“Diabloman’s sister?” I asked.
“Don’t call her that,” Mandy said, frowning. There was something personal in her tone, intensely so. “Her name was Maria Gonzales and she was more than a supervillain’s sister. Spellbinder struggled against the demonic side of her powers and was dark as well as brooding. A loner who didn’t like the spotlight and was an outsider. The perfect role model for a queer teenager looking for an outlet. I remember how she was treated when SKULL outed her. I remember how she was raked over the coals when the Guitarist died at the hands of her brother. I also remember what happened when she died sacrificing her life to kill one of the Great Beasts.”
“Which was?” I asked. I hadn’t been a big Texas Guardians fan and kind of regretted that fact now.
“Nothing,” Mandy said, frowning at me. “She died saving the world and everyone forgot her a week later. It taught me a valuable lesson.”
“What lesson?” Stephen asked.
“Being good sucks,” Mandy replied. “Be good for yourself and not for the public.”
“I’m not sure you can do that,” I said, feeling a lot more emotion in Mandy’s voice than I expected in that story. I knew the story of Spellbinder but there was something about the way she said the tale that made me wonder if there was something else going on there. I’d also never heard her express any real love for the half-demon sorceress until now. Before, I’d always heard Mandy talk about the Nightwalker as her favorite hero.
That was when Entropicus appeared in the middle of the beach arena with a puff of smoke like the Wicked Witch of the West. “It is time for the next round to begin!”
“Oh joy,” I said, turning around. “Today’s festivities have begun.”
“Our first match will be the Prismatic Commando—”
I patted Stephen on the back, making a boing noise. “Good luck, Captain.”
“Colonel, actually,” Stephen said.
“Versus Stingray: The Underwater Assassin.”
What?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ENTROPICUS BECOMES EVEN MORE DESPICABLE
Stingray. Keith Karkofsky. My brother. My dead brother. Keith Karkofsky was the reason I was a supervillain. He’d been a semi-famous supervillain on the West Coast during my childhood. Despite the fact he’d been a guy with a wetsuit and a harpoon, he’d managed to bedevil Aquarius and the Silver Medalist for years along with his fellow Nefarious Nine. Being a supervillain hadn’t been a successful career for my brother despite, or perhaps because of, his notoriety. He’d spent the first decade and a half of my life in and out of jail, which was impressive since he’d been about fourteen years older than me.
In the end, he’d finally gotten his life turned around following a parole from the government for some off-book work against bad guys who didn’t need costumes. He’d forsworn the criminal life for good and broken all contact with his fellow crooks. I’d been too blind to see it, though, because I’d chosen to believe my brother’s career was cooler than being a hero. Even when he was having his brain matter splattered all over my face by Shoot-Em-Up in an ill-advised spree killing of “bad guys.”
“Wow,” Jane said, looking down at her cellphone. “According to this Tournament app, I’m actually the alternate double of Lara Croft! I don’t believe it.”
G looked over her shoulder. “I don’t either given you’re American, biracial, and not an archaeologist.”
Jane glared at G. “I’m short and have brown hair. That’s enough.”
“Your hair is actually black,” G pointed out.
“Angelina Jolie version?” Jane asked. “I mean, I have the body for it now.”
“Guys,” I said, looking over at them with barely concealed rage. “Now is really not the time!”
“Sorry,” Jane said.
Mandy reached over and placed her hand on my shoulder. “It’s probably a trick, Gary.”
“No,” I whispered. “It’s probably not.”
Moments later, I saw the figure of my brother step out of the crowd, wearing a hooded robe over a modified version of his Stingray costume. It looked less like a wetsuit with a diving helmet and more like a suit of power armor. His harpoon was replaced with a kind of weird energy lance that I assumed would be lethal for anyone underwater but someone immune to electricity like, say, someone in insulated armor.
Or a zombie.
Stingray proceeded to remove his helmet, as if to make sure I recognized him. It was Keith alright, but not the Keith I knew. He was younger than me now, about the age he died, but with marble white skin and long black hair in place of his previous dirty blond. His face was gaunt and his cheeks sallow while his eyes were a pale shade of yellow.
