by C. T. Phipps
“Charles Omega is not and has never been the U.S. President,” Colonel Jones said. “The Supreme Court annulled his presidency on the basis of the fact that he was never a U.S. citizen but a foreign aggressor from the future.”
“The attempted genocide of all Supers was also a big deal,” I pointed out, amused at the fact these guys thought they could take me. I’d bitten off way more than it would take to chew up and spit these guys out. I’d fought demon lords, space gods, and A-list supervillains bigger than these guys.
I was tired, though. Tired of killing, tired of fighting in general really. I didn’t want to resist, and it was my hope that if the government did toss me into a hole somewhere, then that would be the end of it. I had brought too much pain and misery to my family over the years to escape punishment for it. I needed to pay for what I had done and maybe this was my way to atone for it.
“Shut up,” the man in the white suit said, punching me in the face.
“Reginald!” Colonel Jones said.
The man pulled back, shaking his fist as my face had clearly been harder than he’d expected. “Don’t Reginald me. This subhuman filth has been menacing decent ordinary people for years. He’s the reason why regular humans can’t go out in the streets every day in peace. Supers are the enemy of the common man.”
I blinked. “You realize I get my powers from magic, right? I mean, literally crack open a book and anyone can—”
“Shut up, freak!” Reginald said, putting all the contempt and hiss into his voice you might expect from a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain. Honestly, if the government was starting to recruit hyper-intelligent psychopaths into its ranks, things were probably going to get a helluva lot less peaceful.
“You’re agitating the prisoner, Mr. Smith,” the man in the gray suit said. His voice was cold and robotic and I saw little circuit patterns behind his eyes. “Our chances of successfully bringing in this Class-A target go down exponentially the more he is upset.”
“We can’t just let this guy surrender! He needs to be made an example of!” Reginald shouted, genuinely furious. He proceeded to shove his gun right in my face and pushed the barrel against the side of my nose.
“Reginald—” Colonel Jones started to say.
I was starting to regret my decision to surrender peacefully. “Can we just get on with this? I haven’t had lunch yet and I have a real hankering for prison eggs. You know, the kind that are powdered then turned back into eggs in water? I don’t know why I love those. I suppose they remind me of my poor, desperate upbringing.”
Reginald pulled away and lowered his voice. “Do you know who we’re going after next? Do you? When we bring you in, we’re taking out your children. Both of the little shits and we’re going to burn them—”
Oh no, he didn’t. “You’re threatening my kids?”
“You’re damn right I’m threatening your kids!” Reginald shouted.
Colonel Jones’ eyes widened as she perhaps realized she’d made a mistake slightly larger than attacking Pearl Harbor or playing with a bear cub next to its mother.
My shackles fell away, not able to do much about phenomenal cosmic power. “That was a mistake.”
Reginald opened his mouth as if to scream some more obscenities.
I didn’t let him. I placed my hand on his forehead and his face began to melt like the Gestapo officer’s in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He let out a gurgling scream that lasted far longer than the seconds it took for his skin and vital organs to slosh off his bones. Colonel Jones pulled back as did the man in the gray suit.
“Fire, fire, fire!” Colonel Jones shouted, pulling out an energy pistol and blasting a few times herself.
What followed was a series of energy blasts, machine gun fire, grenades, explosives, and a laser-targeted missile that ended up killing a few of the soldiers surrounding me. It was like the scene from The Last Jedi where Luke was hit with the entire might of the First Order. I could digress, discussing how much I hated that movie instead of discussing how none of this did a damn thing to me, but I won’t.
In fact, that was the one scene in the movie I’d really enjoyed. Well, the throne room scene was cool, too, even if I don’t understand where Rey became the greatest lightsaber duelist in the galaxy. Was there a secret martial arts school on Jakku? I mean, maybe they could insert that into her backstory as part of the comics. I think that would be neat. Oh, right, me killing the fuck out of these guys. Sorry, Mandy. I didn’t mean to bring violence to your gravesite.
