by C. T. Phipps
I processed that. “The Night Empress, huh?”
Odin’s spear Gungnir was only slightly less famous than Thor’s hammer Mjölnir in Norse mythology. The Golden Apples were far more important, though, because they were the secret to the gods’ immortality. I hesitated to mention that, though, because Cindy would almost certainly freak out over the possibility.
“She’s the one who summoned us,” Gabrielle said. “I chose to respond to her request because I’m ninety-nine percent sure it wasn’t a trap.”
I blinked. “You know, Gabrielle, when you say things like that, it puts me on edge.”
“I don’t like people who are referred to by titles rather than names,” Cindy said. “You can’t trust them.”
“You mean like superheroes?” I asked.
“And supervillains!” Cindy said. “Look at us.”
I didn’t have time to respond to that because there was the sound of a roaring engine over our heads. Looking up, I saw a P.H.A.N.T.O.M hover pyramid about the size of a small house pass over us. If you wonder what a hover pyramid looks like, it’s self-explanatory; P.H.A.N.T.O.M just made a bunch of geometrically precise objects and slapped alien technology onto them.
Rather than have planes, trains, and tanks they had floating cubes, battle spheres, and pyramids. This one had dozens of laser cannon emplacements on its side as well as an enormous P.H.A.N.T.O.M skull and crossbones in a circle. The hover pyramid aimed its weapons at us and fired dozens of energy blasts with the intent to not so much kill us, as to obliterate us.
“Ah hell,” I said, seconds before the blasts struck.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FLASHBACK TO (SORTA) BETTER TIMES
Even though the ground beneath us was destroyed in the torrent of laser fire, we didn’t die. If we were the kind of superheroes (villains? people?) to get killed by guns, then we wouldn’t have lasted very long in our chosen careers.
I summoned my Death magic and surrounded us in a bubble that caused us to turn intangible. My powers with the Reaper’s Cloak had been moderate, at least by superhero standards, and were now extra-moderate. It was enough to keep us from being obliterated. It also triggered a flashback.
That was the price for using the Orb of Death. Perhaps because people associated death with anger, regret, grief, and remorse—those were the emotions that empowered it. Calling upon that power meant I was plunged deeply into those feelings.
One moment I was standing in the middle of a massive grassy field by a dinosaur and the next I was wearing a white button-down dress shirt, black slacks, and a pair of reading glasses I barely needed. I was lying on the couch of my old home, the one the government demolished while cleaning up after the zombie outbreak in Falconcrest City (seemingly out of spite), with a rerun of Friends on the television.
Yes, I was having a flashback.
“Tough day at work?” Mandy asked, coming from the kitchen. She was a beautiful half-Korean, half-Caucasian woman with long curly black hair and piercing dark eyes. She was dressed in a black Judas Priest t-shirt and sweatpants.
“Define tough,” I said, sighing. “Today the Society of Superheroes Fought P.H.A.N.T.O.M as they tried to drop a plague bomb on Paris that would wipe out all non-white people in the city. The Nightwalker also beat up the Ice Cream Man as he held a grade school hostage with poisoned dessert. Compared to that, the fact my boss is a prick and we’re expected to cover the costs of recent layoffs doesn’t seem like a big deal.”
“Super World Problems,” Mandy said, simply. “No matter how bad the economy is, how many people struggle, you can always depend on politicians to talk about how it could be worse. This despite the fact they’re not the people who are keeping the chaos at bay.”
“The chaos at bay?” I asked, looking up at her. “Who are you, Ultragoddess?”
“You should know, you dated her.”
I rolled my eyes. “I did not date Ultragoddess.”
“Your theory that Gabrielle Anders is Ultragoddess is ridiculous.”
“Why? Because she wears glasses?”
“No, because I’ve been saved by Ultragoddess like a dozen times. I think I could tell the difference.”
In fact, I’d once had a hook-up with Ultragoddess in college (Gabrielle and I were briefly broken up at the time). It happened after she’d saved me from a fire started by the Arsoness. Strangely, the next day Gabrielle had acted like we hadn’t broken up. I wasn’t about to share that with Mandy, though. Believe me, I would have been able to tell the difference between them unless I was incredibly unobservant.
