"Oh, you look bored, sweetie," the woman in the tie-dye T-shirt and heart-shaped sunglasses said, leaning in close to a security guard. The guard was on his knees, bound, with a smiley face sticker slapped across his mouth as a gag. The woman held a Tommy gun, its metal components crafted from an alloy that shimmered with a rainbow sheen when the light hit just right. The butt of the gun was pink-stained wood, and both it and the heavy drum barrel were adorned with stickers of rainbows, smiley faces, and words like "groovy" and "far out."
There were more like the poor security guard, hostages tied up, gagged by bright stickers, and at the mercy of Toronto's Mistress of Madcap Mayhem—the supervillain known as Psychedelic.
She swirled around on her platform heels, spinning like a kaleidoscope come to life, her wild hair bouncing in vibrant curls around her shoulders. The bank lobby was her canvas, her stage, a riot of color where chaos reigned supreme. Behind her, two of her henchmen, dressed in matching tie-dye T-shirts that made them look like someone had dressed a gorilla for Woodstock, moved through the room with shotguns painted in a frenzy of abstract colors.
Psychedelic sat down on a desk and slowly crossed her bell-bottom jean-clad legs. "Now, if my calculations are correct, we have a while before a certain party pooper vigilante shows up. I've even left a few toys in the vents for her!" The hostages flinched as she reached into the backpack shaped like a giant yellow smiley face, expecting her to extract a bomb or weapon. To their surprise, she took out a compact mirror and checked her makeup, as if she were preparing for an evening out on the town.
"Had to make sure my face was on before my date with a foxy lady!" she let out a mad, tittering giggle that made the hostages flinch—a laugh that suggested she believed reality itself was a joke.
"Now, my darlings, however shall we kill time?" She picked up a revolver as garish as her Tommy gun and gave it a spin. "Russian Roulette? Twister? Maybe I Spy?"
One of the guards shot her a defiant glare, catching the madwoman's eye. "Oh, you look angry. Do you want revenge? I can tell you it's not all it's cracked up to be sometimes, sugar dumpling!"
She put down the revolver and strolled across the floor. Under normal circumstances, she might have been considered quite an eye-catching woman with a style rooted in '60s counterculture. However, right now, she was the very picture of terror to the hostages in the bank.
She paused and plopped down, sitting cross-legged in front of the hostages. "Oh, I know, class! We can have a story time until my lady friend gets here!"
Psychedelic's smile was all teeth, a playful snarl that sent chills down the spines of the hostages. "Oh, don't look so glum, everyone! I promise I'm a great storyteller." She tapped a finger against her chin, her eyes wide behind heart-shaped sunglasses. "Let's see... How about I tell you about the time I crashed the Mayor's charity gala? Now that was a hoot!"
She tilted her head as she considered her options, then snapped out an order: "Knuckles, light bulb!" One of her henchmen scrambled to her side and held a light bulb over her head. "Ah, I have the perfect idea: a tale of revenge gone wrong, a poor woman left with a broken mind but eyes open to the truth!"
Psychedelic's grin widened into a manic, Cheshire-like smile as the light bulb--rigged with some kind of hidden battery--illuminated her face, casting long, exaggerated shadows that danced across the walls. She seemed to glow with unhinged energy, her whole body vibrating with excitement. "Oh, yes," she whispered, her voice dripping with anticipation, "This is going to be so much fun!"
The henchman, Knuckles, looked nervous, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. He held the light bulb awkwardly, his hands trembling just slightly as he tried to keep it steady over Psychedelic's head. "Uh, boss... do you really think this is a good time for—"
Psychedelic shot him a glare, her eyes wide and furious behind the tinted lenses. "Shush now, Knuckles! I am inspired!" She turned back to the hostages, her smile instantly returning to its wide, unsettling cheerfulness. "Now, where was I? Oh, yes... a tale of revenge, of madness, of waking up to reality!"
She hopped up, using her fingers to pantomime quotation marks around the word "reality." Her laugh filled the room, high and sharp, bouncing off the walls and ringing in the hostages' ears.
"Once upon a time," she began, swaying from side to side as if she were telling a bedtime story, "there was a girl—a very, very smart girl—who thought she could outwit the big, bad system. She believed in rules, in order, in all those boring things society tells you to care about. She was a doctor of chemistry and a psychiatrist, you see..."
