The Supervillainy Saga (Book 4): The Science of Supervillainy

by Phipps, C. T.

  I stared at her. “Lady, are you blind? Have you looked outside your window to what your father has done to the world?!”

  “Father brought peace after World War Three,” Starlight Maiden said, settling down in front of my bubble. “When America was on the verge of economic collapse, he gave jobs and showed us a better path. He’s what you could have been if you’d chosen to use your powers for good rather than evil.”

  “He started World War Three!” I snapped, staring at her in disgust. “This is not a conspiracy theory or truther thing! He really, really did! Look behind you! He has Ultragoddess, one of the biggest superheroes in the world, imprisoned!”

  For the first time, I noticed a hint of doubt on Starlight Maiden’s face. I couldn’t see it clearly since everything was getting blurry, but the expression was something approaching guilt. Also fear. Two emotions I was deeply acquainted with.

  “It’s a healing chamber for Ultragoddess,” Starlight Maiden said, clenching her fists. “Father says it’s going to eventually bring her back to us.”

  “It’s . . . powering . . . his empire,” I said, falling to my knees. “Everything here.”

  Starlight Maiden closed her eyes. “I . . . suspected that was the case. You don’t know the full truth of the Acme Power Plant, though. It is the heart of the Omega Corp Free Energy Initiative. An initiative that powers not only everything on the eastern United States but also the entire sum of the Falconcrest City Defense Force. Every suit of powered armor, mecha, teleportation bracelet, and artificial being keeping this city running. Including me.”

  Ah, dammit. That explained a few things. No wonder she could use the Ultraforce.

  Gizmo’s voice appeared in my head. “You shouldn’t let this stand, Mindy. You were built better than this.”

  Starlight Maiden looked up. “Who? What? Who is in my head?”

  “No,” I choked out. “Go away. Don’t contact us. You’ll lead the First Citizen right to you.”

  “Sorry, dad,” Gizmo said, her voice clearly connecting me and Mindy. “I can’t just watch you die. I’ve just met you. I’ve hooked myself up to a telepathy booster and got it programmed to communicate with her A.I. central processor. It took me a whole half hour to make it, but it’s worth it!”

  I blinked. “OK, I think you’re god-modding the whole super-inventor thing. We need to have a serious talk about power-gaming.”

  “I’m not going to kill him, little girl,” Starlight Maiden said, stepping down in front of me. “I’ve done my best to make sure all of the supervillains outside are disabled rather than killed. Merciless is going to prison instead.”

  “The prison your father is going to send him to is worse than he deserves,” Gizmo said. “Look inside his mind and see what sort of person my father is. See how different a person he is from your father.”

  I was starting to black out now and collapsed, my face to the catwalk beneath me. “No, that will just make things . . . worse.”

  Starlight Maiden looked torn before crossing her arms underneath her breasts. “All right. I’d like to see what’s inside him.”

  That sounded so very wrong.

  “He’s not a good man,” Gizmo said, not helping my case. “He’s angry, ambitious, controlling, lustful, and full of wrath. He’s not a bad man, either. Despite his protestations, he’s capable of incredible good and sympathy. So much of the pain he’s inflicted is because he wants desperately for people not to suffer the kind of agony he did.”

  “So, he’s very much like father,” Starlight Maiden said. “Which means this entire war is between two people in pain.”

  “Except your father blames the entire world,” Gizmo said. “So the infliction of pain will never stop.”

  The Ultraforce bubble around me disappeared and allowed cool air to come into my lungs. Things started to get clearer and less blurry. I was tempted to attack her during the distraction but forced that act down. Not just because it would have been suicidal, but also because I felt for her. It was one thing to be betrayed by your idol, another thing when said person was your creator.

  “And what about you, Nightwalker?” Starlight Maiden stared down at me. She wasn’t talking to me, though. “You held to a code to never kill in your life and saved the world countless times. What do you think of this person who has used your powers to destroy rather than save?”

  Cloak was silent.

  “Gee, thanks Cloak,” I muttered.

