by C. T. Phipps
Then she brought Akuma down a few yards away from us, smashing him a foot into the pavement, creating a pair of scissors around his neck. The look in Gabrielle’s eyes was one of pure hatred and a willingness to kill. At the time I thought it was Akuma’s threat to make her his bride, which was enough to justify his execution in my opinion, but I would later put together that she was just as angry he’d threatened me.
Yet as angry as Ultragodddess was, she held back. Not because Akuma didn’t deserve to be killed or because she expected anything good to come from sparing him, but because she was a superhero. Heroes did their very best to inspire people to be better than they are, even if it meant not doing the smart or pragmatic thing. Chaining him up in Ultraforce bonds and sending him flying to the Society of Superheroes’ base on the moon, she took a moment to look at me.
“Are you alright, citizen?” Gabrielle asked, disguising her voice and covering her face with a glowing white nimbus.
“Sure,” I said, waving to her. “Thank you.”
“Stay safe,” Ultragoddess’ voice cracked, letting loose a lot more affection and love than she should have.
She then took off into the air.
“Well, that was weird,” I said, observing her disappear.
“No kidding,” Cindy said.
Seconds later, Gabrielle emerged from the side of the restaurant, covered in sweat and looking like she’d been punched.
I got up. “What happened?”
Gabrielle said, “Someone hit me in the face while fleeing. Also, the bathroom has like no air conditioning.”
I blinked, feeling an odd fuzziness in my thinking process. “Well, that’s, uh, unfortunate. I’m glad you’re all right, though.”
Already, the forming bruise on the side of her face was starting to dissipate as the Ultraforce healed over her wounds. Her masquerade wasn’t always this effective and there had been times she’d come home bloody and battered, leaving me to take care of her for the better part of a week. Those times I’d never questioned what she’d been up to had been one of the few reasons our relationships had survived. I’d speculated on her being involved in everything from underground female fight clubs to extreme sports. Even that she was a superhero.
Just not that she was Ultragoddess.
That she’d only been willing to tell me after I’d proposed to her.
Her response had to been to break up with me.
After saying yes.
Gabrielle was the mother of all mixed signals senders.
“Gary is sleeping with Ultragoddess,” Cindy said, finally putting down her tray.
“I am not!” I said.
Gabrielle just burst out laughing.
Chapter Eight
Where the World Gets a Whole Lot Darker
Gabrielle continued to stare at me as I remembered that day and all the others we’d shared together. Gabrielle had been the woman I’d expected to spend my life with before Mandy and our lives just hadn’t gone in that direction.
The strangest feeling I had looking at her now? I didn’t feel the same way I used to.
I didn’t love her the way I did Mandy.
Or Cindy.
Crap.
I was in love with Cindy.
“That’s hardly a thing to go ‘crap’ about.”
“Speak for yourself.”
Noticing Ultragoddess looked like she was ready to punch me in the face, I said, “Wait, could you repeat that? You don’t think I’m who I appear to be?”
Looking up in the sky, she turned back to me with wild eyes. “I need you to prove you’re actually Gary Karkofsky. I mean, I can hear Cloak, and that’s a point in your favor but this has been a very strange day.”
“Excuse me?”
“Tell me something only you would know!” Gabrielle said, causing a white-green glow to appear around her right hand as she drew it into a fist.
I raised my hands, now alarmed. “I was motivated to become a supervillain by my brother’s death.”
“Not good enough!” Gabrielle shouted. It was clear she wasn’t thinking clearly.
I took a step back. “When we used to do ‘Opposites Attract’ for karaoke night, I made you sing the cat verses.”
Gabrielle deflated and caused the glow to fade from her hand. . “Okay, well, maybe you are—”
“For years, I thought Madonna’s ‘Like A Virgin’ was about how the sex was awkward and unsatisfying.”
“Gary!”
