CHAPTER TWELVE

BATTLE FOR THE CENTER OF THE EARTH

“Ramming speed?” I asked, stunned. “It’s a lifeboat. We’re lucky it has regular speed!”

“I made a few modifications,” Gabrielle grunted as the flying saucer started picking up speed. The blinking lights and controls in front of her also started making a variety of threatening noises. “Is everyone buckled in?”

Everyone was but me. “Uh—”

“This is meant to be a seven-seater,” John explained.

“Grab Gary,” Gabrielle said.

He put his arm around me.

We were heading straight toward the nearest of the hover pyramids, which was raining fire down onto the multi-ethnic crowds of toga and robe-clad people. It was a pointless, militarily useless massacre that just showed the attackers had no regard for human life.

“Sorry, Gary,” Gabrielle said, before pushing a big shiny red button.

Why did those never do anything good?

An alarm blared and the top half of the lifeboat shot out of the flying saucer, showing that it contained an ejector seat fitted with a parachute. We landed with a gentle thud on top of one of the nearby buildings while the lifeboat UFO became a rocket and smashed into the side of the P.H.A.N.T.O.M war machine.

The hover pyramid wasn’t destroyed by the action, but Gabrielle had aimed it at one of the machine’s four base engines and its stability was damaged. The enormous battle fortress swerved out of control and smashed into another hover pyramid, knocking them out of the sky. The two machines collapsed into the middle of a mostly-empty city park. Internal explosions tore through them, leaving little doubt they’d been taken out of the fight.

“Wow,” I said, blinking. “Did you mean to do that?”

“Obviously,” Gabrielle said, blinking. “Did you think I would shoot them down without accounting for how they would land on civilians?”

Honestly, I’d never actually given much thought to collateral damage during battles between superheroes. Generally, whenever I’m fighting someone it was either one on one or something that was an existential threat to life itself. When the Behemoth raged out and punched monsters through buildings, it was mostly up to other superheroes to make sure everyone managed to get out safely. In retrospect, that was a terrible attitude to have.

I didn’t have much time to process that, though, because taking two of the hover pyramids down caused every other unit of the P.H.A.N.T.O.M forces in the city to converge on us. The hover pyramids launched dozens of jetpack-equipped commandos and I also saw their weapons charging up. It didn’t appear they were worried about friendly fire but these were Nazis and P.H.A.N.T.O.M was notorious for having an inexhaustible supply of idiots ready to die for them.

“This was a terrible idea,” I muttered.

“Get to blasting them!” Mercury shouted, summoning a glowing green dome above us to deflect the dozens of energy blasts that descended upon us. I felt her drawing on the energy of the Inner Sun and realized that was still an option for me as well.

“You got it,” John said, becoming an inky-black humanoid monster about eight feet tall with hideous teeth that occupied a quarter of his head. He ran out of the shield and started jumping from building to building before smashing into the side of a hover pyramid.

Reyan zipped into the air, generating a glowing pair of wings around her back and flying at the jetpack soldiers with battle ax in hand. It was like seeing a heavy metal video come to life. I also wondered if she could generate wings around anyone as we’d seen with the triceratops or if it was just restricted to herself and animals.

“Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to be much use here,” Ken muttered. “Unless you think maybe if I summoned my powers this time that—”

“No!” Gabrielle said. “Just stay safe.”

Ken looked frustrated.

Cindy, meanwhile, transformed into her enormous giant wolf form and leapt down to the streets below us. She tore into enemy soldiers rounding up locals and shook them in her mouth like a wild dog with a rabbit. The viciousness of her newfound form was something she’d fully embraced, and I couldn’t help but be terrified by it.

As for me, I wanted to know where in the city my children were. I sensed Leia and Mindy’s presence, possibly because they were close by, or maybe just because I’d put a tracking spell on them. One time when I’d left the pair to watch Game of Thrones for an hour, Mindy had generated an indestructible Ultra-Force Teddy Bear to battle Leia’s latest Murderbot. They’d followed the fight to Atlantis and there were still warrants out for their arrest in four countries.

I couldn’t focus on them, though, as much as I wanted to. Instead, I gathered my strength and tried to focus all the supernatural energy around me. I wasn’t a very good wizard, whether because of genetics, or just not having the knack, but right then I had to be. I channeled all the energy I could absorb into the Death Orb.

