CHAPTER ONE

A SUPERVILLAIN NO MORE

“So, yeah, it’s been a year since I quit being a supervillain,” I said, standing there with my hands in the pockets of my large leather coat. I had a Fedora on my head and was dressed like it was the 1930s, which apparently had come back in style as the men’s fashion in Falconcrest City. I personally didn’t like it because it made me look like a pick-up artist, but I had basically just been looting Arthur Warren’s wardrobe for the past year. I couldn’t be bothered to shop for clothes as I’d barely left the mansion.

Why?

Guilt.

I was standing over Mandy Anne Karkofsky’s gravestone in the private cemetery built into the Warren Estate. I had no idea what had compelled the Warren family to build a cemetery for themselves on their home’s property, but I supposed when you owned ten miles of land that it wasn’t so much your home as the small country you ruled.

A year ago, I’d saved the entire multiverse from a crazy space god. That was something I could be proud of, but it had cost me everything in the process. I’d ended up in the future with my friends and meeting my two daughters (also from the future). They’d made me an offer I couldn’t refuse and then I’d refused it. Disappointed, they’d brought me back to the past and I’d been without a purpose ever since. You see, I’d decided to hang up my cloak for good. It just wasn’t fun playing dress-up anymore.

“It’s weird adjusting to the quote-unquote lifestyle of a normal human being,” I said, knowing that I was far from it. “I mean, I stole plenty of money from a bunch of bad guys beforehand, so that even after giving away ninety percent of it, I’ll never have to work again. I don’t really care; living like a drug lord or kingpin isn’t really my thing. Money never mattered to me. It was all about making an impact on the world. To live before I died and change the world for the better.”

I looked up to the sun. The light blinded me until I covered my eye with my palm. A trio of Exterminator-robots flew through the sky, painted with American flags. The new president had repurposed President Omega’s army of Super-hunting death machines and re-branded them “Freedom Robots.” They’d picked up the slack in keeping superhuman terrorism down as well as oppressing anyone on both sides of the superhero/supervillain dichotomy to keep them from doing anything good or bad. The world had become a safer, less interesting place if you sufficiently stretched your definition of safer.

“I’m not sure I’ve made a difference,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I know, you’d say we both saved the world from being destroyed so obviously we did. But, well, maybe if I wasn’t there then someone else would have been there instead and done it better. Maybe you’d still be alive.”

I wasn’t a sexist jackass. Mandy had known what she was doing when she set out to become a superhero. Her career had been short, at least as a living woman, but it had been important. Thousands of people were alive because of what she’d done during Falconcrest City’s miniature zombie apocalypse. I knew she’d died protecting Cindy and that act had resulted in the former living long enough to have our child, Leia, but I was having myself a pity party. I wasn’t in the mood to argue with Mandy’s ghost, even if it wasn’t here except figuratively.

“Fine,” I said, looking down at the headstone. It listed her full name, birthdate, and had a tiny carving of a black rose. “You were right. I did good and wrecked a lot of bad guys’ shit in the time I was Merciless: The Supervillain without Mercy. Still, I can’t do it anymore. I can’t be the guy who runs around joking and blasting people knowing what the consequences might be. I’m a father now of two kids and I don’t want to leave them without a father. I also don’t want to be that parent who is always having to rescue them from supervillains.”

The fact there were no guarantees anymore had caused substantial blowback. It had been my decision to make resurrection impossible in this world. What I hadn’t realized was that it would affect all the quote-unquote genre conventions I’d secretly had propping up my superhero-filled world. Villains ended up kidnapping the children of superheroes, killing them, and then getting killed in return.

Heroes ended up broken down emotionally or quitting with no chance of returning. Each day the world got a little less magical and more mundane as the best and worst began not showing up for work. Why should they? No one appreciated their efforts and the masses actively opposed their attempts to make things better or worse. The Age of Superheroes had ended because of my actions and it had ended not with a bang but a whimper. Wow, had I screwed up.

There are some good things going on in the world. Doctor Aeon’s clean fusion process has finally gotten out of the beta-testing it’s been caught up in since the Sixties. No more global warming. For-profit space travel is a thing and we have the Mars Colony finally taking off. The Venusians are helping with that one. Elon Musk and Gizmo are competing for who will be getting the first functional human-designed hyperdrive into space. Personally, I’m on Leia’s side, not just because she’s my daughter, but also because it’s likely to have fewer bugs.