“Maybe she brainwashed you with Ultra-hypnosis into not being able to tell you were dating her until she wanted you to know.”
“First of all, that would be a gross violation of my free will. Second, Ultra-hypnosis? That’s a ridiculous power. Like Ultra-basket weaving or Ultra-knitting.”
“Ultragod has both those powers. My mom’s Silver Age comic books say so.”
“Yes, let’s get our knowledge of how the world works from comic books,” I said, sitting up and turning the channel.
“Don’t be a dick, Gary.”
“I’m pathologically incapable of not being one.”
“Yes, but you usually aim it at someone other than your wife.”
“Sorry.”
One of my bull terriers, Arwen, walked up to me as I patted her head. I turned around to change the TV channel. There was a screen-shot of a funeral being held in Texas with large numbers of citizens, the National Guard, and an ex-President in attendance. The Texas Guardians, minus a couple of members, were also present.
“Oh shit,” I said, looking at the service. “Did you know Spellbinder died?”
“Yeah,” Mandy said, frowning. “It was all over my media.”
“Damn, really?”
Spellbinder was a dark and Gothic-looking superheroine who had the powers of empathic healing, witchcraft, and the ability to possess people. She was apparently half-god or half-demon (a rather nebulous distinction for non-Jewish religions according to my rabbi) and an escapee from an evil cult. Mandy had always been a big fan of hers and drew inspiration from her example—I personally didn’t see the draw. Well, aside from the fact she wore a lot of black and was the snarky angry member of the team. Qualities I admired.
“Crazy how our lives are superhero adjacent,” Mandy muttered. “If we were still with our exes, we might be in the crowd of mourners there.”
“Yeah.”
It was strange how my life had gotten so much simpler once Gabrielle dumped me. Mandy had been dating a supervillain, until the Black Witch had gotten herself sent to prison for accidentally killing someone, the final straw for my wife. Now both of us had lives that were largely supervillain and superhero free. All the craziness of the world was something that happened to other people.
“Do you know how she died?” I asked, having remembered the Guitarist had died just a few months earlier.
“She was killed by Diabloman,” Mandy said, scrunching up her nose in disgust. “Her own brother.”
“I could never hurt a member of my own family,” I said, thinking of departed brother and my still-living sister. “Do you think she’ll come back?”
“Excuse me?” Mandy said, doing a double take.
“Superheroes sometimes come back,” I said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Mandy walked to the kitchen and opened the fridge door. “Sometimes they do. Most times they don’t. Your brother stayed dead. Some of the Sunlights. Most heroes we don’t remember. They just die and stay dead.”
“Would you want to come back?” I asked, unaware of just how ironic my question would be.
“Excuse me?” Mandy said.
“Let’s say something crazy and we both get the superpowers we’ve been dreaming of,” I said, pausing.
“Are we bitten by radioactive dogs? If so, I want to be called the Bitch Queen.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t work unless we had met
agenes influenced by dog saliva. Which you shouldn’t take as a sign I’ve researched this. I mean, let’s say we’re superheroes and one of us dies—what would you want done?”
“You mean, would I want you to hope I’d come back from the dead? Is this a serious question?” Mandy pulled out a beer. “You want one.”
“Yes and no.”
Mandy popped open the top of the beer bottle with her fingers, a trick I’d never understood and took a deep breath. “No.”
“No?”
Mandy took a drink. “Your family talks to ghosts, Gary. You deal with the supernatural on a daily basis.”
“Correction: my sister talks to ghosts. So did my grandmother, and she had a lot of them to talk to because she lived in Poland during World War Two. I am just an ordinary average nobody who thinks a lot about death.”
“Don’t go Hot Topic on me, Gary. You’re not fifteen and listening to Linkin Park anymore. That’s was decades ago.”
“I haven’t felt this old since I talked about how much I loved Shakira and the teller beside me at work only knew her as the girl from Zootopia.”
“Who is Shakira?” Mandy asked. “I only know music that involves screaming and people dressed like it’s Halloween.”