“Sorry! I tend to babble and make bad jokes whenever I’m upset.” Being threatened by your ex-girlfriend, dumped by your henchwoman, and however the hell you’d describe the Mandy situation had made this a day perfect for bad jokes.
“It’s you alright.” Gabrielle pulled me close and wrapped her arms around me, embracing me. She pressed her face against my shoulder, holding me for comfort. It burned a little because she was still hot from the crater she’d fallen into.
I hugged her back. “What’s wrong?”
Gabrielle continued to hold me. “It’s awful. My father....is dead.”
Oh...wow.
“No,” Cloak whispered. “Not Moses. Not Ultragod.”
I hated being right. Ultragod had been my first suspect when Death had suggested one of the great heroes had died but it hadn’t felt real. Suspecting and knowing were two different things. Hearing it from the daughter of said individual and a close personal friend was something else entirely.
Ultragod had been the champion of the people for eighty years. He’d smashed slum lords, dismantled the KKK, brought down Hitler, humbled Stalin, and came within inches of making the world a paradise on several occasions. In the end, he’d always been prevented from fulfilling his dream by monsters like Tom Terror, Ultramind, the Great Beasts, Entropicus, and Pyronnus.
It was hard to believe he was gone.
“The world is doomed without him,” Cloak said, devastated. “He was the bulwark against the darkness.”
“Ultragod was an inspiration to hundreds of other heroes, Cloak. Ultragoddess are every bit as skilled and talented as him,” I thought back to him.
“Moses was unique.”
“So is Gabrielle.”
“Thank you,” Gabrielle said, once again displaying her ability to hear the Reaper’s Cloak. It was an ability she’d shared with her father.
“I’m sorry,” I said, hugging her close. “What happened?”
Ultragoddess pulled away. “I don’t know.”
“You...don’t...” I paused, not wanting to interrogate her. “Well, I’m sure we’ll find out soon. There will be state funerals, national days of mourning, hundreds of examinations—”
“No one knows he’s dead.”
I blinked. “Did he die in space? Another dimension?”
“No. Everyone thinks he’s still alive. He’s currently heading up the Society of Superheroes Annual Conference to discuss their role for the year.”
“Okay. Then how—”
“Moses Anders was found dead in Atlas City. He was shot with a gold ultranium bullet.”
Oh. That would do it.
“So no one in the Society but you knows his secret identity?”
“My father’s was known only to the Nightwalker, you, me, my mother, and Guinevere. Guinevere is currently in Fairyland, hunting down Morgana Le Fey and Balor. We don’t expect her back this year.”
“So…someone is impersonating your father as Ultragod.”
“Yes.”
“And when you tried to tell other people—”
“I was revealed to be a shape-shifting imposter or clone. I’m not sure which. I didn’t really stop to ask when all of my friends and associates tried to kill me.”
I stared at her. “Kill you? That doesn’t seem like them.”
Gabrielle took a deep breath. “It’s not. I suspect whoever is behind the new Ultragod, they’re exerting a subtle influence on the rest of the Society. They’re meaner and more definitive than they should be.”
“You mean they’re killers.”
“It sure looks that way.”
My brother Keith had been a supervillain, albeit one who was never as successful as me at it. Known as Stingray: The Underwater AssassinTM, despite never killing anyone, he had ended up beaten up and in jail more times than I could count. Eventually, he decided to go straight and try to salvage some form of normal life from the crooked path it had taken. That hadn’t stopped a wannabe superhero calling himself Shoot-Em-Up from killing him and a number of other retired or unarmed supervillains.
I had a very low opinion of them, for obvious reasons.
“This nightmare grows,” Cloak said. “We need to get her inside. The magical wards on the house will muffle her presence, assuming she managed to cover her tracks.”
I’d eventually tracked Shoot-Em-Up down and shot him the way Cloak described earlier, getting away with it thanks to the fact that Theodore Whitman had made the poor decision of having a minimum of security while he indulged in his passion for underaged prostitutes. Shoot-Em-Up had been lionized by the media during his short-lived career, though, and triggered an age of murderous anti-heroes that still reverberated through the system.
