by C. T. Phipps
“Bastards,” I said, looking at the dead triceratops. “They killed Dave!”
“You named the dinosaur?” Gabrielle said.
“You be avenged, Dave. This I vow,” I said, searching for whoever had torn through the team like they were nameless mooks facing the Nightwalker. “For both this and three of the five Jurassic Park movies. Plus, all the crappy games.”
“Gary, look!” Gabrielle said, pointing it at the sky above the massacre.
Hovering above my beaten associates was a fourteen-year-old kid wearing a P.H.A.N.T.O.M Youth uniform. It was identical to the kind possessed by Hitler’s murderous band of Anti-Boy Scouts and child soldiers but gray colored with a black cape. Oh, and they’d given the guy an actual set of pants, which was a good thing since a flying Nazi kid sidekick didn’t need a pair of shorts to make him look ridiculous.
The Japanese dinosaur woman was getting up. The rest of the fascist force (that would also be a good codename for this group) wasn’t. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of people but, apparently, the kid had managed to trash the rest of my team thoroughly.
“Uberjunge,” Gabrielle muttered, not aiming her guns at him.
“Superior Boy? Really? That’s his codename? Not Nazi Kid? Fascist Lad? I mean, P.H.A.N.T.O.M is really slipping in their efforts.”
“Silence!” Uberjunge shouted. “I am Ubermensch, not Uberjunget! I am the ultimate warrior of P.H.A.N.T.O.M! No one calls me boy.”
“Right,” I said, looking at him. “Because that’s what I’m worried about now.”
“Argh!” Uberjunge screamed before turning to fly at me, zipping at supersonic speed. I, unsurprisingly, had expected this and turned insubstantial. He smashed into the side of the hover-tank.
Uberjunge passing through me caused me to feel like I’d been punched in the gut. His body was made of magic, like Reyan’s, but my powers prevented it from liquefying me. Instead, it just sent me to my knees. The boy, meanwhile, smashed into the side of the hover pyramid and came out the other side.
“He’s as strong as I normally am,” Gabrielle said. “His powers are magical, too. He tore through much of the Society of Superheroes by himself.”
“Great,” I muttered, clutching my stomach. “You could have told me this. My genius plan now needs some more steps.”
“Your genius plan being to have him smash into something?” Gabrielle asked. “Do you get all your plans from Looney Tunes?”
“It’s worked so far,” I said. “I’m ninety percent Bugs Bunny in my fighting style. The rest is evenly divided between Wile E. Coyote and Evil WizardTM.”
Werewolf Cindy proceeded to get up on her hind legs and stretch out her claws. “Grrrr…. He’s coming back around…grrooowl.”
Gabrielle paused a second before looking to her side. “By the way, Gary, is Cindy a werewolf?”
“It seems so,” I said, keeping my eye on Uberjunge as he came back around.
“Is this a new development?” Gabrielle asked. “Do we need to get you laser hair removal?”
Cindy turned her wolf-head toward her and snarled.
“Down, girl,” Gabrielle said, pointing at her.
Cindy involuntarily sat down on her buttocks.
“Good girl,” Gabrielle said, pulling out a treat from her pocket and tossing it to her.
“Maybe there was a crossover comic she got infected in that readers will have to shell out twenty bucks to pay for the trade paperback.”
“You are so goddamned weird,” Gabrielle said, holding her guns up at the sky. “He’s back!”
Seconds later, Uberjunge came back around as there was a crack of thunder. The child soldier descended, and I sensed the magic radiating off him. It was more than I’d ever felt from anyone save Entropicus, Zul-Barbas, and maybe the Nightwalker. It was energy different from my own, tainted by something vile. There was more going on than him just being another Nazi supersoldier. He was the product of something older and more terrible. Lightning crackled up and down his body as he stared down at me with pure hatred in his eyes.
Cindy returned to her human form. “Yeah, I don’t suppose you still have that teleporting scythe?”
“No,” I said.
“I wonder if he likes older women,” Cindy muttered.
“No, Cindy,” I said. “Just no.”
Gabrielle surprised me by speaking to the monster descending from the sky. “Ken, don’t make me destroy you!”