Being the expert on the undead I was, as much due to obsessive D&D playing as actual magical studies, I recognized him as having made the transition to becoming a Jiang Shi. Chinese vampires or a kind of physical ghost, they were a favorite weapon of necromancers across the globe. Jiang Shi had all the intelligence and power of their living selves but they were fueled only a negative image of their living selves. It was as if someone figured out how to pour out all of the good in a person and leave only their asshole traits. Normally, the only thing that could do that was the internet, politics, or the crappy money-based religions. Having my brother’s corpse animated by his dark side would have been bad enough, believe me it was, but there was another fact to Jiang Shi that made it even worse. Jiang Shi were prisons for the soul. The person who they were was dragged from whatever afterlife they had earned for themselves and forced to be fuel for the black magic that caused them to kill for their masters. Saint or sinner, you would eat a baby if your master commanded it and the entire time you would be aware of it.
“Son of a bitch must pay,” I muttered, starting to walk toward Entropicus and the unholy perversion of my brother’s memory.
Mandy grabbed me by the shoulder. “No, Gary.”
“Please don’t let this be an undead solidarity thing,” I muttered.
Mandy narrowed her eyes. “Entropicus is messing with your head.”
“No shit he’s messing with my head,” I snapped at her. “I would have thought that was obvious by the fact he’s resurrected my brother and murdered my best friend.”
“That means he’s afraid of you,” Mandy said, staring at me. There was no sign she was moved by my words but she’d survived a zombie apocalypse and imprisonment by Merciful so I wasn’t sure that anything could phase her anymore. “Entropicus is trying to bait you into doing something rash.”
“It’s working!” I snapped at her.
I had no idea why Entropicus would be cautious around me since, like Gabrielle, he was fully capable of squishing me like a bug. I’d punched above my weight class more than a few times and managed to come out on top but like Little Mac in Punch Out!, eventually I got myself knocked out. Entropicus was a top tier villain that had fought and defeated the entire Society of Superheroes before.
Honestly, it was entirely possible he could fight the majority of the participants of the tournament here by himself all at once. If he was stopping to screw with the mid-tier magician antivillain who was best thought of a B-List Supervillain with some lucky breaks, I put it squarely in the context of a kid frying ants with a magnifying glass.
“It’s my job to fight him,” Stephen said, looking at me. “I’m sorry about your brother.”
“It’s not my brother,” I said, my voice low. “It’s the corpse a demon is wearing. Do whatever you want to it. You can’t harm him.”
“Wow, cold,” Cindy said. “I’d be thinking all manner of ways of bringing him back from the dead. Seriously, we could bring your brother back the same way we did Mandy and could build our own personal version of The Munsters.”
“Cindy—” I started to speak.
“You can be Herman!” Cindy said.
I closed my mouth. “Yeah, okay, I have no one to blame but myself for the disrespectful way everyone talks about the dead.”
&n
bsp; “Yeah, you really don’t and I’ve known you like a day,” Jane said.
“Wish me luck,” Stephen said, giving me a salute.
“Just promise me you’re not three days from retirement and have a sweetheart back home,” I said, looking at him.
“But I do have a sweetheart,” Stephen said.
“Shh!” I said, holding a finger to my mouth. “Do you want to become a person I have to avenge?”
“You’d avenge me?” Stephen said, patting me on the shoulder. He reminded me a bit of my dad in that respect. All he needed to do was scream at the TV during football games and complain about how easy kids these days had it and the effect would have been perfect. “I knew you weren’t all bad.”
I felt my face. “You Golden Age heroes are way too good to be true.”
“Thank you.” Stephen put his helmet back on and raised a fist in the air. “Entropicus, I challenge your vile monster and choose to liberate its soul! I do so in the name of humanity and all freedom loving people of the universe!”
The Prismatic Commando charged into the arena like a professional wrestler. Entropicus took a position between them and conjured a throne to sit down upon. The battle was joined and the two proceeded to fight it out.
