by C. T. Phipps
“I don’t believe you,” Psychoslinger said, sounding conflicted. “I think I’ll carve the truth out of you.”
“Fine by me,” I said, showing no fear.
Psychoslinger hesitated.
I’d ruined his buzz.
I pointed down the hall. “We’ve got a job to complete, though. Get the Power Nullifier, give it to Tom, kill Ultragod, and get out of here. After that, you could try to kill me but, let’s face it, Psychoslinger, would I really be this calm if I didn’t have an ace up my sleeve?”
Psychoslinger stared at me.
Then dropped me.
“You were in the archvillains wing,” Psychoslinger said, muttering. “I’ve been at this for years and they haven’t put me there. They say I’m a serial killer. Which is complete garbage. I am a SPREE KILLER and mass-murderer, dammit.”
“The Society gives no respect,” I said, getting up and dusting myself off. “Ready to go kill the world’s most powerful hero?”
“Hell yes!”
“Gary, where are you going with this?” Cloak asked.
“I have no idea.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Things go from Bad to Worse (It’s a Frequent thing)
Psychoslinger and I continued past the bodies of the dead New Avalon staff he’d created while searching for me, heading up a flight of stairs to a long hallway which ended in a single doorway. It was here our journey would end. According to Cloak, who was willing to help me in hopes of defeating Psychoslinger, this was Ultragod’s room. Walking up to the doorway, I saw a large metal box with a set of controls just to the left of the solid steel door.
It was the Society of Superheroes’ version of a common door lock, preventing anyone but authorized personnel from entering. I was authorized to move through this place with impunity but, apparently, that didn’t extend to Ultragod’s quarters. I wonder if he suspected his daughter might try and break her ex-boyfriend out of prison or if he’d just changed the locks recently.
Psychoslinger suggested we kidnap one of the local technicians and force him to open it for us, but I didn’t think that was the best option. Psychoslinger would kill any who helped us as soon as their usefulness ended and probably before.
I was tempted to turn myself in, but I hadn’t seen anyone yet who Psychoslinger couldn’t kill outright. Instead, I’d just let him direct me and done my best to keep us stealthy as I struggled to figure out a way to stop someone immune to my powers.
“Will you help me here?” I asked Cloak.
“Follow my lead,” Cloak replied. “Start by unscrewing the panel then…”
With that, he gave me precise instructions on how to hack the terminal. I worked for half an hour on hacking the terminal, finally bandaging two wires together which caused the door to open with a whoosh.
Psychoslinger stared at me. “That was brilliant! Where did you learn to do that?”
“I’m a mad scientist in addition to being a sorcerer. I have a secret fortress filled with android servants underneath the South Pole.”
“I want one of those!” Psychoslinger clapped his hands. It was like he wasn’t threatening to kill me in order to make me go along with his plans. “Tell me how!”
“Later,” I said, giving a dismissive wave before heading into Ultragod’s room.
The interior was a wonderland equal to the Night Tower. There were advanced-looking devices, alien artifacts, glass cases, and a number of statues which looked like they should belong in ancient Rome. It was bigger on the inside than on the outside—taking advantage of the “uncertain technological properties” available to the Society of Superheroes. A giant hologram of the galaxy hovered near the ceiling, generated by a number of glowing crystal pyramids at the base of the floor. Ultragod had an interesting sense of style.
“Amazing,” I whispered. “I need to take everything here.”
“No.”
“Oh hush.”
“This is boring,” Psychoslinger said. “I was hoping we’d get to see Ultragoddess. Killing Ultragod’s daughter would make me the most feared supervillain in the world. Well, you know, aside from you and Tom.” Great, now he was attempting to butter me up. The fact he was threatening to kill Gabrielle should have made me angry but I imagined Psychoslinger trying and it made me laugh. It amused me to think of the myriad ways Gabrielle would tear him apart. Unfortunately, she wasn’t here and I was left alone with the psychopath who outclassed me in every possible way. “Rule Number One.”
“You could try killing him with your intangibility powers,” Cloak said.
