by C. T. Phipps
The Henchbots all released a cheer and started running around the room. Two of them collided and knocked each other out. I wasn’t sure if Leia had programmed them to be endearingly clumsy or there were just limits to what level of balance a seven-year-old could install in downloaded open source artificial intelligence.
“Are you sure we’re not going to be sued for those?” Case asked. “I mean I love the Despicable—”
“Shh, don’t mention the name,” I said. “We can defend against any foe except the copyright office. Besides, Leia has a plan.”
“Your seven-year-old has a plan?”
“Yes, nuke the studios if they object.”
“Does she have a nuke?” With anyone else, I’m sure Case would have assumed I was joking.
I looked sideways. “She doesn’t not have a nuke.”
“Gary!” Case said, fully believing my joke.
“What? I needed to give her something for her birthday! She only uses it to threaten people!”
“I literally don’t know whether you’re joking!”
I threw out my hands. “Of course, I’m joking! She built her own! She got the nuclear material from one thousand glow-in-the-dark Ultragoddess stickers!”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Yeah, I think someone needs to sue that company for potential health hazards. I may own it, though.” The scary thing was, I was only half-joking. I’d managed to stop her before she built the launching mechanism.
Case felt his face as one of the Henchbots handed him his finely pressed clothing. He started getting dressed. “Okay, okay. So, what inspired you to get back into the supervillain game? I mean, I thought you were done-done.”
Case, once dressed, managed to look more handsome than most Hollywood stars after hours of makeup. All his cybernetic enhancements were below the surface, so he was more like a Terminator than Darth Vader. Honestly, I wasn’t anxious to kick him out of my home since it was good to have someone around who had gone through something similar to my own experiences… at least in terms of being the bad guy until you were honestly sick of it. I just hoped that I could knock some evil back into him the way the Feds had just done to me.
“Well, a bunch of government stooges from the Department of Harassing People came to Mandy’s grave and blew it all to hell,” I explained. “I may have killed one of them and scared the President into declaring I don’t exist.”
I wasn’t a big fan of President Karl Trust. He’d been elected in the emergency following President Omega’s declaration of war against everyone and everything. He was a celebrity media mogul and ex-Governor of Florida that embodied the worst of the Right and Left. His only platform was to make sure things ran smoothly, and if that included pretending problems like me didn’t exist, then so be it. I’d heard he’d done the same for other supervillains as well as a few heroes. Most of his platform consisted of declaring superheroes a menace, but at the same time protecting their rights, which strangely made him a moderate.
“You killed a Federal agent!?” an angry female voice spoke from down the hall. “Goddammit, Gary, you can’t do things like that!”
I turned around and blinked as I saw Cindy Wackowski wearing an avocado mask, a bathrobe, a weird set of clippings in her hair, and a necklace of life-crystals bought from the most expensive Useless New Age Medicine stores. She’d also had her nails and toes done by the look of cotton and red around them. Standing behind her was Jane Doe, a.k.a Weredeer, holding the tiny form of my daughter Mindy.
Jane Doe was a short, svelte, bowl-cut young woman who still looked like she could win a few Olympic events thanks to the fact lycanthropy (cervidthropy?) gave you tight abs and muscular thighs. She looked, basically, how Chun Li would look if she was Anglo-Odawa American instead of Chinese. That meant she was part Native American, part Canadian, part deer. It explained where all my organic maple syrup kept going. Seriously, the girl drank it out of the bottle with a straw.
“It just happened, okay!” I said, throwing up my hands.
Jane shook her head. “Seriously, you can’t just kill a Federal officer. On my world, that brings down reprisals, arrests, investigations—”
“Not without me, you can’t!” Cindy interrupted.
“Wait, what?” Jane did a double take.
“Do you know how boring it’s been just lying up here surrounded by endless stolen millions, my every need waited on, and adored by millions of Internet followers?” Cindy asked.
“Oh, you poor thing,” I muttered.
“I’ve had three reality shows while you’ve been lying around, doing nothing! I had to hire a couple of Gary impersonators to do evil stuff in the background,” Cindy said.