The entropic forces swirled around me until they crystalized into the white-hot sparkling orb, which suddenly felt like a miniature black hole in my hands. It threatened to swallow me whole and I worried I’d unleashed something worse than the monsters around me. Focusing my hate, anger, and frustration I then blasted the ball of death forward at the nearest hover pyramid.

“HADOUKEN MOTHERFRICKERS!” I shouted as the ball struck the pyramid, caused it to shudder, and then sucked it into an astral abyss where it was completely consumed.

“Motherfrickers?” Mercury asked, still maintaining the force field around us despite the onslaught of laser blasts.

“I’m trying to cut down on my swearing for the kids,” I explained, collapsing to my knees.

John managed to down the pyramid that he was attacking, the machine unfortunately crash-landing it into a fountain and probably taking out a few civilians trying to escape from beneath it. It was soon joined by a fifth pyramid as Reyan smashed all the engines of one and hurled the enormous metal fortress into the ground so hard it collapsed into a pile of scrap. We’d managed to take down almost half of the enemy forces by ourselves.

The Nur’Ab’Sal proved to be capable of defending themselves as well. Much to my surprise, I saw dozens of pteranodon-borne warriors carrying laser spears that shot forth energy blasts as they attacked the remaining hover pyramids. They were soon joined by a stegosaurus-Tyrannosaurus hybrid creature that spewed radioactive fire and stomped down the streets, tearing open the enemy with ease.

“Is that Godzilla?” Ken asked, blinking.

“It sure looks like it,” I said. I’d gotten a decent look at something very similar to the real thing during the Eternity Tournament.

“That’s Kaijufornia,” Gabrielle explained exasperated. “Camilla Watanabe is a Valley Girl who belongs to the Texas Guardians. She’s your niece’s bestie.”

I blinked. “And she becomes a giant radioactive monster?”

“Yeah,” Gabrielle said. “Do you know what this means?”

“Superheroes just became twenty percent cooler?”

“The Society of Superheroes still has members who are alive!” Gabrielle asked. “You know, confirmedly and not just on the word of our time lost evil-ish children.”

“They’re not evil. They just want me to conquer the world,” I said.

“Get back to killing things!” Mercury shouted, clearly struggling to keep up her shield spell under the stress of the attacks. We’d managed to take out most of the enemy forces but there were three more hover pyramids descending on us.

I had a stupid idea. I felt barely able to stand after casting my last spell and hadn’t entirely recovered from the beating that Superior Boy had given me. Still, I knew where I could get a LOT of magical energy quickly.

“Ken, I want you to say the magic words,” I said.

“Please and thank you?” Ken asked.

“No, the ones I told you not to say!” I snapped.

“Gary, what are you doing?” Gabrielle said, lifting her pistols to shoot at jetpack soldiers who were descending on us.

“Magic!” I snapped.

“Hurry it up then!” Mercury said, falling to her knees as the dome above us began to crack and an energy blast went through, blowing a piece of the roof beside us away.

Ken took a deep breath and looked up to the sky. “BY THE MIGHT OF ASGARD!”

A lightning bolt descended from the heavens, carrying a nightmarish evil energy that I wondered about the origins of. Lifting the Death Orb, I intercepted it and briefly felt an incarnation of pure hate pass through me. P.H.A.N.T.O.M psychics had managed to warp the energy of the Aesir into a kind of metaphysical incarnation of fascism. Unfortunately for them, my powers were fueled by hate.

“Burn, baby, burn!” I said, re-directing the incredible magical power outward in a wave of fire that caused all three of the remaining hover pyramids to explode. They rained shrapnel and ruin, but I was pretty sure it was better than the locals getting exterminated by the assault. Also, it was better than us getting massacred.

Mercury’s dome collapsed and she took several deep breaths to recover. “Thanks for that.”

“Welcome,” I said, shrugging. “Remember, the best part about magic is it’s the universe’s cheat codes and completely unfair in how it’s applied.”

“Uh, did you just burn up my powers forever?” Ken asked. He looked terrified that he’d lost the one thing that made him special.

“Let’s hope not,” I said, having no idea whether I did or not. “Don’t worry, though. If it’s a worst-case scenario, I know some aliens who can give you some new ones. Ones without built-in evil.”

