by Matt Carter
None whatsoever.
After a while, I thought I just might get away with it as life slowly went back to normal.
I started sleeping again, no longer jumping or screaming at the slightest sound. After a few weeks I’d dropped out of the Top 10 trending topics and the news started spending less time talking about Icicle Man’s death and more time on its favorite topics: war and superhero gossip.
In retrospect, my devastating failure at the Sunnyside Liquor Store didn’t seem that bad. After all, I’d gotten away with some cash, and even proved myself against a superhero. He really didn’t stand a chance. And I was famous—just a step or two away from being rich and feared. Maybe if I could retrace my steps, find that yard where I’d buried the costume, I could possibly even resurrect Apex Strike (maybe even hit up a few of those fangirls…).
After all, if I’d gotten away with it once…
I was thinking something much like this while walking home one day in late March when a man in a black trench coat and sunglasses dropped out of the sky in front of me.
“Aidan Salt,” he said, reaching into his coat.
“Ididn’tdoit!” I shrieked back, turning on my heels and running. I looked back long enough to see him tapping his earpiece and speaking rapidly.
Two more men in identical suits appeared in front of me, one dropping out of the sky like the first, the second materializing out of the ground.
The last thing I remember before everything went black was holding my hands up and screaming, “Wait!”
I didn’t wake up dead. That was a good start.
I did, however, wake up tied to a chair in a dark room with a bright light shining in my face. I seemed to only be wearing my underwear and a thin metal collar wrapped around my forehead.
I quickly realized waking up dead might have been a better option.
I tried to focus, but couldn’t. My power had been disabled.
From somewhere beyond the light, someone threw a bucket of icy cold water in my face.
“I was already awake!” I shrieked.
“We know,” a firm, amused voice said from somewhere else in the room. “That was for Icicle Man. And don’t bother trying to use your power. The halo you’re wearing lets us control your powers whenever we want.”
I nearly screamed. Everyone knew the horror stories about what had happened to supervillains who’d been forced to wear halos for too long.
I babbled freely, “I didn’t do anything, I swear! I don’t know what you’re talking about! Don’t hurt me! I’m sorry!”
Tears were streaming down my face, when I heard someone in the dark chuckle.
“We’re not here to hurt you… yet,” the voice said.
“YET? Then… why…?”
They continued, “We have a question for you, Apex Strike.”
“I’m sorry…” I muttered.
“Apex Strike… do you love America?” the voice asked.
There were a thousand questions I’d expected to be asked before this one, but at least it was one I could fake a quick answer to easily. “Yes! Yes, of course I do! My parents put a flag out every President’s Day, and one day I want to visit all fifty-eight states!”
“Excellent…” the voice said. “And what of her allies?”
“They’re awesome!” I said, even though I had no strong feelings toward the Brits or the Soviets or any of the others.
“And Earth?”
“Love it,” I said. I was willing to agree with whatever they asked me if it kept me alive.
“Very good. You see, Apex Strike, America, her allies, and Earth itself have enemies. To maintain the freedom we enjoy, we need superheroes. They maintain the peace and order that allows us to sleep at night. You do like a good night’s sleep, don’t you?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed.
“Good, I’m glad we agree, because not everybody does. They believe that, because there are no more supervillains, because the non-human empires of Earth and beyond are not currently hostile, that we do not need as many superheroes. Already many corporations and governments are considering cutting back on superhero funding. Do you understand how bad that would be?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed, completely answering on autopilot.
“It would be anarchy! People would run lawless through the streets, committing crimes at will! Governments would fall! We would suffer attacks from Lemuria, Atlantis, the less-civilized Sasquatch tribes, maybe even the Grays! The world needs its superheroes!”
The voice fell silent for a moment, and then sighed. “But to have superheroes, we need supervillains. Supervillains keep heroes relevant and funded. That’s where you come in.”
I was still on autopilot. “Yes! I’ll do it! I’ll do whatever you want!”
“You know, we were hoping you would say something like that. I think he’s ready for us to shed some light on this situation, don’t you?”
