ShreyF
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Three months before Metro City laughed her off the steps of City Hall, Vanessa Vex announced her retirement from marketing over a croissant.
“I’m done with nine-to-five marketing, Maya. Good guys make pennies. By winter, I’m going to be the richest, most glamorous supervillain on the Eastern Seaboard.”
Maya took a sip of her iced latte and tugged a magenta ringlet that had fallen across Vanessa’s collarbone. “A supervillain? Van, you cried last week when you got split ends from a curling iron. What’s your evil plan, blinding the police with hair gloss?”
Vanessa swept her hair back with both hands. It took a moment for all forty inches to settle. A man walking past the patio turned to watch and nearly walked into a planter.
“Laugh all you want! Notice how every single person on this block is staring at my hair? That’s star power. That’s intimidation. Just watch me.”
Maya came around the table and lifted the mass of hair off her friend’s neck. “Okay, future overlord, before you rob a bank, let’s get this blanket off your neck so you can eat your croissant.”
“Seriously though, whatever serum you’re using is insane,” Maya said, separating the hair into sections. “It’s so thick I can barely wrap my hand around the base.”
By the time Vanessa finished eating, Maya had woven the loose waves into a thick braid that hung beside her hip. Vanessa admired the way the sunlight caught each crossing of the braid.
“Imported orchid oil and three hundred brush strokes every night,” she said. “This mane is my trademark, Maya. It’s untouchable.”
Three months later, purple smoke billowed across the steps of City Hall. At precisely 12:15 p.m., the mayor’s live press conference acquired an unscheduled guest in a floor-length velvet cloak.
“Citizens of Metro City! Cower before the officially certified, Apex-Tier malice of… MALEFICENT VEX!”
Vanessa raised a black diploma tube, its crimson wax seal turned toward the cameras. The reporters backed away from the podium. At the edge of the crowd, two men exchanged a look and tried very hard to keep straight faces.
“Gaze upon the face of ruthless, aerodynamic perfection—and despair!”
She swept the hood back and waited for the gasps. For one beautiful second, she got silence. The cameras took in the bare skin above her ears, the bristling purple shelf that sloped across her crown, and the solitary tuft dangling over her forehead.
Then a boom operator dropped his microphone. The crowd roared.
“DID SHE FIGHT A LAWNMOWER AND LOSE?!”
“LOOK AT THAT LITTLE TUFT IN THE FRONT!”
Vanessa touched the prickly top with a trembling glove. “W-What are you laughing at?! This is the Elite Vanguard Combat Crop! It’s terrifying!”
The Jumbotron zoomed in so close she could see a bead of sweat run down her shaved temple. She dragged the cloak over her head and bolted. Behind a dumpster, she broke the wax seal on her diploma. Gold lettering framed a crayon drawing of a potato with pink spikes.
CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ABSOLUTE POTATO.
“A POTATO?! THEY SHAVED MY HEAD FOR A POTATO CERTIFICATE?!”
An hour later, a figure in a gray hoodie slumped facedown on a table at the Starlight Cafe. Maya recognized her friend just as Vanessa slammed the crumpled certificate down beside the sugar packets.
“I want to press charges. I want a refund. And if you laugh, Maya, I swear I will vaporize your espresso machine.”
Vanessa pulled down the hood. Maya put both hands over her mouth. Her shoulders shook.
“Oh my god—your forty inches of—” She snorted. “You look like a purple pineapple!”
“Shut up, shut up! Sit down and pour me a double shot. It started the night after our coffee date three months ago…”
That night, Vanessa had sat at her vanity and drawn a gold-plated brush from her crown to her waist. A faint charge crackled at the tips. She counted every stroke, worked oil into the ends, and pressed a thick coil against her cheek. A pearlescent mask, a session under her personal steamer, and a night in jumbo silk rollers left her with waves that bounced past her hips.
“I spent four thousand dollars on silk-lined armor plating just so the collar wouldn’t cause friction frizz,” she told Maya.
