WHERE I START TO REVALUATE MY LIFE CHOICES
So, I was getting my ass kicked. It was happening a lot lately. I was laying on the ground in the middle of the display room of W.I.Z.A.R.D labs with the Time Cube on display. It was a glowing little cube in the middle of spinning rings with a halo of blue white energy around it. What did it do? I had not the slightest idea, but the company that manufactured most of the super-technological devices of the world had made it their center display for their annual science expo, so I figured it would be a good idea to steal it.
Did I wait for nightfall when it was being packed up? Did I wait for it to be transferred from the heavily monitored display room to a less-observed armor car? Did I do it at any time other than broad daylight during the grand opening? No, of course not, because I’m a supervillain. I don’t do things the easy way.
I was surrounded by the unconscious forms of Red Riding Hood a.k.a Cindy Wakowski-Karkofsky and Diabloman, who didn’t have a civilian identity as far as I could tell. There was also the Teardrop Man, Mr. Stilts, the Ring-Tosser, and a bunch of other C-listers who had my exact same plan to rob the place. I swear to God, I’m not making this up, but eight different groups of supervillains had attacked the W.I.Z.A.R.D expo at once. That would have been a big enough disaster by itself, but no, there was also a single superheroine there.
Guinevere.
“Gary, we need to talk,” the enchanting voice of the World’s Most Beautiful Ass-Kicker said, picking me up by the back of my hood and lifting me up to her face. Guinevere was a 6’2 woman who, in her natural form, basically looked like Pryanka Chopra if she was a buxom professional body-builder. Originally, Guinevere’s appearance was just whatever the viewer thought was their ideal partner but she’d got herself shoved into a new body during a fight with Mr. Magick because weird stuff like that happened with superheroes more often than not. She’d also gained a boost in strength making her as strong as Ultragoddess.
Guinevere was dressed in a form-fitting suit of armor with a tabard on the front while Caliburn was sheathed beside her. A little crown rested on her forehead, marking her as Queen of Camelot. She wasn’t the mythological Guinevere, but was Mordred Pendragon’s sister and the daughter of Morgana Le Fey. She’d left the paradise of Otherworld in order to help regular humanity against the horrors of war. Guinevere was one of the two strongest superheroines in the world and well out of my weight class, even with the power of Death backing me up.
“Hi Gwen,” I said, trying not to look at the dozen unconscious crooks surrounding me. My team had arrived late to the party and missed most of her massive beat-down of bad guys, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t had plenty more to share. “How’s it hanging?”
I tried to turn insubstantial, in order to escape her grasp, but her magical gauntlets prevented me from doing so.
Crap.
“Do you know what it’s like having to deal with you, Mr. Karkofsky?” Guinevere asked. She was using my real name, which was never a good sign with superheroes. It meant they felt they knew you personally and were inclined to take their beatings of you personally. If you were the Ice Cream Man or Big Ben, it was just a job, but if you were Gary Karkofsky then you were someone they felt connected to.
“That is a question my wife asks every day,” I said, trying to figure a way out of this and seeing none. “Also, my girlfriend.”
Guinevere wrinkled her nose in disgust. “You’re vile.”
“Hey, they know about each other,” I said. “Don’t be so prejudiced.”
Mandy Karkofsky a.k.a Nighthuntress was a superheroine who’d died and returned as a vampire. That meant, according to Murray v. Harker, we weren’t legally married and couldn’t get married again unless she was returned to human form—which would never happen because there was no cure for vampirism. Cindy and I had gotten together when Mandy was soulless as well as evil. Cindy had given birth to my child, Leia. What did Mandy think of this? Well, she considered Cindy her mortal slave and servant, so she didn’t mind. I had a third relationship happening that was complicating things with the other two. Yeah, I was a pig, but you try and deal with this kind of stuff.
Guinevere pulled me close to her face. “You. Are. An. Annoyance.”
“This is also something they’ve said,” I said, debating my options.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t fight Guinevere, it’s the fact my options were limited to things that might seriously injure or kill the people around me. It also wouldn’t work in terms of winning the fight. I could turn insubstantial (that hadn’t worked), shoot fire or cold, and was a bit more durable than most people. It was times like this that I missed Cloak since he would have known how to handle a situation like this. Then again, the ghost of the Nightwalker would have objected to me trying to steal the Time Cube in the first place.
“Do you want to know what annoys me the most?” Guinevere asked, looming over me like a living statue.
“My acerbic wit?” I asked. “My diabolical genius? The fact I look like a model yet can recite every Star Wars movie from memory? Including the Prequels and Rogue One?”
Guinevere face planted me on the ground, breaking my nose then bringing me back up to her face. “The fact you’ve wasted the opportunities you’ve been given. You’ve saved the world twice. You don’t kill innocents. You had a pardon from the government and Foundation for World Harmony after killing President Omega. Yet you threw it all away to become a petty criminal again?”
