A Karma Girl Christmas

by Jennifer Estep

  He winked and wet his lips with his tongue, telling me exactly what he was thinking.

  Somehow, I managed not to shudder, even though my inner voice was wailing at me that I was in big, big trouble. Yeah, I didn’t need my empathic powers to figure that one out.

  The ubervillain smoothed back my hair and walked around me. “First things first. We’ll have to get you some extensions. Your hair is way too short. I like long, flowing locks on my ladies. We’ll have to get rid of all that silver spandex, too, and get you something in a nice animal print. Leopard, I think, in a pink-and-black pattern. And slim you down a bit. Slave girls should be svelte, and you, my dear, are definitely not svelte. Not to mention your regrettable lack of oomph up top.”

  I rolled my eyes. If he wanted svelte and oomphy breasts, he should go after Fiera again. All the slimming down in the world would never give me the supermodel figure and perfect boobs Fiera had.

  “So you’re the one who decked me inside Oodles o’ Stuff,” I said. “Why are you working with the Mintilator?”

  Caveman Stan shrugged. “Old Minty makes some good points about us not being taken seriously as ubervillains. I mean, folks still talk about the Terrible Triad, and no one has seen or heard from any of them in more than a year now. But me and Minty? We’ve been around since before most of today’s so-called villains were hiding their pimply teenage faces with their very first masks, but we get never get any press. No calendars, no photo shoots, no video games, no action figures, nothing. And we’re out there every single day, pounding the pavement and doing bad things. But do we get any recognition? Hell, no. Well, that’s all going to change now. You gotta admit, stealing the tree and all those toys was a stroke of genius. It’s the kind of crime that people will be talking about for years. Why, me and Minty will go down in the annals of ubervillain history for this heist alone.”

  What was this? D-list villains unite? I felt like I was trapped in a really bad, really cheesy holiday special. All we needed now were some evil singing elves, and the bizarreness would be complete.

  More footsteps clacked on the concrete, and the Mintilator stepped out from behind the Christmas tree, striding across the warehouse toward us. Now, the ubervillain’s lips were turned up instead of down, and he was positively beaming with delighted evil.

  “Ah, Stan, I see you’ve been entertaining our guest,” the Mintilator said. “I’m sorry we wound up with Karma Girl. I know you were hoping that it would be Fiera guarding the toys this year.”

  Fiera, Fiera, Fiera. What was I? One of the Invisible Ingénues compared to her?

  Stan shrugged his massive shoulders. “Oh, she’ll do, I suppose. In the end, one girl’s just like another.”

  “That’s the spirit.” The Mintilator turned to me. “Well, Karma Girl, what do you think? Does my plan sound so outlandish now?”

  I sighed, knowing what he expected me to say. “You’ll never get away with this,” I muttered the cliché line.

  The Mintilator threw back his head and laughed. “But I already have. Come on, Stan. You can play with your new doll later. Right now, we need to get to work. We don’t have long before the Fearless Five will come looking for her and the tree.”

  The Mintilator and Caveman Stan both moved over to the Christmas tree. While I’d been unconscious, the ubervillains had apparently been hard at work stripping the toys off the branches. Dolls, trucks, clothes, and more were stacked on a nearby metal work table, while others had already been packed into shipping boxes. The ubervillains walked around the tree and started discussing how best to go about getting the remaining toys off the branches and which ones they wanted to put up for Internet auction first. They focused in on a few video game consoles and laptop computers. Stan started ripping off the ribbons that secured the items to the branches and passed the electronics over to the Mintilator, who snapped a photo of every item with a digital camera before labeling it and placing it either on the work table or in a shipping box. I had to hand it to the ubervillains—they were nothing if not organized in their larceny.

  The villains were so busy talking and working that they didn’t notice the faint tap-tap-tapping that whispered through the warehouse—but I did. My eyes narrowed, and I slowly turned my head to the left to see Lulu peering at me from around the corner of a stack of shipping crates.

  The computer hacker grinned and waved at me. Somehow, she’d managed to track the Mintilator and Caveman Stan, following them to the warehouse.