“Ken?” I asked. “I thought we were just calling him boy. Also, since when do we not kill Nazis? Teenagers or not?”
“You don’t have to be Uberjunge!” Gabrielle said. “We remember who you really are.”
I had no idea who he was. Why is it that everyone in my world has a deep and complicated backstory with one another except me? You know, ignoring that I grew up with Cindy, was friends with the Nightwalker’s ghost, was the chosen of Death, and had a child with Ultragod’s daughter. Okay, I needed to stop thinking about these things. I needed instead to figure out how to beat a supervillain with the power of ten thousand Nazis.
“I am Superior! Not Uberjunge.” the boy shouted. “The man who will kill Merciless: The Superhero without Mercy!”
“Oh, sweet Moses,” Cindy said, looking on in horror. “He just said your name without any irony. You’re screwed.”
Uberjunge then grabbed me by the back of my hood and began flying toward the glowing orb above us. “Let’s see how much of a smartass you are when I toss you into the Inner Sun!”
“Gurk!” I said, trying to say something snarky but prevented by the fact I was being throttled by my own cloak.
The two of us rose through the air, growing closer and closer to the Sun at the center of the Hollow Earth. It wasn’t anything like the real Sun and you didn’t need a degree in nuclear fusion to figure that out. However, it became incredibly hot as we got closer and closer. My flesh began to blister and regenerate while Ken seemed unharmed.
“The Supreme Phantom will reward me greatly for this!” Ken shouted. He was slowing down despite his approach of the Sun and I remembered he’d not actually killed any of my friends.
Maybe he was regretful? Maybe he wasn’t entirely onboard with Neo-National Socialism? Well, it sucked to be him because I was fully prepared to kill him to survive. If you were old enough to kill, then you were old enough to die.
“Sorry, kid,” I said, turning my hand intangible and putting it into his brain. “This hurts you more than it hurts me.”
It was at this point I realized Ken wasn’t a physical human being. He was purely composed of energy and I didn’t actually put my fingers through his brain. Instead, it just caused him to rear back and grab his head like I’d given him an ice cream headache. I was prevented from falling by my power to levitate that, oddly enough, felt like actual flying now.
“Ha!” Ken said, triumphantly. “The Sun is the source of magic in this land! An infinite battery of unlimited power!”
“First of all, that’s redundant,” I said, fully aware of my own hypocrisy as Merciless: The Supervillain without Mercy. “Second of all, do you have any idea what a really stupid thing that is to tell me?”
“What?” Ken asked.
I unleashed a storm of black lightning that was the nastiest and most dangerous magic I knew. I felt the warmth of the artificial sun pour into my body—an unimaginable stream of mystical power that I channeled into the superpowered teenager’s body. Kindsoldat screamed as his artificial body was disrupted and flickered like a bad WiFi signal.
That was when I charged him like M. Bison in Street Fighter, forced him away from the Sun, and slammed him into the ground at around 1000mph. I turned insubstantial at the final moment and thus avoided the force of the blow, leaving a two-foot-deep crater where we struck. I floated up and stood above him.
“Ten points!” I said, throwing two peace signs in the air. Then I did the Ric Flair stylin’-and-profilin’ dance (props if you know what that is). “Woo!”
Ken proceeded to get up.
“Oh shit,” I said.
Ken took a swing at my head. I ducked. He spun around and missed wildly. He was completely untrained in fighting and relied on brute strength. Like most people who were faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than the United States antiquated rail system, he also was as slow as his brain allowed him to fight. Unfortunately, that was going to get faster as soon as he shook off my earlier attack.
That was when a dinosaur in a lab coat grabbed me from behind. “I’ve got him, Herr Masterson!”
Ken grabbed me by one of my legs and before I could turn insubstantial, smashed me against the ground left and right. I felt bones break in my arms and legs and my head rang like there were church bells clanging around inside it. He then tossed me into the crater I’d created and lifted his foot to crush my skull.
Gabrielle proceeded to shoot him in the leg twice and then kneecapped him, sending him to the ground. “Stay away from my boyfriend!”
“No!” the dinosaur doctor shouted.