“Her name was Doctor Lyra Sinclair, though ‘Doctor Doctor’ would be more accurate,” Psychedelic continued, her voice taking on a sing-song quality as she drummed her fingers rhythmically on the floor. “A double doctorate, you see, but sadly, they only apply the doctor thing once. Such a travesty, isn’t it?” She sighed dramatically, as if genuinely heartbroken over the injustice.
The hostages exchanged confused glances, unsure if this was part of some demented joke or a precursor to another violent outburst. Psychedelic didn’t seem to notice—or care. She was lost in her story, her gaze distant, almost dreamy.
“Doctor Sinclair was brilliant,” Psychedelic went on, eyes widening with exaggerated awe. “A real smarty-pants. She had a way with formulas, with equations, with people’s little broken minds. She believed she could fix the world, make it all neat and tidy, solve every problem with a little logic and a lot of medication.”
“For a brief moment, Psychedelic’s voice changed, sounding normal, almost clinical, her tone suddenly devoid of its usual theatrics. “She specialized in mental health, you see. She believed that a whole host of conditions—depression, PTSD, anxiety, even addiction—could be treated with a little help from our friends, the psychedelics. LSD, psilocybin, MDMA… tools to unlock the mind, to help people confront their fears, heal their traumas, break free from the patterns that kept them trapped.”
The hostages stared, bewildered by the sudden shift in her demeanor. For an instant, she seemed almost like a reasonable person, a scientist, discussing her work with earnest passion.
“She was developing new therapies,” Psychedelic continued as she hopped up and started pacing back and forth, her voice still calm, almost detached. “New ways to treat the mind, to help people where conventional medications had failed. She had access to all kinds of fun stuff—LSD to open the mind, MDMA to ease the fear, psilocybin to give people a little glimpse of the divine.” She paused, her eyes growing distant. “She thought she could use them to make people better… to make them whole again.”
Psychedelic suddenly snapped back to her manic self, her smile wide and her eyes glittering with wild energy. "That was her specialty, you see, and that’s what she was working on at that stuffy university! She had one of those, what do you call it?”
Knuckles, still holding the light bulb above her head, glanced around nervously and answered, “Jobs, boss.”
“Yes! A job!” Psychedelic exclaimed, clapping her hands with exaggerated enthusiasm. “A job at some prestigious institution full of old men in white coats who thought they knew better! She was the brightest star in a dark little sky. A twinkly little star, just like the song!”
She spun around and faced the hostages, her hands on her hips, and Knuckles dutifully shuffled behind her, still holding the light bulb aloft like a cartoon character ready to punctuate her every whim with illumination.
"But all the fun toys the university gave her, and all those lovely, willing subjects they let her use, paled in comparison to her own creation," she continued, her voice dropping to a hushed, almost reverent tone. "A perfume of perfect psychoactive stimuli, a little concoction she called Psych-D. Let me tell you, it was a real gas!"
She wiggled her eyebrows up and down, a manic grin spreading across her face, and then burst into laughter, the sound echoing off the marble walls of the bank like a burst of hysterical applause. "That's your cue to laugh!" she snapped, her smile instantly vanishing, replaced by a glare that could cut glass.
Her henchmen, startled, immediately complied, letting out a forced, nervous chorus of chuckles that filled the air. The hostages flinched at the sudden shift in mood, sensing the volatility of the woman standing before them—a ticking time bomb wrapped in bright colors and madness.
"Much better," she cooed, her smile snapping back into place like a light switch flicked on. “You see, darlings, Psych-D wasn’t just any perfume. Oh, no, no, no! It was a scent to open your mind, a fragrance to make your synapses sing, a bouquet of brilliance that made you see the world in ways you never imagined!” She twirled, inhaling deeply as if savoring the memory. "Just one whiff, and bam! You were on a technicolor rollercoaster with no brakes!”
She paused, her expression becoming wistful, almost dreamy. “But those stuffy academics, they just couldn’t handle it! They said it was too dangerous, too unpredictable. Can you believe it? They called it… unethical!” Her eyes widened in mock horror, her hands flying to her cheeks as if she were the victim of some grave injustice.