“I can turn insubstantial numbskulls,” I said, walking out of the flames and destruction they’d used to assault my wife’s memorial. “Did none of you even bother to look up my Superpedia entry before you came here? Oh right, no you didn’t, because I deface it every day, so no one knows my weaknesses or strengths. Guess what, my secret weakness isn’t aluminum and I’m not held back by four-leaf clovers. I am the wrath of gods.”
I stretched out my fingertips, remaining insubstantial and blasted black hellfire from dark dimensions at the Freedom Robots, which were consumed completely. I waved my hand over the soldiers and their hands became frozen to their guns, now encased in heavy blocks of primordial ice harder than steel. Then I lifted my foot and stomped it on the ground, causing the helicopters to start sinking halfway into the Earth. I turned them substantial. They weren’t buried, they were fused with the rock around them. What had been an enormous military force had become an embarrassment.
Colonel Jones, however, wasn’t deterred. She lifted her pistol, clearly scared out of her mind. “You can’t defy the government, Merciless! If you kill us, another group will come. Another group after that! The entirety of the world will unite—”
“Stop it,” I said, interrupting her by looking at the Death Orb. “You threatened my kids. I’ve never hurt anyone’s kids. Leia’s seven and Mindy’s a baby, for godsakes. You don’t get to play the aggrieved party. You are permanently ‘Colonel Child Murdering Asshat’ as far as history is concerned.”
Colonel Jones, who seemed to be not fully on board with the threaten-my-kids plan, didn’t respond but looked to the man with the gray suit who was currently texting someone. Colonel Jones’ reaction was an incredulous stare. “Really, Mr. Gray? Is now the time!?”
I shook the Death Orb. “You fully charged?”
The Death Orb crackled with unnatural power.
“Right,” I said, lifting the orb into air. “Time for a lesson in what exactly you’re dealing with here.”
It went dark despite being the middle of the day.
Colonel Jones stared as Mr. Gray stopped texting. A U.S. Army Ranger, his arm frozen to his gun, charged at me, leading with his head. He, of course, passed through me and landed on the other side. I had to give him credit, as well as to the other soldiers who were trying to get themselves free. They were tougher than the late Reginald Smith. Also, had balls of steel. I hoped they weren’t in on the child-threatening plan.
“This is your brain on dark magic,” I said, gesturing to the sky. “Wait, dammit, I’ve screwed up the entire thing. Okay, let’s start over. This is reality, this is—”
“What are you doing?” Colonel Jones said, looking up. “What happened to the sun?”
“Oh fine!” I snapped, annoyed at being interrupted. “We’ll do the short version. If you ever threaten me, my loved ones, or my children again then I will kill everyone who has ever had that thought. It will start with every single politician in Washington, D.C. then move through all the people who will have to have signed off on this mission. Furthermore, you’ve put me in a foul mood so I’m going to add a caveat that if I find out you’ve used anyone else’s kids against them like this, then the result will be the same. I don’t care if their parents are Charles Manson, Tom Terror, or Mother Theresa, unlikely as those individuals having children may be. In fact, if you have any in custody, then I expect them to be reunited with their parents or I will have the Earth swallow Congress whole.”
I could do it to
o.
“You can’t dictate to the United States government!” Colonel Jones hissed. “The U.S. army does not negotiate with terrorists.”
I stared at her. “You are not the United States government or her military. They were the guys who liberated France and stopped the Nazis (props to the other Allies). The U.S. military is the group that fought P.H.A.N.T.O.M and the Taliban. You’re not real soldiers. You’re a bunch of toy soldiers threatening the freedom of your country’s citizens. So, while I don’t go after good guys in uniforms—you do not qualify.”
Colonel Jones looked ready to go after me despite the odds. I had to give her props for her courage, even if it was going to get her killed. “You do not scare me.”
“My threat isn’t to you,” I said, coldly.
There was a pleasant beeping noise from the man in the gray suit’s cellphone. He looked down on it. “We’re to withdraw.”
“What?” Colonel Jones asked. “Is he going to nuke the site?”
