by Barry Lyga
“I just want to get a paper towel and pick it up off the carpet. Are you okay?” she asked suspiciously.
“I’m fine!” Kyle said, his voice squeaking. He shot a quick glance at the closet door.
Mairi’s eyes narrowed. “What are you up to, Kyle?”
“Nothing! I swear!”
“Where’s my soda? Have you been hanging out in the foyer the whole time?”
Kyle almost gave up right there. He couldn’t win. He might as well just fling open the closet door and introduce Mairi to the Mad Mask.
“I …” he said, at a loss. “I was just going in there. Right this minute.”
Something thumped in the coat closet. Kyle coughed loudly to try to cover it up.
Mairi looked at the closet door, then slowly turned to look at Kyle. “What’s going on here?”
“Nothing at all,” Kyle said. “Nothing in the slightest. Nothing.” He wondered if he could cram the word nothing in there any more.
After giving the closet door one more glance, Mairi went into the kitchen. Kyle breathed a sigh of relief.
“Is that the time?” Mairi said from the kitchen. “I didn’t realize it was so late!”
Kyle fist-pumped.
“Yeah, it’s getting late,” he said. The closet door opened and the Mad Mask handed Kyle Mairi’s coat. Kyle grabbed it and slammed the closet door, spinning around just as Mairi emerged from the kitchen with a fistful of paper towels and a puzzled expression.
“Are you rushing me out of here?”
“No! Of course not! But it is getting late.” He took the paper towels from her, transferring the coat to her at the same time. “Oh, that Lefty. I’ll clean up after him. Thanks for the paper towels.”
Mairi frowned but nodded. Kyle helped her into her coat, then opened the front door. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he told her, gesturing outside and thinking, Get out! Get out now! while offering what he hoped was a casual and reassuring smile.
Mairi stepped outside, then paused before going down the front steps. “What about the project?” she asked. “We left a mess in the living room.”
Kyle leaned outside, holding the door almost closed. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” He chuckled hollowly and held up the paper towels. “And Lefty’s poop, too.”
Mairi looked like she was going to say something, but instead she just shrugged, waved, and headed home. Kyle waited a few seconds, in case she turned around, then quickly closed the front door and ran to the closet. He had to get the Mad Mask out of the house.
Pulling open the closet door, he saw … nothing.
Well, not nothing — there were coats in there. It was a coat closet, after all. But the Mad Mask was gone.
Kyle spun around, half expecting the masked teenager to be standing behind him, but all he saw was the family portrait that had so annoyed the Mad Mask.
He must have teleported away, Kyle thought. Good!
In the living room, Kyle picked up the bunny poop on the carpet and tossed the paper towel. Then he tucked Lefty under his arm. “You’ve exhausted my goodwill, young man. You’re going back in your cage.”
Lefty yawned expansively to show how much he cared.
Walking past the TV room on his way to the stairs, Kyle heard something that chilled his blood. A voice. It couldn’t be …
But it was.
He poked his head into the TV room. Sure enough, the Mad Mask was standing right there! With Kyle’s parents!
Fortunately, the Mad Mask was standing behind the sofa, and Kyle’s parents were staring straight ahead at the TV, as if the secrets to life, happiness, and calorie-free chocolate cake flickered there in high-def. Lefty grunted as Kyle squeezed him without realizing it.
“Does this television program provide insight into interpersonal relationships,” the Mad Mask was asking, “or does it simply exist to illustrate common perceptions and misperceptions vis-à-vis such artificial social constructs?”
“The fat people have to date the skinny people,” Dad said.
“Or they don’t win the prize,” Mom added, her shoulder twitching from her exposure to Kyle’s brain-wave manipulator.
“Indeed,” said the Mad Mask, drawing himself up to his full height. “And what is the prize?”
“Plastic surgery!” Kyle’s parents said at the same time.
