ANOTHER SHOCK I DID NOT NEED
Guinevere picked up a napkin off the table and wiped the Blue Milk off her face. “You did that deliberately.”
“I admit, I did,” I said, staring at her. “What do you mean, pregnant?”
“What do people normally mean with that?” Guinevere said. “It’s not like it’s a metaphor for something else.”
“Pregnant with happiness?” I suggested, trying to figure out any possible other meaning than that.
“No, with a child,” Guinevere asked, her voice accusatory. “Is it yours?”
“Excuse me?” I asked, confused and blinking rapidly.
“She has a boyfriend,” Guinevere said, looking at me. “Several in fact. I also know you’ve been sexually active with her.”
I thought about when I’d ended up at the Observatory, Ultragod’s Fortress of Awesomeness, and found her just binge watching her show on the CW while eating Ben and Jerry’s. The torment she’d suffered at the hands of Merciful had left her in a dark place and I’d come to visit her.
I remembered her wearing an Atlas City Titans’ sports jersey as she sat in front of the world’s largest flat screen television. Universo the Ultradog was snuggled up next to her, looking like a cross between a French Bulldog and a shark. He reminded me of my bull terriers Arwen and Galadriel, both of which passed away under the care of Merciful while I’d been locked up with Mandy.
“Hey Gary,” Gabrielle said, not bothering to look at me. “You know I would have moved the giant key to let you in if you’d asked.”
I shrugged walking up to her. “Eh, everyone knows the Ultra-Family is weak to magic. I just turned insubstantial and walked through the walls. Strangely, the Ultra-Robots didn’t try to evict me once I came in.”
“You’re on the approved guest list,” Gabrielle said, gesturing to a hovering Ultranian servant bot. “My father never bothered removing you when he thought we were going to get married.”
I frowned, thinking of Moses Anders and how he’d always tried to support me even when I was being hauled off to jail for my actions. “He must have been very disappointed in who I became.”
“I doubt that,” Gabrielle said, conjuring a giant glowing pair of tweezers that she used to lift me up and put me down on the couch beside her. “My father believed the best in everyone and you did save his life.”
“Yeah, before my double took it,” I said, looking at her. “I’d thought you’d never want to see me again after that.”
Gabrielle looked down. “There was a time when I blamed you, Gary. When I never wanted to see you again and I regretted ever meeting you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“That lasted about six seconds,” Gabrielle said, looking over at me. “You did everything in your power to resurrect my father from the dead, just like you did your wife, and you also were the only person who didn’t give up on me.”
I stared at her. “Maybe you’re being a little harsh on the Society.”
“Am I?” Gabrielle asked. “I’m surprised you don’t want to tear down the entire organization after what happened. They kept you and Mandy prisoner as well as let that thing walk around with your identity.”
I shrugged. “The fly doesn’t expect sympathy from he who owns the swatter.”
Gabrielle looked at me with her golden eyes, her glowing irises contrasting with their usual brown. “Yeah, well, when you’re a superhero, you expect the others to have your back. You don’t expect them to throw you under the bus when it’s convenient.”
I didn’t have an answer to that. I had been deeply disappointed with the S.O.S myself. “Everyone has their breaking point. Honestly, I can’t imagine fighting daily against evil for decades like some of the heroes have been doing. Merciful offered them a way out and they took it. He Palpatined them all.”
Gabrielle gave a half smile before it turned bitter. “Maybe it’s also the fact I was only useful to them as long as I was Ultragod’s daughter. When he was gone, I was just another liability.”
“Then they’re fools,” I said, frowning. “You’ve saved the world on your own like five or six times.”
“You’ve done that too, Gary, and they treat you like shit,” Gabrielle said, offering me her pint of ice cream.
“No thanks, I’m allergic to white chocolate,” I said, raising my hand. “Besides, I can conjure my own now. After a year of intense magical study, I can do parlor tricks like add milk and sugar to my ice powers.”
Gabrielle laughed. “So, is your wife, Mandy, comfortable with you coming here?”
I paused. “Yeah, I don’t think she actually cares too much where I go.”
Actually, Mandy suggested I come over here and screw Gabrielle’s brains out with all the casualness of giving her a gift of flowers. It wasn’t the sex that bothered her, as I’d later find out, but the intimacy. Mandy didn’t mind if her lovers had dozens of their own but they couldn’t care for them—it was bizarre. Still, I chalked it up to having had to deal with an immense amount of stress from trying to be a superhero, spy, and spouse all in one. It was enough to break anyone. But it was tiring coming home to find exhausted half-drained worshipers in my home and the remains of a Goth metal party I hadn’t been invited to.
“Trouble in paradise?” Gabrielle asked.
“For better and worse,” I said, not really wanting to talk about it. “She knows you’re one of the most important people in my life.”
I’d never been comfortable with the way my marriage had changed after Mandy’s transformation to a vampire, as much as I denied it. She’d become harder and colder, all of the mercy driven out of her soul by both her undead status and fighting President Omega. I still loved her but there was so much darkness in her soul that I often found myself struggling to love her the way I wanted to. I would do anything for her, kill or die, but I also felt like anything less than those extremes was hard now.