Psychedelic dropped the act suddenly, her face hardening. "So, what did they do? They tried to stop Doctor Sinclair, to cut her funding, or even—gasp!"—she threw a hand over her mouth, eyes wide, and yes, she actually said the word "gasp," causing some of the hostages to blink in confusion—"Fire her from the university entirely!" She brought a hand to her forehead with all the drama of a Southern Belle in some old black-and-white movie, staggering back as if she might faint from the thought alone.
"But our heroine, our brave doctor, she was very smart," Psychedelic continued, her voice lowering conspiratorially as she leaned in close to the front row of hostages, "and she found out about those stuffy old men on the university board and their nasty plans to ruin her!"
She straightened up again, her expression shifting rapidly from conspiratorial to theatrical, arms outstretched as if narrating a great saga. “They thought they could bury her, silence her brilliance with their rules and regulations! But they underestimated her. Oh, they did indeed!” She stomped her foot for emphasis, the sound echoing through the bank like a crack of thunder.
"You see, she had dirt on them—nasty, dirty dirt,” Psychedelic continued with a gleeful snarl, “Unprofessional things, naughty old men with naughty old man games!" She leaned in close, her face mere inches from an older man among the hostages, locking eyes with him, her stare so intense it seemed to burn. Then, just as quickly, she snapped back, her body recoiling like a rubber band, giggling madly.
"Oh, they hadn’t broken any laws, per se,” she went on, her voice sing-song and mocking, “But Doctor Sinclair knew their friends and families would have been quite unhappy to hear about the stuffed shirts and their naughty old man games!”
The hostages shifted uncomfortably, glancing at the older man now fixed in Psychedelic’s sights. He swallowed hard, his eyes darting away, trying to avoid her gaze.
“They came to her little meeting, afraid of their precious reputations as upstanding stuffed shirts being ruined,” she said, drawing out the words like a cat toying with its prey. “Oh, they thought they were so clever, coming to confront her, ready to make deals, to beg and bargain.”
Psychedelic laughed, a wild cackle that filled the room with its piercing sound. "But blackmail wasn’t the doctor’s plan—oh, no!” She leaned forward, her grin growing impossibly wide, her eyes wide with manic glee. “Her revenge had to silence them all, make sure their idea of stopping her research never saw the light of day!”
She spun on her heels, her arms outstretched like a conductor about to lead an orchestra. "So, she invited them in, one by one, offered them drinks, made them comfortable. And when they were all seated, all nice and cozy… she retired for a brief moment to powder her nose."
Psychedelic paused dramatically, her eyes widening with mock innocence. "And by that, I mean she started to flood the room with a dosage of Psych-D that would have killed them twice over!" She clapped her hands together with a sharp crack, her laughter bubbling up again, shrill and unhinged.
“Oh, you should have seen them!” she continued, her voice a mixture of delight and derangement. “Their faces! Their eyes went wide, their pupils like saucers as the colors hit them, as the walls began to melt, as their precious, logical little brains couldn’t handle the sheer, raw wonder of it all!”
Psychedelic’s grin faltered momentarily, and her expression twisted into a scowl. “But then… along came a nasty little vigilante in a mask. She must have been investigating Doctor Sinclair or maybe those old men, or maybe she was just swinging by the university on her way to ruin someone else’s fun. But she had the gall! The temerity! The sheer unmitigated rudeness to break the windows and disperse the gas!”
She stomped her foot again, the force of it echoing like a drumbeat through the bank lobby. "Just smashed right in, all high and mighty, acting like some goody-two-shoes hall monitor in a cape! And with all her little gadgets and smoke bombs, she cleared the room before Doctor Sinclair could finish her masterpiece!”
Psychedelic's voice rose in pitch, her tone a mockery of hurt and outrage. “She ruined everything! The colors, the spectacle, the glorious chaos! She dragged those doddering old fools out into the fresh air, where they started to recover, started to remember who they were!” She shook her head as if recounting some unforgivable betrayal. "Can you believe it? How unbelievably rude!"
"Doctor Sinclair watched from her control room and became ever so cross!" Psychedelic emphasized, her face contorting with exaggerated anger. "Now they were certainly going to cancel her work! Her precious research, her beautiful discoveries, poof—gone, just like that!" She clapped her hands together, the sound like a crack of thunder that made several hostages flinch. "All because some masked meddler decided to play hero!"
