation he was a person consumed by a need to be noticed, and that obsession eventually tipped him over into monsterhood. Sweet Mask suspected the man had fused with his own clown costume, drawing a parallel to Phoenix Man. He first appeared at Narinki Park, tormenting visitors and flattening four security guards, Sosshi, Sanshon, Chinpi, and Gomago, before he could bring his mallet down on bystanders. Sweet Mask caught the weapon one-handed and drove it back into the clown's skull, seemingly killing him, but one of his three balloons burst and the wound instantly closed. From that the hero worked out that each balloon could soak up a lethal hit, giving the clown two more lives.

What made him truly dangerous was not resilience but growth. He belongs to a rare rapid-growing type whose power climbs with every scrap of attention, so as the crowd began filming and livestreaming, his strength ballooned; he caught Sweet Mask's punch and crushed the hero's arm, then rose in threat level from Wolf to Demon and on to Dragon as estimated by Sweet Mask. A single blow launched the hero into the park's Ferris wheel, destabilizing the ride so badly that Sweet Mask had to wedge himself into its collapsing frame to keep it standing, forcing him to shed his human guise and reveal his own monstrous form.

Even a final worldwide spike of attention, sparked by the reveal of Sweet Mask's identity as a mysterious being, could not save the clown; the transformed hero overwhelmed and shredded him, scattering his remains before the horrified crowd. Across the fight he leaned on circus tricks, conjuring a saw-bladed unicycle out of thin air and regenerating a caved-in face, torn flesh, and a ripped ear, yet both his regeneration and his stolen balloons had their limits.