Preparing for the Epic Battle of Epicness
“What the hell do you mean, everyone’s been captured?” I asked, resting my sword on my shoulder, flat first obviously. I really needed to get myself a scabbard.
“It’s—” Mandy started to speak.
“Also,” I interrupted, pointing my sword at her. “Traitor!”
Mandy closed her eyes. “Cindy, we don’t have time for this.”
“There’s apparently time for treason, though!” I said. “You deserted my army! Mutiny! You are a mutineer! If we had a plank, I’d make you walk it!”
“Are we pirates now?” Dana asked.
“Shut it!” I said. “Also, can you like shrink down Mandy’s father to action figure size?”
“What?” Dana asked.
“What?” Mandy repeated.
“I mean, I don’t know if that will make him more manageable, I just think it would be hilarious,” I said, glaring at him then back at Mandy. “Because someone prevented me from killing him.”
“My father is under a spell,” Mandy said.
I did a double take between her and him. “Really? Is that why he was willing to kill you and your kinda-adopted children?”
“No, he would have done that anyway,” Mandy said. “He’s a rotten son of a bitch either way but he’s not someone who would have allowed himself to get captured so easily. If he planned those attacks in his right mind, we’d all be dead.”
“Real piece of work you’ve got there as a daddy,” Case said. “Are you sure you don’t want to kill him?”
“I won’t kill my family,” Mandy said. “No matter how estranged.”
“Really? Because I totally would kill my mom,” I replied.
“I did kill my dad,” Case said.
“Really?” I asked, looking at Case.
He nodded, his one laser eye blinking on and off.
“Kinslayer buddies!” I said, offering him a fist bump. “You, me, Oedipus, Elektra, and Tyrion!”
Colonel Colton struggled in Case’s grip to no avail. Even if he was working at a fraction of his strength, I’d seen him break necks effortlessly with the slightest bit of pressure. “I’m not fist bumping that, Cindy.”
“Spoilsport,” I replied. “I bet Dana would kill her parents.”
“No!” Dana said. “I would not!”
“Search your feelings, you know it to be true,” I said, putting on my best Vader voice.
“We don’t have time for your Star Wars nonsense,” Mandy said.
“No, Gary is Star Wars, I’m Lord of the Rings,” I replied, directly contradicting the fact I’d just quoted the movie. I needed to slow down the conversation until I had full stock of the situation. That was something that people underestimated the value of banter for: giving yourself breathing room with rambling nonsense. “Never the twain shall meet.”
Mandy fell for it. “God, I know. Gary is addicted to that series.”
“He was inconsolable for a month after The Rise of Skywalker,” I replied. “I think the only time he was ever that depressed was when you died.”
Mandy frowned.
“Too soon?” I asked.
Mandy’s frown deepened.
Colonel Colton stopped struggling as if the memory of his daughter’s death was enough to break through whatever juju had been worked on him.
I shrugged. “I had to pay for The Mandalorian series to be made to cheer him up. I mean, the last time I had to get him out of a funk, I had Leia and I sure as shit wasn’t going to do that again.”
“You’re going to give our daughter a complex if you keep talking like that,” Mandy said, unhappily.
“She knows what I mean,” I replied. “Also, I literally do not know how to be a mother and every female I know, as well as some men, do a better job at it. Case included.”
Case slacked his grip on Colonel Colton a bit. The Colonel didn’t move, probably because he was understanding now that the only person who wanted to keep him alive was the vampire he considered to be impersonating his daughter. Which made him the only person who was a worse parent than me on this island.
“Don’t constantly bring up what a miserable experience motherhood is,” Case said. “You could start with that.”
“See!” I gestured to Case. “I’m doing my best here but the only instruction manuals in the bookstore are from crazy religious fundamentalists and weird psychologists who talk in nothing but jargon.”
“You’re doing fine, Cindy,” Mandy said. “Against all the laws of God and man as well as common sense. Both Leia and Mimi are happy, well-adjusted teenagers.”
“I know! What the hell are they planning? They’re up to something,” I replied. “I just can’t figure out what.”
“Right now, I suspect they’re trying to figure out how to escape Smog’s magical prison,” Mandy said, dryly.
I blinked. “Oh right! Yeah, the whole thing about them being captured. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“You totally did,” Case said.
“Quiet Arnie,” I replied, giving him an evaluation. “You’re looking like he did at the end of Terminator 2, and I could probably take you down by breathing hard. I can’t believe those SES yokels managed to do so much damage to you.”
