CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

TAKING A MOMENT TO FIGURE OUT MY NEXT MOVE

So, I was made King of Nur’Ab’Sal.

Apparently, they had some strange leadership traditions down in the Hollow Earth. Things like watery tarts throwing swords at you being the basis for their system of government, except it was Norse gods and spears. Maria had abandoned the place and left us to clean up the aftermath of P.H.A.N.T.O.M’s attack. I understood her logic. Organizing people getting pulled from wreckage and being healed of injuries would slow us down and prevent us from following her.

I had to admit I was torn between my desire to go after her and my niece immediately and taking care of a lot of suffering people. I was really screwing up this supervillain thing. In the end, I decided to do the unthinkable and plan ahead. The city’s workers were caring for everyone; I was going to sit down and find out everything I could about P.H.A.N.T.O.M’s defenses and plot my next move. You know, after being distracted by something completely stupid.

“You enter into the Tomb of Vecna and see that the walls are lined with granite statues of the one-eyed Lich God. All of them hold braziers burning with a sickly green fire and there is a sense of all-consuming evil about the place.”

“I search for traps,” Jane said, shaking the twenty-sider in her hand a few times before tossing it on the stone table to the side of the throne room.

The throne room was at the top of a ziggurat with a pair of stone thrones prominently displayed at the end. It looked a bit like a smaller version of the one at the end of Star Wars. I know, I use that for every one of my pop culture references, but it really did. There also wasn’t any sign of Princess Leia passing out medals to Han and Luke. Have you ever wondered why Chewie didn’t get a medal? I’ll tell you why. Racism. Think about that every time you watch that movie. The fact droids are slaves, too.

Where was I? Oh yes, Diabloman, Jane, Case, John, and I were sitting around a stone table with a map in front of us of the Hollow Earth. We were supposed to be planning our attack on the Nazis, but it had somehow descended into a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Being criminals, we were playing for cash and stacks of gold coins were lined up on the edges of the table.

Case, being the sanest one in the group, of course was the only one to question this activity while playing. “Gary, have you ever been diagnosed with ADD?”

“My inability to concentrate on one task for more than a minute is a choice rather than a… wait, what was I talking about? That dice is really shiny!”

Jane pulled out a laser pointer and moved it around the table.

“Ah!” I said, covering my eyes. “No more.”

“I use this to taunt the werecats in Bright Falls,” Jane said, cheerfully.

Case sniggered before his expression turned serious. “I’m not going to be able to stay here, Gary.”

“Well, of course we’re going to have to leave,” I said, simply. “As nice as Viking Atlantis is, it’s not a place I see myself staying for long. I mean, they don’t have the Internet, except on my phone, and that’s just no substitute when you’re a dedicated multiplayer—”

“I mean back to my Earth,” Case said, frowning.

I blinked. “I thought you hated it there.”

“I do,” Case said, blinking. “I also got a call from my daughter.”

“You have a daughter?” Jane asked, sounding more than a little offended. Clearly, Case hadn’t bothered to fill her in on all of the details of his pre-tournament life.

“Technically, the daughter of the psychotic paramilitary force leader I was cloned from,” Case said.

“Only here does that make perfect sense,” Jane said. “Well here and Metal Gear Solid.”

“How did you get a call?” I asked. “I mean, I thought my cellphone coverage was good but not interdimensional.”

“There’s a lot of remote viewing devices here. Things that can look between parallel realities,” Case replied. “I decided to check in on the people I left behind. They think I’m in a coma since I’m being astrally projected here. I don’t want her standing over me forever.”

Jane looked down. “Yeah, I kind of have to go as well. Time is passing differently there but my family is worried, too. It’s been about three days for me and they’re about ready to call an exorcist.”

They both looked at each other, clearly more upset about leaving the other behind than this world.

I looked between them. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

Jane looked down. “I love your daughters, Gary. I want to have a little deer herd just like them someday. That’s not going to happen if I don’t return to my body. Also, they’re in danger because of all this. One minute in a cute mansion, the next a war zone. You need to find a safe place for them.”

“I don’t think either of your worlds are safe for them,” I said, getting the implication of what they thought I should do.

“It might keep them alive,” Jane said. “Listen, we can arrange—”

I raised my hands up in the air like I just didn’t care. “BEGONE!”

Jane and Case didn’t have a moment to react before both blinked out of existence, returned to their bodies back on their respective Earths. Disrupting divine magic was surprisingly easy when you were the Chosen of the God who cast the spell.

Diabloman looked up. “That was ill-advised.”

I took a deep breath. “I’ve been encountering a lot of really nasty stuff, lately. Maybe it’s time that I start figuring out how to keep the people I love from it.”

“The people you love who include a dedicated cyborg supersoldier and a weredeer shamaness who would have been very helpful during the upcoming fight against P.H.A.N.T.O.M,” John said, simply. “Smart.”