“Let’s call that Plan B,” I said back to him.
“What’s Plan A?” Cloak asked.
“I’ll tell you when I think of it,” I replied.
Psychoslinger threw up his hands in frustration. “Man, who knew being a supervillain could be such a drag. You know, I think I’m going to abandon them when I get back down to the Earth. I’m going to kill a bunch of superheroes, their families, and their dogs too.”
“Really? Their dogs?” I asked, disgusted.
“Okay, that may be going too far, but anything non-canine,” Psychoslinger surprised me by saying. Then again, psychopaths could often bond with animals more easily than with people, I’d read somewhere. It was the one quality which hinted they might be more than complete monsters.
Other psychos tortured animals just fine, too.
So maybe I was reaching.
“Let’s find the teleporter as it’s our chief priority,” I said. “After that, we can get the Power Nullifier.”
“Smooth. He’ll never see through that plan. I’ve underestimated your skill as a criminal mastermind.” I could feel the sarcasm.
“Sure!” Psychoslinger said.
I tried not to smile. Instead, I thought smug smart-alecky remarks at my cloak. “You were saying?”
“I’m beginning to think I’ve overestimated the intelligence of the average supervillain.”
“Supervillains are a cowardly and… something,” I said. “I forget the rest.”
“Be wary,” the Nightwalker said. “Psychoslinger is likely to turn on you at any moment.”
“No kidding.” I headed over to a device which looked like a set from the original Sixties Star Trek. “I think this is the teleporter. Either that or Ultragod is a friend of Gene Roddenberry.”
“You’re right,” a booming voice said above me. “On both counts.”
I looked up at Ultragod, hovering a foot above my head, his cape trailing behind him.
“Well, crap.” I said, staring up at Ultragod. “Cloak, I’m about to get my butt kicked, aren’t I?”
“Indeed.”
Ultragod punched me through a set of glass display cases before I could react. Ultragod was upon me a second later, this time punching me through a set of purple alien pots. By the time I landed on the floor, my back was filled with shards of glass and pottery. I’d been beaten before, sometimes to the point of unconsciousness, during my angry youth.
It was nowhere near this bad.
“I had hopes for you.” Ultragod floated towards me. He conjured a gigantic fist made of energy which picked me up between its fingers. “I thought you were different. Yet, here you are, working with monsters like Psychoslinger and Tom Terror. The choices we make define us. I’m sorry to say yours have revealed your true character. I was hoping better, given what Gabrielle said about you.”
“Pfft.” I spit blood from my mouth. “This is not what it looks like.”
Oh God. Did I actually say that?
“Ninety-seven New Avalon citizens are dead. Several superheroes are critically injured, a few may not make it. That’s not counting the prisoners killed in the resulting battles or by their fellows. Do you have anything to say before I pound you and Psychoslinger into next month?”
“How about... goodbye?” Psychoslinger lifted up a strange multi-barrel gun with dozens of blinking lights. A blast of white energy shot forth from it and struck Ultragod in the ba
ck.
The glowing fist holding me up dissipated as the superhero crumbled to the ground, clutching his chest as if his heart was exploding.
“What the... hell?” I struggled to get up and fell to the ground. I was still hurting from Ultragod’s attack.
“I found the Power Nullifier in one of the display cases. Just look at him, he’s crawling on the ground like a baby. This is so awesome.” Psychoslinger laughed, shaking the weapon like a toy.
I struggled to get up, falling to the ground a second after I got to my feet. “Yeah, awesome.”
Well, that was unexpected.
And really bad.
Ultragod looked terrible. After being blasted with the Power Nullifier, he looked like he’d come down with a severe case of the flu. Worse, he looked like he was dying. In an instant, the tide had shifted and now the world’s greatest superhero was at our nonexistent mercy. Which is exactly what I didn’t want.
“Gary, you have to help him. Tom Terror built the Power Nullifer as a weapon to kill Ultragod, not disable him. Without his powers, Ultragod will be killed by his inherent radiation within minutes.” I seemed to recall Tom Terror having tried something similar on Gabrielle way-back-when, only for it not to work because the Ultraforce was inherent to her.