Kyle was frozen to his spot, stuck in the archway that led into the TV room. From where he stood, Kyle could see his parents on the couch and the Mad Mask behind them at an angle. His parents must not have seen the Mad Mask enter, so enraptured were they with their TV show. As long as the Mad Mask stayed where he was — and as long as Mom and Dad didn’t suddenly turn around — they wouldn’t see anything. Now he had to get the Mad Mask out of the house without them noticing.
“Uh, hi,” he said, finally forcing himself into the living room. “I see you’ve all, uh, met …”
“Ah!” The Mad Mask put his fists on his hips and boomed, “Welcome, Az —”
“As they say in Germany!” Kyle blurted out before the Mad Mask could finish saying Azure Avenger.
Everyone in the room looked at Kyle. Fortunately, the Mad Mask didn’t move, so he was still behind Mom and Dad. Kyle’s parents had baffled expressions on their faces, and Kyle imagined the Mad Mask looked the same under his mask.
“How — how do you mean?” Dad asked.
“They don’t say ‘welcome,’ in Germany,” Mom said, one eyelid fluttering.
Kyle’s mind raced. He chuckled. “Well, of course they do! They just … They just say it in German, is all.”
Silence. Then Mom nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, that’s true.”
It must have been a commercial break because his parents didn’t automatically turn back to the TV. “We didn’t know you were having another friend over to work on your science project.” Mom said.
“Yeah,” Dad chimed in. “What did you say your name was?”
Kyle knew the Mad Mask was about bellow the Mad Mask at the top of his lungs, so he jumped in right away. “Theodore! His name’s Theodore.”
“I knew a kid named Theodore,” Dad commented. “We called him ‘Dore.’ Does anyone ever call you — Oh!” This exclamation because the TV show had come back on, shutting off both parents’ brains.
Kyle took advantage of the distraction to grab the Mad Mask and haul him out of the TV room. They went down into the basement, where Kyle could finally let loose.
“What were you thinking?” he demanded. “You can’t just come to my house dressed like that! Someone could see! No one knows I’m the Azure Avenger. You could ruin everything.”
And — Kyle realized suddenly — the Mad Mask could have even led Mighty Mike right to his doorstep. If Mike had been flying overhead and recognized the Mad Mask and followed him … Oh, man! That would be a disaster.
The Mad Mask flipped a hand as if Kyle’s concerns were just dust to be brushed away. He turned around and paced the basement floor, taking in various gadgets and projects Kyle had in differing states of completion. “While the Mad Mask comprehends your distress, it is ultimately meaningless. We have a greater destiny ahead of us.”
“Don’t you have parents? Aren’t you worried about —”
“My parents forsook me when I was disfigured. They turned their backs on me, refusing even to look at me or to speak of my tragic mutilation.”
The Mad Mask related this in the flat, uninflected tones of someone who doesn’t care, but Kyle couldn’t believe that was the case. His own parents were annoying and none too smart, but Kyle still loved them. He would be devastated if they ever rejected him. One more reason the world could never know that Kyle Camden and the Azure Avenger were one and the same — it would destroy his parents.
“I’m really sorry to hear that,” he started, but the Mad Mask once again flicked his hand dismissively.
“The past is the past. We are concerned with the future. Nothing less.” He paused in his pacing near the biochemical forge. “And what
is this?”
“That’s my biochemical forge. I’m cultivating a species of —”
“Interesting,” the Mad Mask said with a bored voice.
“Look, how did you even find me? I never told you who I was. I wore a mask …”
In his circumambulation of the basement, the Mad Mask had come to the workbench. He stopped there and picked up the electronic slate. Kyle groaned. He knew what the Mad Mask was about to say, so he said it for him.
“You had a tracking device in the slate, didn’t you?” He could almost see the Mad Mask smiling, even with the mask on.
“There had to be a way to find you, so that we could begin our work,” the Mad Mask said.
“But anyone could have answered the door. How did you know it was me? You’ve never seen me without my mask.”
“Your height and general build do not change whether you are in or out of costume. Hence, the Mad Mask was able to deduce that — unless an identical twin lived in this house — you must, in fact, be you.” He nodded curtly. “Which you are. You, that is.”
