CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THIS IS SUSPICIOUSLY NOT THE EPILOGUE

What followed was a little too good to be true. Call me paranoid, it’s the natural result of living in Falconcrest City where the average reaction to a man dying in the street was to take his wallet, but everything seemed to have worked out. Tom Terror was dead, the Primal Orbs and Spear of Odin were recovered, and the Hollow Earth had been liberated from the forces of P.H.A.N.T.O.M. That made me suspicious. There was always another shoe to drop and they usually landed on my head.

Despite this, everything looked on the up and up. An hour after Tom Terror’s death, the central computer room was full of all the surviving heroes. They’d made short work of the remaining P.H.A.N.T.O.M troops once their powers had been restored (thanks, Niki) and were celebrating their victory by breaking out Tom Terror’s classy German beer stores. There had been casualties among the heroes, but it seemed like the majority had made it through unscathed. Indeed, I didn’t even recognize the dead superheroes and they seemed like the kind of usual C-List fodder that died during events to make things seem serious. Sorry, Rat-man, I’m sure you had a mother.

The deaths weren’t dampening the party spirit either. Guinevere, who was conspicuously ignoring my presence, was a veteran of World War II and seemed to have that kind of willingness to let go while not dishonoring their sacrifice. It was ironic, or perhaps apropos, that I was the Champion of Death and had never learned to deal with loss.

Even so, I wasn’t the kind of guy who wanted to enjoy a cold beer with a bunch of superheroes after having been tortured and almost killed. I was healed of all my injuries, but the pain’s aftermath was a reminder of how close I’d come to being killed. So, instead, I sat in the back of the room and tried to avoid socializing with anyone who wasn’t part of my team. Even that was a reminder this had been a nasty fight that had come very close to a complete loss.

“So, anyone trying to arrest you?” Mercury said, her head bandaged and one of her eyes covered. One benefit of our world’s technology and magic meant she’d be fine in a few hours.

John was recovering in the back. He was dressed in a long trench coat, black and white, and had a featureless mask on that I was pretty sure was his face. Plus, he wore a cute little fedora. He was really getting into the spirit of things. Albeit, he was a bit more Pulp than Silver Age. More Shadow and Doc Savage than Ultragod. I blamed the fact he was a creation of H.P. Lovecraft’s world. Well, H.P. Lovecraft-ish world.

“They haven’t arrested me yet,” I said, sipping from my mug of hot cocoa. It turned out, like Saruman was of tobacco, Tom Terror was a connoisseur of fine chocolates. Because Germans like chocolate. Really, that guy had a serious foreign culture fetish. “Everyone knows that I’m the guy who helped save them. I think they’re fully ready to let bygones be bygones—especially since I’m not feeling terribly supervillainy lately.”

It was a hard admission, but the simple fact was I was maybe not the villain I’d always thought I wanted to be.

“Do they know you killed a Federal agent this morning?” Mercury asked.

Or maybe I was just still a murderer and would never be anything more. Either way.

“Was it really just this morning?” I said, sipping the cocoa. “I don’t know. Probably not. I imagine that’s something that will cause no end of hell for me when I get back.”

“Why do you want to?” Mercury asked.

“Hmm?” I asked, looking to her.

“Well, you’re a king here, kind of,” Mercury said. “I think they’re more impressed with Gabrielle than you.”

“As well they should be,” I said.

Mercury continued. “You saved the entire Hollow Earth from Nazis. You’re a wizard and they’re fond of those guys as well. Why not set up shop here and say to hell with dealing with the surface?”

“Tempting, but no,” I said, sighing. “I’m going to stick around long enough to help these guys leverage the orichalcum trade into something that can keep them from getting invaded every other week. Which, ugh, sounds like responsibility. I can’t live without streaming video and genetically-modified food, though.”

“Well, with great power comes great—”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” I said. “There’s just something about it that bothers me to no end.”

Mercury chuckled. “I’ll bring you our old comic book collection from the ruins of Boston when we bring the survivors here.”

I looked at her, surprised. “I thought you guys were reconsidering your whole cross-planar Oregon Trail.”

I was glad at least someone had benefited from all this. The world was rid of P.H.A.N.T.O.M, but that was a statement that had a ring of falsehood like, “Mission Accomplished”, “The economy is just about to recover”, and “We have always been at war with East Asia.”

“Your world isn’t so bad,” John grumbled from behind me. “Ridiculous people in costumes murdering each other for petty reasons and wielding the power of great sorcerers aside, your planet still isn’t a burnt-out radioactive wasteland.”