The spotlight that had been blinding me was shut off, and replaced by dull, harsh fluorescents that lit this otherwise stark, concrete interrogation room.
Standing before me were at least a dozen heroes. Some I knew, while others I didn’t: Everywhere Man, Helios, Crystal Skull, husband and wife team Morningstar and Silver Shrike, Armada, Captain Cola, and even Extreme Man, who I thought had retired in the 90s.
A muscular man, the left half of his body human, the right half a Gray alien, walked toward me, smiling.
It was Fifty-Fifty, who I went as for Halloween when I was a child.
“Welcome to ‘Project Kayfabe,’ kid,” Fifty-Fifty said. “So guys, think he’s ready for Death Island?”
He raised a control device towards me, his finger hovering over a button in the center.
Fearfully, I asked, “What isl—”
#Supervillainy101: Blackjack
If you choose to believe her story, even knowing her history of lies and cons, Jill “Blackjack” Winchester was cursed by a voodoo witch doctor on her plantation in Georgia in the 1760s so that she could never touch anyone without them feeling her pain. From that day forward, the last person she touched would feel all the pain, suffer every injury, and even age every day that she was meant to age, effectively making her into an immortal voodoo doll.
Realizing this power’s potential (and always having an attitude problem), she started posing as a man, “Jack,” and purveyed this curse into a career as an outlaw and mercenary, traveling the world, fighting in wars, and running gangs from the Wild West to Prohibition-era Chicago. Her Old West bravado and style made her a notable and colorful figure in the rising superhuman underworld of the early twentieth century. She was fearless, dangerous, and widely regarded as the first true supervillain of the Golden Age of Superheroes.
When the War on Villainy was announced and the superheroes organized, Blackjack knew that her time was short if she decided to stay a villain. A survivor till the end, she broke into the first ever meeting of the Protectors and offered them all of her criminal contacts in exchange for freedom and a spot on the team.
Naturally, they took her up on this offer, and she enjoys to this day an enduring career as one of America’s favorite antiheroes.
#LessonLearned: Superheroes can be surprisingly reasonable if you learn to play ball.
4
PROJECT KAYFABE
I was getting tired of having my brain turned off and on by the time they finally put me on the boat, but it happened half a dozen times between my interrogation and then.
Three times it was to ask me some follow-up questions about myself; about how my power manifested and how strong I was.
Twice I was woken up by technicians who were working to calibrate my halo. Given their terrified cursing, I think these were accidents.
The last time before the boat I was woken by Armada, decked out in all of his body armor and weapons and reeking of vodka.
“Look scared,” he ordered in his Russian accent.
This wasn’t hard.
“Thanks,” he said, posing hims
elf next to me to take a selfie. Picture taken, he ruffled his fingers through my hair.
“Tell anyone I did that, little boy, and I’ll shove a fucking flamethrower up your ass and pull the trigger,” he said before shutting down my brain.
The next time I came to, I was on my back, staring at a gray, blank ceiling. My head was pounding as the world was slowly rocking back and forth. The sound of water lapping at one of the walls told me that I was on a boat, which had to be better than being in the Tower… or dead.
I sat up, the world righting itself more than my empty and angry stomach wanted to. I could see that I was in a small room with a thick metal door, a toilet, a sink, and my cot. A single flickering bulb in the ceiling bathed the room in a faint yellow light.
I had been in public school classrooms that were more comfortable than this.
The rocking. The pounding in my head. That sour ball forming in my empty stomach.
Something was about to give.
I ran for the toilet, sank to my hands and knees, and vomited, painfully.
I quickly realized three things after doing this:
1. The heroes had found my Apex Strike costume and helmet.
2. I was now wearing my Apex Strike costume and helmet.
3. The visor for my Apex Strike helmet was closed.
“Fuck.”
