A crowd had gathered at the edge of Centennial Park. Parents were pulling their kids back, teenagers were climbing on benches, one old man eating popcorn like it was a matinee. They'd seen the Brat Pack touch down five minutes ago.
Now they waited for the purple and green hero to descend.
"I'm giving you little punks one chance," said The Infectious Imp, landing on an overturned trash can with a three-clawed clink. The yellow eyes of his mask gleamed. His hips cocked to one side for maximum drama. "Walk away now, and I won't embarrass you in front of your mommies."
Behind him, tucked behind a parked food truck, a seven-year-old girl in glasses clutched her backpack straps. He'd just fished her out of a bin. She'd been crying. He'd given her a thumbs-up and said, "Don't worry, kid. The Imp's got this."
She smiled with a nod. She seemed to believe him.
Robbie AKA Wedgie Master, floated six inches off the ground, light black cape fluttering. The raccoon's bandit mask was already wrinkled with amusement. "Oh no. He's doing the tough guy voice."
Headstrong the Hare landed on a park bench, which immediately splintered under his weight. His ears twitched once, then began to expand by rippling outward, thickening, and coiling into two massive arm-like appendages with furred knuckles. "You hear that, Robbie? He's gonna embarrass us."
"Yeah. Even though we all KNOW he’s the one wearing cartoon briefs, right?"
"With little ponies on them probably!"
Hypno-Mouse didn't speak. He just landed silently between his two companions, his purple-and-green visor catching the afternoon sun. The swirl patterns on his helmet began to rotate, very slowly.
Jude Jades, nineteen years old, pizza boy, high school dropout, and the single most overconfident disaster in a fifty-mile radius, crossed his three-clawed gloves. "Last chance."
Wedgie Master sighed theatrically. "You know what, guys? I think he needs a reminder."
He blurred forward.
Jude barely had time to raise his claws.
The first ten seconds were almost competitive.
Jude managed to fire a glob of sticky poisonous goop at Robbie's cape, pinning it to a fire hydrant. He even landed a glancing blow on Headstrong's shoulder with a claws-out swipe. The hare grunted and then smiled.
"Okay," Headstrong said. "Now I'm mad."
His ear-arms moved faster than anything that big had a right to.
The first WHAP sent Jude cartwheeling, wide-eyed, into a newspaper box! The second caught him mid-recovery and slammed him into the side of the food truck. The girl inside of it screamed. Jude slid down the metal, leaving a grease streak, and groaned.
"Up you go," Headstrong rumbled.
One massive ear-arm grabbed Jude by the back of his suit. Not his briefs, not yet. That would come later. For now, Headstrong simply lifted him to eye level and started spanking.
Each hit was surgical, loud, and intensely humiliating!
SMACK. "Who's your mommy?" Headstrong asked cheerfully.
SMACK. "I said-" SMACK "-who's-" SMACK "-your-" SMACK "-MOMMY?"
Jude bit his lip so hard he tasted copper. The crowd was laughing. He could hear a guy with popcorn wheezing. A kid yelled, "Get him, fuzzy bunny!" cheering for the wrong side simply because he was providing them with hilarious entertainment.
Wedgie Master tore his cape free from the fire hydrant and hovered up beside the dangling hero. "He's not gonna say it, Headstrong. You gotta soften him up first."
Hypno-Mouse stepped forward. His visor flashed once.
Jude made the mistake of looking at him.
No no no no-!
The world went soft around the edges of his eyes. For three horrible seconds, Jude felt his body try to wave. Try to smile. Try to say "Yes, sir, whatever you say, sir-!"
He shook his head violently, bit his tongue, and broke eye contact. "N-not today, rat."
Hypno-Mouse tilted his head. "Oh wow! He broke out of it today. How rare!"
Wedgie Master cracked his titanium gauntlets together. "My turn."
What followed was less a fight and more a highlight reel for a bully's TikTok.
Robbie flew circles around Jude, each pass leaving a new indignity. Snip went a claw through a shoulder strap. Rip went another through the purple belt. Yank went Jude's own goop line, wrapped around his ankle by Wedgie Master's superior strength, dragging him face-first through a mud puddle.
"Swirly time!" Headstrong announced.
He grabbed the hero next and dunked Jude's masked head into it. The hero came up sputtering, coughing, his sharp purple mask dripping with algae.
"You're done," Jude gasped. "When I get out of this-!"
"You're not getting out of this," Robbie said pleasantly. "That's the bit. You never get out of this."
Hypno-Mouse was setting something up behind them. Jude couldn't see what. He was too busy getting clotheslined by Headstrong's forearm-sized ear, flipped upside down, and dangled by one ankle.
“DWEERP!” Jude said, stumbling with his eyes rolling before being pulled back in for more.
"The finale," Wedgie Master announced, hovering to a stop in front of the crowd. "Ladies and gentlemen. Children of all ages."
He raised his right gauntlet. The claws gleamed.
SHRRRIIIP.
Jude felt the cool air hit his thighs before his brain caught up.
His purple hero suit's bottoms, the lower half of his costume, the carefully tailored spandex that completed the look, fell away in tatters, fluttering to the ground like sad confetti. The crowd gasped. Then howled.
Jude looked down.
Pink.
Pale pink.
With little pastel ponies on them.
His My Little Pony briefs.
The ones he'd had since he was fourteen. The ones he swore he'd thrown away three moves ago. The ones that had somehow survived every apartment fire, every laundry day, every single attempt at being a cool, collected, competent hero.
