My Super-Ex-Boyfriend vs. My Team
Well, crap. One of the things to know about superheroes is the fact that people quickly forgot their accomplishments while never forgetting their failures. You could save the world a hundred and fifty times but if you didn’t prevent a town from getting turned into gorillas then no one ever let you forget about it.
Seeing the poisonous cloud rising from ACME Chemicals, I had the sneaking suspicion this was going to be one of the latter. It also bothered me to no end that it was Cthulhoid that was responsible because him becoming the world’s fifty-second worst terrorist was going to have some blowback on me. Let’s face it, if you were known as the girl who used to bone the Unabomber that was all you were going to be known for. It had happened to one of my colleagues at the hospital who was permanently tarred as Psychoslinger’s side piece.
Thankfully, I heard the Nightplane’s engines in the air as the raven-shaped hover vehicle flew over our heads with the whine of a TIE Fighter. Did you know that they’re named for their twin ion engines? I do, unfortunately, thanks to Gary. The super-plane went over the cloud and released some sort of white fluid before the poison gas started to dissipate into nothingness.
“What the hell?” Jerry said, staring at the sight and shaking a big tentacle-fingered fist.
“Mr. Inventor was making a counter-agent back at the Clock Tower,” Amanda said, finally emerging from her icy prison by turning insubstantial and passing through it. “Your evil plan is thwarted, Cthulhuoid!”
“Quiet, I’m talking to my ex here,” I said, giving her the hand.
“What now?” Amanda asked. “He’s your what? He was my villain first!”
“Trust me, you don’t want him,” I said. “I used to find him cool geeky but that was before I realized he was the kind of geek who pens thirty-page essays about H.P. Lovecraft not being racist at all.”
“He wasn’t!” Jerry said, appalled. “He was a misunderstood genius!”
“Listen, I like the guy’s monsters as much as the next girl, but Robert E. Howard of Conan the Barbarian fame threatened to beat the guy up in a letter if he didn’t stop supporting fascism.”
I’d always felt a weird connection to the writings of Robert E. Howard and his writings. I particularly loved stories about Red Sonja, who I’d been shocked to discover had been created by Roy Thomas in the Seventies. There was just something about barbarians, mighty thews, swords, serpents, and treasure hunting that appealed to a primal part of me that I couldn’t put into words.
Amanda looked at me. “How do you even know that?”
“I’m a fantasy nerd,” I said. “What?”
Jerry roared, which is something that sea life absolutely did not do. “You have not thwarted my plans, Red Riding Hood! I shall punish your city!”
“Finally, some goddamn respect,” I said, crossing my arms. “Even if it does come from a guy who worships an eldritch god that has stuffed toys and fuzzy slippers.”
“This is my city!” Amanda said, appalled. “I saved it.”
That was when Mandy finally broke out of her ice prison. “Technically, it was Mr. Inventor.”
“He’s my sidekick,” Amanda said. “Also, my husband but totally my sidekick.”
“Like Gary and me!” I shouted.
Amanda looked at me sideways. “Gary’s saved the entire multiverse. Twice.”
“Silence!” Jerry shouted, a huge psychic wave washing over us. His enormous head began to crackle with bolts of yellow lightning.
Did I mention Cthulhuoid was also psychic? That was some strange radioactive seafood he’d fallen into, I gotta tell you. Unfortunately, that meant the overpowered squamous horror was more of a threat than all these undead cyborg ninja thingies combined.
“I’m sorry, Amanda, but you’re going to have to give me this villain,” I replied. “We have a personal connection. I was tied to his origin story. I also personally want to kick his ass.”
Amanda sighed. “Fine, alright. It’s not like I don’t have plenty of other bad guys to replace him.”
“Thanks,” I said, turning to face Jerry. “Jerry, I’m sorry. It’s not me, it’s you. You’re an ugly dumb son of a squid that looks like someone glued bat wings to a fat illithid. On the plus side, I want you to know that it’s not just your looks that repulse me. I was already going to dump your ass for getting involved in all that fake conspiracy stuff regarding former President Omega.”
“He was meant to win the election and trigger the Storm!” Jerry snarled. “President Omega was going to eliminate all Supers and establish an eternal dictatorship! The Informant says that a time-traveler using the Primal Orbs rewrote reality, so he lost the election against Moses Anders and never triggered a massive genocide of the world’s peoples.”