“I object to the word petty,” I said, pushing my nose back into place. “Also, the Gary who was pardoned was actually a version of me from an alternate universe and—”
Guinevere pulled out Caliburn and held it up against my throat. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now!”
I blinked. Caliburn, as one of the Great Artifacts, was one of the items that could kill me with no chance of resurrection or even undeath. I could maybe blast Guinevere with a full dose of hellfire or stygian ice, but that would probably just make her even madder. Even if I did get past her defenses, that would just kill her and I didn’t want to do that. Instead, I relied on my words, as poorly chosen as they sometimes were. “Because you’re one of the good guys?”
Guinevere stared directly at me before dropping me on the ground. She then put her boot around my neck, which seemed to work just as well as her gauntlets in penetrating my insubstantiality. “Yes, I suppose I am.”
I stopped trying to escape and looked up at her. If I was going to get out of this then I was going to need to use my most dangerous superpower: my wits. “You know there are plenty of places where people would pay good money for this.”
Guinevere’s eyes blazed with fury.
“Okay, obviously not something you’d do,” I said, grunting in pain. I’d taken plenty of poundings over the few years but this was particularly painful. Guinevere wasn’t holding back nearly as much as she normally did. I had no idea why but she was furious at me. “However, I’m sensing some latent hostility. Is something wrong?”
Guinevere buried Caliburn in the ground beside my head before taking her boot off my neck. “Yes, Gary, there is.”
I stood up, waving away what felt like a concussion. I’d probably be fine in an hour or two, the aforementioned tougher than normal power, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t feeling every one of my recent defeats. The Prismatic Commando, Splotch, the Bronze Medalist, and even Ultragoddess had all taken turns on the Merciless whack-a-mole.
At least Ultragoddess had taken the time to nurse me back to health afterward, but being defeated by her was no less humiliating. Gabrielle Anders was the third woman in my life but that was a whole other story.
Guinevere pulled her fist back to punch me again. “So I’m going to send you and the rest of these fools to New Alcatraz. Then I’m going to go to the next supervillain bash in what has become a three times a day occurrence.”
I raised my hands in surrender as I slowly got to my feet. “Want to talk about it?”
“Excuse me?” Guinevere asked. “Gary, you’re going to jail.”
“From which I will promptly escape so while we’re waiting for the police here in Atlas City to arrest me, why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?”
“You want to chat?” Guinevere asked.
“Versus getting thrown around like a ragdoll or used as a punching bag? Yes, yes I do.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Guinevere looked intrigued, though.
“Not really,” I said, sighing and going to check on Cindy then Diabloman. “I had a minor in superhuman psychology and I’m one of the few people who knows what it’s like to be on both sides of the hero/villain divide. Besides, legally, you have to wait for the police.”
“Technically, I can give a statement later.”
I interrupted that train of thought as I went over to check Diabloman’s eyes. “Hold up, checking bodies.”
Hollywood made you believe that if you knocked someone out, they would be fine a little while after but if they weren’t up after thirty minutes then they probably weren’t getting up. As such, superheroes had quite a bigger body count than many people believed unless they were Society of Superheroes members who had Venusian equipment to stabilize them. The fact Guinevere was in the Society and hadn’t bothered using it showed she didn’t care. I cast some minor healing magic over my henchmen then went to the other villains to make sure nobody passed on. The Guinevere I knew wasn’t the kind of person who killed. Not unless the victim was a monster and I meant that in the giant or dragon sense.
“Are they alright?” Guinevere asked.
“Nothing decades of medical debt won’t cure.”
“Good,” Guinevere said, apparently missing the irony of my statement or not caring. “I didn’t mean to go so harsh on them.”
“So why did you?” I asked.
“The Time Cube cannot be allowed to fall into evil hands!”
I looked at her. “Do you even know what it does?”
“You don’t?” Guinevere looked at me.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Things,” Guinevere admitted, looking guilty. “Related to time.”
“Uh-huh. You have my parole I will not attempt to escape while you’re here. I wouldn’t abandon Diabloman or Cindy anyway.”
“Honor among thieves?” Guinevere asked, as if the concept was ludicrous. Which it was.
“They’re my family.”
Guinevere stared at me, looking around the scene then sighed. “Very well, I’ll give it a shot. Gary, you and the rest of the supervillains you released from Merciful’s jails are driving the Society of Superheroes to ruin.”
Guinevere was referring to the fact, a year ago, I’d been one of the most famous superheroes in the world—except, for the fact it wasn’t me. Merciful a.k.a Other Gary took my place after dumping me and Mandy in a secret prison of his own design. He’d proven a lot better at my life than I had, ending crime in Falconcrest City and becoming known as a world famous inventor despite the fact neither of us had an IQ above 135.
