It’s Like a Family Reunion
Yes, today was a day for getting my ass beaten. Sometimes it was by redneck alien sheriffs, other times it was at the hands of my so-called allies. Jane, Mandy, and Cindy had come up with the plan to use me as bait to get me inside Dracula’s hidden fortress. By the way, Hidden Fortress was the Akira Kurosawa movie that Star Wars was based on. I learned that in college film studies. Really, it should be required viewing along with other classic Western and samurai movies for anyone who wants to make a Star Wars movie. Seriously Disney, hire me as a consultant. You’ll only regret it, like, weeks after you hire me.
Okay, where was I? Oh yes. I was waking up from getting my ass beaten by my allies to do a somewhat stupid plan that would probably get me killed. There used to be a rule of supervillainy that you didn’t kill superheroes that fell into your clutches. Yes, I said fell into your clutches. Spare me your criticism, I think I had a concussion.
I woke up in a dingy cell made of Medieval construction with a set of bars in front of me. It was, in fact, a literal dungeon and there was a skeleton chained to the wall. Honestly, it felt a little Disney-esque, as if someone had put some poor bastard up against the wall and let him starve to death in order to complete the ambiance. Then again, thinking about that, it actually made the whole thing a lot less Disney. There were the bones of rats on the ground as well as several loose bricks to complete the effect. All the other prison cells were empty as the moonlight trailed in through our windows.
“Sorry, fella,” I said to the skeleton. “I guess you got sentenced to life.”
“And death!” the skeleton said.
I blinked. “Oh, wow, you’re one of those talking skeletons.”
“Yep!” the skeleton replied. “I had my soul damned to be in my body as it rotted away. Now I’m imprisoned here until I can feast upon the flesh of the living in order to rejuvenate myself!”
“Harsh,” I said, looking at him. “What was your crime?”
“Eh, kids,” the skeleton said. “I love ’em.”
I blinked then snapped my fingers to see if I still had my powers. Nope. Apparently, something about these cells—or Castle Dracula in particular—suppressed my powers. With that, I picked up a brick from the ground and smashed the skeleton’s head to pieces before doing the same to rest of him. I didn’t stop until the skeleton was completely shattered and whatever spirit inside it was released to the Hell it deserved.
I paused. “In retrospect, I hope he didn’t mean he loved kids and refused to hurt them on Dracula’s behalf.”
“No, he was a pervert,” A female voice spoke at the end of the hall.
I turned around and saw two figures approaching my cell. The first was Leslie Trust, who had traded out her business suit dress and blonde hair for a tight leather outfit with green highlights. She looked like she was copying Mandy’s style and it was kind of ridiculous. Standing beside her, in a business suit with a grinning Japanese oni mask, was a figure I didn’t recognize. He was, however, holding an advanced super-technology pistol equipped with a laser silencer that looked like it had been built in the future. Given the amount of time traveling I’d done, I’d say circa 2040 or so. Really, they looked like someone had gone to central casting for “Bond villainess and henchman.”
I looked at Leslie. “It would appear you are not actually a prisoner at Chateau De Count von Count.”
Leslie sneered. “As if!”
I blinked. “Wow, you really need to work on your accent. Alicia Silverstone circa Clueless is not going to take you very far in supervillainy.”
“I am the Countess von Cobress!” Leslie said. “Enemy of Merciless and Supreme Executive Leader of Neo-PHANTOM!”
I blinked. “First of all, I think that title is going to get you sued by Hasbro. Second, weren’t you satisfied being the president’s daughter? I mean, you had your own crappy clothing line and everything. Third, Neo-PHANTOM is not a thing. This is not a video game. You kill the boss of an organization, like Tom Terror, and the group collapses.”
“That is exactly how a video game works!” Leslie snarled. “You can’t kill an idea!”
“Yes, you can,” I said. “You can kill every single person who holds an idea. That does wonders for killing it. They were also Nazis and Nazis are bad.”
I was really hoping Leslie Trust was brainwashed because if she actually had gone and become a supervillain then this whole thing was for nothing.
“They’re not Nazis!” Leslie said. “I know because I founded them.”
“You founded a group that’s the new version of a Nazi group,” I said. “What does this have to do with Dracula?”
Leslie chuckled. “Dracula is the first recruit to my new organization! We shall make America great—”
“Don’t please,” I said. “That was overused years ago.”
The man in the oni mask chuckled. Clearly, he had a superior sense of humor since he was laughing at my jokes.
Leslie stared. “I would kill you now if not for the fact that you are needed, Merciless.”
“I am needed, really?” I asked, smiling. “It’s nice to be needed.”