I let out a half-bitter laugh. “What else is there to say? Relationship-wise? Well, I’m still in the penumbra of not being sure what I am to whom. Gabrielle gave birth to Mandy a few months ago in secret but refuses to name me as the father in public. No surprise there. Cindy is seeing Mr. Inventor now, not that she ever wasn’t, but we’ve been a bit distant since, well, I took up with Gabrielle. It turns out my best friend didn’t like being considered not only second best romantically but third best since I proclaimed my undying love for you, then Gabrielle but not her. Mind you, she loves Gabrielle every bit as much as she loves you, so that just makes it weird. Well, in a Dear Penthouse sort of way.”

I coughed into my fist.

“Kerri is continuing to help raise the kids, though Gizmo doesn’t really need so much raising as reining in. I caught her building a death ray to threaten a dictator who was trying to execute his poorer citizens. Gabrielle ended up taking care of that anyway. It may be illegal to be a superhero in the United States for now, but our country’s loss is the rest of the world’s gain. Diabloman has been trying to get in touch with Spellbinder, his back-from -the-dead sister, and I haven’t seen him since the Eternity Tournament. I hate that he seems to care about her more than our family but that’s because she passed herself off as you. I can’t forgive that.”

The emotion of the moment overwhelmed me, and I got down on my knees before putting my hand on Mandy’s gravestone. “I miss you so much. You were always more important to me than all of this. I didn’t demonstrate it, and I screwed things up big time. No one can ever replace you, though, and I just have to keep faith that I’ll see you again someday.”

Well, not really faith. I’d met Death and seen countless ghosts. It’s more like hope. Still, I also hadn’t seen Death or any ghosts for months. The Death Orb remained an inanimate object I kept attached to my car keys. I knew Mandy was in a better place. I’d seen the better place. I just didn’t think I would ever go there myself. So, I closed my eyes and prayed in front of the grave. I badly mangled the Hebrew, but I suspected God would get the sentiment. It was a good moment, ruined by the sound of automatic weapons being prepped behind me.

My eyes shot open. “Not now. Not here.”

The Death Orb started glowing in my pocket. I reached in and grasped it, feeling it draw energy from my cold fury. It was one of the most powerful magical objects in the universe but, a bit like the One Ring of Sauron, was limited by the amount of supernatural juice a person already had.

In simple terms it worked a helluva lot better for Gandalf than it did for Sméagol, and I was a good deal more Hobbit-like than Istari. Unfortunately for whoever was defiling my wife’s grave and interrupting my visit, the Death Orb was also capable of channeling anger in lieu of sorcery. Right now, it felt like the orb was rapidly reaching peak megawizards and I didn’t mean Harry Potter.

I slowly stood and turned. Standing behind me was an African-American woman in a black U.S. military uniform with a colonel’s insignia. She stood between two armored hard-suit-wearing soldiers with energy-blaster gloves. Two Federal agents, armed with machine guns and dressed in a Falconcrest City anachronistic style that made them look like G-men from the 1930s completed the immediate threat. They were dressed in gray suits that looked vaguely menacing even though they had badges hanging from chains around their necks. I didn’t recognize the name of the organization they worked for, but it looked very official.

Mind you, these idiots hadn’t come alone. There were over a hundred U.S. Special Forces and regular Army pouring out of stealth helicopters landing all around the cemetery. I also saw a dozen or so of the “Freedom Robots” land in a circle around me.

“Gary Karkofsky, a.k.a Merciless: The Supervillain without Mercy, you are hereby placed under arrest by the Anti-Paranormal Task Force of the U.S. Army. You will be interrogated and placed in isolation by the Department of Supernatural Security. We are operating here under the provisions of the Anders Act and with the full authority of the President. Your powers represent a clear and present danger to the citizens of our great nation. If you cooperate you will receive benefits and live in relative comfort, but you will never see the outside of a detention center again.”

I took a deep breath then sighed. “Fine.”

The African-American woman who looked like she was spoiling for a fight blinked. “What?”

I extended my arms and presented my wrists. “Fine, I’m not looking for a fight. If you want to take me in, I’ll go.”

The woman narrowed her eyes. “You realize what I said. You won’t be able to escape from us like you have on so many other locations.”

“What, you think I want to take on the entire U.S. Army?” I asked.

“You have before,” the woman said.

I heard one of the soldiers in the back mutter, “He’s cooperating. They never cooperate.”

“It’s a trick,” another said. “That’s what this guy does. He’s tricky.”

Clearly, I was not dealing with the finest of the U.S. military. These guys were not being all they could be.

“Colonel Jones,” the white-uniformed Federal agent sneered, walking over to slap power-suppressing shackles on my wrists, “stop talking to this filthy assassin. He murdered the U.S. President and is a terrorist. The only thing he’s going to find in an interrogation cell is a wet rag until we decide to put a bullet in his head.”