Other Gary turned my hometown of Falconcrest City into a police state. He locked away most of the world’s supervillains in black sites along with a bunch of his political opponents. He even stuffed Gabrielle into a power plant, sucking on her energy for years. I’d ended up freeing her but it had required releasing all the other supervillains Merciful had locked away—many who had belonged in jail or in the morgue. It had destroyed all of the good will I’d garnered before my doppelganger had capitalized on it. Apparently, stopping World War 3 a few years earlier wasn’t anything compared to the mild inconvenience of having to round up some goons I’d let loose.
I looked up at Guinevere. “The Society is being driven to ruins? My frequently broken jaw says otherwise.”
“You have a target on your back since you shut down your doppelganger,” Guinevere said, revealing she knew it hadn’t been me. “Just about every hero wants to punch you or blast you for destroying their lives.”
“I think that’s an exaggeration,” I said, pausing to think about the implications. “Though I’m not sure which part is the exaggeration.”
It did explain my massive amount of bad luck, though. Last year, I’d been ready to take over the world. Two worlds, in fact, only to have my fortune dissipate and virtually every heist I planned ended in complete disaster. I’d become a jobber and while I was one of those supervillains who treated every prison he was held in like Swiss cheese, that didn’t keep me from experiencing the physical pain of every beat down. It had gotten to the point superheroes didn’t even wait for me to commit crimes, they actually tracked me down in order to lay the smack down. That just wasn’t kosher. Legal? Yes. Kosher? No.
“Gary, last year we were on the verge of winning the war against crime. Almost all supervillains were locked up and the major syndicates were all dismantled. P.H.A.N.T.O.M was destroyed along with SKULL and the Fraternity of Supervillains. We were finally able to work on things like clean energy, world poverty, hunger, and other social ills our powers were better suited to. Then you had to go reinvigorate the supervillain world, unite them, and lead them to free all their friends. Do you realize what you’ve done?”
I balled my fists. “Listen, that wasn’t a good thing! Merciful was brainwashing people! He hurt Gabrielle! You let that happen.”
“I’m sorry about that but one hundred twenty-two people died when you cut the power to the East Coast,” Guinevere said, ignoring what I’d said.
I took a deep breath. I remembered when the news showed the faces of the people who’d been killed in the sudden blackout and the failure of the locals to be prepared for it. It was only one of the consequences of my taking down Merciful and his saccharine empire. “I’d do it again. That was sick and I love Gabrielle. By the way, don’t tell Mandy or Cindy that.”
“We know, Gary,” Cindy said, getting up and feeling her head. She was dressed in an armored leather version of a ‘sexy Red Riding Hood’ outfit that was glamoured to be a lot more revealing than it was. “Would someone get me the number of the truck that hit me? It was shaped like a swimsuit model.”
“You able to resist Guinevere’s aura of peace?” I asked, surprised she was standing up.
“I think the concussion is helping,” Cindy muttered, feeling her head.
“I’ve stopped my charm aura,” Guinevere said. “It hasn’t been working as well as it used to.”
“Can’t possibly be the changes to your personality,” Cindy said, spitting out a tooth. “It’s okay, it’s a molar.”
“Do you realize what you did by releasing all those monsters?” Guinevere looked at me with a condemnatory stare. “A lot of monsters were released by your incarnation of the Fraternity of Supervillains too. We’re still trying to find Bloodbath and Killgore for murdering Lady Hollywood’s family.”
Okay, maybe what I’d done wasn’t a mild inconvenience. “Hey, I killed those two, actually. They’d invited me to join in a job. It turned out to involve slaving—which I had only one response to.”
“Turning it down?” Cindy asked. “Calling the cops?”
“Fire,” I replied. “Lots and lots of fire.”
“Ah,” Cindy said. “That was my next guess.”
Guinevere blinked. “What? You killed your fellow supervillains? Why?”
“Because they were psychos,” I said, glad she understood I meant Bloodbath and Killgore. “There’s two kinds of supervillains. The professional criminals and the monsters. I don’t have any room for monsters in my vision of supervillainy. I also killed the Lakewood Slasher, Cannibal Hillbilly Redneck, and the Nightmare Fetishist.”
“It’s why the Fraternity of Supervillains blackballed him,” Cindy said, trying to stand up before falling back on her ass. “It’s technically illegal for any supervillain to work with him and I almost lost my membership card for it. However, I’m okay with them because they all think I’m willing to screw them.”
“But you aren’t, right?” I asked, half-joking.
“Of course not!” Cindy said. “I only have sex with you, Mister Inventor, the Florist, and three former Nineties boy band leads.”
I stared at her. “Yeah, that’s fair.”
I tried to put that image out of my mind and failed. Then I thought about it for a minute.
“Gary!” Guinevere said.