“Give it time,” I said, more bitterly than I’d expected. I wasn’t sure why I was so angry about how things had ended. I should have been happy that Tom Terror was dead, and I was, but there was something in the back of my mind I was forgetting. Spellbinder was still missing, we had to treat Viking Lad, and I needed to have a long talk with Diabloman about helping his evil sister, but those didn’t seem like pressing concerns. No, there was something else and it was killing me that I couldn’t figure out what.

“Got your new real estate picked out?” I asked. “Word of advice: don’t make any treaties where they promise to respect your sovereignty. Not even if they offer you shiny beads. It’s always a trap.”

John frowned, clearly getting this reference and finding it not particularly respectful of American history. Tough. I wasn’t respectful of anything. Not even myself. “The people of Nub’Ab’Sul are giving us the territory around Skull Castle. It’s a formerly inhabited kingdom Tom Terror wiped clean off the map.”

Yikes.

“It’s also a volcanic wasteland,” I pointed out. “I mean, yeah, that works if you’re an orc or demon but it’s not my pick.”

I also wouldn’t want to live in a place that was a mass grave, but I supposed all of Cthulhu Earth was that for these two.

Mercury smirked, amused by my statement of revulsion. “Volcanos are good. They mean it will be a fertile tropical jungle in a few years. A good environment for building a new civilization for refugees.”

“Huh, now I’m thinking of investing,” I said, finishing my cocoa. “Visit Mercuryland and John City. It’s like Hawaii except formerly owned by Nazis.”

“Do you think anyone on the surface would be willing to accept us?” John asked, raising an eyebrow. “Imagine if we asked if they could take in a few million displaced citizens from our world. That sort of thing didn’t fly where I was from.”

I grimaced. “Yeah, refugees aren’t really welcome right now. Or ever. It seems to be the one thing every country on the planet agrees on. Well, actually, there’s a few people but they have to deal with—”

“We’ll take the volcanic rock,” Mercury interrupted. “Skull Castle has a bunch of built-in infrastructure and replicators. We can use those to arm ourselves and sow the seeds of an autonomous city-state. I pity anyone who tries to take our territory.”

Yeah, suddenly this didn’t sound like such a great idea anymore. Much like every other idea I’ve had in my life. “Well, you guys enjoy crushing your enemies and hearing the lamentations of their women.”

I was unironically happy for them. A bunch of Mad Max monster-hunting badasses and survivalists wasn’t the sort of group that you wanted to screw with. Adding them to the population of the Hollow Earth might deter any other would-be invaders from the surface. Mind you, the locals might not get along with them, but hopefully they could sort that out. I got the impression John and Mercury really wanted to establish peaceful relations rather than act as conquerors. I also trusted John to eat whoever disagreed, assuming Mercury didn’t blast them first. If not? Well, I’d keep returning until we made it work. It wasn’t like I had anything else better to do.

“Have you considered speaking real English? Half of what you say is complete gibberish,” Mercury said, apparently not being a fan of Frank Herbert. John’s smile indicated he had read the book, however.

“Only half? I actually am like ten IQ points beneath the minimum threshold to be a super scientist,” I said, simply.

Mercury crossed her arms. “Uh huh.”

“No, seriously,” I said, smiling. I used to have a very high IQ before they raised it to 500 maxima because of all the people making nuclear reactors in their basement. Not naming names, but my daughter. I’m hoping Mindy is a genius like her mom, but I worry about being able to handle two super-genius children. I’m already in debt up to my eyeballs for the time she made a toy Godzilla robot and figured out how to make it life-size. It turns out my villain insurance doesn’t cover acts of childhood whimsy. Quantaman and Quantawoman shouldn’t have published their discoveries online.”

“Size-control is a lot more dangerous power than people think,” John said.

“That’s what she said,” Mercury said, grinning.

John gave her a sideways glance.

“What?” Mercury asked. “It’s both dirty and true.”

I was going to miss these guys. I also made a mental note that after they got everyone through the portal to this world, that we had to shut it down and lock the door behind us. The last thing this world needed was Cthulhu in anything but plushie form. We had local eldritch abominations, thank you very much.

“Yeah, well, I’m going to go talk to Gabrielle and see about getting my kids back,” I said. “There’s plenty of countries with no extradition treaties on the surface I can hide out in. Maybe I can buy myself a castle in Translovakia.”