  Cloak surprised me then. “Good and evil. People are always pretending it’s a dichotomy made up by society. However, just because they only exist inside a person doesn’t mean they’re not real. They are elements of the psyche constantly at war. Always developing, always changing. I have been inside the mind of Gary Karkofsky so very long it’s sometimes hard to tell my thoughts from his, and that terrifies me. It is easy to fall into his perspective and cheer when he lashes out. However, a man cannot be judged by only the bad, but also by the good. He is here to rescue a woman he loves, save the city, and protect the world. In that, he is a hero. Which is all that matters today. I also love him as the son I wish I had.”

  “And yet you never taught him your secrets of magic,” Starlight Maiden said, narrowing her eyes. “You could have made him as powerful as you were. Instead, you let him flounder around with the barest hints of your former power.”

  “I did not think I could teach him well,” Cloak said. “Not that he hasn’t saved this world twice. Gary, would not sacrifice himself for the people of the world. He would, however, sacrifice himself for those he loved. Which is more than I can say for your father—a man who loves only the memories of those he dishonors every day.”

  “Ouch,” I said. “Buuuuuuurn.”

  Starlight Maiden looked up into the top of the factory, then beyond it. “The battle is almost over. The Society of Superheroes auxiliary has almost defeated your army. Reinforcements are arriving to subdue the ones who aren’t fleeing. It would be very easy to just let my father win and choose the lesser evil.”

  “Evil is not like cola; there’s not diet option,” I said, climbing to my feet. “If you want to just throw down, that’s your own business. I don’t blame the Society of Superheroes for being tyrants and I wouldn’t blame you. Just don’t pretend you’re fucking heroes because there’s not a damn thing heroic about what you’re doing to Gabrielle—a woman whom your father has imprisoned and tortured. Whose father he murdered, one of the greatest of all heroes. Whom he is using as a fucking Duracell battery. If you want to be the bad guy, I’m all for it, but you are not worthy of wearing that cape if you let her suffer a minute longer.”

  Starlight Maiden looked at me. “Even if I die?”

  I looked down. “Yes.”

  Starlight Maiden lowered her head, looking on the verge of tears. “It’s like Those who walk away from Omelas.”

  “What?” Cloak said.

  Gizmo answered for me. “It’s a classic sci-fi story by Ursula K. Le Guin about what would happen if you lived in a society where everything was utopian and wonderful. Except, for whatever reason, it was powered by a tortured little girl who was necessary for the system to work. The story said every year some of the people walked away into the desert, unable to live with the joys they had brought about by her suffering. Personally, I always thought it was a poorly conceived power source.”

  “I always thought it was a metaphor for Western Civilization because that is powered by a lot more children than just one,” I said. “But it’s exactly like that.”

  Starlight Maiden closed her eyes. “I’m scared.”

  “You should be,” I said. “But it’s OK to be.”

  Big Ben’s mecha crashed through the eastern wall, a bunch of supervillains beside it as Darklight soldiers burst through, shooting stun rays at them. We were running out of time and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

  “He’s here,” Gizmo said in my mind. “Other Gary has decided to finish this mission himself. I need to break our link
before he finds out where Kerri and I are hidden. Good luck, Dad.”

  “I don’t believe in luck,” I said, looking to where the wall had collapsed. “Only horrible coincidences of circumstance that invariably come down on my head.”

  “I’ll use my power reserves to keep the system going so there won’t be any civilian casualties from the power shutdown,” Starlight Maiden said, turning and aiming her hand at Gabrielle’s cage. “It’s been an honor, Mister Karkofsky.”

  “Likewise,” I said, wishing I had her courage.

  Starlight Maiden fired a beam of white-gold Ultraforce energy into the air and smashed through the tube that was cradling Gabrielle. The energy encircled her; I could feel it enter her and swirl around. In an instant, she went from being a comatose prisoner to an extremely pissed-off supervillain.

  While I couldn’t see it, I imagined the lights going out across the Eastern seaboard with only emergency services and systems still online. Outside, I heard the zipping of energy blasts from the Darklight troopers cease. It seemed even their guns were Ultra-Force powered.