“Hmm?” I said, turning around. “Listen, I’m sorry about what happened but his tyranny couldn’t be allowed to continue. The real Guinevere would know you can’t sacrifice the freedom of seven people just to make sure one guilty person dies. I swear you were a lot nicer when you locked me up a few years ago.”
“When I sentenced you to life imprisonment on the moon?”
“Yes, you smiled more then.”
Guinevere didn’t look impressed with my logic. “I don’t want to sacrifice anyone’s freedom, Gary, but this is a war that has stretched us to the limits. I’ve been fighting it since WW2 and I’ve lost more friends than you could count doing so. Nazi Basher, Captain Stalwart, Ms. Terri, and Two-Fisted Pulp-Hero. Ultragod and the Nightwalker kept us all together but the Society of Superheroes doesn’t have them anymore. I’ve tried to carry the slack, but even I have trouble some days.”
I frowned. “I miss them too. There’s not a day goes by I wouldn’t kill for Cloak’s advice. He was my friend too.”
The world had become a much darker place with the death of the Nightwalker and Ultragod. Lancel Warren and Moses Anders had been two of the three biggest heroes in the world. Their deaths had left a big hole in the ranks of the world’s champions and Guinevere was obviously not dealing too well with the stress. Then again, maybe I was judging her too harshly, as Lady Hollywood was her goddaughter. Lord knew I’d gone crazy a few times in my career.
Guinevere narrowed her eyes. “Gary, do you know why we haven’t just grabbed you and put you on an asteroid with robots to take care of you until you died like we did with Satan Man or Zull the World Destroyer?”
I stared at her. “Because that’s horrifically immoral and against the law?”
“Ultragoddess said if we ever seriously hurt or, gods forbid, kill you then she would destroy the Society of Superheroes outright.” Guinevere’s voice was tired. “Her Shadow Society is made up of people who consider you to be a hero and hate us for abandoning her. There’s also the argument you have saved the world a few times.”
“Oh, really?” I asked, sarcastically. “Is that all?”
I’d saved the world from Tom Terror and two ancient Nephilim, Zul-Barbas (basically Cthulhu), and President Omega’s attempt to commit genocide against all Supers. Hell, I’d even saved the world from my alternate universe doppelganger that the Society of Superheroes had given free rein to “solve” the supervillain issue.
“Ultragoddess wants nothing more to do with the Society or its laws. Mostly, she operates in the Third World nowadays, overthrowing dictators and ending civil wars.”
“Gwen, have you considered you may not be on the right side of history here? A conflict between you and Gabrielle isn’t helping anyone.” Personally, I couldn’t say who would win in a fight between Guinevere and Ultragoddess if they ever threw down but it would be a battle with no winners. They were the two strongest heroes left on Earth by my reckoning and should have been fighting together.
“That’s on her, not me. I’m more worried about whether there will be a history,” Guinevere said, shaking her head. “The Society of Superheroes has lost half its membership. People have retired, been crippled, died, or simply left. They just can’t continue taking up the good fight anymore and the Age of Superheroes is about to end. I was hoping it would end in our victory but it may well end in our defeat. In that respect, I can’t even bring myself to give a damn you’ve admitted to murder in front of me.”
“Well, they had it coming,” Cindy said, sticking her tongue out in disgust. “Especially the Nightmare Fetishist. He targeted children. I mean, you have to have some standards as a supervillain.”
I didn’t know how to respond because Guinevere being utterly exhausted from fighting evil was not something I’d ever expected to see. Combat fatigue affected a lot more heroes than anyone ever really acknowledged, often leading to those dramatic “I shall be a superhero no more!” or hero-on-hero fights you never stopped to examine the psychology of. Guinevere, like Ultragod and the Nightwalker, had always seemed above it all. Maybe I had screwed up. Police sirens echoed outside, signaling it was time to go to jail.
Guinevere’s left gauntlet buzzed. She looked down at it then sighed. “Dammit, there’s a volcano going off in Yellowstone National Park. All hands are needed on deck. I’m going to have to leave you here.”
I stared at her. “Really?”
“Do me a favor and go with the police,” Guinevere said, staring at me. “You are better than this, Gary. You could be so much more than you are.”
“So my guidance counselor kept telling me,” I said. “I promise I’ll wait for the cops.”
“Thank you,” Guinevere said. “I’ll put in a good word for you.”
Guinevere aimed her sword at the Time Cube and caused a glowing bowl-shaped force-field to appear around it. With that, the Society of Superheroes teleported her away to the next crisis she had to deal with.
I didn’t move for a second. Then I walked up to the display, blasted the bottom away beneath it, and let the Time Cube fall into my hands. Stuffing it in my pocket, I went over to help Diabloman to his feet.
“Are we staying for the cops?” Cindy asked.
I looked at her sideways. “What, are you kidding?”