“No,” the man in the gray suit said, who I mentally just named Mr. Gray for lack of a better term. “The Chief of Staff has determined Merciless is a myth.”
Colonel Jones opened her mouth and looked to the injured soldiers and damage around her. “A myth? Are you serious?”
Mr. Gray looked up and bowed his head. “We’re sorry for disturbing you and your wife’s resting place, Mr. Karkofsky. If you’ll excuse us, we won’t bother you again.”
“Good,” I said, dissipating the darkness I’d simultaneously conjured for an acre around the graveyard and the White House.
The outrage on Colonel Jones’ face was beyond belief. Still, there was something about her expression that told me she thought the late Reginald Smith had it coming. I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover if she had children of her own. Nevertheless, she and the rest of them departed on foot toward the estate’s east wall, leaving me alone with my wife’s now-destroyed grave. I’d had no idea if I could have lived up to my promise of using the Death Orb to slaughter everyone who threatened Leia and Mindy. I would have, though, and that kind of power terrified me. I stood alone for close to an hour before turning back to the mansion. It seemed that the world wasn’t going to leave Merciless alone.
So Merciless couldn’t leave the world alone.
CHAPTER TWO
BACK IN BLACK IS NOT JUST AN AC/DC SONG
I walked back to the Warren mansion, which was its own little Versailles constructed by the late Uther Warren way back in the 19th century. It was sort of like Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu except not a complete waste of money (and you just thought I made Star Wars references). The place was ridiculously large and frankly looked like it was something someone had created with CGI when they needed to show someone was super Old Money Rich types.
The place had a West Wing, East Wing, North Wing, South Wing, and Central Manor with a courtyard stretching behind it that led to a hedge maze, pool, guest houses (as in plural), plus its own 18-hole golf course. That wasn’t including the secret nuclear bunker that also had its own separate mansion formerly used as the headquarters for the Society of Superheroes back in their pre-moon base days.
Personally, I thought the place was a victim of changing social standards since it had been constructed Downton Abbey style with the implication that something like a hundred servants would be living there full-time. Lancel Warren, a.k.a The Nightwalker, had devoted himself to fighting crime, evil wizards, aliens, and Nazis for a century, so he hadn’t really done much to expand the family line. His nieces and nephews had also gone on to build their own little mansions. The whole thing had come to me in an estate sale after the city finally acknowledged the legendary hero was not only merely dead but really, most sincerely, dead.
I missed Cloak.
Most of the mansion remained uninhabited and covered in white sheets to keep it from turning into a dusty cobweb-filled haunted house owned by an evil necromancer. My home was meant to be a clean and perky haunted house owned by an evil necromancer. Enough space existed in the place so that I could live there, along with my sister, my niece (when she wasn’t crashing with her fellow Texas Guardians), Diabloman, Cindy, my two kids, and a bunch of freeloaders from alternate realities.
To show how much I valued security, I walked up to the back of the mansion and immediately opened the unlocked door to enter one of the halls. Agent G, a Ryan Gosling-looking cyborg from a Blade Runner universe, as well as one of those aforementioned freeloaders, was lying on an expansive couch in his underwear. He had a half-empty bottle of scotch lying beside him and looked about as drunk as a robot with a fleshy covering could be. The ornate carpet on the ground was being vacuumed by a trio of foot-tall yellow robots with one eye that my daughter had made in homage to a certain movie’s mascots.
“Nyaaaaah, boop, blah!” a Henchbot said.
I made the Vulcan peace sign. “Live long and prosper to you, too.”
“Nah, nah, nah, beep boop!” the Henchbots said, saluting me together. There were God knows how many of these things moving around the house and serving as a substitute for the servants I neither wanted nor could afford. Being a billionaire barely covered the estate tax on this house. By the way, even supervillains fear the IRS. That’s how they took down The Bootlegger King ya’ know.
“Case,” I said, referring to G by his chosen name. “You know where Gabrielle is?”