“They’re the best soldiers in the Foundation and you killed them,” Colonel Colton said.
“Exactly,” I said, showing no sympathy or remorse for the goons I’d killed. “Case shouldn’t have had an issue. I mean, I am way more awesome than him but he’s basically cyborg John Wick so he could have handled them.”
“They didn’t, I was in a fight with the Juggernuke,” Case said.
“Why the hell would you do that?” I asked, once more distracted. “That guy was created by a nuclear bomb going off. I mean, normally, that would kill you, but science is weird and inconsistent when it comes to the Super gene.”
The Juggernuke was one of those supervillains who was going to shrug off being bombed like raindrops. He was the kind of guy that idiot bruisers like Crowbar King and Cthulhuoid dreamed of being. If Case had gotten into a fistfight with him, it was a wonder he didn’t look more like a beer can crushed against someone’s forehead. Still, it explained what he’d been doing when he disappeared, and I could take him off my “Traitors to Queen Cindy” list. A list that was constantly being updated and would determine who lived or died when the revolution came.
“I saw Adonis and Achilles had prepared a bunch of prisoners for human sacrifice,” Case said. “Apparently, they had a little Carthage in their Greece. I figured I might save some of my tattered silicon soul if I rescued them.”
I glared at him. “That was very selfish of you.”
“Cindy—” Mandy said.
“Did you save them?” I asked, grudgingly admitting it was the right thing to do.
“No,” Case replied. “Someone dropped a bunch of bombs on us, and they all died.”
“Bummer,” I replied.
Dana opened her mouth then closed it.
“Yeah, well he’d thrown me into the lagoon before the explosions, so it all worked out,” Case replied, looking down at Colonel Colton.
Colonel Colton’s expression was unreadable, but I hoped he was feeling guilt. I mean, I never felt it, but I understood it to be very unpleasant. Okay, that’s a lie. I felt guilt. Sometimes. Once in a blue moon, particularly when I was mean to Leia. There was something biological there. Stupid evolutionary brain wiring.
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “What was this about my kids being kidnapped? We need to resolve that.”
“You don’t say,” Mandy said.
“Yeah,” I replied. “You, me, the kids, Gary, and Jane need to get off this island. Everyone else can go fuck themselves.”
Dana rolled her eyes, clearly looking for a way to escape. Given she was able to fly and shrink both, I didn’t know what was stopping her. Probably the fact she knew I’d hunt her down and kill her.
Case just gave me a sideways glare.
“Oh, not you,” I said, slapping Case on the shoulder and causing him to grimace. “Right, there’s a big hole there with exposed neural circuitry. Sorry.”
“Selena and Clarissa explained to me that Smog is actually working against the entire world by evacuating it,” Mandy explained. “The dragon is moving his hoard off world so he can enact a virus that will eradicate most of humankind as well as turn a selected portion into subservient serpent men. The rest of the planet will be terraformed into a primeval Cretaceous Era-esque state. Smog will then populate the world with members of his own race.”
I stared at her. “And?”
“What do you mean and?” Mandy asked.
“We were going to kill him anyway!” I said, throwing out my hands. “So, he’s a supervillain who wants to kill everyone by turning us into lizards. That’s a day ending with Y! Blofeld is always trying to nuke the Earth or start World War Three.”
“Blofeld isn’t real,” Colonel Colton said.
“You shut up,” I said, pointing at him. “Your plan was stupid, and you should feel bad for trying to blow up children. You probably did blow up some children upstairs. I mean, I don’t know what families brought their kids to Dragon Island for their vacation but I’m not discounting it was possible. The vacation packages I saw online were pretty sweet.”
Colonel Colton blinked.
“Anyway,” Mandy said, struggling to not look at me like I was a lunatic—Believe me, it was a look I knew well— “Selena and Clarissa argued we should take advantage of the distraction you were making in order to try to infiltrate the underground in secret.”
“Distraction? What distraction?” I asked.
“You picking a fight in front of everyone with Cthulhuoid and Crowbar King,” Mandy said.
“Oh, that thing,” I said. “I barely remember that now.”
“You should see a doctor, seriously,” Mandy said.
I shrugged. “So, you all betrayed me and are now traitors. How did you all get captured in what is ultimately karma?”
Mandy ignored me. “We ended up finding the secret entrance to Smog’s lair before the bombs dropped.”
“How?” I asked, staring at her. “There was like ten minutes total.”