She spun around, her expression suddenly shifting to something darker, more intense. “So, she decided to follow Plan B,” Psychedelic continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, “and opened up her desk, took out the big revolver her father had once used for hunting.” She mimicked the motion, holding an imaginary gun, her fingers trembling with theatrical rage. "If she couldn't free their minds one way, she was going to free them of their skulls in another!"
Her grin grew wicked, almost predatory, and she made a mock firing motion, aiming her finger gun at the older man she had singled out earlier. “Bang, bang, bang!” she shouted, her voice echoing through the bank. “But oh, guess who showed up again? Our meddling little fox friend, always at the wrong place at the wrong time!”
“She just sauntered into the control room after picking the lock,” Psychedelic continued, her voice rising with excitement, “wearing a gas mask and ready to rumble, so the Doctor did what anyone would do and tried to shoot her all kinds of dead!” She threw her head back and cackled, the sound bouncing off the marble walls, unsettling in its sheer manic delight.
“But no, no,” she said, waving a finger like a teacher correcting a child, “the little foxy fox, she was fast enough to jump and run and get to cover! The bullets, oh, they flew and bounced and ricocheted, and—whoopsie!—they hit pressurized canisters of Psych-D…” Psychedelic’s grin grew impossibly wide as she reenacted the explosion with her hands, mimicking the bursting canisters with a sudden burst of sound, “Ka-boom! A rainbow cloud of pure, distilled chaos filled the room!”
She danced in place, moving her feet in little steps as if reliving the moment, her arms swaying like she was orchestrating the madness. “Oh, it was beautiful!” she crooned, almost breathless with glee. “A storm of colors, swirling, twisting, like a kaleidoscope on fire! The air was alive with it—reds, blues, greens, all blending into one giant, glorious mess!”
"And there was Doctor Sinclair, right at the heart of it all,” Psychedelic continued, her voice dropping to a hushed, reverent tone, “with no gas mask, no protection, bombarded with a massive overdose of her own creation, Psych-D!” She let out a wild, delighted giggle. “That sly fox, she pulled her out of the gas, oh yes, but it was too late! Too late! The hero failed to save her before the damage was done!"
She raised her hands to her temples, her fingers splayed like she was holding her head together. “When she woke up in a hospital, oh, what a sight to behold!” Her grin widened, her eyes gleaming with mad enthusiasm. “The world had changed! The faces, the colors, the sounds—oh, how they bled and danced! Everything was alive, vibrating, shifting, bursting with life! That was when she realized… she had been blind all along!”
Psychedelic's voice softened, almost dreamy, as if reliving the revelation. “And in that moment, she understood. She saw it—the real world, the shifting chaos, the truth of it all behind the lies and the illusions. No more black and white, no more dull and gray. Just pure, unfiltered reality in all its swirling, beautiful madness.”
Her expression shifted again, and she threw her head back, laughing—a deep, rich, genuine laugh that was somehow both joyous and deeply unsettling. “And all she could do was laugh! Laugh at the absurdity, laugh at the sheer, ridiculous, marvelous truth of it all!”
She spun around, throwing her arms wide, reveling in the memory. “Because she realized,” Psychedelic sang out, “that all those rules, all that order, all those dull, dreary laws of physics and society and propriety—they were just lies! Lies we tell ourselves to keep from seeing the chaos, the color, the wonderful, endless dance of existence!”
Psychedelic turned back to the hostages, her eyes blazing with a fervor that bordered on fanaticism. “And so, she embraced it, you see? She became me!” She spread her arms wide, as if presenting herself as a gift to the world. “Psychedelic! The one who sees the truth! The one who knows that life is meant to be lived in a riot of color, not trapped in boring, gray boxes!”
“They said the overdose had altered my brain chemistry, sent my mind on an endless trip,” she continued, her voice taking on a mocking tone, as if mimicking some clinical doctor’s diagnosis. “They marveled that I wasn’t catatonic from sensory overload, but they underestimated me! Underestimated just how much a human mind can endure and still keep standing!”
Her voice rose in pitch, crackling with a mix of pride and madness. “I broke out of that hospital. It was easy, really. I had to break out, had to escape before they locked me up in a rubber room with a cozy, comfy straitjacket!” She mimicked struggling against invisible restraints, twisting and writhing with exaggerated effort.
