Archvillain by Barry Lyga

were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon hung? How was the Colossus of Rhodes made colossal?
    In a few hours, Mighty Mike will be honored at the conclusion of his parade. According to BouringRecord.com, the parade begins at nine and ends at nine-thirty. (Bouring is a small town.) The alien dunce will be honored by the mayor on a dais at the end of the parade route, in the town square.
    That is when I will swoop down with the Pants Laser and vaporize Mike’s pants, along with the pants of anyone else on the dais with him!
    And who knows? Maybe I won’t stop with the alien. Maybe I’ll teach this town a lesson in worshipping that extraterrestrial doofus. Maybe I’ll just vaporize
every pair of pants in Bouring!
    Well, maybe not. We’ll see how it goes.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
    Kyle yawned under his mask as he flew over Bouring, struggling to keep the Pants Laser balanced in his arms. Today was the day the town of Bouring would honor Mighty Mike. It was also the day Kyle was more annoyed than any human being had ever been annoyed in the history of being annoyed.
    He had meant to sleep a couple of hours before setting out to upend heaping helpings of well-deserved havoc on Mighty Mike’s unearthly head, but just as his head hit the pillow, Erasmus had chimed in with:
    “Hey, genius — how are you going to get close enough to shoot Mighty Mike without anyone seeing your face?”
    Of course. To protect his identity, he would have to be disguised.
    So he’d roused himself from bed and stumbled down to the lab, where he’d found an old blue blanket and an old set of Dad’s blue coveralls. They would have to suffice.
    Sewing was, of course, beneath a genius such as Kyle,so he’d connected Erasmus to Mom’s old sewing machine and given explicit instructions on what to create. Erasmus complained, but Kyle threatened to erase his hard drive, and a moment later, the basement filled with the chatter of the automatic needle. He scrounged around and found a work belt with pouches that would make it easy to carry Erasmus and anything else he might need.
    At the last minute, he added a cape to the costume. No one would ever suspect Kyle of wearing something as tacky as a cape.
    Now he soared over Bouring in his costume, glad that the full face mask would hide the bags under his eyes. The outfit was a little tighter than he would have liked, but it would do. The cape fluttering behind him as he flew was even sort of dramatic, though Kyle would never, ever admit that.
    “Sort of dramatic, isn’t it?” Erasmus asked. Kyle wore the earbuds under the mask. “The cape, I mean.”
    “No,” Kyle said.
    “I don’t believe you. You think it’s dramatic.”
    “If you want dramatic, play some dramatic music for my debut.”
    “Have you thought of a name for yourself? All of the best costumed superpowered muckety-mucks have special names.”
    “Yes, Erasmus. I have. I shall be known as … the Azure Avenger!”
    If Erasmus had chosen that moment to play something classical and thunderous, it would have been a great moment. Instead, Erasmus played the sound of crickets chirping. (Kyle wondered where
that
had come from — he didn’t have crickets in his music collection!)
    “Yawn,” Erasmus said.
    “It’s a great name.” Kyle pulled up, gaining altitude. The entire town of Bouring lay beneath him, the streets radiating out from the town square like crooked spokes on a crashed bicycle. From here, he could make out the parade as it oozed along Major Street toward the square, which was dominated by the thirteen-foot-tall statue of Micah Bouring, the town’s founder.
    “It’s complicated,” Erasmus said.
    “No, it’s not. I’m avenging my honor. And I’m wearing blue. Azure means —”
    “I know what
azure
means. It’s just sort of long. You need something short and punchy, like ‘Mean Man’ or ‘Tough Stuff’ or ‘Bad Guy.’ ”
    “I’m not the bad guy,” Kyle retorted.
    “You’re not?” Erasmus sounded genuinely