I glared at him. “Says the guy who can sleep in a bucket.”

John casually slid Case and Jane’s gold coins into his pile. “Now that’s just mean. I don’t sleep in a bucket unless it’s a full moon.”

“I’ll try and contact them afterward,” I said, pausing. “Apologize. Otherwise, Leia will be so furious that I sent away her bestie.”

“Mindy, too,” Diabloman said. “Jane helped her pick out her supervillain name. Ms. Teri.”

“Mindy is a newborn,” I pointed out. “She should not be worried about codenames. Potty training should be the height of her current ambitions.”

I already had one super-smart child that had inherited hyper-cognition from some alien abductee ancestor or exposure to arcane magical energies, I didn’t need another one. F.I.T (The Falconcrest Institute of Technology) was already throwing grant money at Leia and it was interfering with my attempts to raise her to be unlike Cindy.

And myself.

“Your family is strange,” Diabloman said, before falling silent. There was clearly something weighing on my luchador friend. “Still, I don’t know why you would send away two of your best friends.”

“It’s complicated,” I said.

The truth was I was just sick of losing people. Cloak, Mandy, Ultragod, my brother after his resurrection, and then Mandy again. I didn’t have the strength to keep losing the people I cared for. Maybe it would have been possible to endure if everyone who died came back after a few years. But the thing was I needed to get over that. This was bigger than me, bigger than all of us, and I’d made my choice—I now had to live with it. Or die with it.

“So, am I next to be sent home?” John asked, shaking me out of my fugue. He didn’t look particularly upset at the prospect, but John had about three facial expressions: angry, angrier, and really pissed-off stoic. He was kind of like John Wayne in that respect.

“Well, you aren’t astrally projected but physically here,” I said, frowning. “Also, I thought you’d want to stay here permanently.”

Truth be told, I was already regretting sending away Case and Jane. The fact was that I couldn’t risk them against a bunch of Nazis. Tom Terror had supervillain teams with him down here and could remove powers at will. If he could also bestow them, we were potentially facing an army of fascist super freaks following their Führer. Which meant we were fucked. I still hadn’t figured out a way to help Ken and he was a ticking time bomb of superpowered fury.

“Super Freaks,” John said, singing. “They’re super-freaky.”

I stared at him.

“Rick James?” John asked.

“Sorry, my pop culture references begin at the Eighties,” I said, pretending I didn’t get it. “Wait, they have disco in the wasteland you come from?

“I knew a ghoul who had some records.” John frowned. “Though, honestly, it’s starting to look like this universe isn’t any safer than my own.”

“We’ll deal with the Nazis,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt.

“That’s not the only thing that worries me,” John replied. “Your world is like an acrobat someone is firing a hundred bullets at. It’s possible you might jump out of the way of a few but at least some of those are going to hit.”

“You actually can’t jump out of the way of bullets,” I said, pointing out a fact. “I mean, unless you have superspeed. I tried and I still have scars from it. Thank God for healing factors, am I right?”

“Which god?” John asked, dryly.

“There’s something else we need to talk about,” Diabloman said, probably referring to the undead elephant in the room that was his sister.

“Like why you should vote Merciless for 20XX?” I asked. “Why settle for the lesser evil?”

“No,” Diabloman said. “Also, that’s Cthulhu’s tagline.”

“I stole it,” I said.

“Cthulhu ran for office?” John asked. “That seems a bit out of character for him.”

I chuckled, knowing the eldritch abomination playing cowboy was joking.

“I mean my sister,” Diabloman said, pausing. “I hope you understand why I abandoned you to go work for her.”

“Because you have a history of poor life choices?” I asked. “Obviously, including working for me.”

Diabloman snorted. “I did so because family is the most important thing. It should trump everything else in a person’s life.”

“Except your Satanist family who ordered you to kill Maria in the first place,” I said, pointing out an uncomfortable fact.

“Sí,” Diabloman muttered, looking down. “Ever since I died and was reborn for the second time, I have felt a great weight lifted off my shoulders. I realized I wanted to make atonement for my sins. That started with my trying to seek out my sister and offering my service to her.”

I grimaced, realizing that what Diabloman wanted to do was impossible. He’d killed Maria’s true love and that wasn’t something you could ever be forgiven for. Forget the whole “destroying the universe” thing, he’d personally wronged her in a way that was beyond the pale. She’d forgive her own murder before what he’d done to the Guitarist. Actually, now that I thought about it, he had murdered her, too.

Yeesh.

“You realize Maria’s kind of evil now, right?” I said, disgusted. “What with the whole ‘rape by deception’ thing.” Yeah, there I’d said it. It couldn’t be taken back now. Sorry for everyone who was hoping I’d backpedal on that.

Diabloman didn’t respond for a while. “Sí. I am the person who corrupted her, though. I am the one who will have to redeem her.”