  My cell phone, I thought. I could feel it resting in the hidden pocket in the side of my boot. With her computer skills, it would have been easy for Lulu to use my cell phone to pinpoint my location. No doubt she’d alerted the others, which meant that Fiera, Mr. Sage, and Hermit were probably on their way here. I might have wanted to handle the ubervillains by myself, but right now, I’d take all the help I could get. All I had to do in the meantime was get free and make sure the Mintilator and Caveman Stan were still here when my teammates arrived—and that Lulu and I were still alive.

  Lulu started to creep forward, but I shook my head, telling her to stay put. There was just too much open space for her to cover to get to me, and the ubervillains were bound to see her if she tried. Lulu stayed where she was, but she didn’t seem happy about it. Instead, she started looking around, probably searching for a metal pipe or something to help me get out of these chains—but I already had an idea about that.

  I started squinting at Caveman Stan, who was still pulling toys off the tree. It took only an instant for me to see the black waves of energy pulsing around his muscular body. The waves felt like raw, brute force, and I reached out for his energy and grabbed it for my own.

  Immediately, this unbelievable power filled my body, like I had the strength to do anything—even break the solidium chains that held me down. I kept focusing on Caveman Stan, grabbing more and more of his energy, his power, and making it my own.

  It took a few seconds, but the ubervillain finally felt what I was doing, felt his strength being siphoned away. He staggered back a step and turned around and glared at me.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing—”

  But it was too late. By that point, the energy had built in my body. With a roar, I unleashed that energy, ripping the chains off the chair arms and legs and causing the whole thing to collapse. I kicked away the pieces of the chair and scrambled to my feet. I wasn’t completely free, because the metal cuffs and links still dangled from my arms and legs, but at least I wasn’t tied down anymore.

  “Get her!” the Mintilator hissed at the other ubervillain.

  Caveman Stan let out a loud bellow, thumped his chest a few times, and ran in my direction. But I was still holding onto those black waves of energy that pulsed around him, still holding onto his power, which meant I was still as strong as he was.

  Caveman Stan swung his fist at me, but I was able to avoid the blow. Stan drew back his fist for another pass, but I whirled around, building up enough momentum to raise the heavy chains and smash them into his face.

  One of the links hit him just right, breaking his nose underneath his black mask. Blood gushed out of Stan’s nose, adding garish red drops to his horrible, zebra-striped toga.

  “You’ll pay for that, slave girl!” Stan bellowed.

  “I’m not your stupid girl!” I yelled back. “And you could at least be politically correct and call them slave women!”

  The ubervillain reached for me again. Once more, I dodged his blows. Only this time, one of my boots got caught in the dangling chains. I stumbled back, and Stan came after me. The ubervillain swung at me again, and all I could do was hold up my arm to ward off his blow—

  “Duck!” I heard Lulu yell behind me.

  I ducked.

  WHACK!

  Her cane arced through the air where my head had been a second before. Lulu timed her blow just right, her cane slamming into the side of Caveman Stan’s temple. The Baseballer himself couldn’t have executed a more perfect swing.<
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  The ubervillain’s eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and he stumbled away. I chased after him and smashed the chains into his face again. Stan took three more steps before he crashed to the dingy floor. He moaned once and twitched, like he was going to get up, but then, his whole body went limp. The ubervillain was out cold.

  I hurried over to Lulu, who had gone down on one knee. She’d put everything she had into that swing, and I helped her get to her feet. I eyed her cane, which she still clutched in her hands. It looked simple enough, with a shiny black finish, a silver tip, and a curved silver handle, but I was willing to bet there was more to that cane than met the eye.

  “That’s a sturdy little device,” I said. “Want to tell me where you go it? Or do I even have to ask?”

  “It was an early Christmas present from Jasper,” Lulu said, grinning. “It’s painted to look like ebony, but really, it’s made of pure solidium. He also included a few extra features for me. There are some special buttons hidden in the handle.”

  By extra features, Lulu no doubt meant explosives, because her friend Jasper was Bigtime’s most notorious bomb maker.