Kyle gave up. He’d been outthought again. He would just have to deal with it. (And, he resolved, there was no way in the world he was going to tell Erasmus about this. The mocking would never end.)
“A question,” the Mad Mask said, now standing near the time machine. “The lagomorph. Is it an experimental subject? Does it exist for breeding purposes? Or perhaps as a comestible?”
It took Kyle a moment to realize that he was talking about Lefty, who was now snoozing comfortably under Kyle’s arm. “What?” Comestible … Oh, gross! “No, I’m not going to eat him! Lefty is my pet, not dinner.” He cradled Lefty protectively, as though the Mad Mask were about to lunge at him with a pot and a family recipe for hasenpfeffer.
“A pet. How … plebeian.” Before Kyle could object, the Mad Mask went on. “Still, all men of greatness and accomplishment have had their eccentricities. Your affectation and affection do not appear to interfere with your progress in the sciences, so the Mad Mask shall overlook them.”
The Mad Mask rubbed his gloved hands together, and for a moment Kyle imagined that he could see his eyes gleaming even through the protective, reflective lenses in the mask. The basement light glinted off the ivory tear.
“And now …” the Mad Mask chortled, “we shall begin to construct … the future!”
“Kyle!” Dad yelled from the top of the basement steps. “It’s almost ten o’clock! Get to bed!”
Kyle and the Mad Mask stared at each other in silence for a moment.
“On the morrow, then!” the Mad Mask crowed.
“On the morrow,” Kyle agreed. “And whatever you do, don’t tell anyone who I am or where I live. That would be a disaster.” He showed the Mad Mask out through the basement door and told him to come back tomorrow once darkness fell. “Oh, yeah: And be sure to use this door, not the front door, got it?”
“It is, truly, gotten,” said the Mad Mask.
Once he was alone, Kyle finally breathed easily. He held Lefty up in front of him, and as the rabbit blinked open its pinkish eyes, said, “That was way too close, Lefty.” Then he tucked Lefty under his arm again and went upstairs.
“And don’t worry,” he added as an afterthought. “I would never eat you.”
The next evening, Kyle was killing time in the basement, making a chart of Mighty Mike’s latest exploits. He was looking for patterns to Mike’s behavior, analyzing when and how he used his various superpowers, which mistakes he made when. And why. Anything that would give him an edge. He lost track of time, absorbed in thought, when — true to his word — the Mad Mask arrived as darkness fell, slipping into Kyle’s basement silently.
“Since your workspace is pleasing,” he announced, causing Kyle to blush with pleasure, “we shall commence our work here, rather than at the Mad Mask’s lair.”
Kyle flashed back to the enormous size of Ultitron from the schematics. “But — but there’s no room for something that big here!”
“Do not cloud the conversation with petty details. We need no significant amount of room. The major construction on Ultitron is completed already. We merely need to develop, assemble, and perfect specific control modules. Those tasks can easily be accomplished here, with the finished components moved to my lair and installed once tested.”
Well, that made sense. Kyle was a little concerned about working with the Mad Mask in his basement, though — his parents could decide to come downstairs. He asked the Mad Mask to work in regular clothes and without the mask.
“The Mad Mask’s deformity shall never be revealed to the open air!” the Mad Mask cried. “This mask shall conceal the grotesquerie that was once a pleasing visage ’til the end of time itself!”
So, yeah, Kyle figured he wouldn’t have any luck talking his ally out of that.
He decided to attack the problem from the other direction. If he couldn’t get the Mad Mask to look normal for his parents, he would fix his parents instead. This meant going back to the brain-wave manipulator, one of the very first gadgets Kyle had built after receiving his amped-up intelligence from the plasma storm that brought Mighty Mike to Earth.
The brain-wave manipulator made Kyle feel a little nervous … and more than a little bit guilty. He’d used it on his parents without testing it and now they both had side effects. He didn’t really want to use it again, but he didn’t see how he had a choice. Marching up the stairs with the brain-wave manipulator tucked under his arm, he resolved to spend some time working on perfecting the device so that he could remove the side effects.
