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

by Phipps, C. T.

  “Are you sure, Cloak?” I asked, as Other Gary grabbed me by the shoulders and started filling me with a painful burning energy that drove out my Death-granted powers. If I guessed right, I suspected it would eventually burn away my insides and make it impossible for Death to restore me. Poetic.

  “I’m already dead,” Cloak said. “Do what you have to.”

  “Gotcha,” I said, grabbing Other Gary and lifting him up over the catwalk side. “I’m sorry, Gizmo, I really wanted to come back to you.”

  “I’m sorry too, Dad,” Gizmo said, revealing she’d been watching this entire time.

  “Die,” Other Gary said. “Die and stay dead.”

  I interrupted Other Gary by jumping over with him into the glowing blue lake below as both of us disappeared into raw mystical power. I strangled Gary as he strangled me back, the two of us washed over by the raw, distilled life-force of billions. Had I not distracted him, Other Gary could have shielded himself. I might have been able to do the same. Both of us instead disappeared, dissolved into the greater mystical force.

  Being both of us were necromancers, that wasn’t the end of it. The two of us found ourselves surrounded by glowing blue light and strange, free-floating crystals. I thought it looked like a combination of outer space with the interior of an aquarium.

  The water of the energy washed over us and flowed even as weird twinkling lights moved all around us. Most of all, however, magic surrounded us. This was where Other Gary had collected his massive amount of stolen life-force. The billions he’d murdered across several timelines were fed into the reservoir and stored across the crystal towers that all linked here. We were in the center now.

  Other Gary, for his part, looked more amused than threatened. “So, this was your big plan? Dumping me in the middle of the center of my power? Brilliant.”

  “I have access to it too,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Yes, but you’re an awful wizard,” Other Gary said. “This will be easy to deal with. My life will return and I will wash away your armies. Forget killing you. I’m going to make sure you never existed.”

  I mentally called out to the billions of people Other Gary had murdered with his plan. “I don’t think so.”

  That was when a weird snake-like skeleton wrapped around one of Other Gary’s arms, followed by another one. A strange white glowing tentacle stretched out from the infinity around us to grab another of Other Gary’s legs.

  “What the—?” Other Gary said.

  “You have the biggest storehouse of necromantic energy in the history of everything,” I said, surprised this was working. “Most people don’t become ghosts when they die, but the ones who died in violence and with regrets have a bigger tendency to become them. I figured that all the people you murdered and stored the life-force of would have issues with you.”

  Other Gary blew off his attackers with blasts of golden light before a hundred piranha-like spirits charged at him, only to be blasted away themselves. This attracted more attention, and he was soon blasting everything around him.

  “This is an irritation, nothing more!” Other Gary shouted, sounding less confident than he usually did.

  “No, it’s a distraction,” I said, taking a deep breath despite the fact that I no longer technically had a body. “Cloak, can you show me how to channel this energy?”

  “How much of it? I’ve been surrounded by mystical wellsprings before, but this is an ocean compared to lakes,” Cloak said, still with me despite the destruction of my physical body. It was rather disappointing since my original plan was he’d be resurrected in here and handle things for me. Whoops.

  “All of it,” I said, stretching out my arms. “We can’t let any of this be harnessed by people like me. Except well, right now.”

  “You won’t be able to survive that much,” Cloak said. “It’s not meant for mortal bodies.”

  “We’re already dead.”

  “I take back everything I ever said about you. Well, most of it.”

  “Let’s not make this mushy.”

  Cloak then merged his mind with mine and for a single moment, I had a hundred years’ worth of being the world’s greatest magic-using superhero. That gave me just the right amount of knowledge to do the spell I wanted to do. I drew in all the energy inside me, pulling it through Cloak and into my soul.

  Other Gary seemed to realize what I was doing. “No!”

  “Yes,” I said. “Unlimited power!”

  That was when the world exploded. At least the one I was in. It’s a weird sensation, dying, even weirder becoming a god—or at least half-a-god. I became one with the reservoir of magic in a way Other Gary had never been willing to risk. I could see other dimensions, the future, the past, old friends long . . . well, you know the drill.

  I understood how the Primals were fragments of a greater celestial consciousness. I understood how the Great Beasts were errors in the cosmos. I even comprehended what angels, demons, spirits, and other gods were. I saw other galaxies, civilizations, and countless variations on the timelines that had produced me.

  Weird—the biggest revelation was that I already knew most of this, as it had been recited to me by my stoner roommate Reggie. Who knew that guy had been the most enlightened being in the universe?

  Either way, I knew how to make use of the power within me. Other Gary was too arrogant, too full of hubris, to humble himself before the powers of the cosmos. I, on the other hand, was perfectly happy to kneel before the Lord if it got me free stuff. Borrowing knowledge from Death, Life, and a dozen other deities, I made a wish. A dozen wishes, really. Ones that were all granted.

  Boom.

  Just like that, it was over. I was standing in the middle of Falconcrest City Central Park in the middle of noon, overlooking Other Gary as he was lying face down on the ground. Other Gary’s white cloak was missing and he was wearing a white t-shirt over some plaid boxers.