I smirked. “You were saying?”
Mandy walked over and sat beside me. “I’m a Wiccan, Gary. I believe there’s a natural order to things. People are born, they have children, they grow old, and they die. If death is to have meaning, it needs to be permanent. I don’t think you believe that.”
It was kind an ironic statement for her to make, because Mandy had made it clear she didn’t want children. She just didn’t see herself as a mother. I tried not to be bitter about it, but we’d rushed into marriage and hadn’t completely worked out the details. I did want to be a father and
“You’re damned right I don’t,” I said, letting my face droop. “Maybe death doesn’t have a meaning. Maybe it’s only life that does.”
“Then I’m glad you aren’t a superhero.”
I laughed. “No, I’d suck at that. Supervillainy, though?”
I didn’t get a chance to dwell on the memory, because I was punched in the face with the force of someone hitting me with a car. The blow sent me flying through the air. I did an unintentional somersault before I landed on the soft ground.
“I really hope that’s mud,” I muttered, feeling like I’d suffered three concussions and a broken jaw at once. Ow! And why did I speak with a punched jaw? Oh right, I’m pathologically addicted to snark.
That was when I realized that, though my flashback had taken only a couple of moments, the entirety of my surroundings had turned into a warzone. The hover pyramid had been knocked out of the sky and was half buried in the ground with smoke coming out of one side.
John, or what I at least believed was John, had become a hulking, slimy, ink-black monster with an enormous mouth and white iris-less eyes. A dozen tentacles stuck out of his back, and he used them like an octopus crossed with a spider, throwing aside P.H.A.N.T.O.M soldiers before leaping at a woman dressed like a Nazi Valkyrie.
Mercury was surrounded by a glowing force shield as she fired energy blasts and hex bolts at the soldiers attacking her. Gabrielle fired two pistols as she ran, ducking under the attacks of a T-Rex-human hybrid in a lab coat with a big Imperial Japanese flag on the back of his lab coat. Reyan flew above our heads with the triceratops having grown a pair of glowing wings as she wielded an energy sword twice as large as her body like an anime heroine.
And Cindy?
Cindy had become a werewolf.
Yeah, that was surprising. My on-and-off lover for the better part of my adult life had become an eight-foot-tall tall brown-furred killing machine that looked less like the Wolfman and more like someone had stuck one of Tolkien’s Wargs on two legs before putting it in Cindy’s cape. This entire experience was so surreal that I didn’t have time to react when a big skeletal hand encircled my throat.
The owner was a figure who was difficult to describe. He looked like a skeleton in a superhero uniform, with the typical “heroic build” associated with capes. It was jet black, the cape red, and the P.H.A.N.T.O.M black Skull and Crossbones were his emblem. Strangely, I could feel flesh around the skeletal fingers and remembered who this jackass was from my WW II history course.
Death’s Head.
Victor Totenkof had been one of the many Waffen-S.S. Ubermensch Project volunteers who had been experimented on by Tom Terror during the Second Great War. After Hitler was taken down by Ultragod, the supervillains had free rein and had made use of alien super-science and demonic magic to create an endless horde of destructive but tactically useless supervillains to throw at the Allies.
Death’s Head had been given super-strength, super-durability, and the power to jump hella high for the small price of having his skin turn invisible. He also developed a toxic breath that could melt the skin off people. This meant, yes, that he was a Nazi poison gas power. Ugh. Israel’s Defense Team Prime, the Zealot, and a time-traveling Jesse Owens working with the Bronze Medalist, had all killed this guy at one time or another. Unfortunately, P.H.A.N.T.O.M’s cloning labs and necromancers had always succeeded in bringing him back from the dead. I’d been really hoping he’d be one of those who’d stayed dead after I won the Infinity Tournament.
“You, Merciless!” Death’s Head cried out. “Enemy of all Nazis!”
“Wait, really? That’s kind of flattering,” I said, struggling to keep him from choking me. “Do I have any other nicknames?”
“Killer of Hitlers! Destroyer of Reichs! Jewish vermin!”
