|| One Million Masks, 2026 ||
"Admit it, dijete. You're smitten. Abso-fucking-lutely whipped over this guy." Emil shells his peanuts into a gas station soda cup, cracking the brown cusps like bones. "Look at you scanning the horizon for a glimpse. Can't even focus. What happened to you? You used to be the biggest baddest boss around and now you're out here simpering over a cat in a cape."
"I'm not smitten," I growl at the old man.
Emil scoffs, wet peanut meat flying from his mouth.
"Ha! You been scoping him out since August, don't think I didn't notice. Why else would you play the theatrics? Why else would you, week after week, go through all these hula-hoops just to get his attention?"
W h y? Because I'm the muthafukin' king - that's why.
He asks why like he doesn't know.
I'm out here because I'm a professional doom dealer with a reputation for pushing the envelope in all matters evil and devious - that's why.
You don't become the #1 ranked villain by accident. You don't just wake up one morning and go "well, I think I'll terrorize society and start a reign of unholy chaos" as a hobby.
Nothing about good villany (heh) is casual.
The idea I would rig the largest vacation cruise I could find on this side of the Atlantic with two tons of C-4 just to get your attention is absurd and, quite frankly, insulting to my craft.
Not everything I do I do for you.
I do, however, worry if the explosion is impressive enough to see from the coast. Maybe I should've waited a few more minutes before I killed the captain - so he could properly finish his emergency transmission...
Too late for it now.
I just have to hope the Coast Guard pings you and you're not tied up with another villain back home, possibly Kitemare and his stupid fucking razor ghost kites. The thought of you missing this beautifully orchestrated tragedy so you can fight Kitemare makes me so angry I want to eat my hand.
Inexcusable.
Emil is still on his rant talking about fuck all.
"They just don't make villains like they used to. You're all reverse psychology and god complexes. So wrapped up in your technology you can't even spare time to punch each other the right way. What happened to setting booby traps and dangling girlfriends over acid pits? What happened to ticking timers? Railroad tracks? Mustaches and goatees? In my day villains and heroes didn't skype each other to set up dates."
"Fuck, do you ever shut up? Where's the off button?"
"I'm not the one commandeering a floating deathtrap so I can make goo-goo eyes at Makeshift."
"No, you're just here to insult me and bum free peanuts. Some villain you are. I thought Professor Kill was a real one."
He snaps at me like a sassy hairdresser. "You didn't deny it, dijete."
I turn away from him, still scanning the sky for a flash of silver. The shape of you.
"There's nothing to deny."
Emil bitterly laughs over the crazed screams of the passengers below us. He leans out his jelly rainbow beach chair and tosses the shells on their heads like Mardi Gras beads.
Emil calls me kid because compared to him even death itself looks like a sulky teenager; though I suspect it has more to do with him not remembering what century we're in.
"You're a dying breed," I tell him. "You should be happy I even brought you along."
The cruise pitches and rolls on the water, unable to cope with a giant ass hole in the hull. It's been a whole ten minutes of panic and flames and still no sign of you. For Emil's sake, I hope you show up soon. Any more of his whining and I may have to toss the senile bastard overboard.
"In the heat of battle Benedict Arnold once said true evil never grows old, so I have to ask what the hell am I still doing here, still alive on this miserable planet."
"I don't think he said that. I'm pretty sure that was Dr. Armageddon."
"What, so you're a history buff now? You weren't even a thought in your mother's womb then."
"You weren't either, Emil!"
"Bah!" He spits. "Millennials."
I keep Emil around because he's an oldie from the Golden Age of villainy so his nuggets of wisdom aren't all inflated smoke. And he's good company. Usually.
When Emil was nineteen he immigrated to the states from war-torn Bosnia in the cargo store of a Russian submarine, surviving on rats and cornmeal for months. Reports say when the crew opened the cargo hold Professzur Olni popped out like a jack in the box, thin as a rake, stinking to high hell, eager to maim and destroy.
Once Emil earned enough street cred roughing up cops and robbing banks up in Massachusetts he Americanized his career name to Professor Kill and fought his way up the ranks to the #3 seat. But the only real difference was he stopped talking shit in Hungarian so he could start talking shit in heavily accented broken English.
No one could kill Emil in his heyday and now he's too infirm to arrest without drawing sympathy, so no one pays him much mind anymore.
He's become snappy in his old age and for some reason, he's keen on spending his last years on this forsaken earth badgering me. Maybe because I'm the only person who can withstand his barbs, children and grandchild included.
"I can't wait till us legacy villains go extinct and your generation flounders when you realize how good you had it with us around."
"Literally no one's going to even notice you guys are gone."
Below us the passengers fight for the lifeboats, brawling for space. They squabble like toucans in their tacky Hawaiian shirts. A woman shoves a toddler to the deck and flings herself over the railing. The kid might be her son - they look so much alike.
