Note: This story takes place before Gladiator’s appearances in Marvel 2000’s Thunderbolts title.

Melvin Potter pittered and pattered around the dank and gloomy space that composed the Spotlight Costume Shop. It was one of the most infrequently open shops in its little cul-de-sac carved out of the city, but that was due to no one’s fault but Potts’ himself. When half a man’s time is spent in and out of jails and psychiatric institutions, his personal life suffers.

The room was dimly lit by the single bare bulb that hung in the center of the ceiling. He’d always meant to get around to replacing it with a brighter bulb and a shade, but it was one of those things he would do later. Those things happened a lot. It didn’t matter, anyway. Whether his shop was well-lit or not, business was going to be steady this time of year no matter what. It was Halloween season.

Melvin scrubbed the counter with a rag, his bulging muscles rippling almost comically under his tight T-shirt. Despite his appearance, Melvin had no superhuman abilities. He was a normal man with a handful of martial arts lessons and a penchant for a needle and thread. He had a habit of bringing fabric to life, turning it from shapeless cloth into something that a man could become something else entirely under. His customers came back year after year, even after they heard about his Gladiator spells. But those days were behind him. He had put those demons to rest. Hadn’t he?

The bell over the door rang, and in walked a girl with her mother. The girl couldn’t have been much older than ten years old. She was at that delicate stage where she was too old to stand too close to her mother, but not quite too old to have outgrown the pigtails. She wandered over to the racks with the hand-sewn princess costumes first, her nose wrinkling up in disdain. That didn’t bother Melvin too much. He’d rather sell the costume to someone who would appreciate it anyway. The girl had to have been a little on the spoiled side anyway to be considering buying a Halloween costume from his shop. Custom costumes don’t come cheap.

“I want to be something cooler, Mom,” said the girl, tugging at her mother’s purse strap. “These aren’t adult enough.”

“Good,” the girl’s mother said. She continued to look through the rack of colorful dresses. Melvin would be surprised if she didn’t walk out with a costume herself.

He chose this moment to intervene. “Is there anything I can help you with, ma’am?” Her initial expression featured distrust mingled with fear, but his handmade nametag let her know that he worked here. As the sole proprietor, Melvin had thought he wouldn’t ever need a nametag, but fate had conspired against him. The nametag was a security blanket. He had seen that sigh of relief far too often to think it didn’t make a difference.

“No, we’re just browsing,” said the mother. She allowed herself a small smile of relief. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Melvin said, going back to scrubbing his counter down.

“Of course there’s a problem,” said a deep, echoing voice from the back of the store.

Melvin looked up. The mother and daughter had not heard. “No, there isn’t,” he whispered, scrubbing harder. “There is no problem at all.”

“Don’t you think they could use your special brand of help? They’re tired of being alive, Melvey, dearest,” said the jack o’ lantern mask above its dark, billowing tunic. “You can relieve them of their pain. Snicker-snack, or so it goes.”

“No,” Melvin said, gritting his teeth. He tossed his rag under the counter and grabbed the broom, his knuckles white from his grip. “Never again. The Gladiator is gone.”

“Gone?” asked the jack o’ lantern costume, its eyes and mouth flickering with the glow of an imagined flame. “Your lies to yourself aren’t becoming, Mr. Potter.”

Melvin took a whack at his gathered dust pile with extreme gusto. “Go to hell. Don’t come back. You aren’t welcome here.”

“Excuse me?” asked the mother, her hand over her heart. Melvin saw her nose turned upward and knew at that moment that she had heard him.

Melvin stood up straight and put his hands at his side. “Sorry, ma’am. I wasn’t talking to you.”

The woman nodded, and Melvin could tell that he had upset her. She wouldn’t be buying anything from his store tonight. She and her daughter lingered for a moment before they inconspicuously slipped out the door. Melvin waited until the bell stopped ringing before he set the broom down and sighed. “See what you did? You cost me a customer.”

“She wouldn’t have bought from you anyway,” said the costume. “She could feel the real you in there. The killer.”

“The killer was nothing. It was a lapse. I’m a good man,” Melvin insisted, almost pleading. “I’m a good man.”

“Are you?” asked a voice from Melvin’s right. It was a life-size costume he had crafted of Peter Rabbit. The beady, red eyes glowed with hellfire. “God only knows you’re already going to hell for the atrocities you’ve committed.”

