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“As a rule, we go about with masks, we go about looking honest, and we are able to conceal ourselves all through the day.” - Mark Twain

Angela R. Ceigh, AKA “Harlot,” stared down in total disinterest at the frolicking ducklings in front of her.

She had never had anything in particular against ducks, but in the current circumstance, they did little to improve her rather foul mood.

In fact, the more she stared at them, the more irritated with them she became. She was really starting to hate them.

Fucking ducklings.

She let out a long breath and leaned back in the uncomfortable plastic chair, looking up at the water stains which dotted the dirty ceiling.

Her honorary uncle, Hector Hopper, AKA “The Roach,” pushed the duck puzzle in question out of the way. “Christ, I hate that fucking thing.”

“Then why do you always have it with you whenever I come to visit?” She asked in confusion.

“Take a guess.” The old man gestured to their surroundings.

The interior of the visiting room in the Mesa Verde Super-Person Retirement Castle wasn’t exactly the most luxurious of accommodations that someone could hope for.

In fact, it was basically just a plain white room with a dozen folding tables and rusty metal chairs.

“The ducklings are the only thing to do in this goddamn hellhole.” He looked around the room suspiciously.

“Closest thing we got to currency on the inside.” He tapped the box to the puzzle.

“There ain’t a wrinkled motherfucker in this place that wouldn’t kill to have The Ducks with them, girly.

” He pulled the object closer. “But they ain’t getting them today.

” He raised his voice and glared at his fellow residents.

“ You hear me, you grasping sons-a-bitches!?! MINE!!! ”

She rolled her eyes and started picking at the scrapes and gouges which marred the surface of the dingy tabletop. “So, what do you think I should do?”

He looked confused. “About what?” His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “If you’re after The Ducks now, you can just…”

“No,” she cut him off before he could finish the paranoid threat, “I don’t want your stupid puzzle.” She made a face at him. “I mean about the Agletarians. Someone’s going to have to do something about them.”

“Why don’t ya quit your bitching and do it yourself then?” He threw his hands wide in exasperation. “Any villainess worth a damn should be able to handle a half dozen paper pushers, right? I killed enough foreign diplomats in my day to fill the goddamn UN.”

“Because I’m not an assassin, for one. I steal things, not kill things.

” She let out another sigh. “For another , I’d be recognized before I ever got into their embassy.

And finally, I have an exam in college that I still need to study for.

If I miss it, my whole GPA will crash and burn.

And you know Syd will never let me hear the end of that, and it’ll all end with my professors tied to chairs while he beats better grades out of them. ”

Hector took on a wizened tone. “I said it before and I’ll say it again: education is just another route to the commie infested waters of intellectualism.”

She ignored that. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do, Uncle Hector.

We need someone who can get in there and get the job done, and we just don’t have anyone who won’t be recognized, and who can also handle themselves against a small army.

” She ran her hand through her hair. “But if we don’t do something, they’ll send someone else to kill us.

Frankly, I’m still not entirely sure why the last assassin they sent is being so cooperative. ”

“Who’d they send?”

She shrugged. “Big guy. Purple hair. Super strong. I think his name’s… Hazard something?”

Hector shook his head. “Never heard of him. Local boy?”

“Brit.”

He scoffed in annoyance. “Fucking foreigners coming in and stealing our good hired killer jobs.” He tapped his finger against the tabletop, obviously believing himself to be making an important point. “Back in the old days , that contract would have gone to an American psychopath.”

“Yes, that was my main complaint about someone sending a killer to murder my father in front of me, as well: the killer’s accent .

” She rolled her eyes again, long used to her uncle’s insanity.

Hector hated everyone, which, unsurprisingly, was making his retirement a nightmare for everyone.

The man was habitually incapable of letting things go, no matter how minor they were or how many decades had gone by since.

“Can we just forget about the increasingly multinational nature of costumed crime-for-hire and refocus on my real problem, please?”

Hector lit his cigar. “Christ on a pogo stick, do I have to do everything ?”

She shook her head. “You can’t smoke in here.”

He ignored her. “What’s your daddy paying you for if you can’t handle one little suicide mission? Your whole generation is failing in the evil business and it’s because you have no follow-through. No wonder all the best evil is now getting outsourced overseas.”

At the table across from them, another resident in the retirement home looked up. “Her generation is failing in the evil business because they’ve finally seen the light and realize that crime doesn’t pay.”

Hector turned to glare at the eavesdropper, something akin to disgusted horror on his face that the man would even speak to them.

“Hey, was I fucking talking to you , Gary? Huh?” He sounded annoyed.

“Do I hassle you when your grandkids come in here and screech and scream about what a great Cape you were? Do I tell them what a fucking pussy you were in the War? No. So SHUT UP!” He refocused on Harlot.

“Where was I? Oh yes. Like I was saying, I know someone who can help you with this. He specializes in… unorthodox warfare.” Hector’s evil smile grew, obviously imagining some horrible scene he had witnessed firsthand and was now just itching to tell her about in extreme and unnecessarily gory detail.

“Best I’ve ever seen at sabotage, demolitions, espionage, infiltration, assassinations…

You name it. All that ninja shit I can’t spell.

Ice water running through his fucking veins, this guy.

Can kill a man just by staring at him hard .

One soulless motherfucker. Evil straight down to the bone.

” He took a puff from his cigar, completely ignoring the warnings on the oxygen tank which was hooked to his wheelchair.

“Sort of an adopted kid of my idiot fucking Cape brother, Roy– may God ensure his loser soul continues burning in Hell– but I try not to hold that against him, because he’s family. ”

“Can you put that out, please?” She pointed at the cigar. “You know it’s not good for either of us.”

Roach made a face, but obediently extinguished his cigar on the warning label affixed to the side of the oxygen tank. “Happy?”

At some point in her life, that type of behavior probably would have surprised Harlot. Sadly, she’d known her uncle too long. “ Ecstatic , Uncle Hector. Thank you.” She let out a weary sigh and tried to get back on topic. “You’d really want to risk your nephew on a suicide mission?”

“Aw, we ain’t close.” Hector waved a hand in dismissal. “Doesn’t even talk to me much; wants to do his own shit. A ‘crazed loner’ type of deal-y, works alone, only calls when he’s drunk or suicidal. But it wouldn’t be risking a nephew. Niece, either.”

She stared at him in confusion. “Huh? What does that mean?”

“It means I got no fucking clue which the kid is. Never even seen his face. Even when he was young he preferred masks and baggy clothes. Could be a niece, a nephew, a fucking opossum from Jupiter , for all I know.” He shrugged.

“Don’t matter much in my book; a badass is a badass and it’s none of my business.

When you get stabbed in the throat with a goddamned katana, you don’t exactly ask the ninja fucker who did it if he’s got cunt or cock, now do you?

” He laughed at the very idea. “Besides, it won’t be a risk.

Walk in the park. Kid’s earned his villain chops…

mostly by chopping people up.” He chuckled in amusement again, obviously thinking back on another blood-soaked scene of carnage and mayhem he’d witnessed.

“Used to worry about him turning to Caping, but he’s more than proven he’s got a pair.

Waaaaay tougher than Roy ever was– may his torment never end.

” He set about searching his pockets for another cigar, forgetting about her constant dire warnings of lung cancer and assurances that smoking near the oxygen would turn the entire building into an explode-y fireball of death.

“’Honorable’ is just another way of saying ‘asshole,’ girl.

Let me tell you something, if you want to truly be at your best, you need to forget all about… ”

Harlot cut him off, not needing to hear his latest crazy idea about how she should be behaving. “So what’s his power?”