“He’s going to die, isn’t he?” Cindy asked.
“Yep,” I said, sighing. “This was a trap for a hero.”
“Come on!” Jane said. “He’s a flag superhero! There’s no way he’ll lose! That would be Un-American.”
“Oh, now you’ve jinxed it,” G said.
That was when Guinevere arrived moments later. She was covered in blood, smelled of acid, and was carrying Caliburn. “Entropicus is trying to eliminate the most powerful of heroes one by one. This includes bringing back the dead as monsters with vast powers.”
I looked over at her. “Uh, sorry about that sword getting dumped into the sewer of toxic waste.”
“I’m judging everything about our brief encounter to be the result of temporary insanity,” Guinevere said.
“You see, Gary, this is what you get with heroes,” Cindy said, shaking her head. “Like the time I time travelled back in time to the forties and ended up sleeping with the Nightwalker. Do I get any appreciation? No, it’s just ‘give up being a thief’ and ‘we can’t be together because you’re bad.’ I also wasn’t the only bad girl either! Makes a girl feel awful.”
I did a double take. “You slept with Lancel?”
“Only like twice. It turns out the 1940s were not actually that much fun to visit for a Jewish girl,” Cindy said. “On the other hand, I killed Himmler with an exploding dreidel.”
I applauded Cindy for having the ability to distract me from my undead brother about to fight in a death match against the Prismatic Commando. Also, her gross hypocrisy.
“Begin!” Entropicus’ voice echoed across the beach.
The Prismatic Commando glowed with a golden rainbow aura before flying up six feet in the air then starting to blast at Zombie Keith. The Underwater Assassin responded by simply knocking away the blasts with glowing fists, aiming the equally glowing harpoon at him, throwing it and then impaling the aging hero. The harpoon was attached to a metal chain forged from the fires of hell before Zombie Keith began to swing around the hero like a ball and chain.
“Stingray?” Guinevere asked, looking at the sight. “Why in the world would Entropicus bring back that loser, power grade or not?”
I shot her a withering glare.
“You know, I used to admire you,” Mandy muttered, adjusting her sunglasses. “You were the best of the heroines. You are a real tool in person, though.”
“I’m only angry when around evil,” Guinevere said.
“And yet somehow the Society of Superheroes works with politicians,” I said.
“That is a cheap joke,” Guinevere said, pausing. “Cheap but true.”
Stephen managed to regain control of the fight and delivered numerous devastating punches to Zombie Keith before blasting his upper torso off. “I’m sorry, but you’re undead so it’s okay to kill you.”
“That’s racist!” Mandy called out from the crowd.
“Well, that was an unexpected outcome,” Cindy muttered. “I had fifty bucks on Zombie Keith.”
“Not cool,” I said, knowing it couldn’t be that simple.
“Hey, he’s family!” Cindy said. “Sort of! I’m really serious about resurrecting him. We can bring back all of the people we like and screw everybody else! You just have to promise me my dear departed mother will stay dead and burning in hell.”
“Rotting in hell,” I corrected. “She’s in the section where people decompose but don’t die.”
“Good,” Cindy muttered, crossing her arms.
My fears proved justified as the missing upper torso of Zombie Keith became a blue pyre that transformed into a new fleshy growth, like he was a Resident Evil monster. The monster then stretched out its arms and wrapped around the Prismatic Commando. Stephen let out a scream as the blue flames burned him and reduced his armor to useless junk.
Stephen was a warrior, though, so he didn’t give up. The WW2 hero shrugged off his injury and charged at Zombie Keith with his bare fists. Zombie Keith drew back his arms and let forth and unholy growl before turning his arms into a pair of bone knives like some arcade fighter game character. They ended up stabbing the hero again, though the stomach.
“Dammit,” I muttered. “Just because I don’t like the guy doesn’t mean I want him dead.”
“You don’t like the Prismatic Commando?” Mandy asked. “He’s like patriotism without all of the unearned pride and xenophobia.”