“Hey, guys,” he said. “Got a sec?”
Both of his parents looked over at him from the kitchen table, where they were enjoying dinner. Kyle pointed the brain-wave manipulator and triggered it.
“You won’t notice anything strange about my friend Theodore. He just seems like a normal kid to you. You don’t mind that he wears a mask.”
“Why — why would that bother us?” Dad asked, now stuttering on why, too.
“We love Theodore!” Mom chirped, and then made a clicking sound with her tongue.
Oh, boy. If he didn’t fix the machine before he needed to use it again, he was going to turn his parents into total rejects.
As he rounded the corner to return to the basement, he nearly collided with the Mad Mask, who was lurking at the top of the stairs. In that moment of distraction, the Mad Mask was easily able to pluck the brain-wave manipulator from Kyle’s hands.
“Do you mind?” the Mad Mask asked in a tone of voice that told Kyle that he didn’t really care what the answer was.
Together they went into the basement. The Mad Mask opened the shoe box that held the brain-wave manipulator. Kyle felt a momentary flush of shame creep along his cheeks and back to his ears. He’d thrown together the brain-wave manipulator very quickly and hadn’t spent any time on its aesthetics or style. It was just a bunch of gadgetry tossed into a shoe box so that he could carry it around without being asked questions. He hated the thought of being judged on this particular device, especially when he had so much more to show off.
But the Mad Mask merely poked around in the innards of the shoe box for a moment, then grunted in something like satisfaction. “This is a most impressive device you’ve constructed. It completely rewrites the subject’s own mental drives?”
“Sort of.” Kyle took the brain-wave manipulator back and cradled it protectively against his chest. The Mad Mask leaned toward it with an eagerness that bothered Kyle for some reason. “It adjusts alpha wave activity to stimulate brain chemistry, creating new memories and thoughts.”
“Fascinating! The Mad Mask applauds your ingenuity.” For a moment, Kyle thought he sensed that the Mad Mask was going to reach out to take the manipulator again. “With this device in your arsenal, why have you not enslaved the entire town of Bouring?”
Kyle opened his mouth to answer, then stopped. Enslave the entire town? He supposed something like that was possible, but what would be
the point? He didn’t want slaves; he wanted two very small, very simple things: 1) for people to stop being foolish, and 2) for people to reject Mighty Mike. For the first, he’d developed the Prankster Manifesto. For the second, he’d become the Azure Avenger. In both cases, compelling people by manipulating their brain waves wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying as having them come around on their own and agree with Kyle of their own free will.
“I can’t use it on anyone but my parents,” Kyle said. “It only works on people genetically related to me.”
The Mad Mask snorted. “Ah. Well. Perhaps not as impressive as originally assumed.” Kyle thought his new ally might decide against their team-up, but then the Mad Mask gestured to the workbench and the electronic slate that lay there. “Let us commence! It is time for you to take your first step on the path to the future!”
“Yes!” Kyle set the brain-wave manipulator on the shelf next to the jar of irradiated soil he’d collected from the spot where Mighty Mike had touched down on Earth. “I can’t wait to start working on the Ultitron.”
Spinning around, the Mad Mask spat out, “It’s just Ultitron! There’s no ‘the’! Ultitron! Ultitron!”
Kyle held up his hands. “Right. Right. Got it. Sorry. Slip of the tongue.”
“Say it aloud!”
“Ultitron.”
“Mighty Ultitron!”
“Mighty Ultitron.”
“Magnificent Ultitron!”
“Magnificent Ultitron.”
“Glorious Ultitron!” the Mad Mask roared.
“Glorious — Look, can we just get to work? It’s late and my parents are going to poke their heads down here soon enough.”
“Right.”
Together, they settled in at the workbench and began poring over the schematics, a position they found themselves in for the next several days as they planned out the construction of the crucial control modules that would actually bring Ultitron to life. Kyle’s parents would occasionally check on them, reminding them late at night that “It’s time for Theodore to go home,” but they never commented on the Mad Mask’s mask and outfit, testament to the power of the brain-wave manipulator.