"I hear sirens, dijete." Emil checks his watch, a gaudy Rolex from his favorite granddaughter, and taps the face. "I guess your boyfriend is a no-show."
No. You'll be here. I know you will. Kitemare is a joke - you wouldn't miss a chance to meet me on the battlefield for him.
You and me, we're like Nazi Germany and Imperialist America.
Or Communist Russia and Nuclear America.
Or literally any country versus America.
"Next time you should just send flowers," Professor Kill snickers. "Boys like flowers."
I'm tempted to snatch the tartan blanket off his lap to prove a point but then he'd complain about the cold.
Instead, I turn back to the pink westerly sky where you'll be arriving. I hope.
And then-
There's a sparkle.
An ear-shattering BOOM!!!!
The boat pitches with the force, taking on more seawater, and the screams intensify into hellish wails.
On the deck, between the minibar and the shuffleboard, a figure crouches in a cloud of white smoke. Two metal wings welded from junkyard scraps screech on its back like demons.
My heart wrenches.
Makeshift.
It's you.
You're here.
You quickly take in the situation: downed children in Spongebob swimming trunks and panicked authorities sailing in on their black military watercraft. There are at least four thousand people on board and all of them want off.
I knew you couldn't resist me, darling. I smirk and step back into the choking smoke. So let's play.
Amid the chaos you spot me and Emil on the upper deck, the nucleus of the disaster stood on high like a disinterested god. Which I am. I'm always pulling the strings. Tugging your chords. Making you dance.
Deep from your belly, you roar my name.
"Vortex!"
Ahhhhh...
My eyes roll back in bliss.
Yes.
Yesyesyes.
What a glorious sound.
That's what I've been waiting for all week. I crave your recognition and the anger it marries.
I wear a different mask every time but you know it's me.
Last week it was a vulture, mottled feathers, and a ghastly beak.
Today it's a serpent with paper-thin eyes. The scales glitter against the harsh ocean waves.
I hope you notice the effort I put into this one. These sequins were a bitch to paste on - third-degree burns from the hot glue gun speckle my fingertips and rub against the suit.
I nod down at you and wait.
Your move.
Your first priority is saving the passengers. I know how heavy casualties weigh on you. And this is one of the few occasions I give you time to intervene.
Usually, I just kill them all at once and leave the mangled bodies for you to sort through.
I'm being generous. Kind, even.
Did you notice?
"Stop!" You dart over to the passengers with your hands in the air. "You don't have to fight, there's enough room for everyone! File in with the youngest at the front and then bring the elderly on after."
You're insanely good at this.
Your voice commands order. Safety.
They trust you.
Eventually, they calm down enough for you and the onboard officials to direct them into the lifeboats. They're gently lowered into the waves like baby Moses basketed in the Nile.
They cheer for you, chant your name.
"Makeshift! Makeshift! Makeshift!" They sing at you with cellphones high. You're on their Snapchat stories looking particularly dashing, metallic wings and all. I can practically see your hero rank inflating in the leaderboards.
Makeshift reclaims his seat as #1 hero in the world, a perfect match to his arch-nemesis, #1 villain, the one and only, V o r t e x !!!
You don't hear your admirers, don't respond.
You don't do this for the praise or the rank.
You're here for me.
Passengers and crew evacuated, all that's left are me, you, Emil, and the sinking ship.
I haven't moved an inch, hands clasped behind my back, watching you work.
Your metal wings collapse into blades and it's all mental, fluid. No thought required.
You long jump up to the third balcony where I stand and land hard enough to crack the floor.
Breath hitches in my throat.
You're here.
You're really here.
And you're furious.
Beautiful is your anger.
"Two explosions in one week?" You stalk forward with a glare, blades floating around you like sentient magnets. "Are you bored or just running out of ideas?"
My mouth waters at the sight of you and I'm paralyzed.
Not for the first time.
Like most heroes, you look damn good in spandex.
I don't know what it is about your type and tight lycra but it works and you make it work. Sunlight cascading off the planes of your chest finds a home in the smooth crevices of your mask. For reasons I could never understand you chose a mask with exposed eyeholes (so vulnerable and squishy, made to be plucked and eaten).
I have never seen a more wholesome, self-righteous brown. I don't think I ever will.
"Hello, Emil," you toss this over your shoulder, unwavering gaze still lasered on me. "Still hanging around this spook? You need better friends."
Emil squints at you through the smoke.
"Ey, boyo. Glad you could make it. You were almost late to the party."
"Traffic was horrendous," you grit. "Then I caught a flight and ran into some kites."
I want to laugh but Vortex is a silent killer so I latch the impulse deep inside my chest.