I wanted to help, I did, but I wasn’t sure how. God almighty. Why was reality doing this to me? You know, aside from all the horrible stuff I’d done in the past few days. Psychoslinger placed the Power Nullifier beside Ultragod, taunting the Lord of Light with the reverse setting being just out of reach. The weapon looked like an oversized children’s toy yet it had reduced the strongest man in the world to a shivering wreck. Psychoslinger kicked the legendary superhero across the jaw, conjuring a psychic dagger before driving it into his left hand and doing the same to his right. The wounds weren’t lethal, but they were enough to cause Ultragod to cry out.
“You want to join in, Merciless?” Psychoslinger said, giggling. “I figure there are all sorts of things we can do to him without killing him.”
Somehow, between here and when he’d ambushed me in the hall, we’d become friends again. Or he was going to kill me soon so there was no point in not playing with me first.
“I’ll pass. I’ve got a teleporter to catch. You, however, knock yourself out.” I needed to find a weapon to get rid of this bastard. My back tooth came loose as I ran my tongue over it and spit it out along with a mouth full of blood. Ultragod had cleaned my clock but good.
“Thanks!” Psychoslinger gave me two thumbs up. “You’re all right.”
“Your approval fills me with shame but I’ve got better things to do than stand in your way.” My eyes searched the trophy room around me for something which might help. There were alien flowers, weapons which I didn’t know how to access through their casings, and holograms of Gabrielle with various boyfriends. About half of them were of her and me.
Awkward.
Psychoslinger picked up Ultragod by his tights, hoisting him up to eye-level. Looking into the superhero’s eyes, he said, “I wonder what it would do for my rep if I cut the face off the world’s greatest superhero? How beloved will you be if your face scares small children?”
I decided I had no idea what half of this crap was and I’d just have to improvise. “Psychoslinger?”
“Yeah?” my psychotic companion said.
“I’m actually on his side,” I said, deciding to distract him. Maybe Ultragod could think of something. Maybe Psychoslinger would kill us both.
Either way.
I was a supervillain.
Which meant I did what I wanted.
Not what was smart.
Psychoslinger seemed to understand what was happening because he dropped Ultragod and threw a pair of psychic daggers at me. I was already turning intangible by that point and slipped into the floor before levitating up behind him. Grabbing a humanitarian of the year award from the wall, I attempted to put it inside his chest as I done with the Extreme.
“Fun times over, Psychoslinger,” I said, before noticing there was nothing inside Psychoslinger’s chest. It was like he was made of electricity. “Crap.”
“I’m made of psychic energy, you fool! There’s nothing you can do to stop me!”
“The one time I try to do something nice...” I trailed off, wincing.
“Albeit for the selfish reason of not wanting Gabrielle to hate you any more than Mandy would for letting the world’s greatest hero die.”
“Not the time, Cloak!”
Spinning around, Psychoslinger tried to take my head off with a psychic scimitar. I ducked, not wanting to know whether or not the psycho’s weapons could hurt me in my intangible state.
“Bitch!” Psychoslinger hissed. “Stand still!”
“I’ll pass,” I replied, deciding discretion was the better part of valor. Using my intangibility to pass through objects around me, I dodged attack after attack. One of the hurled blades managed to nick the back of my leg, knocking my feet out from under me. I noticed I was once more at the teleporter, directly under the control system in fact.
“You had me fooled, didn’t you? You had me thinking you were one of us, but you were really one of them! Naughty-naughty!” Psychoslinger walked at me, smiling as he conjured a series of six-inch claws on the ends of his fingers. It made him look like one of the Tomorrow Society’s villains.
“Tell me,” I whispered to Cloak, coughing, “how do I work this thing?”
“Push the green button and turn the dials up to maximum. Then hit the outline where Psychoslinger is in relation to the room.”
“Gotcha.” I smiled.
