I looked up from my cloak. “Anybody dead?”
Gabrielle was moaning behind me while Mandy was scrambling to her feet, her hair stringy and covering her face while she growled. Cassius, the only person in the room I didn’t actually give a crap about, was uninjured.
“No,” Cassius said.
“That was a stupid plan,” I said, glaring at him.
“I have a general belief that whenever people get bogged down in talking, it’s best to dramatically act,” Cassius said, sheathing his sword.
“That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life!” I said, staring at him. “Who are you, Anakin Skywalker?”
“The future Darth Vader?” Cassius asked, looking like he was trying to parse out the reference. “An odd choice.”
“Wait, you have Star Wars in the future?” I asked, deciding this guy might be alright after all.
“Well, it is a classic of Old Earth mythology, even in the thirty-first century,” Cassius said.
“Yes!” I shook my fist. “Reality has some hope after all! I hadn’t had any hope for Star Wars’ future since The Last of the Jedi came out.”
Mandy growled some more.
“Oh hell, she’s going to be evil or berserk now. I just know it,” I muttered turning to my wife.
Mandy’s face had twisted and contorted into something grossly inhuman with shark-like teeth instead of fangs and glowing white eyes. Her fingernails had turned black and extended outward like velociraptor-esque claws. Her skin had also become sallow and corpse-like with none of the vibrancy that differed her from other vampires.
“Gabrielle, could you—” I started to say before turning around and seeing Gabrielle was staring at me with pure hate in her eyes. Her golden aura had turned a darker shade with orange flames flickering against it every few seconds.
“That doesn’t look good,” Cassius said, drawing his pistol.
“You could say that,” I said. “I don’t suppose you have any planet punching powers?”
“No,” Cassius said. “Just an energy shield, a sword, and fusion pistol.”
“Well, we are boned.”
That was when Entropicus’ gravelly voice spoke throughout the room. “Double-elimination match! Two on two battle!”
“Wait, what?” I said, looking up.
“FIGHT!” Entropicus shouted.
I barely managed to maneuver before Gabrielle jumped forward and punched me across the face with a glowing fist. She had to be holding back since, as the inheritor of the Ultra-Force, she could have easily taken my head off in one blow. Mandy, by contrast, went after Cassius who blasted her with a blue energy wave that I assumed to be stun. Sadly, as anyone who knew anything about the undead could tell you, they weren’t creatures easily subdued.
Gabrielle conjured a glowing orange-yellow scythe, which I felt was ripping me off then swung it in my general direction. I turned insubstantial and went down below her. Normally, this was when I went behind my opponent, but I stayed put and Gabrielle swung around in that direction. Coming up behind her by not moving in the slightest, I mentally apologized to her, and unleashed a torrent of Sith-like lightning.
I’d expanded my power’s variety to include the equivalent of third-level spells but with significantly more wallop when I drew from Death. I was terrified of accidentally killing her but didn’t want to die either so I gradually turned up the electricity in hopes of using the minimum amount to disable her. A minimum amount which, it turned out, didn’t seem to exist.
Ultragoddess screamed but it was more a roar of rage than a cry of pain. The Ultragod Family was vulnerable to magic, one of their few vulnerabilities, but it was more in the context of not having any extra defenses against it versus being invulnerable to anything else. Watching her all but shrug off the power plant I was throwing at her and start marching toward me, I wondered if they’d made up that vulnerability to sucker wizards like me into thinking they had a chance.
“Must…destroy…you,” Gabrielle said, making a glowing chainsaw out of her powers. “You are Merciful! Betrayer!”
Oh, great, she was convinced I was my doppelganger. Before I could react, a glowing cage appeared around me of the Ultra-Force. Gabrielle stepped through the bars as if they weren’t there. I proceeded then to blast hellfire outward that disintegrated the cage and her chainsaw. I checked on her the moment the blast was done and saw aside from some singing to her hair, she didn’t even look injured.