“I wondered who those guys were,” I said, rubbing my chin. “What about Mr. Inventor?”
Cindy waved a hand. “He has to go help people. What about helping me? I would have invited the Backstreet Boys to seduce, but I know your policy of killing all boy bands.”
“It’s for the greater good,” I said.
“The who?” Jane asked.
“Before your time, Jane,” Case said.
“Is that why you’re getting, uh, all beautied up?” I asked, waving at her.
“Pfft,” Cindy said. “Spoken like a man who doesn’t have to spend twenty-four/seven focused on making sure she looks presentable in a villainess costume. It’s nonstop calorie management, electrolyte treatments, and Jazzercize.”
“Jazzercize?” I repeated, surprised anyone still did that.
“How do you and Case keep looking like you do? You live off doughnuts and him Jack Daniel’s?” Cindy asked.
“Well, I’m a machine,” Case said.
“Eh, I use magic to stay young and beautiful,” I said, shrugging. “Magic is the cheat code to the universe and I freely take advantage of it.”
Cindy muttered something about science catching up with me someday. “What about you, Jane? You live off Mountain Dew. Not the kind of mountain dew deer drink either.”
“Weredeer burn ten thousand calories a day,” Jane said, shrugging. “I have to eat piles of salt and fries with every meal.”
Cindy glared at Jane. “No one asked you.”
“You just—” Jane started to say.
“Well, I’ve decided to get back into supervillainy! I shall rob from the rich and give most to the poor! I shall humiliate the corrupt and prank the peerless! As for the really evil? I will horribly murder them and laugh at any consequences.”
“Great example you’re setting for your kid,” Jane said, rolling her eyes.
“Kill Nazis,” Mindy said, cheerfully.
“Please tell me those aren’t her first words,” Case said, grimacing.
“Why?” I asked, knowing they weren’t, but very proud they were her sixth or seventh. “It’s the best sign of Cindy’s parenting yet. I can’t wait to see what she teaches our grandchildren.”
“That’s it,” Cindy said, waving her hand. “I am no longer going to age! Gary, contact me a vampire.”
I stared at her. “Cindy, we’re not contacting a vampire.”
The mental trauma I’d suffered watching what I’d thought was Mandy become a soulless abomination was something that still haunted my nightmares. Vampires were not cool or attractive creatures to me but horrible monsters. Because they had about as much sex appeal as a walking corpse.
“I’m aging, Gary!” Cindy said, looking at me. “I used to be twenty-something Julia Stiles hot. Now I’m—”
“Thirty-something Julia Stiles hot?” I suggested.
“Who is Julia Stiles?” Jane asked. “Is she an actress?”
Case shook his head.
“Jane, be less young,” I said, sighing.
“Yes, do that!” Cindy snapped. “Wait, do weredeer live forever?”
“No,” Jane said.
“You still age slowly,” Cindy said, stretching out her arm. “Bite me and infect me with your lame shifter disease.”
Jane’s eyes narrowed and th
ere was a look of pure supernatural fury behind them.
“Lame shifter disease? We are not diseased!”
“Well, I don’t have anything cool around like a werewolf to bite me!” Cindy snapped. “Werewolf women can still be hot. Anna Paquin was one.”
“Anna Paquin is a werewolf in this world?” Jane asked, confused. “Sweet.”
That was the problem with having conversations with my friends. No matter how urgent a topic you might be discussing, everything rapidly degenerated into nothing more than a series of digressions. It was like The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. That was a literature reference to Thomas Jefferson’s favorite novel about an author who could never get to the point. Consider yourself to be slightly more educated.
I raised my hands in the air and whistled for everyone’s attention. “Listen, everybody, I need your complete and undivided attention.”
“I need to change Mindy’s diaper,” Jane said.
I sighed in defeat. “Yeah, you do that. But, seriously, all I want is to know if anyone has seen Gabrielle. I need to tell her that I’ve decided to become a supervillain again. Given she’s only at the mansion maybe a quarter of the time, it’s important to catch her while I can.”