“I see,” Gabrielle said, clearly not understanding. “Well, I’m glad you’re here. How’s Cindy?”
“Cindy is Cindy,” I said. “She’s not so much living with us as perpetually sponging. Still, she invites herself along on every heist and is never useless.”
Truth be told, I was under the impression Cindy was having a midlife crisis of some sort. After having lost her license to practice due to the Merciful-controlled medical board, she’d been somewhat aimless and without purpose. Medicine had always been her dream with supervillainy just a way to achieve it. Mandy’s return had also put a crimp in her plans of being a superheroine herself and I suspected Cindy’s refusal by the superhero establishment was fueling her desire to keep me out of it. I wished I could help her but mostly, she just wanted to drink vampire blood and bash heads in. I wasn’t sure there was a psychologist who dealt with post-superhero depression.
“The perfect henchwench,” Gabrielle said.
“Henchwoman,” I said, correcting her. “Henchlady if we’re being polite.”
“How is your family?” Gabrielle asked “Kerri, Lisa, and your daughter?”
“Decent,” I said, not lying. “Lisa just joined the New Guardians. I’m appalled she’s decided to go the superhero route but it’s easier to get royalties from your work than otherwise. Kerri and Mr. Inventor are settled into their new life together. I don’t think they’re dating, necessarily, but they live together. I’m still hoping Mr. Inventor will take up the mantle of the Nightwalker. As for Leia? Well, she’s a genius and telepath so I’m pretty sure she’s destined to take over the world or be the leader of a counterculture band of misfit heroes.”
Gabrielle looked at me. “I’d do just about anything to be a part of a family like that.”
Apparently, Gabrielle had been ignoring everything else I’d said.
“Are you feeling alright?” I looked at her. “Besides, aren’t you still part of the Ultra Family? I mean, yeah, Moses and Polly are gone but—”
“Bark!” Ultradog said.
I scratched behind his ears and conjured some ice cream for him to eat. Ultradogs weren’t lactose intolerant so he lapped it up eagerly.
“Ultragodling got in a fight with me over the fact he wants to use my father’s name,” Gabrielle said. “I’m not comfortable with that even if dad treated his bio-construct like a son. I’ve considered visiting the Bottled Universe to talk to the Ultranians there but I’m not sure I’d want to come back if I did. I stopped by the 40th century a few times to hang with the Army of Space Heroes but apparently even they have limits for dealing with sulking heroines.”
“How about the Shadow Seven?” I asked, referring to her squad of ex-villains and antiheroes.
“More like Shadow Seventeen now,” Gabrielle said, shrugging. “A lot of younger heroes don’t want anything to do with the Society now but I’m not in the right headspace to lead them. The Human Tank is doing a great job leading them.”
“Not the Black Witch?” I asked, having always had a love-hate-hate relationship with Selena Darkchylde.
“She’s going through a divorce because she cheated on her wife with a vampire.”
I looked over my shoulder. “Yeah, I can’t imagine who that was.”
“What about you? You own Pizza Hutt now?”
“Sort of their off-brand competition,” I said, shrugging. “I could retire now but then what would I do with myself?”
“Be rich and happy?” Gabrielle suggested.
“Pfft,” I said, making a dismissive wave. “I’d go crazy if I wasn’t raising hell and taking names.”
“Still planning on taking over the world?” Gabrielle asked, half joking.
“Honestly, Mandy seems more into it than I do,” I said, looking at the screen. “Man, I can’t believe they got Rosario Dawson to play you on this version.”
“Zoe Saldana was a good choice but I had creative control. I’m just glad they didn’t try to cast a teenager.”
“You know, they cast Wentworth Miller as me in the Merciless movie.”
“Who did you have to pay off to get that done?” Gabrielle asked, sounding genuinely interested.
“A lot of people,” I said, simply. “Thankfully, it turns out this is still America and people don’t look at the bloodstains on your money. I mean, non-lethally obtained money that I obtained legally.”
Gabrielle rolled her eyes and reached over to take my hand. “Thank you for coming here.”
“Always.”
Gabrielle leaned over to kiss me. I didn’t resist. Yeah, things had gotten intimate after that. I’d also realized in that moment I was still in love with Gabrielle, every bit as much as I was with my wife. It was part of the reason why we hadn’t spoken to one another after the event since I didn’t want to betray my wife’s trust and it clear being in love with someone else made her furious.
Cindy’s reaction to the discovery Gabrielle and I slept together? Not a care in the world other than asking if that meant we’d have to buy a steel reinforced bed. At some point my life had become a soap opera and harem anime without any of the romance or easy conclusions. I didn’t want to be the bad guy in all of this but I sure as hell wasn’t the good guy no matter what I chose to. It reminded me of the time Ultragod had lost his memory for a year and regained it only to find out he was married to a mermaid named Penelope Poseidon. God our world was weird.
I took a second to slowly return to the present and shook away my memories. My life was a never ending source of complications.
“Yeah, you could say we were,” I said, looking up at Guinevere in the present.
“Your wife and your mistress not enough?” Guinevere asked.