I didn’t want to respond. “Listen, Guinevere, I—”
“No,” Guinevere said, looking down. “Not again, I’m not going to let another friend die.”
Oh hell.
Guinevere lifted up Caliburn and summoned forth the Shield Perilous as a glowing disc around her arm before charging at Zombie Keith. A rousing battle score started playing and for a second I thought it was Cindy’s cellphone app working again. Instead, I realized it was merely my mind providing music for one of the greatest heroes the human race had ever produced. As prickly as I found Guinevere, she was a woman who wasn’t going to abandon her friend and that thought shamed me.
Unfortunately, it occurred to me what was really going on wasn’t a heroic rescue but a trap. I kept thinking of Entropicus as the generic Evil Overlord/Sauron figure that history comics had taught me he was. However, he was the Chosen of Death or at least had been. That meant if he was anything like me then he was a guy who knew the kind of stupidly noble drives that inspired heroes to displays of self-sacrificing idiocy.
The trap then became clear. This wasn’t an attempt to destroy me by using my brother against me. No, it was a feint. A sleight of hand that had a far bigger and more impressive target in mind. It was a trap set for Guinevere.
“No!” I shouted, levitating upward and launching myself at Guinevere like I was a video game boss.
Guinevere moved too quickly, though, and drove Caliburn into the heart of Zombie Keith. The undead abomination exploded into a collection of burning bones, saving Stephen’s life, but breaking the rules for the tournament. I hadn’t had a chance to study the rules but even I knew that was going to have awful consequences when the guy arbitrating the tournament was very close to Asmodeus himself.
“Interference,” Entropicus said, shaking his head. “The battle is forfeited to my champion. The punishment for those who broke the rules? Elimination!”
“Do your worst, fiend!” Guinevere said, lifting her sword and shield. “I should never have agreed to participate in this foul bloodsport to begin with. I shall smite you and bring an end to the threats you have brought to creation!”
Entropicus smashed down the bottom of his staff against the ground right before black and red lightning descended downward upon both her as well as Stephen. I was beside Entropicus by the time it happened, ready to attack him, only for a te
rrible glow blinded me. Moments later, I turned to see both Stephen and Guinevere had been transformed to stone like Diabloman.
“You do not fight my power,” Entropicus said, laughing. “You fight the power of the tournament and my authority within it is absolute.”
I stared at the sight of two more fallen champions and realized the Age of Heroes was over. The Nightwalker, Ultragod, Guinevere, and Prismatic Commando were all fallen. Worse, I’d done almost nothing to make the world a better place as it had happened. I’d killed a few people worse than them but without these pillars to build a new tomorrow then there wasn’t anything worth saving about the current age. What was the point of being a villain if there were no heroes to fight? There was just darkness and worse darkness.
“You bastard,” I gritted my teeth.
“I merely followed the rules,” Entropicus said, chuckling to himself. “She was the one who chose to break them.”
I turned around. “Well, there’s no rule so absolute as to not have a loophole. I challenge you, Entropicus! Right here, right now!”
Entropicus gave a rictus grin, the little bit of flesh on his face allowing him the parody of a smile. “You have to win two more battles before you are able to reach the tournaments finale, Merciless. You will not because I will—”
I turned around. “I challenge Agent G and Jane Doe.”
“I surrender,” Agent G said.
“Me too,” Jane said. “Though I could totally take Entropicus. I just don’t wanna.”
“I don’t want to die so I’m surrendering too,” Cindy said. “I totally am getting bribed for this, though. Like, a small planet and at least three Hawaiian Islands. The good ones, not the leper ones, as Homer Simpson would say.”
“You got it,” I said.
A glowing light descended upon both me and Entropicus. It was a sign the Primals had accepted my thinking. Almost immediately, the other contestants on the beach disappeared and left only my friends where once had been a vast crowd. A few others were left over, seemingly without rhyme or reason, but it was an effective signal the tournament was over. Almost over. Now all I had to do was battle the God of Evil and win.
Tournament of Supervillainy Page 15