  I shook my head and started to ask her where Fiera, Mr. Sage, and Hermit were, but Lulu’s dark eyes widened.

  “Duck!” Lulu shouted.

  I ducked again.

  That weird green gas sprayed through the air over my head and hit a metal table. Once again, the gas turned into a shimmering goo that immediately started shrinking whatever it came into contact with. By the time I got up on my feet, the table looked like it belonged in one of the dollhouses on the toy tree.

  “Drat!” The Mintilator cursed, shaking the gun he’d taken from Frost’s lab. “Empty already. But no matter.”

  The ubervillain threw away the gun. The glass tube on top of it shattered against the concrete floor, and a last bit of green gas puffed up into the air. Well, that was one less thing to worry about.

  But I had another—a ball of green acid coming my way. I ducked for a third time, and the acid whooshed past my head and slammed into the crates on the far side of the warehouse. The wood on the crates immediately disintegrated, dripping all over the floor like liquid splinters. Smoke boiled up from the crates, and the smell of spearmint filled the air, so sharp, clean, and fresh that it burned my lungs to breathe in the aroma.

  I scrambled to my feet and whirled around to find the Mintilator standing behind me, forming another glowing green ball with his hands. I’d been right before when I’d thought that the ubervillain had an acid-based power. Apparently, he was so minty-fresh that he’d melt the skin right off your bones.

  The Mintilator threw another acid ball at us, and I shoved Lulu out of the way. I rolled to my right and managed to pull myself back up onto my feet. I headed toward the ubervillain as fast as I could, my chains clanking like those attached to Marley’s ghost. I put myself in between the Mintilator and Lulu, who was struggling to crawl over to where her cane had fallen.

  “It’s over,” I said. “Stan’s down already, and the rest of the Fearless Five will be here any minute. Give up now, before I have to hurt you.”

  The Mintilator’s eyes narrowed with rage, his gaze just as green and glowy as the acid ball in his hands. “I don’t think so. I’ve worked too hard and come too far to let you ruin this for me now. This is it. My big score, my last hurrah, my retirement fund—and I’m not going to let some newbie superhero stop me now.”

  Newbie superhero? Anger pulsed through my body at the casual way he dismissed me. I’d show him exactly what a newbie superhero could do. I reached for the green waves shimmering around his body, even as the ubervillain drew back his hand to throw the acid ball at me.

  This time, I was quicker.

  I grabbed hold of the Mintilator’s power and used it to form my own ball, and we both threw acid at each other at the same time. But instead of tossing it at the ubervillain’s chest as he did with me, I aimed lower, going for his knees, hoping to take him by surprise and make it harder for him to avoid it. I ducked out the way of the acid he hurled at me, but the Mintilator wasn’t expecting the quick counterattack, and he wasn’t nearly so lucky—the acid hit him square in the balls, eating right through his costume.

  Needless to say, having acid sprayed all over your, ah, sensitive regions is a bit painful, even for an ubervillain.

  Make that excruciatingly painful, given how the Mintilator howled and howled and howled, dancing from one foot to the other. The ubervillain stumbled back, and his white cape wrapped around his legs. That was the proverbial straw. The Mintilator teetered back and forth, trying to find his footing, cursing and howling all the while. His boot caught in a crack in the concrete floor, and he slammed face-first into one of the solidium branches on the toy tree. I heard the crack of the impact all the way across the warehouse.

  The Mintilator slumped to the floor without another sound.

  I stood there, hunched over, my hands on my knees, trying to get my breath back. Taking on ubervillains was tough enough to start with. Doing it with thirty pounds of metal weighing me down hadn’t made it any easier—

  Bang-bang-bang!

  My head snapped up, and I wondered if there was yet a third ubervillain I’d somehow missed in all the confusion—one who was on his way to kill me right now.

  Instead of another ubervillain, the double doors leading out of the warehouse rattled, like someone was trying to get inside. Then, one of the doors caved in, sporting a distinctive, fist-like dent. The person on the other side drove a fist into the door again, this time punching right through the metal. Gloved fingers curled around the opening and then—

  SCREECH!