"You might want to abandon ship before it's lost completely," you tell him.
"Ah, I'll take my chances." Emil finishes off the rest of his peanuts and settles in for the fight.
He knows you're too proud to break the immunity clause. There's an unspoken truce between us about protecting sidekicks and partners - ensuring Emil (no longer a threat to anyone but himself) is left out of our spats.
Well, after three years of beating the living shit out of each other you probably think of our fights as 'bloody clashes' but the public is more inclined to call them lover's quarrels (I agree.)
One BBC reporter once called our five-hour brawl on the Golden Gate Bridge a bit of a domestic.
I'm sure you got a kick out of that.
Literally a kick, I think I broke half your ribs that day.
"You can't keep doing this, Vortex. This has to stop."
The severity of this attack has shaken you for some reason.
I haven't even killed anyone.
Maybe it's the potential for death, what would've happened if you came too late, or not at all.
Ugh, your moral dilemmas are so boring. I like it better when we're throwing semi-trucks at each other.
Muscles tensing we circle like moons, gravity and propulsion pushing us together and apart.
Together and apart...
As long as we've known each other we've broken almost every bone in each other's bodies. It's an intimate knowledge.
"Listen," you try again. "You have to stop this, Vortex. You have to give it up. We can't keep doing this. We can't."
I'll never stop.
That would mean an end to us.
And I can't have that.
I think you Get It because you stop circling and finally raise your fists.
ohyes.
Energy sizzles around your hands and the metal braces supporting the hull crack and moan. The cruise is already useless, might as well make a wreckage out of it.
You wrench your hands forward and the metal sheets crush into thick spikes, rocketing towards me.
Quick!
I nimbly spring out the way and hover just out of reach.
The spikes redirect and dart back over as you take flight.
"Hragh!" You grunt as power surges through you.
I shoot a few half-assed light beams your way, enough to singe, not enough to burn.
My goal isn't to hurt you... Too bad.
Okay, yes, I want to inflict unimaginable devastating pain upon your soul (that's part of the pleasure) but certainly no irreparable damage.
I'm a sadist, not a jackass.
But you don't have the same agenda. 2023 Makeshift was a softie, left so much power untapped taking down purse-snatchers and petty muggers.
Now you always fight to kill.
I tend to bring out the worst in people.
In you, darling.
Outpacing the projectiles I dash down the observation deck and narrowly dip behind a towel rack. The towel monkeys grin at me and I smile back at them, manically, from behind my mask.
I hear you coming. Channeling my inner ranchero (we all have one) I lasso my black solar flares around your legs and snatch down you to the promenade so hard you explode through the wood paneling and leave a Makeshift sized hole in the foundation.
You're relentless. Shooting up from the crevice you rip the engine from the heart of the ship and hurl it at me with a roar. The Merry Queen of the Sea bellows like a harpooned whale.
We're getting nowhere. We resort to punches, hand-to-hand. Fist to fist. Clobbering me silly against the steam funnel and slogging you left right left left until we're coughing lifeblood.
It's so good.
God.
I wish we could go on forever.
I bite my lip against a heady moan but that doesn't stop my hips from grinding against yours when we roll past the forecastle and slam back first into the safety railings.
If you notice my arousal you don't mention it.
Like immunity, hardness is another theory you're too proud to acknowledge.
I'll feel this ache for days. And so will you.
But I can't drag this on for too long - there are appearances to keep.
Eventually, once I've gotten some distance, I give up the game and lazily allow you to "catch" me.
In an instant, your metal loops pin me to the ground, cinched tight to my torso, ironed stiff around my legs.
You stagger up from the balcony, breathless.
The flight here must've winded you.
But still, you overcome.
"When are you going to stop this?" You ask. "What do you want?"
Ha!
As if I could control myself.
As if you could give it to me.
A Channel 6 news helicopter hovers overhead and buffets us with wind. Later tonight our entire fight will be dissected on the evening news, and I'll watch and laugh. We have our own segment. The anchors call it Power Hour. And once the video finishes idiot newscaster Dan Singer will spin the story so you look like a buffoon even though you're the only mitigating factor between my capture and complete destruction here.
To think they loved you at first - they being Middle America.
So impressionable. So unforgivably vapid.
To them, Makeshift represented ideals the country prided itself on: pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, self-sufficiency, rebellion, fighting for what's right even under threat of death, blah blah blah.
Blue-collar America was absolutely nutty for you, ready to ride your heroic dick into the gleaming sunset, until one day your suit tore on my Getty knife and the cameras caught a glimpse of the ripe black skin underneath.
Then you became something of a ||touchy topic|| for these once gung-ho Makeshift supporters. Conservative pundits turned on you overnight.
Your image morphed from Golden Role Model to Tarnished Vigilante so quickly the leaderboard got whiplash.