“Roargh!” Ultragoddess cried out, conjuring a suit of armor straight from Dark Souls and aiming her sword at me before fireball after fireball shot forth. I once more hid in the floor, only for her to start smashing through the area above me to get at me. This was not a fight I could win hand-to-hand, magic-to-magic. I was both underleveled and under-geared.
“Gabrielle, it’s me!” I shouted, trying to think of something special. “Your favorite literary character is Katniss Everdeen, you love coffee ice cream, and you have the highest score of anyone on the planet with Tekken. A game you know I hate because I’m a Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat man. Plus, you hate the fact they consistently nerfed Ultragoddess whenever she’s a guest fighter!”
“Argh!” Ultragoddess hissed, ripping away all the rock between us. “You lie!”
So, there was something of her left over. It required me to say something that was so shocking and terrible that it would break her away. “Gabrielle, I really think you should find a relationship with someone else. I love you and always will but our lives have just moved in opposite directions. You’re too wonderful a person to not find someone else who is going to make you happy.”
Gabrielle momentarily broke free. “Wait, what? You think I’ve been mooning over you for, what, a decade? Or maybe a few years? Time has been pretty wonky lately. I’ve had dozens of relationships since then and just because I still like you and I recently had a night of pity sex—”
“Distraction-fu attack!” I said, blasting her with my ice powers.
Gabrielle was trapped in a huge block of ice and looked decidedly cross with me. I didn’t blame her. That was a cheap shot. She could, of course, easily break free but what was the point when we had no reason to fight? It turned out there was a very good reason as a gong resounded through the temple, signifying an elimination. Entropicus had decided, apparently, this qualified as Gabrielle being defeated.
“Awesome, I won!” I said, glad at winning on a technicality before the weight of that fell on my shoulders. “Which means, oh crap, I’ve just removed the single most powerful hero from the tournament and made it that much easier for Entropicus to destroy the multiverse.”
I didn’t get a chance to contemplate the monumental nature of my screw up because Mandy leapt on my back and started going for my throat. Nearby, I could see Cassius lying on the ground, trying to hold the blood back in his neck as he used a future laser of some kind to treat a bite wound. He hadn’t been eliminated yet but that was only because Entropicus hadn’t called a stop to the contest yet.
“Dammit, Mandy!” I said, spinning around and trying to avoid getting my head ripped off. “I do not want to hurt you!”
“Too bad!” Mandy said, her voice having a shrill Evil Dead witch-esque quality. “I will swallow your heart!”
“Must not do any double-entendres,” I muttered, before turning insubstantial and letting her fall through me onto the ground. “I will not say she wants inside me, that she’s inside me, that she loves sucking, she wants my fluid, that she’s naturally cold but I warm her up—”
Mandy shook her head, a moment of lucidity appearing on her face. “Oh Gary, shut up!”
“Sorry, Mandy,” I said, grabbing the Book of Midnight off the ground and smacking her across the face with the leather-bound Bible-sized tome. It sent her spiraling backward against Gabrielle’s ice block where I proceeded to freeze her over. Unlike Gabrielle, I was pretty sure Mandy didn’t have the ability to break free. Sure enough, a second gong sounded and I had the dubious satisfac
tion of having eliminated the smartest most dangerous woman alive from the tournament. Yay me! God, Death chose a crappy champion.
“That’s the plan,” Death whispered in my mind.
Wait, what?
“No ice puns?” Cassius asked, standing up, a big scar on his neck and some blood on his outfit but otherwise unharmed.
“Please, I have some standards,” I said, huffing. “Though I’m glad I got both women to chill.”
“Oh for hell’s sake,” Cassius muttered, covering his face with his right hand.
I was about to make a few more when Gabrielle shattered her icy prison as the orange fire returned to her eyes and she clocked me in the jaw, sending me flying, and landing in the middle of the orbs.
The orbs glowed, and everything went white.