“Okay, you were doing so well until that last one,” I said. “Wait, does the fact I’ve killed so many of you guys mean you aren’t the Master Race? Not that you’re looking particularly blond and blue-eyed. Does that mean you’re out of the fan club or do they give you the one-testicled freak exception they gave Hitler?”
Yes, I know Hitler didn’t actually have one testicle, but historical accuracy doesn’t matter when insulting Nazis.
“ARGGHH!” Death’s Head opened his mouth to breathe his poisonous breath. Unfortunately, I’m not immune to poison gas, even if I turn intangible. Don’t ask me how that works.
I slipped through his grip, ducked under the cloud of toxic gas, and punched him in the groin. Unfortunately, it turns out that punching someone who is invulnerable is actually a pretty stupid idea if you don’t have super-strength. Breaking two bones in my fist, I remembered there was a reason that superheroes and villains trained—so they didn’t end up doing these things by reflex.
“Ow,” I said, knowing it would take a few minutes for me to heal.
That was when Totenkof kicked me like a football and I flew through the air, again, and banged against the side of the hover pyramid. I slid down the side, my cloak slowing my descent a bit as I silently wished Cloak were still alive. Well, around, as he was a ghost by the time I met him. He’d been very good at preventing the worst of my stupid mistakes.
Death’s Head wasn’t the first of the small group of Nazi supervillains we were fighting to reach me. A woman with long blonde braids, a horned helmet, black wings, and a ridiculous set of armor with a metal brassiere reached me first. She grabbed me by my snow-white hair and lifted me up. “Pathetic erbsenzähler, Brunhilda shall now slay you and avenge all the losses ve hafftaken at your hands!”
“Did you just call me a pea counter?” I asked, confused at her insult.
“It sounds better in German,” Brunhilda said, defensively.
“It’d have to.”
Brunhilda hissed and pulled her fist back, but before she could drive it into my face, Totenkof grabbed it.
“Nein! He is mine!” Death’s Head shouted. “The glory of his death belongs to the foremost of the Overlord’s Generals!”
“Hosenscheisser!” Brunhilda hissed. Hosen meant pants and scheisser, well, you can figure that one out.
That was when Gabrielle came up behind bo
th, aimed her pistols at the backs of their heads, and fired. “Dodge this.”
Whatever was in the guns, they weren’t bullets. Glowing energy blasts blasted them in the face. The results weren’t pretty. Both supposedly invulnerable Nazis ended up with their brains splattered against the hover pyramid’s wall, right beside me. I even had to wipe a little Brainhilda off my cloak. I had to give Gabrielle credit; she’d made her witty retort after killing them. That was just good common-sense tactics, even if they probably hadn’t heard it in hell.
I looked up at Gabrielle. “Aren’t you against killing?”
“Nazis don’t count.”
She had me there. I was mostly upset she hadn’t let me blast them first. “What are you using for ammo?”
“Ultranium,” Gabrielle said.
“So….the one thing in the universe that can kill you normally is the thing you’re carrying around,” I said, trying to follow the logic.
“Yes,” Gabrielle said. “I have one clip of Ultranium bullets for each pistol. The rest of the time they just draw from the nuclear generators in my pistols.”
I blinked. “Who made your guns? Satan?”
“No, the Space Angel Varkel. He’s the forgemaster of God.”
Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. “How is the fight going?”
That was when Cindy’s werewolf form landed against the side of the pyramid.
“Not well,” Gabrielle admitted.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ME VERSUS A SUPER(IOR) BOY
The field before us was littered with the bodies of dead Nazis, something I’m always in favor of.
Unfortunately, dead Nazis were not the only thing on the other side of the hover pyramid. Instead, I saw a pounded-up and doughy-looking black blog that I presumed was the still-living (albeit barely) form of John Henry Booth.
It was curled around the badly injured, but glowing form of Mercury Takahashi. She was muttering healing spells to try to keep her body together after someone had tried to tear it to pieces. The triceratops lay dead to one side, decapitated, and Reyan was collapsed on the ground. Well, maybe just collapsed. I could only see her blonde hair and smaller-than-normal hands sticking up from the ground.