“Take care, Merciless,” Mercury said, smiling. “You’re not the worst person I ever met.”

“I hope I never have to kill you,” John said, giving me a thumbs up.

I took that as high praise.

Gabrielle walked over to me, still holding the Spear of Odin and smiling brightly. “Good to see you’re enjoying the victory celebration, Gary. Some of the Society of Superheroes want to give you a medal.”

“Not until Chewbacca gets his,” I said, solemnly before pounding my chest with a fist. “Solidarity with my Wookie brothers.”

“Not this again.” Gabrielle rolled her eyes. “Gary, we have something to talk about when this is all done.”

“Good sexy-time talk or breaking-up talk because you need to learn to open with something else if it’s the former.”

Gabrielle smirked. “The former. Mostly I wanted to know how you were holding up. You took a pretty bad beating back there.”

“The only thing injured was my everything,” I said, dissipating my empty cup of cocoa. “How are you holding up?”

“It was a big win and we needed one of those,” Gabrielle said. “Yet it was a win that came after coming perilously close to disaster.”

“A lot of people got very used to your father and the other old guard taking the biggest threats themselves,” I said. “You showed them you can do the same.”

“Thanks.” Gabrielle took a deep breath. “Do you think he’s gone this time? For good I mean?”

I thought about what Odin had said. That Tom Terror was just a fragment of a much greater evil intrinsic to the universe. Somewhere, across reality, he was probably reincarnating as someone who would grow up to be the next monster that threatened the universe. Monstro the Conqueror, Astro the Mind-Star, or Zing the Horrifying.

Knowing this, I decided to lie. “Yes, I absolutely believe he’s gone forever and will never trouble anyone ever again.”

“Good.” Gabrielle took my hand. “Come on.”

Gabrielle brought me to a group of heroes in the center of the room that I recognized as the Society of Superheroes High Council. Which, honestly, was surprisingly pretentious for a group of normally humble heroes. Then again, even Moses Anders referred to himself by the incredibly unsettling title of Ultragod, so maybe every superhero had a bit of the megalomaniac in them.

In this case, the seven members of the High Council were the new Prismatic Commando, Captain Ultra, Guinevere, Aquarius the King of Atlantis, Nightwoman, the Silver Medalist, and Queen Isis the Incredible. They were a garishly dressed collection of heroes and at least one of them (*cough* Captain Ultra *cough*) should have been replaced with Gabrielle. Nevertheless, I was actually grateful to be in front of them as something other than a prisoner.

“Wait, I’m not being arrested again, am I?” I asked.

“Why would they arrest you?” Gabrielle asked.

“Murder, theft, making bad jokes,” Nightwoman said, looking surprisingly comfortable among the gods of Earth’s superheroic Olympus. You know, as opposed to the actual Olympians who the Society of Superheroes had kicked out of this dimension.

I sniffed the air. “My jokes are never bad, except when they are.”

“Are you sure she’s not brainwashed?” Captain Ultra asked, looking at Gabrielle.

Captain Ultra, who was a tall man who looked like Will Smith with a shaved head and beard, kept his arms crossed and looked at me in disapproval. He had the look of a man who had spent twenty-plus years as a sidekick with all the repressed anger that implied. I didn’t like Captain Ultra for a lot of reasons, not the least that he had phased Gabrielle out of the Society of Superheroes. and had called for Supers to be subject to registration. Which, contrary to the O-Men comic books, isn’t bad by itself but is when the government has vocal members wanting to lobotomize or murder Supers.

“Only by love,” Guinevere said.

“The worst kind of brainwashing,” Aquarius said, softly. He looked like a speedo-wearing Conan the Barbarian with gills. Not exactly the best kind of swimmer’s body but the dude moved at Mach 9 so who was I to judge.

“The spirits have a powerful influence over Merciless,” Queen Isis said. She was a woman of mixed African and Egyptian descent. “They swirl around him and protect him even as he sends many of them to their greater destiny. The future is obscure but—”

I raised my hand. “You know that I know you’re from New Jersey, right?”

Queen Isis frowned and dropped the accent. “Do I interrupt your shtick?”

“Fair enough,” I said. “My bad.”

“Thank you,” Isis muttered.

“So, what is it that you wanted to talk about?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t something stupid like whether I was willing to surrender.

“We’re here to offer you membership in the Society of Superheroes,” Guinevere said, looking into my eyes. “It’s time for you to become a superhero.”