Gabrielle was legally forbidden from superheroics in the United States, not that it prevented her from diverting nuclear missiles fired at it or fighting alien invasions. She instead devoted her time to building hydroelectric dams, stopping famines, and punching out other nations’ collections of supervillains. It turned out most people didn’t have the love/hate relationship with superheroes the U.S.A. did and were just happy to have people help out. Really, the only places she wasn’t welcome were Russia and China. It turns out if you are pro-democracy and freedom of speech that those two places don’t much like you trying to talk about them. North Korea, well what was left of it at least, had learned that the hard way.
Case looked at me. “Oh, is that what you were asking about?”
“Yes!” I snapped.
“She’s in the living room,” Case gestured with his thumb.
“Pppft zip zoop blah!” the Henchbots said, doing circles around us.
“Don’t let them change Mindy’s diaper,” I said. “Even if she’s an indestructible baby, as Cindy has demonstrated.”
“I only dropped her a few times,” Cindy said, looking guilty.
“She’s meeting with the Pulp adventurers from Cthulhu world,” Jane said, walking over to a door leading to one of the house’s forty bathrooms.
“Cthulhu world?” I asked, wondering if we were having to deal with another alternate reality.
“Yeah, John and Mercury, they’re a pair of superheroes I met in the tournament,” Cindy said. “They’re from a post-apocalyptic world where the Great Old Ones destroyed humanity. Basically, their world is like ours but what it would look like if we didn’t have superheroes punching the giant godlike aliens.”
“Ah,” I said, grimacing. “Don’t tell me they want to move in, too.”
“No,” Case said. “They want your help invading a lost kingdom.”
“Oh, great,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Because that’s what I want to do with my day—go on one of those weird side-treks storytellers send their heroes on when they’ve run out of stories in the Big Cities.”
“Apparently, the kingdom is overrun with Nazis,” Case said.
I blinked. “I’m in.”
CHAPTER THREE
NAZIS IN THE CENTER OF THE EARTH
“Nazis. I hate these guys,” I muttered.
Part of it is because I’m Jewish. Part of it is because I’m not a fan of white supremacists in general. But the thing that irritates me most about them is that they just won’t frigging die out already. I don’t throw the label of Nazi around lightly either. On my world, it’s not just an Internet insult.
There’s a bunch of actual WW2 supervillains out there still partying like it’s 1939 and have a distressing number of fanboys. People who fail to realize whether you do it “ironically” or not, waving the red and black flag is pretty much a declaration of intent. Either way, I have a simple rule when it comes to the Sieg Heil crowd. I kill them. I’ve even gone to multiple parallel Earths and killed Hitler dozens of times. Usually, that just meant someone much smarter took his place (Tom Terror and President Omega were the usual candidates) but I still consider it a net positive activity.
“Wait for me,” Jane said, following me around with Mindy in hand.
“What, you want a piece of the action?” I asked, hoping it was a bloody and vicious mission Gabrielle brought to me.
“I’m a part-Native American, so yes,” Jane said.
I blinked. “Did the Nazis do anything to the Native—”
Jane glared at me.
“Welcome aboard,” I said, raising my hands in surrender.
Cindy waved me off while G followed at a discreet distance. My sister Kerri was at the supermarket. As mentioned, I hadn’t seen Diabloman in a year and it was bothering me that he hadn’t even tried to stay in touch. I knew his guilt over his sister’s death—okay, murdering her—was a big deal but she was back now, so hopefully he’d get over it. Yeah, maybe it wasn’t the best logic, but I missed the big guy.
I pushed open the doors to the Warren Estate’s study and found myself in a room that looked like a movie set. There was a huge six-foot-in-diameter globe next to the door, two stories’ worth of bookshelves, framed maps, and some black-and-white photos from Uther Warren’s days adventuring with Allan Quatermain. Uther Warren was the least racist Great White Hunter who ever lived (that was serious damning with faint praise) and the architect of the Warren Family fortune.