  Gabrielle’s superhero costume appeared around her, and her eyes crackled with power. I’d seen her furious before, but this was something else. I could only imagine what was going through her mind as she realized that not only had she been imprisoned for five years, but also, the Society of Superheroes had made no real effort to find her. Surely, they would have noticed their ally’s armies were powered by the Ultraforce and questioned where that energy came from.

  There was going to be hell to pay.

  “Bastards!” Gabrielle shouted, her voice echoing through the chamber. The Extreme, all wearing rocket packs, smashed through the opaque skylight above to engage her. She destroyed all of them with a streak of lightning-fast attacks I could only follow from the tracer-like pattern left behind her. I made a mental note to break into Other Gary’s headquarters after this and see if I could wipe their memories from his databanks. I was getting real sick of the Extreme’s save scumming.

  It was a bit of an anticlimax, but the Ringwraiths died when Mount Doom exploded, so I couldn’t say it didn’t happen in great works of art too. Personally, I would have made a sequel with the Witch King taking over to menace the next age, but that was just me. I would have called it There and Back Again, Again: The Hobbits’ Revenge.

  “Oooo, he’s going to get it now,” I said, smiling broadly. Even if Other Gary managed to win, he wasn’t going to be able to prove he wasn’t responsible for keeping Gabrielle prisoner this entire time. Even if the public accepted his rationale, which I doubted they would barring brainwashing, it was going to be the end of his claims of moral superiority.

  “I doubt that,” Cloak said. “We need to win this battle if we’re going to save the city. History is written by the winners, and only historians care about doomed moral victors.”

  “Point taken,” I said, grinning briefly.

  Starlight Maiden had collapsed on the ground. “I’m glad I was able to do the right thing. It was harder than I expected.”

  I rushed over to the side of the dying android before lifting her up with her arm over my left shoulder. Starlight Maiden was heavier than she looked, which made sense since she was mostly plastic and circuits. “Come on, Mindy, we can get you a battery plug-in to keep you going for a bit longer. Nobody else has to die tonight.”

  Mindy blinked rapidly. “I don’t think that’s going to be possible, Mister Karkofsky. I feel everything shutting down and corroding. My systems weren’t designed to survive past losing power. I think—I think my father didn’t want me potentially passing on his secrets. I do believe you may have been right that he was a bad person.”

  “No,” I said. “He’s a good person. He just happens to be an awful one. He’s also not your father, since no true father would have treated like you like this. Listen, I’m kind of terrible at resurrecting people, but I say practice makes perfect—”

  “Goodbye, Mister Karkofsky,” Starlight Maiden said. “Again.”

  With that, Starlight Maiden went limp in my arms. I cradled the android’s body in my arms as the life went out of her eyes. Above me, Gabrielle continued to rip up Other Gary’s forces even as more reinforcements came wielding conventional weaponry.

  “You are really an annoyance,” Other Gary said, drawing my attention. “Did I ever tell you that?”

  The white-cloaked superhero was splattered with blood and visibly pissed. Behind him, I could see the unconscious form of Adonis and his lover Erudite. There were other supervillains behind him, like the Crackerjack and Sir Question. Big Ben had been ripped in half and the stuffed animal was crawling after my doppelgänger on the catwalk’s grating, waving a box cutter as he shouted obscenities.

  I looked down at Starlight Maiden’s fallen form before gently putting her aside. Her body clunked against the grating harder than I wanted.

  Both Garys were finally face to face, and one of us was not going to leave this power plant alive. Possibly both of us. I didn’t care.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  THE FINAL SHOWDOWN BETWEEN ME, MYSELF, AND I

  “Your daughter is dead,” I said, shaking my head. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “She was no more my daughter than a portrait or sculpture of her was,” Other Gary said, shaking his head. “Besides, I’m not the person who killed her. You did that when you rescued Gabrielle from the Grand Capacitor. Who knows how many people you’ve killed now that there’s a shutdown of Ultraforce-provided electricity across the East Coast.”

  I shook my head. “You are pathologically incapable of accepting that anything is your fault, aren’t you?”

