WHERE I DON’T DIE BECAUSE THIS IS MY STORY
Well, I wasn’t dead. That was a good sign. Mind you, I had earlier boasted about not being afraid of death. It wasn’t true. I think everyone who says they’re not afraid of death is lying, even if they had proof positive it wasn’t something to be afraid of like I did.
For example, I could have just been hallucinating Death during our frequent encounters or it might have been a sufficiently advanced alien taking advantage of my desire to see a Grim Reaper who could usher the souls of the dead to distant shores where they might be cared for. Sort of like some near-death experiences were actual visions of the other side and others were dreams you had while high on anesthesia.
The truth was, though, I didn’t want to die. I had lived a life that was full of amazing moments but they’d mostly happened in the last few years. Dying here, at Cassius’ hand, seemed to be something of an anti-climax to it all but I supposed that was to be expected. Death was rarely someone who actually took you when you wanted her to.
The Nightwalker had died of a heart attack fighting three muggers after defeating everything from Great Beasts to the Laughing Wizard. Ultragod had died at the hands of Merciful, a man who only managed to shoot him with an ultranium bullet because of our dubious friendship. Guinevere, Stephen, and Diabloman didn’t deserve to be killed as signs Entropicus wasn’t to be screwed around with.
In fact, I had an uncle I’d never met named Jerry Karkofsky. He had been my father’s older brother. Jerry had been the golden boy of my father’s family and a United States Marine. Both my father and he had signed up to fight in the Second Vietnam War not out of a desire to be heroes but just because they’d thought it was their patriotic duty. There had been pictures of Jerry on our mantelpiece, in my father’s study, and I’d grown up hearing plenty of stories about the guy. He’d been a great football player, a straight A student, a ladies man, and apparently knew how to play guitar.
However, none of these stories had ever involved the war where my father had distinguished himself. I’d found out, one night, when dad had been loaded after a failed parole hearing for my brother Keith (he’d broken out of prison with the help of the Nefarious Nine). Jerry had died during one of his first patrols, killed by friendly fire, because the guy fighting beside him had panicked and opened fire on one of their fellow Marine groups approaching. All of Jerry’s potential had vanished in a moment and my father had learned the lesson “heroes” rarely got to be rewarded for their bravery because it was the survivors who wrote the tales of them. At the end of every battle were ignominious endings to what had once been living stories of people who someone, somewhere loved.
As I lay there, a huge hole in my chest from where Cassius stabbed me, I found myself realizing this kind of reminiscing was probably going to get me killed. Why did I always get philosophical whenever I was close to death? Dammit, I needed to be actively trying not to die during those times!
Summoning my remaining breath, I shouted, “Listen, jackass, I haven’t accepted your challenge and the tournament is over so killing me doesn’t help!”
I had no idea if that was true but I imagined if I died here then Entropicus wouldn’t mind. As arbitrator of the tournament, he probably would judge me a forfeit and declare himself the winner by default. That was the benefit of being the guy who made the rules, you could usually break them with impunity and Entropicus had repeatedly proven himself to be a cheating bastard.
“I’m actually trying to heal you,” Cassius said, lifting his Century Box. “I don’t want you dead, Gary, I just want to save billions.”
He then, reluctantly, pulled out the sword and used the Century Box to seal up the wound. Century Boxes were things that had shown up repeatedly in the conflict between Entropicus, Abaddon, and the Earth. They were apparently tools from the realm of the Ultranians, people who worshiped the Ultraforce, and could do just about anything related to matter as well as energy manipulation. Within reason. The Century Boxes had many limitations but what they were was a mystery to me. They were sort of like Star Trek technology in that they could reverse your D.N.A from being an iguana but apparently not cure blindness.
In seconds, I was alright again. “Thank you, man, I appreciate that.”
“You’re wel—” Cassius started to say before I punched him in the face. It was like punching a brick wall. Apparently, humans in the future made extensive use of either bio-engineering or cybernetics and that was cheating.
Cassius was about to rebuke me when I grabbed his sword and started swinging it around at him. I managed to climb to my feet and continued to take swings at him while he moved back and forth.