Most people were only lucky to find love once in their lives and sometimes not even then. I’d been lucky enough to fall in love three times, though each was a very different kind of love. Gabrielle Anders, a.k.a Ultragoddess, was the mother of my youngest child. She rarely had time to spend with me but I treasured each second we were together. She’d walked past me when she’d arrived this time and told me to give her an hour. I was pretty sure that meant she wasn’t visiting for fun—which was a shame. I had no idea how I was going to explain, “By the way, I just scared off the child-threatening dregs of the U.S. army at the cemetery. Oh, and I also killed a Federal agent. That won’t have repercussions, I’m sure.”
Case woke up with a start and pulled out a high-tech gun from under a pillow, aiming it every direction in a quick sweep. Thankfully, he didn’t fire.
“Ah, morning PTSD,” I said, pausing. “How did they even program that into a robot?”
Not my nicest statement but I was having a spectacularly crappy day. It wasn’t even noon yet and I’d made an enemy of the U.S. government. Because, really, I wasn’t stupid enough to buy that they were backing off. They were just waiting for me to let my guard down and I was pretty sure they wouldn’t wait more than a few hours. The last time I’d been an enemy of the state they’d blown up a good chunk of the mansion. This time? This time would be worse.
I could feel it.
Case glared at me and put the gun away. “No one programmed my nightmares. I’ve earned them the same way other people have.”
“Shouldn’t you be going back to your magical world of megacorps, holographic babes, cheese-in-a-can, and super-slums?”
Case was from Earth-C, a reality where pretty much every William Gibson and Ridley Scott movie was real. Okay, not Robin Hood. It was a cyberpunk world without superheroes but sporting plenty of villains. Life was cheap there and it had been Case’s job to charge for it. Much to my surprise, he preferred to live in my world. The thing was, I wasn’t sure that it was possible for him to stay indefinitely. I would have let him if it was up to me.
“Cheese-in-a-can is what stuck out about my world to you?”
“I miss it so much in this world and yet cannot find it at my local grocery store anymore!” I said, raising my hands. “I lived off that stuff in college.”
Case felt his head with both hands. “Your priorities are deeply skewed. Also, I remind you there’s a thing called the Internet you can order it off of.”
“I note you’re dodging the question about returning home.”
Case and Jane Doe had been brought from their respective universes by Death t
o fight in the Eternity Tournament. Strangely, unlike me and my group, they’d been taken in astral form. In simple terms, their bodies were lying back on their homeworlds. Jane was in a sweat lodge and Case was hooked up to a virtual reality simulator. Theoretically, when and if they decided to go home, they’d return to the exact moment they’d left with a whole bunch of new memories.
You know, like the Chronicles of Narnia. Neither of them expressed much of a desire to do so. For Jane, it was because she’d bonded with my daughters as their nanny (God, I had a nanny—I was officially part of the bourgeoisie) while Case stayed here for Jane. Both had romantic partners they’d left behind, which would have appalled me, were I a massive hypocrite.
Case stated his reluctance to leave upfront. “Even if it’s getting nastier and grimier, your world is still a colorful world of superheroes, magic, and super-science. I’ll take that over my hellhole Earth any day.”
“Said someone who has never lived through a zombie apocalypse followed by their evil twin coming to kill them.”
“My evil twin has tried to kill me,” Case pointed out.
I ignored his response. “Come on, you can come back anytime you want to. I’ll even help you settle back into your world. We can do some Runner missions where we rob big corporations, kill the evil executives out to bulldoze the slum, and steal vital information for shadowy employers only to be double-crossed.”
“You’re describing my Tuesdays, Gary. Also, you don’t get talk to me about retiring from being a badass mercenary while you’re retired.”
I raised my hand and made a shadowy cloak appear around me with my regular magic. I wasn’t anywhere near the world’s strongest wizard, not even in the top 100, but I had my PHD in sorcery. Powers, Hexes, and Deviltry.
“I’m not retired anymore,” I said, simply. Then I faked excitement. “Merciless is back, baby!”