THE STATE OF THE SUPERVILLAIN UNION
“Must I?” I asked, raising my hands. “Because I’d prefer to live.”
The Human Tank’s helmet retracted, revealing the brown-haired woman beneath. “This is no laughing matter.”
“I laugh in the face of Death,” I said. “Well, not really, because she’s really done well by me.”
Clarissa Montehaven (formerly David Stockwell), a.k.a The Human Tank, was someone I didn’t want to fight. Not only because she’d been one of the people who’d helped fight against President Omega as part of the Shadow Seven, but also because I had known her longer than Cindy and Mandy put together.
Not well, but she’d been part of my brother’s gang, the Nefarious Nine, which was one of the more longstanding supervillain “clubs.” Clarissa had broken with the group not long after my brother’s death and had embarked on a successful solo career before trying to reform. She was also looking good for a woman pushing fifty, still sporting the Linda Hamilton look. Compliments to her surgeon. Maybe there was something to Cloak’s claim that superheroes and villains didn’t age until they did.
“There isn’t,” Cloak said. “I just made that up. The Society of Superheroes and Fraternity of Supervillains just have longevity spells as perks.”
“Nice to know,” I said, waiting for them to make the first move. Mandy and Amanda had moved into attack position, and I was more worried about them than I was Clarissa or her crew. Mostly because we were here to recruit an army. Not kill more of Falconcrest City’s supervillain population.
“Do you recognize any of these guys?” I mentally asked Cloak.
“No,” Cloak said. “Which could be good or bad.”
Falconcrest City’s collection of supervillains had been all but wiped out between our miniature zombie apocalypse and Mandy’s subsequent bloodthirst-driven rampage. These were all out-of-towners who’d been unable to cut it in their hometowns or newbies, which meant I could probably mop the floor with them.
Mandy, however, stepped in front of me. “Clarissa, put that gun down or I swear I will rip off your arm and shove it up your thermal exhaust port.”
“Mandy?” Clarissa said. “He’s made a robot of you too?”
Amanda glared. “This isn’t Merciful; it’s Merciless.”
A man dressed in a polka-dot leotard with a glowing eye-visor pointed at me. “Like it matters! You made a big mistake coming her—oh my god, my foot is on fire! Help! Oh shit, Christ, help! Oh god, now it’s frozen!”
The next supervillain, a woman dressed in a 1950s bubble-topped astronaut’s suit, aimed her ray gun at me only for Amanda to knock it out of her hand with a moon-shaped boomerang.
“You don’t know who you’re messing with,” Amanda said. “Yesterday, I let a bunch of decent people die to rescue these two. You have no idea what lengths I’ll go to in order to protect them.”
That was when Clarissa blasted Mandy with a concentrated blast of sunlight and caused her to smash against the wall behind me.
“Sunlight actually doesn’t work on vampires,” I said. “It’s annoying and makes them grouchy, but it doesn’t actually do anything.”
Then I looked at Mandy’s face, which was half-burned off and now regenerating. She looked really pissed off. Her fangs were jutting out and her claws were extending. I was pretty sure she was going to kill everybody here and that would defeat the purpose of coming here to recruit a supervillain army.
I turned intangible as a six-armed guy with a spider-costume jumped on me, followed by a samurai woman with a glowing katana that turned out not to be enchanted save to glow, and a guy who just made pew-pew gestures with his fingers at me. He was wearing a t-shirt that said “I’M THE STUPIDIFIER.” I was worried about that guy.
I took a deep breath. “Clarissa, it’s me. Other Gary kidnapped and imprisoned me after the attack on President Omega’s base. We’re kind of friendly, we both like Gabrielle, and you really, really love football despite it being a dumb sport.”
“You shut your mouth!” Amanda said, lifting the spider guy over her head. “You have no right to complain with all the useless crap you love.”
Clarissa switched over her arm cannon to a setting I suspected would be able to hit me in my intangible form. “I don’t believe you.”
I closed my eyes. “My brother, Keith, and you had an affair that left him really, really confused. It’s part of the reason he was going straight.”
Everyone stopped at that.