I stared at her. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“Gabrielle is like a daughter to me,” Guinevere said, her voice low and threatening. “I would do anything to protect her.”
“Does she know that?” I asked, honestly wondering what had happened to their relationship. “Because every time I see you two together, you’re at each other’s throats. Usually about me.”
“So, once?” Guinevere said, finishing cleaning herself off.
“Once is enough,” I said. “Which isn’t a pregnancy joke.”
Except, apparently it had been.
“Funny,” Guinevere said. “Except, I don’t find the subject funny in the slightest.”
“Do you have any family? I mean, aside from the girl you and the Society of Superheroes raised before abandoning her?”
“How dare you,” Guinevere growled with all the fury of an ancient Celtic warrior goddess.
“I’m serious. Humor me and I’ll tell you a secret.”
I think whatever Guinevere was drinking must have affected her because she paused before outright refusing. “Yes, I had a family.”
“Had?”
Guinevere closed her eyes. “I was raised by the Tuatha De Daanan in another universe after my father, King Arthur, killed my brother Mordred. I’ve fought against the latter after his resurrection a hundred times since as well as our mother Morgana Le Fae. Time functions differently in the Otherworld.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said, wondering why Morgana Le Fey named her daughter after Arthur’s wife. It sounded like the Pendragons had even more problems than I did, especially if you bought into the story Gawain was the adulterer rather than the potentially fictitious Lancelot. “You’ve got the whole Lannister thing going, except you’re Tommen.”
Guinevere snorted. “The gods of the Tuatha De Daanan should have been my family but they’re a mean, arrogant, and corrupt bunch. So, I came back to the Earth in the hour of the British Isles’ greatest need to fight against the Nazis alongside my father. Arthur during the battle and I fell in love with a Welsh infantrymen.”
“What happened to him?”
“He died,” Guinevere said, opening her eyes. “Of old age, while I stayed young and beautiful forever. It’s not as romantic as you might think it is.”
“I never thought it would be,” I said, thinking about Mandy and me. The Reaper’s Cloak provided longevity but it didn’t provide immortality even if Old Gary proved I might be able to live centuries.
Assuming it wasn’t just a trick by the Primal Orbs or Entropicus.
“Did you have any kids?” I asked.
“Yes,” Guinevere said. “Igraine, Percival, and others. They became heroes in their own right, grew old or died as the whims of fate dictated. That was the curse Moses, Stephen, and I all bore. We got to watch our families go on but forever struggle with the pain of our being immortal.”
“Until they died,” I said, frowning.
Guinevere stole a nearby bar maid’s stein of beer before chugging it down. “Yes, Gary, no sooner did I find a group that I could live among forever than I realized it still came with a horrific cost. I forgot you only had to lose a single battle to die forever and while a few of us have come back from the edge of death, only some of us have returned completely. That seems to be the province of villains.”
“Don’t I know it,” I said, frowning. “So, that’s why you’re so upset with me. Because Merciful killed Ultragod and you see him in me.”
“I told you why you upset me.”
“People don’t hate as personally as you do me because of ideology,” I said, looking at her. “Believe me, I grew up the poor Jewish kid with a supervillain brother in a neighborhood full of skinheads. No, there’s something else going on here.”
“It’s not that,” Guinevere said, staring down. “But you’re right, there’s one more reason I can’t stand you.”
“Which is?”
“Do you know why I didn’t look for Gabrielle?” Guinevere asked.
“I think that’s the twenty-million-dollar question,” I said, looking at her. “I mean, other than the question of how long it’s going to take for NetherRealm Studios to sue us.”
“Who?”
“The makers of Mortal Kom….err, never mind. Never explain the joke. Honestly, we need to rip off some other fighting games to be less obvious. If only someone made a fighting game about superheroes and alternate realities merging together. We could rip off that instead.”
Guinevere felt the bridge of her nose and looked like she’d skipped straight to the hangover portion of her drinking binge. “You, Gary.”
“Me, what? Is this about my attempt to kill the Four White Dudes?”
“Wait, what?”
“The boy band!” I snapped, slamming my hands on the table. “They had to be stopped.”
“We didn’t look for Gabrielle because of you,” Guinevere said.
I stopped dead. “What?”
“Merciful claimed Guinevere had gone into another dimension because she was pregnant with your child and was going to raise them in safety. Having children and grandchildren to my enemies, I was willing to believe she was making the responsible choice.”
“And you believed him?” I asked, hissing.
Guinevere stared at me. “The only thing all of us believed about you, whether you were good or evil, was that you would never hurt someone you loved. That trust is the reason why Gabrielle was imprisoned.”
Wow, there wasn’t much to say to that was there?
I stared into my empty glass of Blue Milk. “How far along is Gabrielle?”
“Two months,” Guinevere said.
“I see,” I said, thinking. “You don’t think I…hurt her when I fought her, did I? I mean, she shouldn’t really be in this tournament in her condition.”
“She has the Girdle of Nimue,” Guinevere said, staring at her. “It will prevent any damage to her child barring death.”
I nodded, reassured. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go talk to her.”
Guinevere didn’t respond as I left.