“Charles Omega is not and has never been the U.S. President,” Colonel Jones said. “The Supreme Court annulled his presidency on the basis of the fact that he was never a U.S. citizen but a foreign aggressor from the future.”

“The attempted genocide of all Supers was also a big deal,” I pointed out, amused at the fact these guys thought they could take me. I’d bitten off way more than it would take to chew up and spit these guys out. I’d fought demon lords, space gods, and A-list supervillains bigger than these guys.

I was tired, though. Tired of killing, tired of fighting in general really. I didn’t want to resist, and it was my hope that if the government did toss me into a hole somewhere, then that would be the end of it. I had brought too much pain and misery to my family over the years to escape punishment for it. I needed to pay for what I had done and maybe this was my way to atone for it.

“Shut up,” the man in the white suit said, punching me in the face.

“Reginald!” Colonel Jones said.

The man pulled back, shaking his fist as my face had clearly been harder than he’d expected. “Don’t Reginald me. This subhuman filth has been menacing decent ordinary people for years. He’s the reason why regular humans can’t go out in the streets every day in peace. Supers are the enemy of the common man.”

I blinked. “You realize I get my powers from magic, right? I mean, literally crack open a book and anyone can—”

“Shut up, freak!” Reginald said, putting all the contempt and hiss into his voice you might expect from a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain. Honestly, if the government was starting to recruit hyper-intelligent psychopaths into its ranks, things were probably going to get a helluva lot less peaceful.

“You’re agitating the prisoner, Mr. Smith,” the man in the gray suit said. His voice was cold and robotic and I saw little circuit patterns behind his eyes. “Our chances of successfully bringing in this Class-A target go down exponentially the more he is upset.”

“We can’t just let this guy surrender! He needs to be made an example of!” Reginald shouted, genuinely furious. He proceeded to shove his gun right in my face and pushed the barrel against the side of my nose.

“Reginald—” Colonel Jones started to say.

I was starting to regret my decision to surrender peacefully. “Can we just get on with this? I haven’t had lunch yet and I have a real hankering for prison eggs. You know, the kind that are powdered then turned back into eggs in water? I don’t know why I love those. I suppose they remind me of my poor, desperate upbringing.”

Reginald pulled away and lowered his voice. “Do you know who we’re going after next? Do you? When we bring you in, we’re taking out your children. Both of the little shits and we’re going to burn them—”

Oh no, he didn’t. “You’re threatening my kids?”

“You’re damn right I’m threatening your kids!” Reginald shouted.

Colonel Jones’ eyes widened as she perhaps realized she’d made a mistake slightly larger than attacking Pearl Harbor or playing with a bear cub next to its mother.

My shackles fell away, not able to do much about phenomenal cosmic power. “That was a mistake.”

Reginald opened his mouth as if to scream some more obscenities.

I didn’t let him. I placed my hand on his forehead and his face began to melt like the Gestapo officer’s in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He let out a gurgling scream that lasted far longer than the seconds it took for his skin and vital organs to slosh off his bones. Colonel Jones pulled back as did the man in the gray suit.

“Fire, fire, fire!” Colonel Jones shouted, pulling out an energy pistol and blasting a few times herself.

What followed was a series of energy blasts, machine gun fire, grenades, explosives, and a laser-targeted missile that ended up killing a few of the soldiers surrounding me. It was like the scene from The Last Jedi where Luke was hit with the entire might of the First Order. I could digress, discussing how much I hated that movie instead of discussing how none of this did a damn thing to me, but I won’t.

In fact, that was the one scene in the movie I’d really enjoyed. Well, the throne room scene was cool, too, even if I don’t understand where Rey became the greatest lightsaber duelist in the galaxy. Was there a secret martial arts school on Jakku? I mean, maybe they could insert that into her backstory as part of the comics. I think that would be neat. Oh, right, me killing the fuck out of these guys. Sorry, Mandy. I didn’t mean to bring violence to your gravesite.

“I can turn insubstantial numbskulls,” I said, walking out of the flames and destruction they’d used to assault my wife’s memorial. “Did none of you even bother to look up my Superpedia entry before you came here? Oh right, no you didn’t, because I deface it every day, so no one knows my weaknesses or strengths. Guess what, my secret weakness isn’t aluminum and I’m not held back by four-leaf clovers. I am the wrath of gods.”