Clarissa stared at me then, scrunched up her face in horror. “Why the hell would you just announce that!?”
“Because you’re shooting at me and my wife!” I snapped. “The other option is just killing you.”
“My goddamn foot!” the polka dot guy said.
“I am going easy on you, pal!” I snapped. “Also, what’s your codename? I’m not getting a theme here with the helmet and leotard.”
“I’m the Polka Dot Zapper!” he proclaimed.
I blinked. “OK, that’s not a name that has any theme. Do you zap polka dots? Project them as like a laser-targeting sight, or what?”
“I’d answer but I need a doctor!” Polka Dot Zapper said.
“Quit whining,” Clarissa said, looking about ready to slug him. “Archanodude, Robot Samurai Girl, take him down to the Painful Nurse for healing.”
They lifted the Polka Dot Zapper and dragged him away, leaving only a fragment of her original group. That was when Mandy stepped through me and looked ready to rip the Human Tank in two, which I fully believed she could do.
“Down girl,” I said. “Clarissa is probably a friend now.”
“I want to rip open her throat and gorge on the blood as her heart pumps it in my face,” Mandy said.
“I suspect the demon inside Club Inferno is affecting her,” Cloak said. “Evil magic calls to evil magic.”
I wanted to conjure Cloak’s spirit so I could punch him in the nose.
I took a deep breath. “Mandy, please don’t kill the Human Tank. You can beat her within an inch of her life later.”
“Hang on,” Clarissa said.
“No buts,” I said, raising my hand. “We have more important things to talk about.”
“Like the fact that he’s here to recruit a supervillain army to take down Other Gary’s power plant, which he believes is powered by Ultragoddess,” the Stupidifier said.
“How did you know that?” I asked.
“My power is actually telepathy,” the Stupidifer said. “It makes—”
Amanda broke his jaw with one punch and sent him spiraling on the ground.
“What the hell!?” Clarissa said.
“Operational security,” Amanda said. “Keep him away from us.”
I looked at her. “We’re trying to convince her we’re legitimate.”
“Operational security protects You-Know-Who,” Amanda said.
“Voldemort?” I asked.
The Stupidifier crawled away, presumably to the Painful Nurse.
“Your daughter,” Mandy said, once he was out of sight.
“You have a daughter?” Clarissa said.
I glared at Amanda and Mandy. “Nice job, you two. Brilliant. The best way to keep telepaths out of your head is to not think of stuff you’re trying to hide. You instead think of inane stuff that no one cares about it until they get bored and leave.”
Mandy stood there, shaking until she finally pulled back her fangs and claws. “I’d say that would give you an impossible advantage over them, but there’s like six on Earth, so it’s not much of an ability.”
“Seven,” I said. “Mention my daughter to anyone, Clarissa, and I will kill you. Friend of my brother’s or not.”
I was deadly serious.
From her reaction, Clarissa believed me. “You have my word as a former member of the Shadow Seven, I will not betray your trust.”
“What happened to the team?” Mandy said, her hands shaking.
I put my hand on her shoulder. She grabbed it and bit into it. I grimaced and let her use it to take some of the edge off. Thankfully, vampire saliva was a natural coagulant. The wounds sealed up as soon as the vampires stopped drinking.
Clarissa looked over to where the others had walked away. “The world was a different place after World War Three. Everyone blamed everyone else, but most of all, they blamed the superheroes for not preventing it and the supervillains for existing. Merciful rose to power in the chaos and recruited countless supervillains to his cause for rebuilding. He also dismantled Gabrielle’s reform program. Shadow Team Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and more were replaced with his own troops. They were less interested in reformation than in making use of the psychos and eliminating anyone who could stand in his way.”
“Ironic for a supposedly reformed villain,” I said, pulling my hand away before Mandy drank more blood than I was comfortable giving. “Then again, in Other Gary’s mind, he was never a villain.”
Clarissa sighed. “It explained a lot. We never believed you and Merciful were the same person. Not only had your family informed us of him, but we’d fought with you before. That made us targets. We were all framed for returning to our life of supervillainy. General Venom allowed himself to be captured to let us all escape. Other Gary made sure he was tried, convicted, and executed for the crimes he’d committed before his attempt at atonement.”