“Oh for God’s sakes,” Cassius muttered as I ineffectually tried to assault him with a weapon I’d never used before. “Wait, is this a challenge?”
“No, it’s an attempted murder!” I said, swinging again.
Cassius sidestepped one of the attacks and grabbed the sword before sheathing it. “No, because if you were doing that, you’d use your powers against me.”
“That and I like swinging around lightsaber-esque weapons,” I said, frowning. “Listen, who put you up to this insane scheme since it is clear your heart is not in it. You only stabbed me because I attacked you.”
“Why did you do that again?” Cassius asked. “I thought we had a deal.”
“Villain!”
Cassius’ expression told me he didn’t find my statement to be the least bit funny. “I grew up on a world ruled by a fascist dictatorship and genetically-engineered nobility. The whole idea of playing a pantomime villain for laughs isn’t really amusing to me.”
“This is the world you want to bring back?”
Cassius shrugged. “Not the dictators but the people under them.”
I could understand that. “The offer is still on the table but only if you tell me who gave you the Century Box.”
My question was answered by the wall to the castle being smashed down before Guinevere, alive and unstoned, was smashed through it by Gabrielle. The two of them were having an old fashioned, knockdown, drag out fight between superheroes that used to be common. That was back when superheroes were actually friends, ironically, and yet still always seemed to end up having throwdowns. Now, ironically, they mostly just scowled at each other since it seemed no heroes really liked each other anymore.
“Her,” Cassius said, pointing to the dueling women.
“Guinevere!” I shouted, pointing at her. “I know you don’t like me but this is just low! How could you frigging set up an attempt to take my place in the tournament.”
“You witch!” Mandy shouted.
“Actually, no, I meant Ultragoddess,” Cassius said, pointing at her.
“Wait, what?” I said, doing a double take.
“Run away, Gary! She’s gone Fatal Attraction!” Cindy shouted. “If she can’t have you, no one can!”
Guinevere looked over at Cindy in sheer confusion before Gabrielle knocked her across the room into the wall, effectively ending the fight. “It’s not like that Gary. I gave Cassius the Century Box with explicit instructions to goad you into a fight so you could be defeated and your place usurped.”
“That’s what we just said!” I said.
“But that you weren’t to be harmed!” Gabrielle said, wrapping Cassius up in glowing fist and squeezing him. “I was explicitly clear about that.”
“Why the hell would you do that?” I asked, genuinely stunned she’d betray me like that.
“Because she doesn’t want the father of her child to be killed,” Cassius said, pausing. “Because Entropicus cannot be defeated by you.”
“And you think you have the ability? That is some brass balls there, Star Lord,” Jane said, shaking her head.
“Star Count,” Cassius corrected. “That’s the name they’ve started referring to me as.”
“Say one lightsaber, ah-ah, two lightsabers, ah-ah,” Cindy said in an exaggerated Transylvanian voice.
“No,” Cassius said, struggling against the glowing fingers of his prison.
“I have a plan,” Gabrielle said, looking at me. “But yes, Cassius is expendable, while you’re not.”
I looked over at Cassius. “Are you okay with that?”
“There is a word for a soldier who doesn’t prepare himself for death in the line of duty,” Cassius said, looking over at me with a stone cold empty expression. “Fool.”
“And what about her?” I asked, pointing at Guinevere. “You stayed dead for like fifteen minutes!”
Guinevere took a deep breath and picked herself up off the ground. “Knowing the entire world was at stake, I fought my way out of Arawn the Celtic God of Death’s realm in order to rejoin this group. I then decided I needed to make sure Gabrielle didn’t make a terrible mistake by threatening the multiverse’s best hope for victory.”
“Thank you,” I said, touched.
“I meant herself,” Guinevere said. “Since Entropicus is going to win the tournament, that means we need to have a backup plan involving the entire Society moving against him before he can make his wish.”
I sighed. “Man, no one believes in me, do they?”
“I believe in you, Gary,” Jane said, looking at me with sincere faith in her eyes. “Like, all of these people are from your universe so that means this has to be your comic. If it was my comic, it’d be littered with my supporting cast.”
“Thanks, I think,” I said, looking at her. “I’m totally buying you a salt lick after this.”