I ripped the helmet off and dropped it into the toilet, retching at the stench that filled the air and covered much of my face. I turned both sink handles on full blast. There was a hiss of air and the heavy thudding of something vibrating in the wall before thick, brown water burst from the pipe with an explosive bang. I yelped, falling back onto my cot and banging my head against the wall and suddenly wishing I hadn’t taken off my puke-filled helmet, as the wall had no give against my skull.
“This sucks,” I muttered, wiping my face on the back of my jacket’s sleeve.
There was a thudding sound from the head of my cot, followed by a puff of black smoke and the smell of brimstone.
A small man was standing on the end of my bed. Only he wasn’t a man… not quite. Barely three feet tall, he had the upper body of a man and even wore a small white collared shirt with an even smaller black tie that made him look like an engineer for NASA back during the Silver Age. Assuming of course that Silver Age NASA engineers had triangular heads with seven beady black eyes around the rim, quill-like hair, a toothy mouth surrounded by tentacles, and four wafer-thin ears that fluttered next to his face like moth’s wings. And, of course, assuming that they had a bulbous black lower body beneath their shirt the size of a basketball with seven spider-like legs sticking out from the sides.
He cocked his head, looking at me curiously, before raising a clawed, four-fingered hand and waving it at me.
“Hello! Odigjod likes how you smell!” it said cheerfully.
I screamed, trying to climb up the wall it some attempt to get away from this… thing.
I then felt someone pound from the other side of the wall. “FUCKING SHUT UP, TESTA DI CAZZO!”
The little monster on my bed waved his hands at me. “Apologies! Apologies! No need for fearing! Just a fan of the villain Apex Strike wanting to hello before competition beginning!”
I backed into a corner and asked, shakily, “What the hell are you?”
“Ah, my topside manners are needing working. Apologies, apologies,” he said, taking a dramatic bow. “I am Odigjod, son of Bamtalegrissnkareayganitikanikan and Bob the Dietician. Odigjod is imp, up topside from Third Circle of Hell on work exchange program to try to be supervillain like you! Odigjod’s big fan of your work! Can Odigjod have autograph?”
Still shaken, and the fact that I’d never signed an autograph before, I shakily agreed. “Umm, sure.”
He snapped three of his fingers and made an autograph book and pen appear in midair. I took both and signed my name, and hoping I didn’t misspell his (I did, writing it like he’d pronounced it: “Odd-dig-jodd.”).
“Thank you, Mr. Strike, I look forward to competition with you,” he said politely.
There was that word again.
“What competition?”
Before he could answer, two of his ears perked up vertically, cocked toward the door.
“Coming for us now. Everything beginning! Have to go back to room! Thanks!” Odigjod said, disappearing with another puff of brimstone and smoke.
The door swung open with a heavy metallic squeal. A large man in a black, SWAT-like outfit with body armor and a gas mask waved an automatic rifle at me.
“Out now! Costume on!” he commanded.
I looked at my helmet, sitting in a couple inches of rusty toilet water and vomit.
“Do I have to?” I asked.
He flipped a switch on the side of the rifle. The red pinpoint of a laser sight appeared on my chest.
“Got it,” I said, running to the toilet and pulling my helmet out, shaking it free as best I could and slamming it down on my head.
I didn’t think it was possible for the helmet to smell worse.
I was wrong.
The guard led me down a long hallway past many similar rooms with locked and guarded doors. I don’t imagine I looked terribly intimidating in my mud-caked outfit, tattered cape, and stinking helmet, but they didn’t let their guard down around me. It was up a long, creaking flight of stairs before I was out in the sunlight and on the deck of a large freighter in the middle of the ocean. There were more guards along the railing, some armed, some not (supers). About a hundred yards away from the boat was a foreboding island teeming with dense, thick jungle (including many twisted trees that didn’t look like they belonged in nature) and a mountain that I could have sworn had half a face carved in it.
The guard dragged me to the middle of the deck and quickly disappeared into the darkness below.