  Some kids were playing Frisbee nearby before chasing after their dog over the closest hill. The air was clean around us and the sense of grim foreboding that had hung around my city was absent. Mostly because it wasn’t my city.

  “Cloak?” I asked, checking on my friend first.

  “Goodbye, Gary,” Cloak said. “I know you intended to die with me, but I think I can handle this on my own. The price is mine to pay. Try not to completely wreck the world without me.”

  In my mind’s eye, I saw Lancel Warren, as a man dressed in a trench coat and fedora, enter a door of light. There was a price for using the kind of power we did, and he was the one willing to pay it.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

  Then my friend was gone.

  “Where am I?” Other Gary said, holding his head. “What—”

  I pulled out the remaining pistol Death gave me and pistol whipped him across the face. “The Greeks were very fond of the concept of the deus ex machina. That’s where the gods stepped in to make everything all right. Well, here, I had to make them get involved.”

  Other Gary felt his face, which was bleeding badly. “What did you do?”

  “Assuming they followed my plan, we’re in opposite orbital rotation to the earth. You killed billions of people to try and get the magical energy necessary to create a new universe. I, instead, just tried to remake your old earth. This is Earth 2.0—or maybe 1.0, since it’s the original one. All your dead friends and loved ones are here. A bunch of copies of the existing superheroes are here as well. Sadly, not Ultragod or the Nightwalker, since that’s just not how stuff works. Don’t ask me why.”

  Other Gary looked at me. “You did that for me?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Thank you,” Other Gary whispered. He thought he knew what was coming.

  He was right. I shot him in the head. His body collapsed on the ground, a big hole leading from one side to the other in the middle of his forehead. He didn’t regenerate, get up, or show any sign he wasn’t truly dead this time. I still shot him six more
times. You know, just to be on the safe side. Then, driven by hate, I conjured a flame so hot it burned Other Gary’s body down to its atomic particles. I continued until his remains were nothing more than a burnt shadow on the ground.

  “That was for Cloak, you son of a bitch,” I hissed before tossing my remaining gun on the ground. Had it been worth it?

  No, no it hadn’t.

  “Congratulations, Merciless. You have successfully completed your task,” Death’s voice spoke behind me.

  I turned around to see my boss wearing a pair of black blue jeans and a corset with her hair tied in a ponytail. It was an unusual look for her, but one that worked.

  “Woo,” I said dryly. “Aren’t I special?”

  I was tempted to fly away then, since I could already see parkgoers running away while others used their over-large cellphones to call the police. Unlike in my Falconcrest City, it seemed gunning down someone in the middle of the park wasn’t normal here. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  “Do you regret killing him?” Death asked.

  “No,” I said. “I regret the cost of killing the crazy-ass bastard, though. Lancel Warren was worth all the Garys in a million universes.”

  “Perhaps, but perhaps not. Your doppelgänger wasn’t crazy, though,” Death said. “Just differently sane. A factor you share.”

  “Thank you for making my day worse.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I paused. “Will I ever see Cloak again?”

  “Lancel Warren has gone on to his afterlife. What that is doesn’t matter. It is not your place.”

  I sighed. “Then I hope this was all worth it.”

  “Five billion people live on this earth,” Death said. “Merciful is dead and his regime is crippled. Ultragod is avenged. President Omega is also lost in the spaces between time due to your destruction of his body and radical changing of the future. It will be a long time, if ever, before he returns.”

  “Not enough to make up for Ultragod and the Nightwalker, for Mandy’s and my suffering, for all the years I’ve lost with my daughter, and for what happened to Gabrielle,” I said. “Not by a long shot.”

  “True,” Death admitted. “But you should take what you can get.”

  I blinked. “You know, it just occurs to me I could have used all that power I had to bring back everyone. To make all of this go away. To have a world with the Nightwalker, Ultragod, my brother, and me as the world’s most awesome supervillain, everyone I love happy as well as safe. A paradise limited only by my imagination.”

  “Perhaps,” Death said. “But then, what would have been the difference between you and Other Gary?”

  “I’d have succeeded in getting everything I wanted without dying?” I asked.

  Death laughed. I didn’t particularly like her reaction, but I understood it. This whole thing was a comedy of the blackest kind.

  “What happens now?” I asked.

  Death placed her hand on my shoulder. “I restore all of the power you were supposed to have as my chosen. You will find Lancel Warren’s books of magic and The Book of Midnight waiting for you back at your restored mansion. Merciful enspelled it to regenerate anyway. If you wish, you can—”

  “Claim his stuff, gotcha,” I said. “I intend to. But what about me? What exactly do I do?”

  “Anything you want, Gary. That’s the benefit of being you.”

  With that, she was gone.

  I decided to float off with my levitation powers.

  I had some things to take care of before I returned home.

  Epilogue

  Diabloman opened his eyes.

  I blew a red party blower in his face, tickling the bottom of his nose with its extending end. I was wearing a little pointy paper hat with a Death Star on it.

  Diabloman looked at me. “I love you as my hermano, but I will punch you.”