  The door was torn off its hinges. A second later, Fiera strode inside in all her flaming, orange-red spandex glory, followed by Hermit and Mr. Sage. Fiera, who was holding the door with one hand, casually tossed it across the warehouse like the heavy metal weighed no more than a paper clip. To her, it didn’t.

  Fiera marched over to me and stopped, staring at the unconscious forms of the Mintilator and Caveman Stan. Then, she looked at me. “Aw, you’ve had all the fun already. You should have at least left me one ubervillain to take down.”

  “Yeah,” I wheezed, still trying to get my breath back. “I had that very thought while I was dodging balls of acid.”

  Fiera sniffed and tossed her hair over her shoulders. “Rookies,” she muttered.

  I closed my eyes and resisted the urge to wrap the chains hanging off my body around Fiera’s neck.

  Teammates. Can’t live with them, can’t choke them unconscious.

  #

  Using her superstrength, fire-based powers, and some explosives from Jasper that Lulu had stashed in her backpack, Fiera was able to blast the solidium chains off me. Meanwhile, Mr. Sage arranged for the police to transport the still-unconscious Mintilator and Caveman Stan to a secure ubervillain prison. Which, of course, they would no doubt escape from in a few months. But at least they wouldn’t be bothering anyone else—at least not before New Year’s.

  But all I could do was stand there and look at the toy tree. The sun had come up while we were getting everything squared away, and it was now past seven in the morning. Oodles o’ Stuff was supposed to open at nine sharp so the kids and their families could get their Christmas presents and other goodies.

  “How are we supposed to get the toys all the way across town in time for the store’s opening?” I asked, a sick feeling filling my stomach, eating at me like the Mintilator’s acid had him. “Not to mention the tree? All those kids and their parents. They’re going to be so disappointed, so heartbroken, and it’s my fault—all my fault.”

  Mr. Sage put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s not your fault the tree got stolen, Karma Girl. Don’t worry. We’ll get everything back in time. I have a good feeling about this.”

  I eyed him. “Is that what your psychic powers are telling you—”

  The air whirled violently through the warehouse, drowning out the rest of
my words and causing the remaining toys on the Christmas tree to sway back and forth. My head snapped right and then left as I wondered once again what new ubervillain had come out of the woodwork to wreak havoc on my holiday, but it wasn’t an ubervillain at all.

  One second, there was only empty air in front of me. The next, Swifte was there, striking a cocky pose in his shimmering, opalescent costume. He stood like that for a second, making sure that we all got an eyeful of him in all his shimmering glory. Then, the speedy superhero turned to me and grinned.

  “Karma Girl,” he chirped in a cheery tone. “You’re looking well, all things considered. Love the silver spandex, by the way. Have you been working out?”

  Well, at least someone noticed my efforts. I started to ask Swifte why he was here, but my inner voice whispered, and I realized exactly who had called him. I looked at Lulu, who shrugged.

  “Once I saw how many toys the villains had taken off the tree, I put out a citywide call to the other superheroes,” Lulu said. “I figured we’d need all the help we could get.”

  “And naturally, I was the first one here,” Swifte said, striking another heroic pose, despite the fact that there weren’t any cameras around to capture him strutting his stuff. “Good thing too, because those toys aren’t even close to where they’re supposed to be.”

  I shook my head. “Even you’re not that fast—or strong enough to carry everything across town in time for Oodles’s opening.”

  Swifte just grinned at me. “Nope, but my friends are—and they should be getting here any second now.”

  He turned toward the open warehouse door, and sure enough, one by one, they started trickling inside.

  Granny Cane. Black Samba. Halitosis Hal. Pistol Pete. Wynter. The Invisible Ingénues. Okay, so I couldn’t exactly see the Ingénues, since they were, well, invisible, but they called out a cheery hello so I knew they were here.

  Practically every superhero in Bigtime walked through the warehouse door. Even Debonair popped! in using his teleportation superpower. In minutes, I had an army of heroes standing before me, ready to make sure the kids of Bigtime and their families got the Christmas they deserved.