The room had numerous leopard-print sofas, couches, and chairs that were, thankfully, all fake. Apparently, either Uther Warren wasn’t really that good of a hunter (though a genius at negotiating trade deals) or his descendants didn’t like sitting on murdered exotic animals. I say that as a carnivore by the way.
There were four people present in the room, only one of whom I recognized.
The first of them was Gabrielle Anders, the mother of my second child and one of the three women I’d loved in my life (yes, I’m aware that’s selfish). She was a beautiful brown-haired woman of mixed African and Latino descent. Gabrielle wasn’t wearing her Ultragoddess outfit, but a sweater, headband, and skirt that made her look like a grad student from the Sixties. She was the daughter of the late Ultragod and ace reporter Polly Perkins, as blue a blood among superheroes as you could get. Why she was with me, if she was with me, was anyone’s guess.
The other three individuals were, indeed, characters out of Pulp novels. Well, characters who looked like movie characters based on old Pulp novels. The first of them was a tall, muscular black man with a Stetson hat and a duster. There was an aura about him like I’d sensed in the Death Orb and his shadow had tentacles that moved on their own. Basically, he was something magical and terrifying like the Great Beasts that lived between dimensions.
Standing beside him was a black-haired woman who very much resembled an Asian Lara Croft, the reboot version versus original shorts and tank top version. I sensed an aura of magic coming from her equivalent to my own (i.e. a solid B-lister). Finally, there was a muscular blonde woman dressed in animal furs and face-paint who looked like Frank Frazetta had drawn her, and then given her more clothes. She had a feathered spear in hand.
“Hello, Gary,” Gabrielle said, looking at me as if she half expected me to be covered in someone’s blood.
“What?” I asked, wondering why I was getting the stink eye.
“Ahem,” Gabrielle gestured down to my feet.
Then I looked down at my shoes and saw they were covered in gore. “Oh, right. I should have cleaned off the guy I murdered before I came in.”
Gabrielle felt her face. “Oh, Gary.”
“Believe me when I say he had it coming,” I said, raising my hands.
“Killing people is—”
“He threatened Mindy and Leia,” I said. “He said he was going to put them down.”
Gabrielle stared. “I’m not going to say you did the right thing, but I’m not going to say you did the wrong thing either.”
Ultragoddess was a bit more hardcore than her father, Ultragod. Most superheroes believed the Ultragod Family were paragons of “Thou Shall Not Kill.” The truth was that they tried hard not to kill people, but if it was a choice between killing someone or saving innocent lives, they chose the latter. The difference between them and me was that they weren’t executioners. If you were subdued, be you misguided antihero or monster, they left you alone. It’s the only reason Tom Terror is still breathing. I consider that unfortunate.
“I take it those are your kids?” Asian Lara Croft asked. Wait, was that racist? Woman who looked like an Asian Lara Croft? Okay, I just needed to ask her name.
“Her kid and a half,” I said, shrugging. “Mindy is her child with me and she’s Leia’s stepmother except for the part about not being married to me. We’re a modern Space Age family.”
I wasn’t even sure how our relationship presently stood since she stopped by for booty calls and the occasional date but was soon off to cap volcanos or knock meteorites off their course. It wasn’t exactly the most stable relationship and had disrupted just about every other one I was involved in. I still loved her.
“I love Leia like my own,” Gabrielle said.
“You can have her at a reasonably low price!” Cindy said, walking in. She was wearing her full Red Riding Hood costume and her hair perfect. I did a double take.
Jane stepped away from Cindy, holding Mindy protectively. Gabrielle then snatched her away with a glowing Ultra-Force energy field that gently levitated her daughter into her arms.
“You are like the worst mother ever,” I said, shaking my head.
“Not true as long as my mother is alive and suffering in the shitty nursing home I’ve got her under guard at,” Cindy said. “That reminds me, I need to borrow the car so I can go down there to gloat over her paralyzed form. I also need to whip up the drugs to make sure she stays that way.”
Cindy didn’t like her mom. I don’t know if you, the audience, picked up on that. Something about selling her into prostitution as a pre-teen. Yeah. Her backstory is surprisingly dark for such a fun gal.