I didn’t have a response to that. “Right.”

I didn’t know if redemption was a real thing outside of Star Wars and Angel. I used to be a big believer in it, but the simple fact was that once you took a life, that was permanent. There were no do-overs for that. I mean, I’d learned that lesson the hard way. There was no making it up to Mr. and Mrs. Goon for the fact I’d killed a few hundred of their relatives. That government agent I’d liquefied this morning had a family somewhere. I mean, yeah, they were probably scumbags like him, but they’d miss him.

Maybe.

Okay, I wasn’t helping my case.

“Maybe you should focus on trying to look after your daughter,” I said, diverting the subject. “If she’s going to become a superhero or supervillain then she’s going to need a lot of training. The Super lifestyle has never been more dangerous.”

Diabloman seemed to think about that. “I agree.”

“Good,” I said. “Now let’s get back to the game. Rocks fall and kill Jane’s and Case’s characters.”

Diabloman wasn’t finished, though. “My daughter is but seventeen. I ask you not to sleep with her.”

“Wait, what!?” I blinked, then got furious. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Diabloman misinterpreted my reaction. “It is not that long a wait.”

“I like women!” I snapped. “Adult women! Specifically, ones I am in love with. Gabrielle can bench-press a tanker truck. I am not interested in cheating on her.”

“You regularly sleep with Cindy. Which is like sleeping with all of Falconcrest City.”

“I heard that!” Cindy called from the other side of the throne room where she was modeling a bunch of Nur’Ab’Sal fashion in front of quicksilver mirrors. “I am a doctor, goddammit, and very safe!”

“My apologies,” Diabloman called out. “You are a very clean harlot.”

“Thank you!” Cindy called back.

“Are you spying on us?” I called over to Cindy.

“Obviously!” Cindy answered back. “I can’t believe you banned me for life from your tabletop games.”

“You cheated!” I snapped.

“Those dice came up twenties on their own,” Cindy said. “The fact that they had metal interiors and I had a magnet was just coincidence.”

“Fair enough,” I said, not really wanting to get into it. “I swear, it’s like people don’t understand that some people prefer to be with one person.”

Which is totally how I felt. I mean, yes, I’d been with other people than Cindy and Gabrielle over the past year while mourning Mandy, but that was business. Sometimes you need to seduce the queen of a country, a supervillainess or superheroine, to get at something like your Okmarian Death Ray or the crown jewels of Londonium. Okay, wow, I had problems. Gabrielle and I needed to establish where we stood. Because, honestly, I wasn’t all that sure these days. I’d tried to offer being exclusive with her, but she’d backed away faster than a speeding bullet.

“It’s just, well—” Diabloman looked embarrassed.

“What?” I asked.

“I thought you and Ultragoddess were having problems,” Diabloman said.

John raised an eyebrow.

“What makes you think that?” I asked, defensively.

“The fact she spends half her time in space and another half flying around the world punching things. The rest of the time, which is nonexistent if you can do basic math, is short dates with you and leaving you to watch the kids. That’s not a healthy relationship. That’s a regular booty call and free babysitting.”

I looked over at Cindy. “You can have the decency to be here when having a conversation with me.”

Cindy walked in, dressed in a large array of jewelry and a strategically placed white wrap that substituted for clothes. “I’m just saying if she likes it, she should put a ring on it. Also, we need to loot this place like there’s no tomorrow.”

I rolled my eyes. “We’re not imperialists, Cindy.”

“Well, why the hell not!” Cindy said. “It’s not racist if we’re doing it just because want their stuff, is it?”

John laughed at that one, which bothered me.

“They have polygamy down here in the Hollow Earth,” Diabloman said, before slamming his fist on the stone table. “You could marry both and they could marry their loved ones. Then you could conquer this land and rule as one large family of intertwined nobility.”

“Pass,” Cindy said, shrugging. “I prefer being the mistress. I’m in Gary’s will anyway. Wait, I am in your will, right?”

“I’m immortal,” I said, remembering what Mercury said about godhood. “Probably. So, I don’t have a will.”

“Dammit,” Cindy said, before realizing what she said. “I mean, good. By the way, if you want more kids, you need to get someone else to birth them. I put on a whole inch because of Leia and while I love her, she’s going to have to pay that back by inventing me a suit of armor or something. I suggest you go seduce Nightgirl and let Galahad find you two in bed. Then I will point and laugh.”

“No,” I said.

“Diabloman?” Cindy asked.

“Marriages are sacrosanct,” Diabloman said. “Or should be.”

“Oh come on!” Cindy said. “That’s not been true since Henry the Eighth.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose to stave off a migraine coming on. “I am not sleeping with anyone else. Gabrielle and I are fine.”

Gabrielle then walked into the room, wearing a toga that stopped before her knees and a little crown. “Gary, we need to talk.”

I knew what that meant. “Goddammit.”