I stretched out my fingertips, remaining insubstantial and blasted black hellfire from dark dimensions at the Freedom Robots, which were consumed completely. I waved my hand over the soldiers and their hands became frozen to their guns, now encased in heavy blocks of primordial ice harder than steel. Then I lifted my foot and stomped it on the ground, causing the helicopters to start sinking halfway into the Earth. I turned them substantial. They weren’t buried, they were fused with the rock around them. What had been an enormous military force had become an embarrassment.

Colonel Jones, however, wasn’t deterred. She lifted her pistol, clearly scared out of her mind. “You can’t defy the government, Merciless! If you kill us, another group will come. Another group after that! The entirety of the world will unite—”

“Stop it,” I said, interrupting her by looking at the Death Orb. “You threatened my kids. I’ve never hurt anyone’s kids. Leia’s seven and Mindy’s a baby, for godsakes. You don’t get to play the aggrieved party. You are permanently ‘Colonel Child Murdering Asshat’ as far as history is concerned.”

Colonel Jones, who seemed to be not fully on board with the threaten-my-kids plan, didn’t respond but looked to the man with the gray suit who was currently texting someone. Colonel Jones’ reaction was an incredulous stare. “Really, Mr. Gray? Is now the time!?”

I shook the Death Orb. “You fully charged?”

The Death Orb crackled with unnatural power.

“Right,” I said, lifting the orb into air. “Time for a lesson in what exactly you’re dealing with here.”

It went dark despite being the middle of the day.

Colonel Jones stared as Mr. Gray stopped texting. A U.S. Army Ranger, his arm frozen to his gun, charged at me, leading with his head. He, of course, passed through me and landed on the other side. I had to give him credit, as well as to the other soldiers who were trying to get themselves free. They were tougher than the late Reginald Smith. Also, had balls of steel. I hoped they weren’t in on the child-threatening plan.

“This is your brain on dark magic,” I said, gesturing to the sky. “Wait, dammit, I’ve screwed up the entire thing. Okay, let’s start over. This is reality, this is—”

“What are you doing?” Colonel Jones said, looking up. “What happened to the sun?”

“Oh fine!” I snapped, annoyed at being interrupted. “We’ll do the short version. If you ever threaten me, my loved ones, or my children again then I will kill everyone who has ever had that thought. It will start with every single politician in Washington, D.C. then move through all the people who will have to have signed off on this mission. Furthermore, you’ve put me in a foul mood so I’m going to add a caveat that if I find out you’ve used anyone else’s kids against them like this, then the result will be the same. I don’t care if their parents are Charles Manson, Tom Terror, or Mother Theresa, unlikely as those individuals having children may be. In fact, if you have any in custody, then I expect them to be reunited with their parents or I will have the Earth swallow Congress whole.”

I could do it too.

“You can’t dictate to the United States government!” Colonel Jones hissed. “The U.S. army does not negotiate with terrorists.”

I stared at her. “You are not the United States government or her military. They were the guys who liberated France and stopped the Nazis (props to the other Allies). The U.S. military is the group that fought P.H.A.N.T.O.M and the Taliban. You’re not real soldiers. You’re a bunch of toy soldiers threatening the freedom of your country’s citizens. So, while I don’t go after good guys in uniforms—you do not qualify.”

Colonel Jones looked ready to go after me despite the odds. I had to give her props for her courage, even if it was going to get her killed. “You do not scare me.”

“My threat isn’t to you,” I said, coldly.

There was a pleasant beeping noise from the man in the gray suit’s cellphone. He looked down on it. “We’re to withdraw.”

“What?” Colonel Jones asked. “Is he going to nuke the site?”

“No,” the man in the gray suit said, who I mentally just named Mr. Gray for lack of a better term. “The Chief of Staff has determined Merciless is a myth.”

Colonel Jones opened her mouth and looked to the injured soldiers and damage around her. “A myth? Are you serious?”

Mr. Gray looked up and bowed his head. “We’re sorry for disturbing you and your wife’s resting place, Mr. Karkofsky. If you’ll excuse us, we won’t bother you again.”

“Good,” I said, dissipating the darkness I’d simultaneously conjured for an acre around the graveyard and the White House.

The outrage on Colonel Jones’ face was beyond belief. Still, there was something about her expression that told me she thought the late Reginald Smith had it coming. I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover if she had children of her own. Nevertheless, she and the rest of them departed on foot toward the estate’s east wall, leaving me alone with my wife’s now-destroyed grave. I’d had no idea if I could have lived up to my promise of using the Death Orb to slaughter everyone who threatened Leia and Mindy. I would have, though, and that kind of power terrified me. I stood alone for close to an hour before turning back to the mansion. It seemed that the world wasn’t going to leave Merciless alone.

So Merciless couldn’t leave the world alone.