I blinked. “Actually, that’s surprisingly accurate. But I suppose a stopped clock is right twice a day. The fact that you support genocide of all Supers is stupid, though. Because, you know, we are Supers.”
I was also a bi Jewish woman so it’s not like I was a big fan of President Omega’s fanboys in the first place. Oh, and I had a brown kid too. Mimi might not be mine by blood, but I didn’t mind the motherhood thing if it required nothing from me but cash and vague platitudes. God, I just realized Mimi was a black Jewish female Super. My sorta-adopted kid was gonna get screwed by society so bad. No wonder Gary wanted to take over the world to make it easier for her.
“There’s too much competition,” Jerry said. “I think the world could do with ninety percent less Supers. We can start with your kids.”
I stared at him. “Weirdly, I’m feeling an even greater desire to kick your ass now.”
“Bring it, whore,” Jerry said, making a come get some gesture with his tentacled hands.
“You say it like it’s a bad thing,” I said, assuming my nine-foot-tall war form.
“I shall make you kill your own allies!” Jerry proclaimed, fully embracing his status as a stock supervillain.
That was when Mimi picked him up from behind by his legs, held them together and started smashing him around the roof like he was a rag doll being thrown about by a toddler. Jerry let out some confused and terrified screams as Mimi spun him around in the air prior to hurling him through the air toward the moon. I didn’t know if he hit it or would fall before he broke the atmosphere because I lost sight of him after the first few thousand feet. Both Amanda and Mandy joined in watching the supervillain disappear into the horizon. It was certainly a display of the fact there was super-strength and then there was super-strength.
Mimi dusted off her hands and posed triumphantly. Leia was standing beside her, looking equally smug.
“Another victory for the Super-Science Sisters!” Leia said.
Oh God, they had a team name already picked out and it was adorable. I needed to put a stop to it, but I wasn’t sure I could. It didn’t help that both of them were geniuses in addition to being grossly overpowered little twinks. Why is it the kids of superheroes were always stronger than their parents? At least Mimi wasn’t quite as powerful as her mom, yet.
“You didn’t do anything!” Mimi said, turning to her sister. “I beat up Cthulhuoid all by myself!”
“I suppressed his psychic powers during your attack,” Leia said, crossing her arms.
Mimi blinked. “Did you?”
“You’ll never be able to prove otherwise,” Leia said, smiling. It was the same look I gave Gary whenever I was pretending to be interested in the latest news about Star Wars sequels. Seriously, it’s over, Gary. Rise of the Skywalker killed it.
I frowned at my daughters. “That’s what’s called kill-stealing, my lovelies. It is a breach of online MMORPG guild laws. Also, supervillain rules.”
“Sorry, Mom,” Mimi said. “However, I wanted to say I beat Cthulhu.”
“He wasn’t Cthulhu,” I replied. “Cthulhu isn’t real. At least in this reality. He’s just the product of the fevered imagination of a prolific Rhode Islander that hated seafood and organized religion. Besides, Cthulhu is a mile tall. Cthulhuoid is more like one of his minions or cult leaders. Mommy and Daddy have beaten real Great Old Ones, or at least creatures legally distinct but effectively the same.”
Amanda looked in the general direction that Jerry had been thrown. “Will that kill him?”
“Probably not,” I replied. “Jerry is ridiculously overpowered for a guy with the combined abilities of a Red Lobster menu.”
“Maybe he’s cosmically possessed by the real Cthulhu!” Leia said. “Or a legally distinct—”
“Stop that,” I replied. “Don’t give the Primals ideas. The Powers that Be are a bunch of bored nerds writing our lives as amusement for their dull but omnipotent lives.”
“Well, I’ll ask the Society to pick him up if he reaches orbit,” Amanda said, taking it in stride. “If not, let’s hope he doesn’t land on anyone.”
“I calculated for landing in the middle of Lake Michigan,” Mimi said, reminding me she was a genius. “I mean, I could have aimed for the Atlantic Ocean, but I figure that the Great Lakes are right here.”
“Well, let’s focus on the important thing: me,” I replied. “I need your help, Amanda, and I helped you save the city. By which I mean I pretty much did all the work and you stood by.”
“That’s not remotely what happened,” Amanda said.
“Whatever,” I said, making the Jedi mind trick gesture. “I need you to help me and Mandy rob the Dragon King of his billions.”
Amanda blinked. “Why would I help you rob a kaiju supervillain?”