Mandy shrugged. “Okay, maybe it was marked DO NOT ENTER - UNDERGROUND LAIR but not everything has to be complicated.”
“Mmm hmm,” I said. “So, we’ve found out how you betrayed me. How did you get taken down? All of you are pretty tough cookies.”
“And why didn’t you invite me?” Dana interrupted.
I swatted her in the arm.
“Ultragoddess,” Mandy said, frowning. “Somehow she’s fallen under Smog’s spell as well.”
“Huh,” I replied, dryly. “The dragon archvillain is behind all our problems. Who could have possibly predicted this lazy bit of storytelling?”
“We’re not fictional characters,” Mandy said. “We’re real people.”
“Are we?” I asked. “Or are we the product of some deranged being’s imagination that enjoys torturing us for his or her own amusement? Seriously, ever since I got this kickass sword, I’ve been revaluating religion.”
The sword started playing Feuerschwanz’s cover of “Warriors of the World United”, and I bopped my head along to it.
“I’m so glad your sword-shaped Omega-pod is a religious experience,” Mandy replied, clearly sick of having this conversation. “However, I’m fairly sure that Ultragoddess used her powers to disable Gary, Mimi, Leia, and her doppelganger too.”
“Why not just kill them?” I asked the obvious question. “Hell, why not just kill us all? Ultragoddess is vulnerable to magic, but Selena and Gary together would need to hit first, which is hard when she moves faster than the speed of sound. Gary once beat Gabrielle during the tournament but that was because she was mind-controlled and not bringing her A-game.”
“I don’t know,” Mandy admitted. “I don’t even know how I escaped. I can’t believe it was because Gabrielle felt any sympathy for me. Even if I still believed she felt anything, she’s always hated me.”
“That’s because Gary will always choose you over everyone else,” I replied, my voice containing no bitterness. Nope. No sir. No bitterness at all.
Mandy looked sad. “I don’t think that’s the case anymore, Cindy. Love isn’t finite and I think you’ve come to mean more to him than the memory of a dead woman.”
“Aw, you’re sweet,” I said, stretching out my arms.
“Oh God,” Colonel Colton muttered. “What a disgusting display.”
I looked at Mandy. “I swear, please, just let me break his legs.”
“No!” Mandy said.
“A finger, anything!” I shouted. “You lost your soul, surely you can afford me that.”
“I’m past my angry adolescence stage of vampiredom. Two hundred years in the future will do that,” Mandy replied.
I blinked. “I love that we live in a world where statements like that can just fly by.”
“I don’t,” Mandy said. “Now we need to go rescue everyone and get the Society of Superheroes to help.”
“We’re slaying the dragon ourselves,” I said, firmly. “We do not need to be bailed out by those nincompoops.”
“Are you willing to bet Leia’s life on that?” Mandy asked. “Mimi’s?”
I didn’t answer for a moment before sighing. “No.”
“See, you are a good mother,” Mandy reassured me.
“Please never say that again,” I said, looking at her. “Okay, let’s focus on getting the kids back and getting the duck out of Fodge.”
I had every confidence that the kids could take care of themselves, but I was responsible for them despite my best efforts not to be. I wasn’t abandoning Gary or Jane, either. It surprised me how much I cared about what happened to them. There had been a time when the only person that I did care about was myself—and that wasn’t a time I wanted to return to.
“Can we keep what we’ve stolen already?” Dana asked.
“Of course, we’re keeping what we’ve already stolen!” I stared at her. “God, whoever taught you how to be a supervillain should be ashamed.”
“I was mostly kidnapped by Tom Terror and forced to do his bidding at death ray point,” Dana asked.
“And Gary killed Tom, so you owe him,” I said.
Dana sighed. “Sure.”
I looked up at the ceiling and held up my sword. “Death, I have never prayed to you before—”
“Oh Christ,” Dana muttered.
“Just go with it,” Case said.
“I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will give a crap if we were heroes or villains. What we did or how we died. No, all that matters is we looked badass doing it! That’s what’s important. Battle pleases you, Death, so something-something revenge. And if you do not listen…then the hell with you!”
“Cindy the Barbarian continues her copyright infringement spree,” Dana muttered.
“It doesn’t count if it’s a parody,” I replied.
Nothing happened.
Not that I expected anything to.
That was when the entire chamber shook, and a secret doorway opened up in the side of the wall.
Huh.
Maybe I should reevaluate going to synagogue with Gary and the girls.
Nah.