That seemed to mollify Ken. “That’s good to hear. I already get enough crap from my sister for getting worse grades than her. I can’t imagine how much worse it would be if she was the only one with superpowers.”

“It’s terrible,” I remember growing up with a sister who could talk to the dead. “They try and tell you that you’re every bit as special without powers, but we all know it’s bull—”

“Gary!” Gabrielle said. “People with superpowers are not superior beings. We’re all equal in our capacity to love.”

Mercury, Ken, and I looked at Gabrielle like she was crazy. Which she was. I believed in universal equality and all that jazz, but superpowers were awesome.

Let’s be honest.

Cindy was utterly soaked in blood and when she returned to her normal form, she was still covered in carnage like Carrie after her prom night.

She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she looked remarkably chill. “That was awesome. I feel like I’ve contributed heavily to making America Nazi-free again.”

“The Hollow Earth,” I corrected her.

“Eh, same difference,” Cindy said, smiling. “You know, I think blood is a good look for me.”

Ken looked over at me. “Why do her clothes disappear when she becomes a werewolf and then reappear when she’s not? How does that work with her being covered in blood?”

“Magic,” I explained. “Also, stop trying to figure ways of seeing her naked.”

“That may be hard,” Ken said. “I am a fourteen-year-old boy.”

“That is a sound and rationale argument,” Cindy said, walking over and hugging me. “I feel like I should bite you and make you my mate alongside Gabrielle.”

“You couldn’t break the skin,” Gabrielle said, looking uncomfortable with the transformation Cindy had undergone.

I gently scratched behind Cindy’s ears as I tried to figure out a way we could cure her. As much as she seemed to be taking to the whole lycanthropy thing, the simple fact was I didn’t think it would work out for her. Let’s face it, being a canine was all fun and games until you had to get shots and a flea collar. Plus, you just knew that Cindy would take up the entire bed now that she had lupine instincts.

Gabrielle took a few potshots with her pistols at fleeing P.H.A.N.T.O.M forces but there was little chance any of them were going to get away. The battle had been won and we now had to focus on contacting our loved ones. “Gary, can you tell if our kids are alright?”

“The tracking spell is still active, so they’re alive,” I said, taking a deep breath. I could always sense it in the back of my head. “Better than a baby monitor.”

“Except for that time, you left them alone and they almost wrecked Atlantis,” Cindy said, pulling away from me.

“The Henchbots were watching them!” I said, raising my hands. “How was I supposed to know Leia had an override for them? Mistakes were made. New parent problems!”

“She made those robots!” Cindy snapped.

Honestly, I was eager to track the pair down. As much as I wanted to find Diabloman and my niece, the simple fact was that my children dominated my thoughts now that I knew they were down here with me. They had been the real reason I’d retired from supervillainy, as much as I liked to attribute it to Mandy’s death.

I had responsibilities to my children that meant playing dress-up wasn’t an option anymore. At least, that’s what I’d thought. The problem was the Call to Heroism (Villainy?) knew where I lived. If retiring my cloak and villain name didn’t protect my family, then what was the point of retiring? Superheroes tried to leave the Great Game all the time, usually having more options to do so than your average supervillain, but they always ended up being drawn back in. That was because when you had the power to make a difference in the world, it was very hard to argue that you shouldn’t.

Mandy, the real Mandy, had known the truth and still influenced me. Still influenced Cindy. Hell, it still influenced all the people whose lives she’d saved in her short time as a superhero. While I had been playing around, pretending to be the bad guy like a Super-themed mod for Grand Theft Auto, she had been genuinely thinking about how she could use her training to fight evil. The world would have been a very different place if she’d gotten the Reaper’s Cloak instead of me.

That was when a giant moth landed on the rooftop with us. I did a double take and wondered if kaiju were just going to be a thing now. The moth was twenty feet long and it had numerous saddles on its back, loaded with people I knew and loved. There was Diabloman, a teenage woman wearing a version of his costume, Mister Inventor, Jane Doe, Agent G, and my children in the latter two’s arms.

There was one additional person on the giant moth, though. A person I recognized and made my blood run cold. She was dressed in a crown, jeweled necklaces, a cloak tied around her neck, a black V-neck wrap, and leather pants that contrasted to her royal paraphernalia.

It was Spellbinder.

Maria Gonzales.

Still wearing my wife’s corpse.

My fists began to burn with the fire I conjured inside them.

I had one more person to kill.