Werewolf Cindy tackled it and started tearing it to pieces. Ken slowly stood up, bleeding badly from his injuries but looking furious. That was when Reyan grabbed him from behind in a bear hug, looking decidedly worse for wear. She then shouted into the sky, “By the Might of Asgard!”
A bolt of lightning flashed from the sky and struck them both, driving them to the ground into the tall grass. I would have just watched what happened, but I’d just gotten my ass kicked. I wasn’t about to let myself lose to a fascist Generation Z loser. I struggled to get up then fell to my knees and then landed on my chin.
Not my finest moment.
“Got you,” Gabrielle said, helping me to my feet. “I think we won.”
“Are all the Nazis dead?” I asked, spitting out a tooth that would take a couple of hours to regenerate.
“No,” Gabrielle said. “Just most of them.”
“Then we haven’t won yet,” I said, feeling my body slowly beginning to heal. Ken’s blows were among the hardest I’d taken outside of Entropicus beating my ass during the Eternity Tournament.
“Take a deep breath,” Gabrielle said. “We can get Mercury to heal you.”
I started slurring my speech. “You know I’m not entirely feeling the whole ‘Ultragoddess with Guns’ thing. You should be harmlessly punching people with the force of a moving train, not using pistols. Either that or smacking them around with house-sized fly-swatters. What happened to the Silver Age, man?”
“Gary, you’re rambling.”
“Also, why does your costume have a skirt? You fly. Do you put bicycle shorts underneath or what? I mean, it’s a good look but—”
“I think you may have a concussion,” Gabrielle interrupted.
“Pfft!” I said, blinking rapidly. “Superheroes don’t get concussions. We’re right and ready by next month’s issue!”
I then collapsed face first into the mud.
Gabrielle picked me up again. “You’ve got a concussion.”
“I might have three,” I muttered. “But what does not kill you makes you stronger. Discounting traumatic brain injury, maiming, permanent injury, or all the other ways that quote is dead wrong. Damn, Nietzsche! Why couldn’t you stay as relevant to me as you were in high school!”
Cindy walked up to me and Gabrielle and spit out a chunk of the dinosaur lady. “Wow, I think I’ve solved one of history’s greatest mysteries. They are birds. That thing tasted just like chicken.”
“Cindy, when the hell did you become a werewolf?” I asked, feeling my mind clear.
Cindy shrugged. “I dunno.”
I blinked. “Okay, good to know.”
“We’ll find out and get you a cure,” Gabrielle said, earnestly.
“Hahahahahaha,” Cindy said, letting out a peal of high-pitched laughter. “Oh, wait, you’re serious.”
I rolled my eyes and stumbled over to where the others had fallen. Mercury was almost fully healed but looked like I felt. John was slowly convalescing into an ink-black humanoid shape that started to look like his previous self. Cowboy hat and all.
“Huh,” I said, looking at him. “Are you actually wearing clothes or are they part of your body? I’ve been wondering.”
“Yes,” John answered, pulling out an oversized .45-caliber Magnum that was as Clint Eastwood as the rest of his outfit but a different movie. “Now, where’s the little superpowered shit, so I can put two rounds in his head?”
“Over there,” Cindy said, pointing to where Reyan had tackled him.
“I’ll enchant the bullets,” Mercury muttered. “They’ll be able to pierce any magical defenses he has.”
“No, you can’t kill him!” Gabrielle said.
Literally all four of us looked at Gabrielle and said, simultaneously, “Why?”
“He’s a child!” Gabrielle said.
“A bad child!” I snapped. “Damien Thorne! King Joffrey! Some other bad kids—”
Gabrielle looked at me. “Gary, please, be the better man for once.”
My expression lost all its mirth. “This is a mistake.”
“It’s not,” a teenage girl’s voice spoke as a slightly chubby sixteen-year-old blonde girl walked through the tall grass after getting up from where she fell. The girl seemed familiar. She wore a pair of glasses, a white button-down t-shirt, and a long brown skirt with Crocs. “My brother is brainwashed by P.H.A.N.T.O.M. He’s not guilty of the Uberjunge’s crimes.”