She had auditioned hairstyles in front of a three-way mirror. The twin spiral ponytails made her look like a magical girl’s sidekick, and the braided crown hid too much volume. The high ponytail looked fierce for ten minutes, until the gold cuff started to pull at her scalp. She slipped it free and watched her hair spread across the back of her cape.
“Yes. Loose, wild, untamed. Let the wind machines do the work.”
At the museum, she barely finished announcing that the Starlight Tiara belonged to her before a backflip sent the ends of her hair into a spinning vent and around a vault hinge. The tiara stayed where it was. Vanessa dangled above the floor until Apex and Bolt showed up carrying iced coffees.
“Look, Apex, it’s the Pantene Pro-V bandit again,” Bolt said. “Get the safety scissors.”
“DON’T YOU DARE CUT IT! UNSCREW THE VENT! UNSCREW THE WHOLE WALL!”
At First National Bank, a revolving door caught the last foot of her hair. Apex spent twenty minutes working peanut butter and olive oil into the seal while she sat in handcuffs. Bolt watched from beside the door. “Next time we rob a bank, let’s pick one with sliding doors.”
A thunderstorm turned her next heist into a game of blindman’s buff. She walked straight into the back of a police wagon with wet hair plastered across her eyes.
She came closest to getting away with a stolen battery. Apex and Bolt were three blocks behind when she spotted a reflective billboard and stopped to brush out a wind knot. Thirty seconds later she was under a weighted net.
“Every Tuesday, Vanessa,” Apex said. “You rob a place at five, get stuck by five-ten, and make us miss dinner untangling your hair so you don’t sue the city.”
That evening, Apex soaked his sore fingers in ice water. Bolt scrolled through Vanessa’s feed, which consisted mostly of videos of her turning her head in slow motion.
“Wait a second. Why does she commit crimes? For clout. And what is the only thing on earth she loves more than clout?”
Bolt pinned her photograph to a corkboard beside a set of heavy-duty clippers. By morning, a black envelope bearing a gold skull and crossed shears had slid under Vanessa’s door. The International Academy of Supervillainy had noticed her potential and summoned her to Warehouse 9 for mandatory S-Tier certification.
“I knew it! The big leagues finally recognized my aura!”
Warehouse 9 had velvet banners, a fog machine, and two men in ill-fitting robes behind a folding table. Vanessa paid more attention to the spotlight catching her hair than to either of their mustaches.
“Halt, Candidate Vex!” said Apex, doing his best Baron Von Malice. “You stand before the High Tribunal of Supreme Evil!”
“I am ready for my trials, Masters! Point me at a bank!”
Doctor Dread, who was Bolt in a domino mask, ordered her to surrender her cape to the incinerator. Vanessa hesitated over the clasp. She had paid extra to have the lining sewn by hand. Then she folded it over her arms and handed it over. Bolt dropped it into a laundry hamper labeled DEFINITELY LAVA.
The next test required an evil laugh after six saltines without water. Vanessa got through the first syllable before coughing cracker dust into her fringe. Apex checked a square on his clipboard. She had won a game of tic-tac-toe without knowing she was playing.
“Breathtaking lung capacity. You have passed into the Final Sanctum.”
Behind the curtain stood a barber chair, a polished mirror, and a row of clippers.
“Wait… why does the Final Sanctum look like a barbershop?”
“Because, Candidate Vex, your final exam is the Mandatory Villain Combat Haircut.”
Vanessa gathered her hair to her chest. “Cut my hair?! Are you insane?! This is forty inches of virgin, orchid-oiled perfection! My hair is my brand!”
Bolt presented a binder blaming every failed heist on follicular drag. “I can just wear a swim cap during heists! Or braid it tighter! I don’t need to cut it!”
“Put the clippers away, Dread,” Apex said, reaching for a stamp. “I told you she lacked the ruthless spine. Only the truly elite qualify. Let her go back to robbing parking meters with her pretty princess curls.” At the thought of going home with SIDEKICK printed on her paperwork, she sat down so fast that the chair rocked.