“You shut up! You have no idea! No freakin’ idea!” Melvin said, brandishing the broom against the costume. He could see Peter Rabbit physically recoiling, his cotton fur pressing back against the rack behind him.

The rabbit then cackled. “You wouldn’t want to get too angry now, would you there, Mr. Potter? You wouldn’t want to kill me, too, would you? You wouldn’t want to kill a poor, defenseless rabbit the way you’ve killed so many poor, defenseless people, right?”

“Shut UP!” Melvin yelled. He swung the broom handle at the rabbit costume, forcing it off its hook and onto the floor. He stood there, his teeth gritted as he huffed and puffed. “Don’t you even dare! You don’t know me! I’m not him anymore!”

“No, but you’re going to be,” said the jack o’ lantern. “You’re gonna lose that pretty wife of yours someday, and everything you’ve built for yourself is going to burn to the ground. What are you going to do then? Sit down and take it like a man? Or make your way to a secret hideout and strap yourself a saw blade onto your wrist?”

The broomstick crashed into the plastic pumpkin helmet and sent that costume to the ground as well. “You’re lying!” Melvin yelled. “I’m NOT a bad person! Nothing can change that! The doctors, everyone told me so!”

“Then why are you fighting a bunch of Halloween costumes, crazy? Unless we aren’t figments of your imagination at all?” the rabbit asked from facedown on the floor. “Go on, take a look at the special surprise we’ve been hiding for you. Look at you, descending to attacking defenseless rabbits and pumpkinheads. You really are a monster, Melvin Potter.”

Melvin looked to the rack that he had knocked the talking costumes from and caught a glimpse of metal. “Oh, no,” he whispered. “Nonono, please. It can’t be here. You can’t let it be here.”

“Who, the Gladiator?” asked the jack o’ lantern. “The Gladiator isn’t a mask you wear. Melvin Potter is the mask. The Gladiator is the real you coming out to play. The way his mask keeps him cooped up all the time, can you blame him for going a little wild every once in a while? I mean, really.”

Melvin whipped the broomstick back and forth, knocking one costume at a time away from the rack, slowly revealing what stood at the back of the rack. A custom grim reaper flew off against the wall, and clown slammed into the opposite. Both costumes stared up at Melvin from their landing spots, egging him on with their wicked gazes. “He can’t be here,” Melvin muttered. “He just can’t.”

“But he is,” the rabbit taunted. “He really, really is. He never left, buddy boy.”

The last costume fell to the ground halfheartedly, revealing the final prize. This was no costume. This was an identity. This was the Gladiator.

The breastplate hung in the center, its every curve molded to the form of Melvin Potter’s body. The helmet lay at the bottom of the rack, set in the perfect center. Its curved elegance somehow conveyed sharpness in that inexplicable sort of way. But, of course, the centerpiece of the costume was the pair of twin saw blades that were mounted to be worn on the wrist. The entire display screamed, “Wear me!”

But Melvin Potter stood firm. “No,” he said, his confidence returning to him by the nanosecond. He had defeated the Gladiator before, even if it had only been inside his head. He wouldn’t be coming out to play today. Today, Melvin was going to win.

“No, you aren’t,” the jack o’ lantern and rabbit said in unison, and Melvin swooned as the entirety of the costume shop seemed to come alive, screaming at him. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized, maybe, just maybe, things would be okay if he just didn’t let the Gladiator out. He could keep him in the costume shop, in the safe zone, and everything would be okay, wouldn’t it? Sure it would.

And that would still be okay if he just, you know, tried on the suit. Just for old times’ sake, right? Just to get the freaking jack o’ lantern and rabbit to shut their pie holes, to prove that he could handle it. He’d be okay, right? Sure he would.

There was still a little voice at the back of his head that said this was a bad idea, but Melvin had confidence in himself. He could handle it. He was a big boy. That was what he had said, right? Sure he had.

Melvin stepped over the fallen costumes as best he could and then had a second thought. He couldn’t just go about putting on this costume, could he? Not at a time like this. He’d come so far.

He turned the “Open” sign to “Closed.”

There. Much better.

A little time in a costume never hurt anyone, right?

Sure it hadn’t.

---

The End

Author’s Note

The adventures of Gladiator pick up in Marvel 2000 continuity in the Thunderbolts series. Check it out. It’s an awesome series, especially if you love-love-love villains.

--Hunter Lambright
10/29/09