Vortex Man Vs. Dr. Elemental

“Nooooo!  Curse you, Vortex Man!  Once again, I, the great and powerful sorcerer, Dr. Elemental, have been defeated!  But I will win next time, Vortex Man!  Here, take one of my famous curses as I get away!  MUAHAHAHA!”  The deranged old man points a finger at you, shouts “ees uoy gniht txen eht knird yletelpmoc lliw uoy!”  And runs off, the orderlies chasing after him.

You, vortex man, hero of Neo Metropolis, let out a sigh.  There was a time long past where Dr. Elemental was a threat, until he tore a hole into another reality and has not been right in the head since.  You have other villains to fight with your tornado powers, yes, but as Dr. Elemental was your first arch-nemesis, you make sure to visit him in the hospital every month or so to put a stop to his ‘evil schemes’.  Gone are the days of trying to take over the city with various demons and monsters.  Today his evil scheme was replacing all the plastic spoons in the cafeteria with sporks.  But one thing never changed, and those were his famous ‘defeat curses’ he laid on you as a last kick in the face when you claimed victory.  They always were so mundane, decoding them became a hobby of yours.  One time he cursed you to lose a pencil, another time he made it so every radio played “La Macarena” at the same time since you weren’t too fond of it.  One time he had a sore throat, and literally tripped you on your way out.

You say goodbye to Patty the friendly receptionist, and walk out the front door of the hospital, watching the flags flap in the wind like capes.  You miss yours, but that lady did have a point about them getting stuck on things.  It’s a beautiful day in Neo Metropolis, with barely a cloud in the sky, and the sunlight sparkling across the waves of the open ocean, making for a wonderful view that few tire of.

You suddenly feel very, very thirsty.

You fly over to the nearby water fountain, drinking from it for a good three minutes before realizing that you are in no way getting less thirsty.   All you can think about is the ocean, that sparkling view of all the water, and how that just might be enough water to quench your thirst.  Silently bemoaning the fact that Dr. Elemental may have finally dropped a curse before you figured out what it did, you fly out into the bay, land on a small island off the coast of the city, and carefully take a sip of the saltwater, ready to spit it back out.  But you don’t.  Instead, you swallow it, thinking that this normally far too salty liquid is the best thing you have ever tasted, and in a blind, almost stupid rush, you dive into the shallow water and try to drink as much as you can.  You can feel your stomach bulging and sloshing slightly from all the seawater you drank, but you can’t get enough.  You barely even come up for air, swimming in the surf around the small island, mouth wide open to catch as much of the delicious fluid as you can.

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Hours pass.  You sit on the shore, rubbing your distended, bloated belly, looking more like a beanbag-sized water balloon than a man’s torso.  Yet despite that, in the dimming light of the evening, you still feel just as thirsty as you did before.  It’s as if you need to drink the entire ocean to be satisfied.  Could you even pull that off?

Of course you can.  You are Vortex Man, after all.  With a fire in your eyes, you stand up tall, brace your feet and belly on the sandy shore of the small island, and cry out the name of a move you haven’t used in ages.  “Vortex… Inhale!”  Opening your mouth wide, a vacuum forms inside your body, sucking in everything in its path.  Aiming true, the ocean’s water spirals up in a tornado and with a force no average human could withstand, forces its way down your throat, as you taste it as even better than it was before.

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All around the world, scientists, news crews, and superheroes alike rush to find the reason as to why the ocean’s waves are slowly receding, turning beachfront property into plain old city outskirts and coral reefs into modern art museums.  As the water recedes, you grow exponentially, forcing more and more of the heavenly seawater down your throat with your powers.  You’ve gone from a humanoid blob to a jiggling mass as tall as a skyscraper, your uniform long ripped off and a massive waterfall falling backwards from the sea into your waiting maw.

You don’t know when it happened, but as you grow larger you become aware of movement within you.  Rapidly growing taller and wider, you realize that you are too small to have developed tides and currents yet.  No, instead you can feel fish, hundreds of thousands of fish swimming around in your ever-growing gut.  You beam with pride, realizing that your actions have likely dismantled the operations of every sea-based villain in the world.

Back in Neo Metropolis, citizens watch in horror as a massive blob threatens to smother the city underneath it, as it saps up the ocean like a sponge.  Cries for Vortex Man go unheard as you cannot hear over the sound of the ocean surging into you as you continue to drink everything in sight.  Citizens of Neo Metropolis and the surrounding cities evacuate just in time as your now mountain-sized body crushes the city in one fell swoop.

Larger and larger you grow, slurping up the entire Atlantic ocean and starting on the Pacific as its water rushes into the void left by your little drinking problem.  High above you, in space, the alien fleet approaches to do battle with Cyber Girl, but turns and retreats as they see a massive swelling glob of flesh swelling to cover multiple continents with no sign of stopping.  Heroes and villains put aside their differences to try and find a solution to get the water back without popping you, as the resulting tidal wave would flood the world.

With a final gulp, the Earth’s oceans are no more, trapped in your immeasurable form.  You smile as you gave over the vast desert that was once the seven seas, seeing dozens of shipwrecks and unique rock formations, all the while enjoying the feeling of being so tight, so full.  Your skin stretched to its limit, you can feel the creatures of the ocean swimming around inside you, and as the water you hold begins to form currents and tides, you wonder if you should change your name to Hydro Vortex Man.

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Having escaped the orderlies, Dr. Elemental laughs from his ‘top secret’ underground bunker made of macaroni art and glitter that everyone knew about but decided not to break because it kept him occupied.  He laughs, and laughs, and laughs, joyous in the fact that his master plan to replace all the city’s bacon with Canadian bacon can finally come to fruition!

Then he realizes two things:  One, the city is destroyed, and two:  Your massive body has trapped him in his bunker.  Fists clenched in rage, he screams to the heavens:

CURSE YOU, VORTEX MAN!