Psychedelic straightened and continued, her grin widening, “After all, there was a whole world out there, full of people who needed to have their eyes opened to chaos—the truth that reality is just a melting kaleidoscope of pure nonsense! And nothing they do, nothing they cling to, really matters!”
Her voice lowered to a menacing whisper, eyes narrowing as she spoke with a sudden, cold clarity. “But even more than that, there was a woman in a fox costume who thought she could fight for order and justice, keep up the lies, like she was Atlas holding up the world on her shoulders!”
She leaned closer to the hostages, her smile predatory, almost gleeful. “That’s why you’re here. Well, in part, I do need money to pay for my swanky toys,” she admitted with a theatrical shrug, “but if and when some hero—preferably one with fox ears—shows up, I get to prove that the reality she fights so hard for is a strawman, a flimsy facade!” Psychedelic giggled, her voice turning singsong. “And I will open her eyes to all the mind-crushing truth, just like she did mine!”
With a sudden snap of her head, Psychedelic turned on her heels at a muffled sound. One of her henchmen had vanished, dragged silently into the shadows. She narrowed her eyes, her grin returning, wild and sharp. “Looks like story time is over, class!” she announced, grabbing her riotous Tommy gun off the desk with gleeful abandon.
Without hesitation, she unleashed a flurry of rounds from the drum magazine, the bullets ripping through the air with reckless, deafening intensity. She aimed into the shadows, the vents above, anywhere her foe might be lurking, cackling maniacally all the while.
“Let the fun begin!” she shrieked, the chaos unfolding around her as the bullets tore through drywall and metal, the sound a cacophony of violence and madness.
And so, the clash between order and chaos began anew, as Psychedelic’s laughter filled the room, and The Vulpes prepared to emerge from the shadows, ready to face the storm of color and madness once more.
Psychedelic turned back to the hostages, her eyes blazing with a fervor that bordered on fanaticism. “And so, she embraced it, you see? She became me!” She spread her arms wide, as if presenting herself as a gift to the world. “Psychedelic! The one who sees the truth! The one who knows that life is meant to be lived in a riot of color, not trapped in boring, gray boxes!”
“They said the overdose had altered my brain chemistry, sent my mind on an endless trip,” she continued, her voice taking on a mocking tone, as if mimicking some clinical doctor’s diagnosis. “They marveled that I wasn’t catatonic from sensory overload, but they underestimated me! Underestimated just how much a human mind can endure and still keep standing!”
Her voice rose in pitch, crackling with a mix of pride and madness. “I broke out of that hospital. It was easy, really. I had to break out, had to escape before they locked me up in a rubber room with a cozy, comfy straitjacket!” She mimicked struggling against invisible restraints, twisting and writhing with exaggerated effort.
Psychedelic straightened and continued, her grin widening, “After all, there was a whole world out there, full of people who needed to have their eyes opened to chaos—the truth that reality is just a melting kaleidoscope of pure nonsense! And nothing they do, nothing they cling to, really matters!”
Her voice lowered to a menacing whisper, eyes narrowing as she spoke with a sudden, cold clarity. “But even more than that, there was a woman in a fox costume who thought she could fight for order and justice, keep up the lies, like she was Atlas holding up the world on her shoulders!”
She leaned closer to the hostages, her smile predatory, almost gleeful. “That’s why you’re here. Well, in part, I do need money to pay for my swanky toys,” she admitted with a theatrical shrug, “but if and when some hero—preferably one with fox ears—shows up, I get to prove that the reality she fights so hard for is a strawman, a flimsy facade!” Psychedelic giggled, her voice turning singsong. “And I will open her eyes to all the mind-crushing truth, just like she did mine!”
With a sudden snap of her head, Psychedelic turned on her heels at a muffled sound. One of her henchmen had vanished, dragged silently into the shadows. She narrowed her eyes, her grin returning, wild and sharp. “Looks like story time is over, class!” she announced, grabbing her riotous Tommy gun off the desk with gleeful abandon.
Without hesitation, she unleashed a flurry of rounds from the drum magazine, the bullets ripping through the air with reckless, deafening intensity. She aimed into the shadows, the vents above, anywhere her foe might be lurking, cackling maniacally all the while.
“Let the fun begin!” she shrieked, the chaos unfolding around her as the bullets tore through drywall and metal, the sound a cacophony of violence and madness.
