In the midst of this, the coldest cold snap my poor feet can remember, a thought occurs to me:
This is the perfect time to construct my heroic, super-secret fortress of heroism. Awesome.
All heroes worth their salt have secret hideouts. The Rebel Alliance and Echo Base on Hoth. Batman and his Batcave. The X-Men and the mansion on Westchester. Superman and the Fortress of Solitude. Swamp Thing and ... the swamp.
You see where I'm going with this.
So as a person who aspires in all respects of life to be as awesome as possible, I need to decide how to go about creating my fortress. I've gotta consider location and theme, mostly. As much as Superman occasionally annoys me by being too overpowered and looking too much like Brandon Routh, he does have a rockin' bachelor pad. A giant ice fortress in the Arctic that can only be opened by a key that's so massive only he can pick it up?
Now that's what I call home security.
But OK, so I've tentatively decided that my lair will be hidden deep within the bowels of the secret tunnel system underneath the campus.
There're no tunnels under campus, you say? Please. We're all adults here. No need to hide them anymore. As long as we're all respectful toward the tunnels and don't use them to pop up into Big Roddy McD's house to scare him. Anymore.
As a subterranean lair, it'll be a chilly and damp place, intimidating to the villain, mysterious and enigmatic to friends. Not the place to have a Super Bowl party, but definitely an appropriate location to plot to kill Hitler.
It'll probably take lots of digging to create an underground cavern that is both structurally sound and large enough to hold my vast array of superhero cars, gadgets, gimmick weapons and DVDs.
We'll also need to heat the place, which I'm assuming I will be able to do by forming a friendship with the peaceful Mole-Men who live under Ping, and asking them to reroute their lava rivers through the middle of my cave. It'll be like having central heating AND I'll be able to re-enact the light saber duel from the end of Revenge of the Sith - hopefully without the falling-into-the-lava-and-becoming-Vader part, though.
Also, if we're really lucky, we'll be able to tunnel up into the back of one of the theaters in the Athena and we'll get to see movies for free - we
of course, being my henchmen, the Mole-Men and myself.
What? Heroes can have henchmen, too. Unless ...
OK, fine. So supervillainy would be more fun. The lava river is secretly for the forging of evil rings, the size of the cave is to create giant pennies, and the use of the underground tunnels is to cause mischief in more places than one, a la the Gopher from Caddyshack.
Try as you might, you'll never stop me! MWAHAHAHAHA.
Nick Philpott is a sophomore studying playwriting and creative writing. He is not really a supervillain, so please don't send the cops after him. He's so easy to find. Send him your plots for ruling the world at np714907@ohiou.edu. 4
Opinion
Nick Philpott