“I’ll do a trim! A tactical, villainous trim! Just enough to show I’m serious!”
Apex fastened a white paper strip around her neck and snapped a black barber cape over it. Bolt drew a comb through her hair while Apex stretched a tape measure from her crown to the ends. Vanessa watched the comb slide down in the mirror and thought three inches might feel almost refreshing. Then Apex pointed to her collarbone.
“Wait—collarbone?! That’s over two feet of hair!”
“Look in the glass, Vex. A sharp, shoulder-grazing lob screams ‘cold-blooded corporate CEO villain.’ You keep the framing, you keep the glamour, and no more revolving doors.”
She pictured herself stepping through a bank door without having to turn around to check what was behind her. The idea had its merits.
“Okay… a fierce, shoulder-length lob. Right at the collarbone. Not a millimeter shorter!”
Apex gathered her hair at the nape and cinched it tight. The blades closed partway through the bundle and stopped. Vanessa felt the pull against her scalp as he opened them and cut again. The final strands gave with a dry crunch. The weight left her head so abruptly that she lifted her chin. In the mirror, Bolt was holding her ponytail by its tie. The loose ends brushed the counter.
“Oh my god… you actually cut it! That took me six years to grow!”
Apex misted what remained and combed it straight. The damp ends rested against the cape until he began cutting. Each time the scissors closed, the new line climbed closer to her jaw. The blow-dryer swept the clipped ends inward and left her with a blunt, glossy bob.
“Hey! That’s way shorter than my collarbone! That’s my chin!”
She turned her head once. The hair swung forward and settled neatly. She tried it again, slower this time.
“Wait… okay, it’s super short, but… it actually looks kinda chic? Very ‘assassin in Paris.’”
“Assassin? Please. You look like the head of a suburban PTA bake sale.”
Vanessa’s fingers curled around the ends of her bob. “A PTA mom?! I do NOT look like I run a bake sale! Fix it! Make it look dangerous!”
This time the shears started behind her ear. In the mirror she could see the diamond earring in its entirety. More magenta locks slid down the cape as Apex and Bolt worked around the back, reducing the nape to short layers and leaving a longer fringe swept across her forehead. She touched her neck and found skin where the bob had hung moments before.
“My neck is totally naked… I haven’t had hair this short since kindergarten! Okay, we’re done! The fringe is edgy, right? Very cyberpunk villain!”
Bolt held up the academy’s aura meter. The screen flashed red. The pixie, he explained, registered as “adorable tinkerbell.” Her only hope of passing was a military flattop with a tactical plasma-conductor tuft.
“I already lost three feet of hair… I’m not leaving here without that diploma! Do it! Make me 100% menacing!”
The first pass of the clippers started at her temple. The buzz rattled against her skull as a strip of pink hair peeled away, exposing her scalp high above the ear. On the other side, a longer piece of fringe still fell into her eye. She caught sight of the bare strip when Apex turned the chair.
“WAIT—IS THERE EVEN A GUARD ON THAT THING?! THAT FEELS LIKE BARE METAL!”
“Guards are for cowards, Vex! High and tight to the bone!”
The clippers worked around the back, leaving dark stubble below the crown. Then a foil shaver cleared away the stubble until her temples and nape felt slick. The cool air on both ears made her shoulders rise. She could still see hair on top, and for a moment she took comfort in that.
Apex combed it upright and ran the clippers across the teeth. A row of purple tips scattered across the cape. He tried to even out the right corner and left it shorter than the left. Bolt held one lock above the center of Vanessa’s forehead and snipped it into a point. When he let go, it curled forward.
“And… complete!” Apex said, dusting her with powder. “Do not look in the mirror yet—the menacing geometry is too powerful for an uncalibrated eye!”
They pulled the hood down over her brow, gave her the sealed diploma, and sent her straight to City Hall.
“A stud-finder?!” Maya said when Vanessa finished. “They used a garage stud-finder on you and you let them shave off forty inches of hair?!”
