One Million Masks: REDUX | ✓

One Million Masks, 2026

|| One Million Masks, 2026 ||

I noticed you fraying last winter.

Milad un Nabi had come and gone, and I was bored, so I rigged Mount Rushmore with some Spanish titadine and detonated on Christmas Eve.

White rocks sparked like fireworks, raining hell onto the snowy forest below. A hailstorm of Thomas Jefferson's distinguished face.

I'd never been to South Dakota before and would likely never return.

The Black Hills weren't black and the Badlands weren't even remotely bad. The false advertising alone warranted an explosive makeover, in my opinion.

Ever since I was ten I thought my masks would look much better carved up on Mount Rushmore and now I had the motive and the means to usher my plan forward.

("What have you done to belong up there with presidents, Nico? Only big men go up on mountains."

My mother was a pragmatic woman when she wanted to be.

"Well, for one," I stuck my finger in the air. "I've never owned slaves. So there's that.")

Besides the dynamite's cracklepop! it was a peacefully silent night.

Right around then my abuela would be at midnight mass lighting a candle for her lost grandson.

"Oh, Nico," she would pray. "May you grow up good."

The Park Ranger emergency ping flared up and not even ten minutes later there you were. Like a pipin' hot pizza or something. Thirty minutes or less.

You fly so fast now, baby.

Not as fast as me, of course, but for a hero who can't teleport you sure knew how to get around.

"Vortex," you growled like you knew what it did to me. "Never a day off, huh?"

I couldn't smile so instead I fixed my mask, a plastic Santa piece I painted in grade school, and waved you forward.

It didn't take long for us to tussle.

We rolled on the ground spitting hate at each other. Definitely not in the Christmas spirit. What would Jesus say if he knew you were knocking my molars out on his birthday?

You hated to touch me, found me too vile to handle, but that night the gloves were off. Your chest heaved like a silver fireplace. I'd exhausted your strength after hours of back and forth but I still had gas in the tank.

The moon hung high and big behind your head like a blind eye. Or a halo, maybe.

You sneered behind a mask creamed with blood, mine and your own.

"Why are you doing this?" You screamed in my face, ramming me against the rubble. "Why are you like this?"

It was a fair question. I'd taken so much from you over the years, seconds you'd never get back, leaching sanity from the city and gorging Starlight City with paranoia.

When I felt particularly vindictive I took hostages; I liked making you choose between lives.

You used to sweat bullets measuring the worth of two hundred uneducated coal miners against ten weeping private school students. I drove you to decisions only God should answer to.

Now you don't even blink.

Maybe it should've been a sign.

A litmus test that you don't have nearly as much fun playing over the fates of complete strangers as I do.

Did.

But you can't just quit me.

Vortex and Makeshift.

Makeshift and Vortex.

You can't have one without the other.

It's like a pie with no filling.

EDM with no bass.

Ivy league universities with no racism.

It just isn't right.

We're legendary, darling. You and me.

Three years fighting, exchanging blows. Never giving. Always taking.

In my lair I read over the daily insanity on my tablet, cackling and banging my fist on the glass, wondering how far I can inflate your ego before I take mercy on you and crush you like the bug you are.

You were a pet. No better than Coco. An entertaining break from the dull heroes and jejune villains who thought their decisions actually meant jackshit in the grand scheme.

There were countless opportunities to give you the old Vortex Heart Removal Treatment and end the rivalry once and for all. See how you taste from the inside.

And yet I never did.

At some point, the thought of taking your life was no longer feasible. An impossibility.

Now it's all a mess.

Now you're... a project.

My enterprising father would refer to you as a 'long-term personal investment.'

I believe the phrase I'm looking for here is pleasant, tingly distraction.

That's all you are.

...All you were supposed to be.

Back on the mountain, your knuckles clacked against my cheeks and there went another tooth.

Your hands were tight chains around my throat.

awyes

I thought you might kill me.

Maybe you might try.

Maybe I wanted you to.

But Makeshift has Rules.

Makeshift has Morals.

goodness.

You might beat me senseless but you'd never cross that line. It's your hard limit, you safeword whenever you come close, exercising all that needless restraint when we both know what you're capable of.

Pathetic.

It must eat at you not giving me the final thrashing I deserve.

I'm first seed on the FBI's Most Wanted list and a war criminal in nineteen countries (including North Korea, yikes!) The public can't help but wonder why you haven't shut me down permanently yet either.

Maybe we're just evenly matched, equal weights on the universal scale (compared to me you're a gnat buzzing next to a velociraptor, but I'll let them make their assumptions.)

Every second you let me live is another innocent's life snuffed.

I've made it my mission to corrupt you, to be the one who sends you over the edge.

Imagine a child poking a caged bear until it snaps and loses all sense.

I'm the stick jabbing in your side.

I'm begging for a mauling.

Because I'll kill again if you don't.

Shortly before I passed out amidst the snow flurries and smoke, I decided if I were to die at all, ever, it would have to be by your hand.