Leslie hissed. “You have the missing Primal Orbs but even they cannot be used to overturn the resurrection ban until you will it. I intend to make sure you’re tortured until you do so.”
I blinked. “How the hell does…wait, is that what this is all about? You guys lured me here to get the Primal Orbs and have me overturn my tournament wish? That’s it?”
“That’s it?” Leslie snapped. “Do you realize what you did?”
“Stopped the revolving door of death?” I said.
“Yes!” Leslie said. “So many supervillains used to be able to raise as much hell as they wanted! Tom Terror, President Omega, the Death’s Head—”
“All Nazis,” I said. “I’m noticing a theme.”
Leslie shook a fist in front of me. “They could get killed but our necromancers and clone masters would have them up and running within months—sometimes days—after their deaths. Nothing would stand in our way but heroes and while they could come back too, our eventual triumph was guaranteed! Now heroes and villains both die while peasants live.”
I blinked. “I’ve got to say, maybe it wasn’t the best thing to put President Omega’s former VP in charge. I am so glad I voted for the other guy.”
“Can you even vote as a felon?” The guy asked. There was something very familiar about his voice, no matter how muffled it was by his oni mask.
“No,” I said. “However, if I did vote, it would be for the other guy. I figure I made my feelings unambiguously clear when I killed the time traveling Nazi who brainwashed everyone into voting for him.”
“I don’t think that’s a real political position,” the man in the oni mask said.
“Says you,” I said. “Make America Nazi free again! Not invoking Godwin’s law, not calling my opponents Nazis, just actually against Third Reich supporting jerks. If that’s a wrong position, I don’t want to be right.”
“Give me the cattle prod,” Leslie said, holding her hand out to the man. He proceeded to give her an electrified prod that looked like it, too, came from the future. “I am going to make you pay for killing President Omega. When you beg for a chance to undo your wish, I will torture you some more. Then after we resurrect him, I will give him the privilege of being the one to take your life, Merciless.”
“Yeah, I don’t think you’re really giving me much reason to cooperate, toots,” I said, leaning back against the wall of the cell.
“We have ways of making you talk,” Leslie said, adopting a fake German accent.
“Bork off, lady,” I said, staring.
I had the plan of dodging past her when she tried to torture me. Leslie was a deranged First Daughter who had spent most of her life selling clothing made in economically underdeveloped countries and playing off her family name. I didn’t expect her to be particularly difficult to fight. Magic or no magic on my part. The unknown quality was the man in the oni mask. I had no idea if he was tough or not but there was something about him that said he was the Oddjob in this particular Bond movie. Oddjob, racist caricature aside, beat the living hell out of Sean Connery. Not many villains could say that.
Leslie opened the door and I proceeded to jump her with my cat-like reflexes. So, it was much to my surprise when she caught me in mid-air by the throat. Then proceeded to jab me with the futuristic cattle prod. It was the week of getting my ass kicked it seemed, and I managed to hold off from screaming for a good thirty seconds before succumbing. I wondered if this ever happened to the Nightwalker. If you find that to be a non sequitur even by my standards, take note my brain was truly scrambled.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Leslie said, putting her boot on my chest. It was, of course, a high heeled one. Leslie had apparently gotten her ideas of how supervillainesses acted from dominatrixes. Which, honestly, is not my scene.
I coughed, smelling my own burning flesh. “I actually am one of the few musicians on Earth who know how to properly use a keytar.”
“A keytar is just a keyboard shaped like a guitar on a strap,” Leslie said, jabbing me with the prod again. “It’s also a really stupid instrument. Tell me what I really want to hear. Tell me how to bring an end to the resurrection ban.”
I grimaced, forcing down my next scream. “Even if I knew how, I wouldn’t tell you.”
She jabbed me again. “Talk!”
“I’m really fond of William Shatner’s TekWar series from the Nineties! I intend to review it after I finish my Murder, She Wrote retrospective!”
“No one was fond of that show!” Leslie shouted, jabbing me again. “Now, I shall begin work on your genitals!”
“Usually that’s a good sign with women,” I said.
Leslie moved to jab me between the legs only to stop, the sound of three tiny gunshots going off. Leslie looked shocked and fell forward, landing face first on the ground. The man in the oni mask was holding his futuristic pistol behind her. He’d gunned her down while she was distracted with me.
Instead of expressing my confusion or gratitude, I looked up at him. “You couldn’t have done that before the electric torture?”
The man in the oni mask removed his disguise and revealed Case Gordon, aka Agent G. Case was a man of somewhat indistinct features but was a white-passing man that had hints of other ethnicities in a way that couldn’t quite be identified. As I understood, his mother was black/ Hispanic and his father Caucasian. Except he was a robot based on the guy he resembled and said guy was a psychopathic cyborg. Yeah, the sad fact was that this was normal among backstories of people I knew.
