It’s the holiday season and I know what you’re all asking: can I be a Killmaster?
Nick Carter is codename N3, a Killmaster for AXE which is not a body spray but is instead "the most supersecret espionage organization extant in America" and he's been deployed to Japan where he must "destroy the group known as the Sons of August Six before they cause death and destruction across the American continent — making the bombing of Hiroshima look like a mere fireworks display in comparison." A mere fireworks display that killed 90,000 people, that is. Shut up, snowflake! Nick Carter's got enough on his plate without your whining, but he can handle it because he is a fully licensed and accredited Killmaster. What is a Killmaster? Is it the right job for me? What's the health coverage like? The Christmas Kill is essentially the Glassdoor of men's adventure fiction, so if you’ve got Killmaster questions, here are your Killmaster answers.
A Killmaster does a LOT of killing.
If you don't want to kill people, this might not be the job for you. Nick Carter starts in Colombia where he kills the leaders of a terrorist organization that wants to "kill every American living in that South American country" but then 60 of the terrorists want to kill him for killing their leaders but then an American helicopter kills all of them so it can deliver orders that Nick's boss, David Hawk, needs Nick to investigate a toy factory explosion in Hiroshima. That's going to be tough because we killed so many people in Hiroshima with our atom bomb that Hiroshima (and maybe Nagasaki) are the two places with the most anti-American sentiment in the world. As a Killmaster, Nick will kill so many more people in Hiroshima that those feelings probably won't go away anytime soon.
A Killmaster must be a hedgehog, not a fox.
Like the fox, a Killmaster must have a wide range of knowledge, not just be a hedgehog specialist who only knows about killing. He knows that when a stewardess named Pira rests her "perfectly shaped behind" on the arm of his seat he has to send the right signals. "I flexed my muscles to let her know I was aware of that nice touch." Do that, and she'll obediently follow you wherever you want. If that's all a Killmaster needed to know, then he'd be James Bond, but a Killmaster has to know so much more. Like about the toy industry and basic economic theory.
Upon arriving in Hiroshima, Nick visits the Porfino toy factory and meets their amazing new toy: Tikki-Tik, a robot shaped like R2-D2 that will conquer America when it arrives on store shelves for the Christmas season. It can climb stairs, do menial tasks, and do what every child wants: carry on a conversation.
"Tikki-Tik, I wish to discuss matters that would be comprehended by a five-year-old child with an IQ of, say, a hundred and ten."
"As you wish, sir," Tikki-Tik said, then proceeded to ramble on about family life, kindergarten, the alphabet, simple arithmetic, children’s books, television.
"Enough…you now must upgrade. You are now talking to a child of ten, with an IQ of a hundred and sixty."
Jesus, I thought, genius class.
"As you wish, sir."
Tikki-Tik whizzed into a gabbling dissertation about Einstein’s theory of relativity, nuclear physics, rocketry, space travel, opera, classical music, and classical literature…one thing was clear. This was truly a superior toy."
Familiar with global supply chain issues, Nick knows that Tikki-Tik should weigh under 10lbs and is shocked that it clocks in at 20lb (24lbs if you include batteries). Based on his knowledge of the American toy market, he's also astonished to learn that Porfino Toys plans to ship 2 million Tikki-Tiks to America for the holiday season. 200,000 would be adequate. Why saturate the market with a toy that must, by Nick's estimate, be priced at $200 - $300 to turn a profit? He spends a surprisingly long time tracking down the retail price of Tikki-Tik and knows something's wrong when he finds a Powerpoint deck claiming the chatty little "mechanical slave" will retail for $40. He knows something is URGENTLY wrong when he discovers its actual retail price will be $10. Every Killmaster has a subscription to The Toy Book and knows this kind of price is way out of whack with the basic theory of price definition.
Killmasters must be prepared for the worst.
As a Killmaster, you are going to spend a lot of time vomiting. You will vomit when you see 60 Colombian terrorists turned into giblets by an American helicopter. You will almost vomit when you disembark with your obedient stewardess, Pira, and three gunmen in black hoods machine gun the mother walking off the plane in front of you and also machine gun Pira. Later, you will rent a car and head over to investigate Porfino Toys in the dead of night and almost vomit when shoeless men kick you in the stomach and explode your kidneys, then put you in the trunk of your rental, drive you to Hiroshima's Peace Park, and leave you tied up in the A-Bomb Dome. You are there for three days with your ruined kidneys slowly poisoning your body, dying of thirst, but the worst part? No one returned your rental car. Imagine the late charges!!! A Killmaster must be prepared. For ANYTHING.
Killmasters must have morals.