“IT HAD A BLINKING RED LIGHT, MAYA! IT LOOKED VERY SCIENTIFIC IN THE DARK!”
Maya leaned over and ran her fingertips across Vanessa’s temple. The bare skin made her laugh all over again. When she flicked the front tuft, it sprang back into place.
“Stop touching it! Every time the wind blows, it feels like someone is rubbing an ice cube on my ears!”
Vanessa opened her compact. Maya used her phone to give her a view of the back. The short top looked crooked from that angle, too.
“Look at my head, Maya… I spent six years oiling and braiding it, and two guys in Spirit Halloween mustaches turned me into a geometry textbook in twenty minutes!”
Vanessa caught a passerby staring and instinctively flicked her head to send her hair over her shoulder. Her hand swept right past her neck.
“I just tried to hair-flip air. My neck is so light I keep over-rotating when I turn my head!”
They tried to flatten it at Maya’s apartment. The moment Vanessa took her comb away, the wet bristles sprang upright. A jeweled clip slid off the tuft and landed in the sink. A neon-pink Halloween wig perched on top of the bristles and itched so fiercely that Vanessa threw it into the basin.
At L’Étoile, Pierre dropped his comb when he saw her. “Mon Dieu! Mademoiselle Vanessa?! Where is the forty inches of silk?! Who attacked you with hedge trimmers?!”
“To make this even, chérie, I would have to buzz the entire top down to a number one guard. There is nothing left to sculpt!”
“Touch me with clippers again and I will level this building, Pierre!”
She left before he could reach for a drawer. Outside, Maya showed her the viral clip from City Hall. In the background, Apex and Bolt were laughing. Vanessa recognized the faces they’d been wearing under those mustaches.
“IT WAS APEX AND BOLT! THOSE TWO JERKS FAKED THE WHOLE ACADEMY!”
She rubbed her gloves across her crown, ready to blast Warehouse 9 into orbit. One tiny pink spark fizzled at her fingertip. It took forty inches of friction to charge her powers. She tried again and got less than she’d managed the first time.
“I… I can’t even light a birthday candle right now! They neutered my superpowers with a pair of Oster clippers!”
She took the bus to Warehouse 9. Everyone aboard seemed to be watching the Jumbotron clip. At the warehouse she kicked open the door and demanded a full refund. Inside, a single bulb swung above a broom and a pile of magenta clippings.
Maya peeled a note off the broom. “Dear Potato: Tuition was $0.00. No refunds. P.S. We donated your 26-inch ponytail to a charity wig maker, so at least some part of you is finally doing good for the city. Hugs, Apex & Bolt.”
Vanessa knelt beside the pile. She lifted a handful of purple hair, and the short pieces slipped between her gloves. She had spent years gathering those lengths off the backs of chairs and checking for split ends. Now she could barely keep a handful together.
“There wasn’t even any tuition… I didn’t even pay them to ruin my life…”
That evening Maya offered to trim the crooked corner. Vanessa flinched at the sight of the scissors, then held still while Maya snipped the offending tips. When her friend massaged a little lotion into the bare sides, Vanessa shut her eyes and let her shoulders drop.
“Mmm… okay, I hate to admit it, but scalp massages without hair in the way actually feel amazing.”
The next morning at the Starlight Cafe, Vanessa wore her biggest sunglasses and made no attempt to hide her ears. Maya set down a croissant. “On the bright side, Van, you got out of bed ten minutes ago and didn’t have to spend two hours blow-drying.”
“Don’t get used to it. I already bought six bottles of biotin gummies. In four years, Maleficent Vex is making a comeback. Until then, I’m officially retired from supervillainy.”
Maya pointed through the window. The potato certificate was hanging on the café wall in a gold frame.
“Whatever you say, Overlord Potato. Eat your croissant before the breeze gives your ears frostbite.”
“I hate you so much, Maya.”
Vanessa picked up the croissant. For the first time in six years, she could lean over her plate without anybody having to hold her hair back.
Tuition Paid: $0.00. Inches Lost: 39.5. Lessons Learned: Zero.