“That’s racist,” Jane said. “Also, accepted.”
“Well, I have a decent chance against him,” I said, crossing my arms.
“You just got stabbed by Cassius,” Gabrielle said. “That is not a good sign since the whole point of my replacing him with you is that he’d be underestimated.”
I walked over to Cassius and stole his Century Box, causing his futuristic gear to vanish before attaching it to my shoulder, causing the Reaper’s Cloak to gain a bunch of blue Tron lines as I felt the Ultraworld technology alter my body to be the best version of itself. I could feel years of fast food, general neglect, and drinking vanish along with the micro-polyps from living in Falconcrest City’s hellhole. Honestly, it was amazing I looked as good as I did despite all that. The Century Box also increased my magical output by several manifolds, providing me genuine invulnerability and flight to go along with my fire as well as ice powers. I could even turn insubstantial enough to avoid magical attacks like the kind that normally could stab me. I was powerful now.
An A-lister.
“Okay, good,” I said, crackling some electricity between my fingers to test my abilities out. So far, so good. I still needed a few more edges, though. “New plan. Mandy, I need you to give me over Caliburn.”
“Like hell,” Guinevere said.
“I’m going to also need to loot your picnic basket of holding, Cindy.”
“Double hell!” Cindy said. “You can’t just take my gadgets! We’ve got a whole theme you’d be interrupting!”
“Trinkets aren’t going to be able to defeat Entropicus, Gary,” Gabrielle said, looking over at me. “My father lost a number of battles against him and even his victories were never conclusion. He is perhaps the ultimate threat to the universe.”
“The multiverse, actually, but Entropicus can’t use his powers against me,” I said, looking between them. “Death obviously had a plan to defeat him so she made it so the two of us are going to evenly matched when we confront one another.”
“Except he’s a god of evil and can punch through planets,” Guinevere said. “Every time the Society has conclusively beaten him, it’s turned out just to be one of his avatars. The real thing may have not even have been encountered.”
“I have a way around that too,” I lied.
“I can sense when people lie to me,” Guinevere said.
I shrugged. “Well, the worst thing that could happen to me is I die and that was your plan anyway.”
Guinevere paused. “You raise a very good point.”
“You know, I totally regret saying you had the best movie of the Society of Superheroes released,” Cindy said, looking at Guinevere. “The Shadow Seven movie was much better and not just because I was in it.”
“Please, you were the only good thing in that movie,” Mandy said.
“Best film where I wore clothes the entire time,” Cindy said.
“I object to that statement,” I said.
G shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’m too dazzled by the fact I’m seeing all of this happening to offer any advice. I will say that I think you should screw the tournament and try to take out Entropicus before it ends, though. If he wins then it’s the end of everything, so almost anything is justified to get it done.”
“Ah, but if the tournament is derailed then he’s almost certainly going to win by default,” I said, pausing. “That is probably why he did it in the first place. No, we must trust in Death’s plan.”
“You mean the Death who made him a god in the first place?” Cindy pointed out.
Dammit, I hated logic. “I was going to go with the Death who could take him out at any time anyway so yeah. Stupid mysterious ways of gods.”
Gabrielle put down Cassius then looked at me. “Gary, I don’t want to risk your life on this.”
“I think we’re a little past that,” I said, pausing. “Besides, even if Entropicus does destroy everything and everyone then we’ll just have to rebuild afterward.”
“That’s….moronic,” Guinevere said.
“It’s hope, that Carrie Fisher gave us,” I said, lowering my hood and putting my hand over my heart. “Yo, Century Box, lower the force shields on my family.”
“Affirmative,” a metallic reverberating voice said.
They did.
Mandy charged at Cassius before stopping just short of ripping his head off, hands outstretched. Her eyes were blood red and her fingernails had extended into claws. Cassius didn’t flinch or even try to resist. He was a man who didn’t care whether he lived or died.
“Well,” I said, walking toward Gabrielle. “I really should be getting going to my match with Entropicus but I need to talk to you first. In private.”
Gabrielle lowered her head. “Alright.”
“Thank you.”
I had no idea what I was going to say during this conversation.