Desperation made my hands move unnaturally fast, allowing me to finish the operation within a fraction of what time it would normally have taken. If I had moved any slower, though, I’m sure Psychoslinger would have taken my head off.
Speaking of which, Psychoslinger stared as a glowing ‘particle’ affect appeared around him, followed by a weird static noise. For a second, he looked confused, and then terrified. Seconds later, he was gone.
I wanted to say something witty but I was too tired to. “Okay, what the hell, did I just do to him?”
“You teleported him without any destination, so I suspect his atoms are scattered across Earth’s atmosphere.”
“Good.” I coughed. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”
“I always tried to save life, even that of supervillain’s. This is the first life I’ve taken since defecting from the Brotherhood.”
“Are you okay?”
“Somewhat.”
“That’s all we can ask for.”
I limped my way over to Ultragod. The world’s greatest superhero was bleeding on the ground, looking half-dead. Picking up the Power Nullifier, I pulled the only lever on it to the opposite of its original position before firing another blast into Ultragod’s chest. The superhero started looking better almost immediately, getting up off the ground within moments.
“You saved my life.” Ultragod sounded surprised. “Thank you.”
“You are now my hostage.” I aimed the gun at his chest.
“What?” Ultragod stared.
“What?” Cloak joined him.
“With this positronic Merciless Gun, I am holding the world’s greatest superhero hostage! Unless the sum of one million dollars is delivered to my favorite charity, namely me, I will use it to obliterate you!”
“Lancel, is he out of his mind?” Ultragod asked, looking at my cape.
“That would explain a great deal.”
“Okay, I want you to set the teleporter so it takes me back to Falconcrest City.” Poking him in chest with it, I gestured for him to go to the device.
“You realize the battery contained just enough energy for two shots, right?” Ultragod pointed at the futuristic ‘gun’ in my hands.
“Obey the Merciless Gun!” I shook the useless weapon. “Or you’ll be obliterated!”
Seconds later, Tom Terror zoomed in through the door.
“Ah, you survived. I must admit, I’m surprised.”
Perfect timing.
Now I had to deal with him too.
The guy who was more terrifying to me than Magog and Psychoslinger put together.
“He’s just a man,” Cloak said.
“So were you,” I replied.
“Don’t worry,” I said, hoisting around the gun. “He’s already taken a blast. He’s doomed. You, of course, should be the one to finish him off.”
Ultragod fell to one knee, faking weakness. I was glad he’d finally copped to my plan.
Tom Terror looked at me. “I’m surprised. I thought you’d betray us to his daughter at the first opportunity. That was why I selected you, after all. I recognized you from my research. You were my Judas Goat to lure her to her death.”
“Sorry that didn’t work out,” I said.
“Are you?” Tom Terror said, revaluating me. “Hmm, I suppose the only emotion strong enough to replace love is hate. You will be able to relish your lover’s tears as you play a vital role in the death of her father.”
Wow, Tom was a nutcase. “It’s all I ever wanted.”
“What happened to Psychoslinger?” Tom asked.
“Psychoslinger decided I was a threat, either that or he got bored. I’ve got him covered, though. This gun is so powerful even Ultragod would be destroyed should I fire it.”
“Gary, what are you doing?”
“Evil!” I snapped, waving around my useless gun. “Work with me, Cloak.”
Tom seemed uninterested in my random mutterings. “Well, no one will miss Psychoslinger anyway. Still, his loss affects my plans somewhat. I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for New Zealand,” Tom said, landing nearby Ultragod. He looked pleased with himself, not even bothering to check whether Ultragod was really down for the count.
“Yeah.” I smiled. “Sure.”
Ultragod smashed Tom Terror in the face with an energy construct boxing glove. It came so fast, Tom didn’t have time to react. A second later, a gigantic hand smashed Tom flat, creating a little cartoon-like impression of his body in the floor. Taking a look inside the foot deep hole, I saw Tom was still alive, albeit barely. I was tempted to finish him off. Instead, I decided to let the heroes deal with it. I didn’t want a zombie Tom Terror coming after me like the Ice Cream Man did.