“Because he finances terrorism,” Mandy said. “The act of depriving him of his resources would seriously impact the flow of money to numerous illicit organizations. You also know that Cindy, for all of her many, many flaws, will donate the money to charity.”
“What I don’t spend foolishly,” I replied. “I might buy an island in Dubai, which requires buying a lake to put in the desert to make the island first. I’d then run around naked on it in defiance of local custom. Which yes, is probably legal as private property but Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Both Amanda and Mandy stared at me.
“But there will be plenty leftover!” I reassured them. “I mean, he’s also leaving the planet and won’t be financing terrorism on our world after that in a week so the argument we’re doing good-good doesn’t hold weight but think of all the crimes he’ll be getting away with! Do it for the anachronistic retributive justice system!”
“You are terrible at arguing,” Mandy said.
“Eh, I figure she’s coming no matter what,” I replied. “Due to the ancient principle of ‘you owe me.’”
“I told you that I didn’t believe you actually helped that much,” Amanda said. “Besides, saving the city helps you too.”
I shook my head. “I mean for helping you avenge your mother and get superpowers in the first place. I may have kidnapped you at one point too but if not for me, then you never would have been inspired to become a superhero in the first place.”
Amanda blinked. “Are you actually arguing that you were doing me a favor by kidnapping me?”
“Then you’d owe me twice but if you don’t then you still owe me for that time I helped you out during the last zombie apocalypse,” I replied. “Mandy died protecting you during that too, so you owe her too.”
“I died saving you as I recall,” Mandy replied.
“And I owe you for that,” I said, unhesitatingly. “What do you want? Do we do this Solomon style? Because I have two kids. We don’t have to divide them in two. You can just take one. Or both! I recommend both.”
“You are a really terrible mother,” Amanda said.
“She really isn’t,” Leia defended me. “For my eighth birthday, she got me my own T-Rex. We also can play in the morgue any time we want.”
“Not many parents let you drive as soon as you can reach the pedals,” Mimi said.
“Or have rocket launchers!” Leia added.
“Do I need to bring you in for child abuse?” Amanda asked.
“Honestly, probably,” I said, not actually joking. “Children are incredibly fragile, and I have no idea how to deal with them.”
“The kids are fine,” Mandy said. “Cindy knows her limits and has devoted vast portions of her wealth to looking after Supers and getting mundane children out of abusive hones. Now do you want to help or not?”
“I do,” Amanda said, sighing. “Though not for the reasons you think. The Dragon King is exiting planet Earth because he’s staying ahead of the Foundation for World Harmony finally getting enough evidence to move against his corporate and criminal empire. He’ll be out of Earth’s jurisdiction but fully capable of continuing his activities through intermediaries as well as hypercomm communication.”
“All he needs is Gary’s cell service,” I replied. “That thing reaches into other dimensions and the center of the Earth.”
Did I sound jealous? Maybe a little.
“Everything I’ve found out about him says he’s a credible threat to world security,” Mandy said.
“It’s worse than you know,” Amanda replied. “The Dragon King is responsible for a massive number of the supervillains the Society has faced over the years. His high-interest loans and payments have outfitted hundreds of supervillains over the years. He pays for their lawyers, equipment, break outs, and medical bills. If you’ve ever wondered why so many seem to be a revolving door of justice, then it’s at least partially on him. Plenty of supervillains rob banks and attack random buildings as part of his complicated payment plans. Businesses are intimidated into silence or heroes distracted while he makes his next chess move to up his stock.”
“Ah, dragon loans,” I said, nodding. “I always wondered why they were called that. All the experienced supervillains used to tell me never to take them out because they were worse than student debt. I was smart enough to pay off the latter by robbing banks.”
Amanda lowered her head. “I hate my life.”
“We need your magic for this operation,” Mandy said. “Also, your help getting the other members of the team.”
“Which we’re a part of!” Leia said.
“The hell you are,” I said. “No one is endangering my kids by using them in a heist. Not even me.”
“Can you stop them if they press the issue?” Amanda asked.
I paused and thought that. “Crap.”
That was when I heard a crack of thunder and Jerry descended from the sky, his wings spread out. He looked a bit worse for wear, though, from where Mimi had beat the crap out of him. “Fools! Did you think you could defeat the avatar of the Sleeping One? What is dead can never die!”
That was when Leia blasted him with a massive telepathic beam of mental power that knocked him out from the air. We spent the next twenty minutes beating on him.
Good stress relief.