  “Grand words from the man who decided to be a supervillain and ruined the lives of everyone he loved,” Other Gary said. “Mandy’s death and vampirism followed by centuries of torment are all on you. Your mistress, Cindy, is traumatized by the fact that her daughter almost died because she felt opposing me was better than accepting the way things were. Diabloman is going to die too. I intend to put him on trial for destroying my universe and make sure he’s healthy enough to serve a lifetime of torture for every single person killed by his misdeeds. Justice will be long and drawn out rather than swift.”

  “Good guys don’t torture,” I snarled.

  “I’ll call it something else when I get the courts to legalize it,” said Other Gary. “‘Justice’ is another word for revenge, after all. The only difference is the victim. Society is built upon paying evil unto evil, and I’m going to do it until this world is scoured clean of filth like you.”

  I took a deep breath and drew my pistols. “You know, screw talking. I’ve had enough of your bullshit. We may look alike, but we are nothing alike inside.”

  Other Gary smiled. “The only difference between you and me, Gary, is a matter of stakes. You’ve cut a bloody swath through everyone who has stood in your path. You’ve ruined the lives of those you love. You’ve betrayed friends and allies to achieve your goals. You’ve built an empire while claiming to be an anarchist. I, however, am going to fix this world. To help everyone. You can’t even help yourself.”

  I aimed my pistols at his chest and pulled their triggers repeatedly. The bullets shot forth, only for glowing discs to appear in the air around Other Gary’s head. I shot repeatedly, but I wasn’t very good, and the little blasts of hellfire did exactly nada to the guy.

  “Uh oh,” I muttered.

  That was when Other Gary pointed at the pistol in my right hand and it cut itself in half. He aimed at the second and I dropped it. I proceeded to conjure every bit of flame in my body and hurled it like a blast of death at Other Gary.

  “Hadoken!” I shouted.

  The fire washed across Other Gary as if it were raindrops.

  “I’ve been building my power up for the past five years,” Other Gary said, walking forward. “You, however, have been stuck in a hole.”

  “A hole you put me into!” I threw ice blasts at him.

  Th
ey turned into steam, melted by a golden aura Other Gary conjured around himself. “Indeed. Perhaps that should have been your first clue to stay down.”

  He then grabbed me by the throat and started to strangle me. I grabbed his hands and tried to pull them away before deliberately falling to my knees.

  “Goodbye, Gary,” Other Gary said. “I really am sorry—SON OF A BITCH!”

  That last line was due to my grabbing the jagged remnant of my first gun and jabbing it into his femoral artery. He’d obviously prepped for dealing with all my spells and attacks but not necessarily for thinking outside of the box. Which is what I did best.

  “That and your guns are made of pure anti-life matter,” Cloak said. “I doubt regular weapons would have done anything.”

  That was when Other Gary’s leg wound started to heal and his eyes blaze. “You’re going to pay for that.”

  “Ah crap,” I said, using the gun’s lower half like a pair of brass knuckles to stun Other Gary. They smacked through his defenses and gave me my first real chance to beat the holy hell out of my doppelgänger. “Cloak, I have a really stupid idea that will probably get us both killed.”

  “I’m up for it,” Cloak said. “Even if I don’t see any way out of this.”

  “I do,” I whispered, hitting Gary again before he blocked my third strike, then kneed me in the stomach.

  The problem was, my plan was a suicide gambit. There was no way in hell I could beat Other Gary in a way that would permanently kill him. He was immortal, and for all my pretensions to being the Chosen of Death, that didn’t give me any special insight into murdering the guy. Still, I had an idea of where he got his power, and that let me know I could probably take it away from him—if I was willing to give up my life doing it.

  I didn’t want to die, any more than the Starlight Maiden had. She had been a good person, every bit as much as Gabrielle in her own way. However, I didn’t exactly see any other way around this. Honestly, deep down, if it had been a choice between killing Other Gary and fleeing, then I probably would have chosen the latter. His earlier offer about leaving reality sounded better and better each minute. He’d tried to kill Gizmo, though, and if he was alive, then he’d do it again or try to raise her himself. I wasn’t going to let him get away with doing that. I just needed Cloak’s permission first. It was his life too, after all.