“Who the hell is she?” Cindy asked.
Gabrielle rolled her eyes.
“Reyan?” John asked, looking down at her. “But she’s uh…well, not at all like that.”
Apparently even the human-blob monster had thought she was hot in her other form.
“The shapeshifter shouldn’t comment on appearances being deceiving,” I said, shaking my head.
“The power of Odin gives me the beauty of a Valkyrie,” the girl said, adjusting her eyeglasses.
“I’ve got my eye on you,” Cindy said, pointing at me. “Pervert.”
“I’m sixteen,” Reyan said. “I just look twenty-eight when I change.”
Cindy looked at me with contempt. “You’re a sick man, Gary. How could you even think of a child that way!?”
I did a double take. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m blaming you for what I was thinking,” Cindy said.
“Ah,” I said before turning back to Reyan. “Sixteen is way too young to be adventuring down here. You’re purely sidekick material. Go join the O-Men or the Texas Guardians. They accept child-soldiers.”
“I was a Texas Guardian,” Gabrielle said.
“Leave the real fighting to us adults,” Cindy said. “Shoo-shoo. Fly away, be free.”
I walked past Reyan and looked behind her. What I saw was the collapsed form of a fourteen-year-old boy who looked completely different from the child Nazi I’d fought. I mean, completely different. For starters, he was black.
“Uh—” I started to say.
“P.H.A.N.T.O.M also changed the way he looks,” Reyan explained. “He normally looked like a black Viking in his twenties.”
“Obviously,” I said. “And you?”
“I was adopted,” Reyan said.
“Ah,” I said.
“We need to figure out how to get the hover pyramid going again,” Reyan said. “The Reichmen were the primary team of P.H.A.N.T.O.M in the Hollow Earth. Destroying them and recapturing my brother means they’re going to be weakened. That will allow us to rescue the Society of Superheroes, Texas Guardians, and your niece.”
“Assuming any of them are alive,” I said.
“They are,” a new voice spoke behind us. “You’re also the only ones who can save them because this is where they are meant to die.”
I turned around. “Oh, great. You two.”
“Who are they?” John asked.
“Our daughters,” Gabrielle said.
CHAPTER NINE
REUNION WITH
THE FAMILY
I had a lot of weird things in my life. My wife being killed by a dragon, my raising her as a vampire, and then a dead superheroine possessing her while still claiming to be the original Mandy. My brother Keith was a supervillain killed by a vigilante psychopath, my sister could see ghosts, and my niece was a superhero. Even my relationship with God was crazy. Death had made me her chosen one and used to send me on missions. But the weirdest thing in my life? The fact I had adult children from the future.
Nothing says that you live in a world where normal has no meaning better than your children traveling back in time to visit. In some ways, it was flattering. In other ways it was terrifying. It implied something terrible must have happened to you as they used time travel instead of texting their present-day dad.
Standing just to the side of the group were the adult forms of my two daughters. Leia was a late-twenties beautiful woman with snow-white hair like my own (I was the only platinum-blond Jew I knew aside from my sister and called it our “Targaryen blood at work”). Leia had a superficial similarity to Cindy but hadn’t gotten the nose job Cindy had at sixteen. Leia wore a pair of orange-red overalls that had the word “Gizmo” over the right breast. Around her waist was a toolbelt of various devices and gadgets that I only recognized half of, as well as her mother’s ray gun.
Mindy, having a different mother than Leia, obviously looked a great deal different with shoulder-length curly hair and chocolate skin slightly darker than her mother’s. Yeah, that sometimes happens in genetics. She was dressed in a bright blue overcoat and fedora that made me wonder if the future had retro-1940s fashions, or she’d been raised by Carmen Sandiego. She glowed with an aura that I recognized as the Ultra-Force, despite the fact this place should be draining it way.
“Your daughters?” John asked, raising his gun.
Gabrielle pushed the gun down. “Yes. Gary’s and mine.”
“And mine!” Cindy snapped. “I’m their mother, too! One of them I totally gave to Gary’s sister to raise! I also gave up drinking for eight months.”
Mindy pinched the bridge of her nose. “How do you not die of embarrassment?”