It's almost like Fox News doesn't want black superheroes to gain any sort of positive credibility.
And yet you're the only Super, regardless of race, to answer Emergency Pings no matter the time of day.
I wonder how you feel about the hoopla but you remain predictably tight-lipped about the subject.
Knowing you, you probably don't give a shit. You're just here to do your job and leave.
Hmmm...
Speaking of not giving a shit - the authorities anxiously hover in a loose perimeter around The Merry Queen of the Sea waiting to see who'll emerge victorious. They're the Jamaican Sea Troopers; they know better than to intervene while Makeshift and Vortex sort out their traumas.
You're screaming at me, at the end of your rope.
"What do you want? What do you want from me? What's your endgame, huh?"
You don't wait for an answer because Vortex is a silent killer and my mask does all my talking for me.
I haven't uttered a single word to you in three years, why would I start now?
Limp and euphoric in your unyielding metal embrace, I wait for the handcuffs. I want to light a cigarette. I want to ask if it was good for you too. I know it was. It always is.
But you don't slap handcuffs on my wrists.
Instead, you do something entirely different.
A new step in our dance.
"I'm not turning you in," you say. "That's what you want. An hour after they book you, you'll be back on the streets again so there's no point. We both know they can't hold you at BlackBurn anyways - the technology just isn't there yet."
You're right. They can't. It's stupidly easy to escape from institutional prisons when you can phase through walls made to contain mortal men.
But that never mattered to you before.
Why the sudden change of heart?
You rub your face and wrinkle your mask, two black stripes on a field of silver. Exhaustion radiates around you in a fog.
"I don't know what'll stop you. I don't even know if I can or if it's humanly possible. But if we keep this up there's only one way this can end. So I'm done fighting you, Vortex. I can't do this anymore."
I hear it crystal clear in your voice. The Give Up.
"The other heroes can have you. Maybe they'll have better luck locking you up."
With that, you turn your back on me.
Metal wings reassemble and you take a running start off the platform.
And.
Then.
You.
Leave.
Off you go, back to whence you came.
My mouth falls open.
I'm watching your fading black speck in horror when Emil shocks me back into reality.
"He's got you figured out, doesn't he, dijete? Boyo turned down the pieces. Left the game board." Emil drags his blanket over his shoulders and suddenly he looks very very old. "I didn't give Makeshift enough credit. Neither did you, eh?"
Unable to speak, rendered mute by your betrayal, I phase through the metal restraints you left behind and shakily stand.
Before the Coast Guard can descend on us I gather Emil into my arms like a wrinkly old baby and jet us back to the mainland in minutes.
"Next week same time?" He asks once we fly over the Skyway Bridge.
"Same bat channel. Same bat place."
I leave Emil on a bench outside Sea Acres Assisted Living and ring the courtesy bell before anyone notices.
(Waiting around isn't worth the hassle. The CNAs still scream when they see me even though I'm here almost every week. You'd think they'd appreciate me taking Emil off their hands but all I get are criminal pings and pleas to 'take out the comatose residents first.' Hell, I visit Sea Acres more than the kids who actually tossed their parents into that dump, and Emil hasn't even written me into his will, the lecherous bastard.)
A few minutes later Nurse McElwain walks out for a smoke break. She sees Emil, curses her dumb luck, and tiredly wheels the ornery villain into the lobby.
"It's about time!" Emil snaps at her. "I was freezing my keister off out here!"
Good.
I step out of the roses bushes and blink back into the safe darkness of my lair.
Poof. I'm gone.
My lair is a warm, dry den with all the amenities a tyrant would need. Surveillance equipment. A high powered computer with limitless storage and LED monitors stacked three screens high.
An assortment of torture devices.
A sandbox where I can draw pentagrams and call upon the dark forces if my powers should grow weak.
It's a home and it's mine.
Coco purrs when she sees me. She hops down from her ledge and butts her thick head against my stomach. Her speckled tail flicks my nose, making demands.
I toss a raw chicken from the deep freezer into her pen so she'll leave me alone.
I don't know why PETA says female jaguars don't make good house pets but PETA can fuck right off because Coco is a dream roommate.
Quiet, tidy, a good listener. She'd pay her rent on time if there were any bills to pay.
While Coco's busy mauling the frozen chicken I unclasp my glittering mask and hitch it on The Wall next to the countless others. The serpent stares back at me unfeeling. The twin-eye slits mock me from their perch.
This must be how fathers feel when children witness their failures.
What am I saying?
The day was a success, anytime I ruffle your feathers and pain you is a win, but despite the glow, all I feel is hollow.
"I'm done fighting you ..."
I'm hurt.
"The other heroes can have you..."
"I can't do this anymore..."
You didn't say a single thing about my mask.