“Holy moly. I was right…” Headstrong's ear-arm snagged the waistband of those pink pony underpants. Jude's eyes went wide behind his mask.
"Don't."
YANK.
The wedgie was biblical.
Jude's entire body was lifted by the elastic. His spine arched. His three-clawed gloves scrabbled uselessly at the air. A high, reedy, and completely involuntary sound escaped him. Whatever it was it was definitely not a scream. It was a vocal exercise. Yes. A warmup for… singing… later?
"EEEEEE~!"
Headstrong held him there, suspended by his childhood briefs, six feet off the ground. The hare's red mask somehow conveyed pure delight. "He's squealing, Robbie. Record this."
Robbie pulled out his phone. "Oh, I've been recording."
Hypno-Mouse finished whatever he was doing and walked back into view, brushing dirt off his purple-and-green gloves. "Is he ready?"
"Almost," Robbie said. He floated up until he was eye-level with the dangling, wedgied, half-naked hero. "You know what time it is, don't you, Imp?"
Jude stopped thrashing. His voice came out small. "Please."
"Time to see who's under the mask."
The crowd surged forward. The phone cameras zoomed in. Those with popcorn stood up on a bench for a better angle.
"Nooooo~! No, no, no~!" Jude grabbed at his purple mask with both hands, trying to hold it on, but he was upside down and his gloves kept slipping on the material. "You can't-my face-people will know–!"
"Know what?" Robbie tilted his head, genuinely curious. "That you're a nineteen-year-old pizza guy who wears cartoon briefs and cries when wittle bunny wabbits spank him?"
"I don't cry!"
"You're literally leaking right now."
Jude's cheeks burned. He wasn't crying. That was sweat. From the fear. Which was reasonable. The mightiest of heroes always felt fear when heading into battle. It meant they were bastions of bravery!
Jude was flipped right side up and suspended by a wedgie to his MLP briefs. “HEEEK!”
Headstrong then used his free ear-arm to grab the top of Jude's mask. Not yanking. Just holding. Just waiting.
"Aww," the hare cooed. "Look at him wiggle."
"Please," Jude whispered. "Please, I'll do anything. I'll stop fighting you. I'll leave town. I'll-I'll give you some free uh pizza delivery routes? Please don't take the mask!"
"A tiny little baby," Hypno-Mouse said, his voice soft and syrupy. "Making tiny little baby noises."
Headstrong tugged the mask up by one centimeter.
Jude's chin became visible. A soft jaw was visible.
"STOP~!"
Another centimeter. His lower lip. Trembling.
"I'M BEGGING YOU-!"
Another. His mouth. Open in a silent, desperate gasp.
Wedgie Master held his phone steady. "Faster, Headstrong. He's boring me now."
"No," Hypno-Mouse said. "Slow. Very slow. Let him feel every second."
Wedgie Master shrugged. Headstrong grinned. His ear-arm tightened its grip on the mask and began to pull… millimeter by agonizing millimeter. The purple material peeled back from Jude's face like a second skin being flayed.
Behind him, unnoticed by the dangling hero, Hypno-Mouse reached into a satchel at his hip and produced a folded white square. He shook it open with a CRACKLE of thick plastic-backed fabric.
A diaper.
Adult-sized. Overnight-grade. With little blue tabs and a wetness indicator stripe down the middle. Hypno-Mouse placed it on the ground directly beneath Jude's dangling body. Then he smoothed it out. Fluffed the leg cuffs. Made sure it was perfectly positioned.
Jude didn't see any of this. He was too busy squirming, pleading, watching his secret life peel away one centimeter at a time.
"People are gonna know," he babbled. "My boss! My landlord! The kids! They can’t know my civilian status as a real hero!"
"You're not a real hero," Robbie said flatly.
"YES I AM, YOUUU~!!"
The mask reached the bridge of his nose. His eyes, green and terrified, were visible now above the yellow featureless mask-lenses that had already slid down to his cheeks.
"LAST CHANCE," Jude threatened.
Wedgie Master checked his claws. "For what?"
…Welp. That was worth a shot at least.
Headstrong's ear-arm gave one final, lazy YANK.
The purple mask tore free.
Judeth Jades’ face was exposed. Purple fur. White muzzle. Green eyes blown wide with horror. His whiskers trembled. His ears, his real ears, not the mask's pointed imitation, pointed in pure feline distress.
No mask. No hiding. Just a nineteen-year-old anthro cat in pink pony briefs, wedgied to his armpits, exposed to every phone camera in the crowd.
"GUH! "
That was all he could say.
Wedgie Master raised his phone high and shouted to the crowd, to the cameras, to the internet that would never, ever forget this: "WHUH-OH! THE HERO HAS BEEN UNMASKED!"
Headstrong flexed his ear-arms, still holding Jude suspended directly over the waiting diaper. The hare's voice boomed across the park: "THERE WAS A DIAPER LOSER UNDERNEATH!"
The crowd erupted in laughter. Shrieks of laughter! At least one person was clapping even.
Jude, the Infectious Imp, hung there in his childish underwear, wedgied to the point of spinal realignment, his secret face bared to the world, with a fresh white diaper gaping beneath him like a fluffy, terrible throne.
And somewhere in the back of the crowd, the little girl with glasses, the one he'd saved from the being pushed in the bin, was watching.
She wasn't laughing. She looked disappointed. She stood there as the cellphones kept recording and with a sigh she said, “Lame”.
END OF ISSUE #1
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