Moments later, another larger cargo door opened on the opposite side of the deck, and out stomped a vaguely human-shaped robot with a hunched back and glowing green eyes (or was it a mech suit like ATHENA?). It looked cobbled together, as very few of its heavy metal parts had matching paint jobs, with some of them dented and rusted. It came to a stop next to me, close enough for me to see that one of its right thighs had a few names painted on it and crossed out, the most recent one reading FIREWALL.
Never having seen a robot (or mech suit) before, I couldn’t help but touch it.
“Touch me again and I will fucking destroy you,” a distorted female voice with a vaguely British accent said from within.
“Sorry,” I muttered, stepping away.
Another door opened, and out stepped a young dark-skinned man in a faded green army jacket and ski mask.
“Bloody hell, I gotta share?” he said with an Irish accent, shaking his head.
More supervillains, great.
They came out from the hold one at a time. Some of them had costumes, both homemade and professional looking. Others wore street clothes or prison issue jumpsuits. Not all of them were human; aside from Odigjod, who came up on deck bouncing and gushing over villains that he must have recognized, I noticed three scalefaces, a Sasquatch, a Cyclops, and one guy who appeared to be made of lava. There was another who was made of large, jagged crystals, and an Atlantean showing off their trademark pride. There were some gene-jobs, too, asymmetrical and misshapen from going to one of those illegal clinics to change their DNA to become super, or having it forced on them by some mad scientist. One of the bigger ones looked like he’d taken a hyena-shark-lizard cocktail and appeared so vicious that he had to be escorted by two guards with noose poles around his neck. He snapped and yipped for effect, but didn’t try to seriously attack them.
Most of these “villains” appeared to be young, in their late teens or early twenties. While the guys ran the gamut from ugly as sin to movie-star good looks, the girls were universally gorgeous. Beautiful faces, firm, toned bodies with tight asses and high, firm, big breasts… well, whatever was happening here couldn’t be that bad, I realized.
; Many of the other villains looked at me, but didn’t try to initiate a conversation. Some smiled and nodded (not as many girls as I’d have liked), while others looked disgusted by my presence.
Everyone had heard of me, yet I hadn’t heard of any of them. It was a pretty cool feeling, one I definitely was not used to.
After the last villain had been led onto the deck (a girl in a tight white bodysuit and black hooded cloak, her face covered with a porcelain doll mask), there had to be at least ninety of us there, standing around confused, watching the guards, wondering if we were all brought here to die or if we’d have to fight our way out. Since the fight option seemed more likely, I scanned the deck, trying to find anything to hide behi—
“Welcome to Death Island!”
The voice was proud and powerful and very Southern. We all looked to the raised section of the deck to our right.
She stood there looking like she’d just jumped out of one of her posters; long black coat stretching almost to the floor, faded cowboy hat obscuring the top half of her face, showing only a square, tanned chin that had seen a few too many fights, two faded auburn braids tied loosely at the back of her neck, and a half burnt-down cigar sticking out of the corner of her yellow smile. Seeing she had our attention, she jumped the twenty feet down to the main deck in front of us, brushing off her coat.
The fluttering breeze revealed a pair of pearl-handled revolvers holstered at her waist.
Blackjack.
She was shorter than I’d expected.
Seriously, she had to be like four-and-a-half feet tall, tops.
Though looking like a middle-aged soccer mom who’d spent a bit too much time in the sun, her frame was powerful and quick, like a coiled snake.
“This island used to be home to Professor Death, one of the greatest supervillains of his day, just like all y’all. And just like all y’all, we heroes took him down,” Blackjack said, pacing the deck in front of us, her spurs jangling as she went.
“Now, I know some of you may take umbrage at the term ‘supervillain.’ You may not be like the rest of the sonsabitches on this boat who strapped on some spandex, gave ’emselves a new name, and decided to mo-lest po-lite society. You may not have come out of a superprison. You may just be some hard-luck kid who just happened to break the law while coincidentally having a superpower. Well, despite your o-ppression complex, I got a harsh reality for you: to the rest of the world, you are supervillains. You deserve to be removed from po-lite society with extreme prejudice so people can go about their everyday lives.”