I couldn’t say I felt much. General Venom was, in his own way, sort of like Diabloman. One of the genuinely evil supervillains who’d once been a big deal before becoming considerably less so (both evil and a big deal) as time passed. Venom—I didn’t know his real name—had been a massive big deal as a superpowered militia leader in the 1980s before the word “terrorist” had been a household word.
His organization, the House of Serpents, had done a lot of damage in its war against the Foundation for World Harmony’s troops, but the public had treated it as one gigantic sports match. In the end, after the House of Serpents crumbled, General Venom converted to Islam and ended up trying to bring peace to the Middle East and other war-torn countries. I’d never been entirely comfortable with the guy and always wondered why Gabrielle had tried to give him an out. Still, I supposed I hoped he’d found some sort of peace.
“Well, if you’re going to take down Merciful, then I’m in,” Clarissa said. “So is my husband John.”
“John?” I asked.
“John Midnight,” Clarissa said. “A resurrected and ensouled Bloodscream the Retributive.”
Oh yeah, I remembered him coming back from the dead right before I’d been imprisoned in Undertown. It seemed the revolving door of death only applied to supervillains and ex-supervillains. It never seemed to apply to the noble like Ultragod or the millions of people President Omega killed. I didn’t want to think about that, though, so I made a glib remark. “I was resurrecting loved ones as vampires and giving them their souls back before it was cool.”
Mandy gave me a sideways glance.
“Which means you were doing it first!” I said, backtracking. “He’s totes ripping you off!”
Mandy sighed. “Whatever.”
Ouch. Suppressing her violently murderous urges was probably a lot more difficult than it usually was if she wasn’t in a joking mood.
“We also have Diabloman, Mister Inventor, Red Riding Hood, and … others,” Amanda said, perhaps only then realizing we didn’t have anyone else. “So, that’s something.”
“Not unless you intend to make a legion of vampires under your control,” Clarissa said. “Which is possible, I suppose.”
“No, it’s not,” Mandy said. “That’s the one line I won’t cross.”
“Line-crossing is bad when you’re trying to control a horror hunger.” I wracked my brain trying figure out how I was going to convince hundreds of supervillains to work together against the First Citizen. Tom Terror had managed it only by unleashing them against his enemies while working another angle. “Despite the stirring beginnings of our force of six or seven people, we need more bodies on the ground. Taking out this power plant and recovering Gabrielle will do a lot to weaken Other Gary, though. It might also allow me to steal all the life energy he’s stolen and will him out of existence.”
“Really?” Clarissa said.
“Fuck if I know,” I admitted. “I’ve literally learned more magic by accident than trying to understand its principles. I’ve got the unlearn part down but have almost zero luck with the actual physics.”
“Way to fill her up with confidence about our chances, Gary,” Amanda said.
“Who is the leader here?” Mandy asked. “We need to speak with them.”
Clarissa looked uncomfortable before answering. “Uh, it’s … Selena. Selena Darkchilde. The Black Witch.”
Mandy stared.
I closed my eyes. “Of course it is.”
“What’s wrong? Aren’t you two friends?” Amanda asked, looking between us.
“Since when?” Mandy said, looking between us.
“Eh,” I shrugged my shoulder. “She’s kind of my magical tutor.”
“My ex-girlfriend is your instructor,” Mandy said, sounding appalled.
You two hated each other. What could possibly have brought you to … oh.”
“Yeah,” I said, sighing. “We only had one thing in common, and trying to save her was enough to put aside any differences we had.”
Selena Darkchilde, a.k.a the Black Witch, was a sorceress possessed by the spirit of Hecate. Selena and I technically had the same supervillain story. The insidious Doctor Thule— and I refuse not to use the descriptor for him—had taken dozens of highly intelligent but emotionally unstable Falconcrest City university students before manipulating them to their breaking points. I hadn’t gone all the way, though, and never got superpowers like she had via magic. We’d known each other before Mandy, though, and I considered her a fundamentally good person gone wrong. She was also petty, vindictive, and extremely jealous. I did not know how she was going to react to Mandy’s soul being restored.