The Society of Superheroes had been torn over the past few years over whether these anti-heroes were to be condemned, embraced, or controlled. Unlike in comic books, most traditional superheroes would kill if it there were absolutely no other choice to save lives, but anti-heroes tended to embrace the role of judge, jury, and executioner. They didn’t want to be superpowered police or rescue workers so much as soldiers.
I also had a very low opinion of them, for obvious reasons.
“Yes, because they’re going to miss the big glowing comet that hit my backyard.”
“We’ll have to move quickly,” Gabrielle muttered.
“I agree.” I hated asking my next question but I had to be absolutely sure. “Are you sure he’s dead and not, I dunno, kidnapped or in another dimension or something? This sort of thing has happened before.”
If Ultragod was—and I hated using this comparison—really most sincerely dead, then it was the end of an age. He’d been the bedrock of superheroism since the thirties and the measure by which they all judged themselves. It just wouldn’t be the same without him.
Gabrielle nodded. “I sensed his spirit joining the Ultraforce the same way so many other Ultraheroes of the past have done.”
“I’ll pretend I know what that means.”
“I can feel him inside my soul like my other dead relatives.”
“Oh.”
“I know what that’s like.” I gave her another hug and started leading her to my kitchen door.
“You don’t have to worry about the Society of Superheroes showing up on your doorstep, at least for a few hours. I managed to fake an Ultraforce explosion over the Himalayas with one of my constructs. It’s not going to fool them for long, though, and when they start scanning the Earth then they’re probably going to find me—even with my stealth suit.”
I looked at her. “That’s your stealth suit?”
Gabrielle looked down at her attire. “Yeah, I may need to cover it up with something a little less ostentatious.”
“Just a little bit,” I said, reaching the door and heading on in. Kerri was trying to keep Lisa away in the next room. Which was probably a good idea given our present circumstances. ““What can I do to help?”
“You’re the only person I thought I could turn to.”
“I understand.”
It had been a smart idea coming here. My relationship with Gabrielle was a secret shared with precisely no one outside of our most trusted confidants: the Shadow Seven black ops team, Diabloman, Nightgirl, Cindy—okay, actually, it wasn’t a very good secret. Still, if Ultragod’s secret identity was secret, then so was Gabrielle’s and that meant our relationship was secret. After all, who in the world would suspect the World’s Most Beloved Kid-Heroine-Turned-Adult had dated one of the world’s most infamous supervillains?
“Most infamous would be stretching things.”
“Not the time, Cloak.”
“I offer my decades of service and skills as a detective to this cause. We have to find out who was responsible and put a stop to this.”
“No argument from me.”
Gabrielle continued. “I need your help, yours and Cindy’s and even your second-in-command Diabloman.”
It must have pained Gabrielle to say that since Diabloman had been a dire enemy of her teenage years when she was leader of the Texas Guardians. “With the superhero world compromised by whatever thing is impersonating my father, you’re the best hope I have for tracking down whoever killed my father. We need to find them, punish them, and foil whatever scheme they’re planning.”
I didn’t say that whatever scheme they had planned had already taken a great step forward by killing Ultragod. People had been trying to kill him for the better part of a century and doing so altered the power balance of the world forever. I believed Gabrielle could pick up the slack and the rest of the superheroes, but that didn’t mean the world wasn’t a far darker and more unpleasant place thanks to this event.
“Perhaps now is the time to consider becoming a hero for real.”
“You shuddap,” I said to Cloak.
“I agree with Cloak,” Gabrielle said, taking a seat down to the damaged breakfast table. “Now is a time for heroism.”
“Now is a time for friendship. Everyone on Earth will want to help you avenge Ultragod, I’m sure.” It wasn’t a good time to recruit Cindy but, really, I had faith she’d put aside her feelings to help deal with this.