“No,” Case said. “I couldn’t. Because you frigging banished me from your dimension without so much as a by your leave.”
“We’re already full on our Monty Python quotes,” I said, trying to get up and failing. “Ow. I take it you’re Mandy and Cindy’s spy in Castle Dracula.”
“What gave it away?” Case asked. “The fact I’m a spy or the fact that we’re in Castle Dracula?”
Case was like Jane in that he was every bit as much of a smartass as me. I’d never realized how annoying that was until I’d met them both. “In any case, you just killed the president’s daughter and that’s going to get you some flack.”
Case gestured down with his head and I saw that the body of Leslie Trust was sparking where she’d been shot. “She’s a human replacement droid or HRD. Programmed by President Omega to secretly support his agenda while he was gone.”
“What happened to the real one?” I asked, surprised.
“I don’t think there is one,” Case replied. “President Trust is probably also another one of his minions.”
I stared. “You know, that’s why I only pretend to vote. That and I’m legally prevented from doing so.”
If President Trust was a robot duplicate, then that went a long way to explaining why he was still carrying out the anti-Super crusade that his master had instituted in previous years. It also explained why he was hesitant to do anything too overt. With the exception of fully sentient machines like Case, most androids and gynoids didn’t work very well outside of their programming. I wasn’t sure what had triggered Leslie going full Baroness from G.I. Joe but maybe she’d had that in her code all along. Really, that said something about President Omega in itself. Guy couldn’t even recruit his own perky female minions, he had to build them.
“I’m more curious why you can’t tell if a president is a robot or not,” Case said. “Aren’t you guys supposed to be more technologically advanced than my world? Which has AI and robots too. I mean, we have a thing on my world called an x-ray.”
“Ah, so you don’t have the subsonic phase inducer that puts up a fake set of vital signs?” I asked.
Case narrowed his eyes. “How the hell would that even work?”
“Very well, thank you,” I replied. “In any case, it’s wonderful to see you.”
Case banged me on the top of my head with the butt of his pistol. He didn’t hit me as hard as he could have, especially as Case was the world’s chattiest Terminator, but it was enough to let me feel it.
“What the hell was that for?” I snapped.
“You separating me from Jane,” Case said. “Sending me back to my world was equivalent to exiling me to Hell—”
“You have no idea,” I interrupted.
“But breaking up Jane and me was unforgivable,” Case said. “I am seriously pissed at you, Gary.”
I held back a few things that would have been needlessly nasty. That Jane was in a new relationship. That Case should have realized he couldn’t just run away from his problems by skipping worlds. That I’d probably saved Case’s life since an android assassin was pretty small potatoes in a world where we had people who could move the moon out of orbit. Instead, I said something that probably made matters worse but was as kind as I could think of. “Jane is here now. Apparently, someone has been using my family and friends to try to lure me in.”
Case kicked the dead body of Leslie. “How did they lure you in?”
“My children,” I said, frowning. “They said I had to save the Multiverse.”
Case snorted. “You?”
“I know! I should have guessed it was really pandering to my ego. They also sent a talking bird to lure me in.”
Case stared. “Uh huh.”
I frowned. “Talking birds are cool.”
“So, did Jane ask about me?” Case asked.
I took a deep breath. “Not the time here. I need to know how they managed to fool me with a fake version of my daughter. Whoever managed to get me here knew me intimately and secrets about my family that I shared with perhaps a half-dozen people in the world. Did you sell me out?”
Case stared at me like I was an idiot, a look that I’d gotten a lot over the years and was only sometimes justified. “Gary, why the hell would I rescue you if I sold you out?”
“Because you are devilishly clever!” I said, pointing at him.
Case rolled his eyes. “I know who sold you out, Gary. This is all one large complicated psy-op to gaslight you into assisting in the resurrection plot.”
“Psy-ops mean something different in my world. That’s when you use psychic powers to control someone into doing your bidding,” I said.
“I mean someone is messing with your head,” Case said. “There’s a bunch of superhero human replacement droids in a closet nearby. One of them was a heavily beaten-up version of your daughter, Mindy. I even saw them growing zombie-looking clones in a lab of things, like the Nightwalker. They were made of nanites that made them all but indestructible.”
I blinked. “So, all this sorcery stuff is just super-science? Is Dracula even here? Who the hell is helping him screw with me?”
“Dracula is not here,” Diabloman said, standing twenty feet away at the door to the dungeon. The old luchador was standing there in a lab coat of all things, still wearing his mask but looking like a mad scientist themed wrestler as much as his old self. David was sitting on his shoulder, looking guilty.
I stared at my former friend. “Well, shit.”