CHAPTER TEN
A GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE
I found myself, face down, in the middle of some truly epic carpet. I mean, I’ve fought kaiju and something legally distinct but pretty damn similar to Cthulhu but this was some truly magnificent carpet. It was thick, furry, and felt like I was face down on top of a panda. Which, as any poacher will tell you, is the cuddliest of all animals. I don’t deal with poachers by the way and have killed more than a few over the years, FYI, I’d just like to make that clear. All panda fur products in my home are completely artificial or cloned.
Ahem.
Lifting my head up from the panda fur carpet, I found myself in an enormous palace’s throne room. It was a kind of neo-classical Rome crossed with corporate executive. The floors reflective black marble, the columns holding up the ceiling were white stone, and the walls were covered in red tapestries marked with the Merciless Symbol. The Merciless symbol was a double-A anarchy symbol combined to make an M. Light was provided by modern lights above but also hellfire braziers.
The carpet I was lying on was a single long straight rectangle stretching back to the throne room’s entrance about a football field behind me up the steps in front of me to an elevated dais. There, with the throne’s back to me, was an enormous electronic throne chair that was facing a wall-window that showed a futuristic Falconcrest City. The skyline had all been replaced with metal buildings reaching miles into the sky and flying cars zipped around the airways.
It was also raining with a steady downpour of greenish-brown water that clung to the transparent steel finish. It was like someone had combined Blade Runner and Coruscant. Oddly, despite the fact it was an archvillain’s lair, the place smelled like Red Dust combined with marijuana and I could hear the sounds of an Xbox being played.
“Goddamn zombie Nazis!” my voice, except much older said, followed by the sound of electronic gunfire. “Screw you ten year olds in Korea! Do you know who I am!? I swear, I am outlawing multiplayer tomorrow!”
“Uh, hello?” I asked.
The sounds of yet another installment of Call of Duty stopped being heard before I saw a smoke ring blow in the air. The throne slowly turned around with a grinding noise before I found myself facing yet another Gary doppelganger. This one was wearing a black cloak identical to my own and looked to be in his mid-sixties. He had a black military uniform underneath the Cloak with a rank badge covered in blue and red squares. On his hands were eight golden rings that had glowing gemstones. A hookah was to one side of his arm as he didn’t quite fit the throne and an Xbox controller was inside his lap.
“Oh, it’s you,” Old Gary said.
“What?” I said.
“I’ve been waiting for you since, well, I was you,” Old Gary said.
“Who are you? Where am I?” I asked, a lot more bewildered than I usually was in this sort of situation.
“I am you. I am also Emperor Gary Karkofsky the First and Only. I am the ruler of the Grand Terran Empire and its dozens of colonies. Most of which, admittedly, are hollowed out spinning asteroids because that turns out to be a lot easier than terraforming planets.”
I blinked. “Are you Merciful? Somehow resurrected? I mean, I was hoping you were kind—”
“No, Gary,” Old Gary said, feeling his face. “I am you. Future you. This is the scene in Back to the Future part II where Jennifer met her older self then fainted before no longer being included in the film. Which, honestly, was a huge waste of Claudia Wells.”
I blinked. “Okay, let’s just say I believe you.”
“Wow, this conversation is getting boring. I wonder how older me tolerated it the first time around,” Old Gary said.
“What year is it?” I asked, looking behind me and expecting a bunch of stormtroopers to come and arrest me.
“It’s 2250,” Old Gary said, offering his hookah pipe. “Want a hit?”
“I’m high on life, nerd culture, and sex with beautiful superhumans,” I said.
“Fair enough,” Old Gary said, taking a deep puff. “I’m high on those and drugs!”
“Just say no, man!” I said, shaking my hands. “Remember what the Director of the FBI said in all the arcade games! Winners don’t use drugs!”
Old Gary blew some of the smoke in my face. “Clearly, he was wrong.”
I took a moment to process this all. “So, by touching the Primal Orbs—”
“Hehe, you said orbs,” Old Gary said, giggling.
“Oh grow up,” I said, fully aware of the irony.