  That was when Diabloman looked around to realize he was no longer inside the hospital room of the Crystal Palace or a captive of Other Gary. In fact, I’d found him being treated well on one of the Foundation for World Harmony’s hover battleships. They’d let me see him and transport him off without any difficulty, really calling into question the “intelligence” in “intelligence agency.” We were now in the medical ward of Merciless Manor, which was a neat little clinic given the circumstances.

  That wasn’t the big change to my friend, however, since he was now once more restored to a healthy, physically formidable body. It was a good twenty years younger as well, bulging with muscles and tattoos that drew their energy from the Underworld rather than the Great Beasts. Diabloman was still wearing his mask despite the fact that he was otherwise naked— barring the hospital sheet up to his chest, at least.

  “Gary, what have you done?” Diabloman asked.

  I twiddled my thumbs. “Well, I restored Other Gary’s world before killing him. I call it Earth-Deuce. Unfortunately, I used all the magical reservoir’s juice doing so. Well, almost. It occurred to me that since I had my Death-granted powers back to snuff, I could use them to try to transfer your soul to another body. That’s a hideously difficult spell unless you’re doing it to someone who is identical to you, like Other Gary was to me.”

  “Gary, did you murder the Diabloman of another world to restore me?” Diabloman didn’t sound upset, just confused.

  I looked to the side. “Maybe.”

  “Gary!” Diabloman said, sounding on the verge of laughing.

  “He was a bad version of you!” I said. “Just running around trying to destroy the universe! Again! It was a good thing you replaced him.”

  Diabloman surprised me by laughing. “You truly are irredeemable, Boss.”

  “On the Census Bureau beside religion, I put Jewish Sith Lord.”

  Diabloman looked up. “What happened to Other Gary?”

  “He’s finished,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I owed him for saving Mandy’s soul but needed to kill him for everything else he did. So I gave him his deepest wish, and then took his life before he could enjoy it. I don’t know where Death sent him post-mortem, but I doubt it’s pleasant.”

  Truth be told, I was willing to spare a moment of pity for Other Gary. He’d been insane rather than evil. OK, well, he’d been both. He was the kind of fundamentalist Knight Templar nutter who left me feeling that the side of good wasn’t nearly as superior as the so-called evildoers. For all the good he’d done, he’d been blinded by the fact that a million people wasn’t simply a statistic that could be used to justify a single tragedy. At least, that’s what I told myself. In any case, I was going to try not to think about the fact that I’d killed myself twice in one day, and just move on.

  “I see,” Diabloman said. “Well, I’m glad he’s defeated.”

  I patted Diabloman on the back. “Come on, let’s get going. We have a whole new world to enjoy.”

  “The Society of Superheroes still controls the United States.”

  I paused. “Gabrielle has already been declared to be a terrorist, along with all of her cohorts. They still believe that story that she was replaced all those years ago.”

  “Or it’s more convenient to believe so. Heroes have feet of clay just like villains have feelings of love and companionship.”

  “Maybe. In any case, her war will continue.”

  “And ours?”

  I didn’t answer and let him get dressed. He was soon wearing a red spandex wrestling suit that fit him quite well.

  “Listen, about all the stuff you told me?” I said. “You know, how you didn’t want to be brought back to life? I’m not going to say I’m sorry I did it. I’ve lost enough people today.”

  Not just Cloak, though his loss was the harshest. Kerri had told me she was moving out and wished me the best, but to give her two weeks’ warning before I visited in the future. I brought too much chaos and destruction to her life. Mister Inventor had decided to go with her. Apparently, having noticed Cindy’s desire to reunite with me, he decided to mack on my
sister instead. Kerri seemed OK with it, too, despite her ghostly marriage. I would have to think of some terrible brotherly vengeance to wreak on them. Either that or be happy because someone had emerged from this better than they started.

  “Please forget it,” Diabloman said. “I was close to death and ready to accept it. The weight of my actions against Other Gary and the rest of the universe weighed on me. I forgot that taking the easy way out was not a true redemption.”

  “It worked for Vader,” I said, shrugging. “Listen, D, I’m not sure being around me is going to give you the peace you want. I’m not exactly planning on being a Boy Scout from here on out. In fact, I’m pretty sure things are going to get worse before they get better.”

  “Is there a Spellbinder and Guitarist on the planet you created?” Diabloman asked.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, thinking about Diabloman’s sister and brother-in-law. The ones he’d murdered. “They’re married and have two kids. I checked up on them for you.”

  Diabloman took a deep breath. “Then it doesn’t matter if I murder, steal, or worse for you. I am capable of living with the guilt now, thanks to you.”

  I was tempted to point out that they weren’t necessarily the ones he murdered. I had no idea how souls, magic, and super-science worked with alternate realities. What I’d done was a miracle, and I was no better equipped to explain it than anyone else. Instead, I just said, “If that’s the way you want it, sure. Your wife and child will be happy to see you.”

  “Children,” Diabloman corrected. “My wife had a son while you were gone.”

  I smiled and put my hand on his shoulder. “Congratulations.”