“You think she believed Mandy would someday return to her?” Cloak asked.
“No one likes setting their exes free,” I mentally replied. “It’s why the Supremes sang about it.”
“I actually got that reference,” Cloak said. “How do you think Mandy will react?”
I honestly had no idea. “Let’s get going, Clarissa. Time is wasting, and every second is another second Gabrielle remains imprisoned.”
“All right,” Clarissa said, walking forward. “Let’s go.”
I looked over to Mandy, who looked conflicted. “Are you OK?”
Mandy looked up at me, her eyes having turned red. “No, Gary, no I’m not.”
I put my arms around her and led her down the halls. “It’ll be OK.”
Amanda walked beside us. “How bad could it be?”
“I’m not in control of my emotions, so I might murder everyone here,” Mandy said.
“Yeah, let’s not do that,” I said. “At least until we need to make a really dramatic statement about how much of a badass you are.”
Though in a fight between me, Mandy, Amanda, and an army of ten thousand versus Selena, I put my money on Selena. The trek through Club Inferno left me feeling that things were worse than I’d expected with the supervillain business. I passed stands where people were selling advanced weapons, magical items, and loot, but the pickings were far worse than I remembered.
Also, the clubgoers weren’t just losers from other cities trying to make it in Falconcrest City’s power vacuum, but a lot of mid-listers plus a few of the less smart big boys. There was Ax-Crook, Brain-in-a-Jar, the Cyberpunk, Jigsaw Jones, B-Movie Slasher, Sexy Jester, Ant-Girl and Bee Queen, Gay Pierre, Murder Hobo, Domo Origato, and her husband Mister Roboto plus a few others I recognized.
The club scene was also a good deal more depressing as well, since plenty of these supervillains were lined up at the expansive bar, getting plastered. They looked like they’d been doing it every night for months. Others weren’t bothering with mere alcohol and I saw a den of supervillains completely out on Red Dust. There were methods to clean up people in less than twenty-four hours, but this was a damned depressing sight. About the only part that wasn’t was the Gladiator Pits, where at least some were enjoying beating the hell out of each other with their powers. The Gladiator Pits were enspelled so the combatants couldn’t kill each other, mostly out of a need to make sure supervillains didn’t decrease the amount of evil in the world with their infighting. But the pits still were as violent as ever.
“This isn’t just a haven for the villains of Falconcrest City anymore, is it?” I asked Clarissa.
Clarissa shook her head. “No, Club Inferno has opened gateways across the United States and beyond. This is a haven for all supervillains on Earth now. It’s a profession that’s rapidly dying out.”
“Oh, the shame,” Amanda said.
Clarissa shrugged. “They now work for the First Citizen, beating up protestors and killing people in foreign countries for outrageous amounts of money. Going straight doesn’t mean they’ve gone good.”
There wasn’t much to say to that. We arrived at a secluded alcove overlooking the Gladiator Pits, where Black Witch was lying on a black leather couch with a couple of guests. Selena looked like a million bucks in a set of fishnets, a female magician’s top, and a witch’s hat. If Angelina Jolie and Eva Green had a science baby, she would probably grow up to be half as hot as Selena Darkchilde. The Red Schoolgirl, who was now more the Red School Mistress, was wearing an adult version of a school uniform while leaning against her on one of the couches. Guarding the door was a living stone statue of a politician from before my imprisonment that I vaguely recognized as the professional henchman Rockman Obama.
He smiled at me. “Welcome to the Lady’s alcove. Don’t try anything. I might get mad.”
Mandy locked eyes with Selena.
Then Selena rushed out to embrace her.
“OK,” I muttered. “This is nice.”
Selena kissed Mandy on both cheeks, then the lips before shocking me by hugging me. “I’m glad you’re all right too, Gary.”
I held my hands out completely straight to avoid groping her in even the slightest way. That the back of her outfit was just a corset made that difficult.
Selena pulled back. “How can I help you?’
Wow, that was easy.