“I’ve been transplanted to a possible future where I’ve successfully taken over the world,” I said.
“Two Earths, the moon, a Mars base, and lots of asteroid colonies,” Old Gary said. “We’re members of the Galactic Congregation that is a lot less religious than it sounds but not wholly secular either.”
“Great,” I said, muttering. “Well, if you’ll excuse me I have to get back—”
“Of course, it might not be a possible future but the future,” Old Gary said.
“Excuse me?”
“Because I remember the Eternity Tournament and how it successfully screwed up the entire universe,” Old Gary said. “I also remember this meeting as I’ve alluded to several times in this conversation, which means this may end up as a self-fulfilling prophecy instead of a new timeline. More Terminator instead of Back to the Future.”
“Wait, original Terminator or Terminator II? The others don’t count, even the series that was awesome toward the end,” I asked. “Because in Terminator, John Connor was only born because of sending Kyle Reese back but—”
“Let’s stop and never mention the specifics of time travel again,” Old Gary interrupted.
“Probably a good idea,” I admitted. “Listen, I know this is a big accomplishment and all but I’m not actually interested in taking over the world. I mean, seriously, who wants that kind of responsibility? I really just talk a good game. I’m going to become a hero instead of remaining a supervillain. So, this future? This future is not going to happen.”
Old Gary snorted in disdain. “I remember this part too.”
“You’re really starting to tick me off, Old Man.” I narrowed my eyes. “I am not going to take over the world.”
“You do,” Old Gary said, putting down his hookah. “Not because you want to or because someone convinced you to but because you had to.”
“No one has to become a conquering despot,” I said, disdainfully.
Old Gary leaned back into his chair. “This is the part of the story where I relay to you the fact it is possible to force someone to become the very thing they disdain. If you live long enough as the villain, you start to want to be a hero.”
“That’s stupid and even if you reversed the statement, it still wouldn’t make any sense.”
“Shut up and listen, jackass.”
“Only if I get a chair and some popcorn,” I said. “I feel like that’s going to be a common feature of this tournament.”
“Always happy to use an old favorite among my spells.” Old Gary snapped his fingers and a lawn chair appeared with a big movie tub of popcorn.
I plopped myself in the former and picked up the second to start eating it. It
was exactly the way I preferred it. “Okay, you’ve bought yourself five minutes.”
“I won’t need that long,” Old Gary said, leaning back in his chair like the Emperor. “In one of the few realities where you successfully win and the multiverse is saved—”
“Okay, that already doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s like the Wheel of Time, as long as one reality resists the Dark One, they’re all saved.”
“Okay, one, spoilers, two what is with Robert Jordan appearing everywhere lately?”
“The thing is, all of those heroes and villains teaming up together up against Entropicus and the chaos that followed didn’t have the effect people wanted.”
“People?” I asked, eating a handful of popcorn.
“Well, me,” Old Gary said, frowning.
“I was hoping it would cause everyone to take a look at what was beneath all the costumes and secret identities. I was hoping we could realize that hero and villain were just two sides of the same coin. The heroes could work with the less insane of the villain world. Pay out pardons and money so we could all become rich as well as famous do-gooders.”
“That’s a stupid idea,” I said.
Old Gary shrugged. “What happened, instead, was the War.”
“The War?” I repeated.
“Yes, accent on the,” Old Gary said. “The final conflict between the heroes and villains.”
“Did our side win?” I asked.
“No,” Old Gary said, reaching over and stealing some of my popcorn. “Our side most certainly did not. We sat out the war like Achilles, content on believing the two sides would come to their senses before things escalated too far.”
“Were we stupid?” I asked, my mouth dry. “Need a soda.”
An enormous paper cup, like the kind sold as the largest size in movie theaters, appeared in my lap. I took a sip from its milkshake-sized straw. It was like Coca Cola except even more syrupy and sugary, which I mentally named Merciless Cola.
“Thanks,” I said.
The Supervillainy Saga (Book 5): he Tournament of Supervillainy Page 10