After escaping and rejecting medical care (another Killmaster requirement) the Killmaster sneaks into the Porfino factory again and this time discovers that each Tikki-Tik has 10lbs of TNT hidden in its belly, set on a timer to go off on Christmas morning. Doing math, Nick realizes that this will be "one gigantic Christmas kill." He decides to set the timers to go off in an hour because that will destroy all of them "along with another large section of Hiroshima." That moral dilemma gives him pause, after all, everyone in Hiroshima already calls him "Yankee Slime." Does he really need to make it worse? Then he learns that the people behind this scheme are the Sons of August Six, a bunch of dudes (and women!) who want to kill all Americans to avenge the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If two wrongs don't make a right, maybe three wrongs will? Ultimately, Nick lures the Sons of August Six back to the Peace Park and destroys them with hand grenades, laying waste to the Park in the process because fuck monuments.
Killmasters require a varied skill base.
After ironically destroying the Peace Park with hand grenades, and with his exploded kidneys poisoning his body, Nick hides out in a hotel with Kiko, the Porfino secretary who is "adorable as a trained puppy" but also, like most puppies, "The young woman clearly radiated sex." After trained puppy sex, Kiko tries to kill him with a samurai sword, which is not very puppy-like at all, but then it turns out the Sons of August Six are blackmailing her. As a Killmaster, Nick knows exactly what to do. He goes downstairs to the hotel kitchen, rummages in the fridge and finds a whole dead goat which has been "butchered but not skinned." Then he grabs a jar of duck blood, which he knows will be there because "It's a Japanese delicacy, used for hunters." He tucks the dead goat into his bed and covers it in the duck blood, then gets Kiko to tell the Sons of August Six, "mission accomplished."
Kiko "almost vomited" when she saw the dead goat, and when The Sons of August Six come upstairs to inspect her handiwork they buy that the duck-blood-covered dead goat is the corpse of Nick Carter, then they come downstairs and one of them "ripped off his hood and vomited in the street." Killmaster achievement unlocked.
Now, all that's left to do is rent a mini-helicopter, which any Killmaster knows how to pilot, land soundlessly on the Porfino toy factory roof, take all the explosives for future robots, then use your knowledge of international shipping to locate the vessel in the Pacific that is taking the other Tikki-Tiks to America, and drop the explosives on it until it sinks into the ocean. But don't be discouraged at the breadth of knowledge and the wide skill base required of a Killmaster, because ultimately...
Killmasters know the real enemy is the Patriarchy.
Helping Nick Carter is Lady Nashima. A lot of people would dismiss her as less useful than a dead goat and a jar of duck blood because she is over 50. In fact, she has even internalized this ageist misogyny, saying, as she climbs naked into Nick Carter's bed, "Pardon my forwardness...but I cannot keep back my feelings any longer. If you do not find this old woman undesirable, I should like to join you in your bed." Fortunately, she is also "the most beautiful woman I have ever seen" and "quite tall for a Japanese" and has "ample breasts that were high and enticing." But the patriarchy would just throw her away like garbage, or stab her to death with Hugo, Nick's 6" stiletto, or kill her with Pierre, his "lethal little gas bomb that I normally carry in a sheepskin pouch as a third testicle on my right thigh."
But a Killmaster knows that age is just a number. While Nick's flexing his bicep against Pira's bottom like some kind of weird arm boner, he's also talking to her like a human being and not a potential sexual conquest and learning that she is also a student. A student of what? Nuclear physics. She'd love a chat with Tikki-Tik! He knows about nuclear physics, too! It's a shame she's dead and that Nick just left her bleeding out on the floor of Narita International Airport like a bag that's too big to fit in the overhead compartment, but Killmasters know you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette and by "eggs" I mean "women with degrees in nuclear physics".
However, there's one thing Nick Carter, Killmaster, can't abide: institutional sexism. At first, he thought Lady Nashima was the head of Porfino Toys but then it turned out that her job title was a sham!
"I was given the title of president. But I am an executive in name only. I have no power. That's why I don't keep regular office hours."
Nick tries to process this shocking and un-American turn!
"I was trying not to lose respect for this woman. I couldn't believe that a woman of her strength and composure would sit still for a figurehead job."
She tries to justify it by blaming her country.
"You have to understand the role of the woman in Japan...Although we've advanced considerably since World War II, there is still a vast difference between Japan and the United States as it concerns women's rights. To be head of such a large factory is an honorable position for a woman in —"
"No job without substance has any honor," Carter snapped. "See you around, lady."
Fortunately, she realizes that he is right, that the real enemy isn't Nick Carter, Killmaster, but the patriarchy, so she helps him shoot all the sexist men in her family then brings her high and enticing breasts into his bed again and the two of them experience "a physical and emotional high that blossomed and exploded in that narrow bed in that long room in that fine Christian home."
So, you want to be a Killmaster? Prepare for travel, killing, vomiting, and make sure to expand your knowledge base at every opportunity so that one day, you too can experience blossoming and exploding physical and emotional love in a narrow bed in a long room in a fine Christian home.