“We should also try and talk with Tom Terror,” Gabrielle suggested. “Get his input on all this.”
“Okay, everyone on Earth but him.” I blinked, not sure I heard that right. “You want to recruit the Nazi scientist?”
“He’s done of a lot of evil since then. He’s not really a Nazi scientist so much as a mad scientist in general.”
“Jewish supervillain,” I said, pointing to myself and explaining why any defense of a former Nazi was talking to a wall.
“Point taken.”
“Tom Terror also has tried to kill you, your father, your mother, your father’s best friend, your father’s boss, and everyone even tangentially associated with your family. He is, as I know you know, a very bad person. Which, given who is speaking, is saying something. Why in the world would you want to speak with him? He’s probably the one who killed Ultragod.”
“Tom Terror is one of the few people I can confirm didn’t kill Ultragod.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because if he did, he’d be announcing it to the entirety of the world,” Gabrielle said, disgusted. “He might be able to provide some insight into the possible suspects, though. He’s still imprisoned in Atlas City Penitentiary after his transfer from the moon. Whatever you did when you blasted him with the Power Nullifier has left him kind of batty.”
“Or so he wants you to think.”
This was a bad idea.
That was when Lisa managed to get past Kerri and walked through the King to get into the kitchen. Holding her cellphone, she started to take pictures of Gabrielle. “Holy crap, you really do know Ultragoddess! This is awesome! I can’t wait to post this on—”
I grabbed her cellphone from her. “You can’t share these on Insta-whatever or Facewho.”
“What?” Lisa stared. “Why?”
I tried to figure out what would dissuade Lisa from social media and drew up a blank.
“Because a bunch of people will come and kill us,” Gabrielle said, simply. “I’m in hiding and if people know where I am then there’s nothing that will be able to prevent them from doing so. So, please, don’t do that.”
Lisa blinked then nodded. “Okay, I’ll go upstairs and do my homework.”
She then walked off, robotically.
I stared at her, confused, then glared. “Dammit, do NOT mesmerize my niece!”
&n
bsp; “Sorry! It was just the first thing that came to mind!”
“Brainwashing should not be the first thing that comes to mind!”
Kerri proceeded to head into the kitchen and started cleaning up the mess on the floor. “I assume breakfast is over?”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” I said, frowning. “Uh, Kerri, this is Ultragoddess, Ultragoddess, Kerri.” I tried not to let there be any hints that Gabrielle my ex-girlfriend whom Kerri knew was also Ultragoddess, the world’s greatest superheroine.
Kerri extended her hand to Gabrielle and shook it. “It’s nice to meet you, again, Gabby. I’m sorry you and my brother didn’t work out.”
“Ah, you saw through her disguise, huh?” I said, grimacing.
“Not really,” Kerri said, shrugging. “Whenever Gabby and I met while you were dating, she mesmerized me to not make the connection to her secret identity. However, my spooks just told me the truth.”
Gabrielle frowned. “Ugh. Well, keep it to yourself would you? Secret identities are something some superheroes choose to be without but not something I intend to be without.”
Looking up into the sky out the windows, I said, “Yeah, who knows what the consequences of being targeted by a bunch of sinister unknown people could do to your sense of security?”
“You’re talking about the twenty-million bounty on your head?” Gabrielle asked.
I did a double take. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, that was issued by President Omega last week. His Department of Superhuman Security contacts has been getting in touch with mercs left and right for it.”
Well...crap.
“Why not just arrest me?”
“Well, you did kind of bankrupt his corporation. The one he’d intended to return to after his term ended. I think he wants you dead.”
Chapter Nine
Yet Another Flashback
I knew the event she was referring to. It had been a few months ago, when Cindy had managed to persuade me to try and get back into the game of being a supervillain. The site of our prospective heist? The Falconcrest City Stock Exchange.