by C. T. Phipps
THE FUTURE OF SUPERVILLAINY
Book Six of The Supervillainy Saga
By C. T. Phipps
A Mystique Press Production
Mystique Press is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Digital Edition Copyright © 2019 C. T. Phipps
Original Cover Design Concept by Jim Bernheimer
Cover Art by Raffaele Marinetti
LICENSE NOTES
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Meet the Author
C. T. Phipps is a lifelong student of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. An avid tabletop gamer, he discovered this passion led him to write and turned him into a lifelong geek. He is a regular blogger and also a reviewer for The Bookie Monster.
Bibliography
The Rules of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #1)
The Games of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #2)
The Secrets of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #3)
The Kingdom of Supervillany (Supervillainy Saga #4)
The Tournament of Supervillany (Supervillainy Saga #5)
The Future of Supervillany (Supervillainy Saga #6)
I Was a Teenage Weredeer (The Bright Falls Mysteries, Book 1)
An American Weredeer in Michigan (The Bright Falls Mysteries, Book 2)
Esoterrorism (Red Room, Vol. 1)
Eldritch Ops (Red Room, Vol. 2)
Agent G: Infiltrator (Agent G, Vol. 1)
Agent G: Saboteur (Agent G, Vol. 2)
Agent G: Assassin (Agent G, Vol. 3)
Cthulhu Armageddon (Cthulhu Armageddon, Vol. 1)
The Tower of Zhaal (Cthulhu Armageddon, Vol. 2)
Lucifer’s Star (Lucifer’s Star, Vol. 1)
Lucifer’s Nebula (Lucifer’s Star, Vol. 2)
Straight Outta Fangton (Straight Outta Fangton, Vol. 1)
100 Miles and Vampin’ (Straight Outta Fangton, Vol. 2)
Wraith Knight (Wraith Knight, Vol. 1)
Wraith Lord (Wraith Knight, Vol. 2)
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Table of Contents
Foreword
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Foreword
Ah, Indiana Jones.
Oh, right, I’m not supposed to tip my hand as to what this book is going to be about. So I won’t mention Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar, Hollow Earth Expeditions, or any other sources I’ll be drawing from. I won’t reveal this is meant to be a book of pulpy two-fisted action and adventure set in a Lost World like Marvel’s Savage Land or DC Comics’s Skartaris.
When last we left Gary Karkofsky, he was dealing with the fact that had just altered reality to make consequences stick in his comic book world. Death, if not final, was going to be a lot harder to overcome. Superheroes who had died would remain dead and that included Ultragod, the Nightwalker, Sunlight, the Prismatic Commando, and his wife Mandy. Yes, the bad guys would stay dead too but that was a small comfort compared to the loss of so many great heroes—and Sunlight. Worse, Gary also found out his life had been subject to numerous retcons that re-wrote his history and past for the benefit of a deranged child-like god who was obsessed with angsty heroes.
Yes, it was a commentary on the fandoms (or perhaps the perception of fandoms by comic book publishers). It was also very real to our protagonist. The fact it once more trashed all his existing relationships and sent him into a deep funk can’t be denied. On the other hand, it meant that Gary could go forward and make a difference for his family. He had two children now, Leia and Mindy, for whom he was going to be the most overprotective father since Harry Dresden.
Still, I felt like Gary was in a spot where he needed to take on an adventure outside of his usual comfort zone. He’d already done battle with every permutation of supervillain, cosmic evil, and supernatural bad guy he could in Falconcrest City. It was time to take Gary to an exotic locale and see how he managed to adapt, in spite of being a geek ill-equipped for anything but a climate-controlled building with high-speed Internet access.
Which, yes, brings us to Indiana Jones.
Part of the fun of comic book worlds is they are not just one genre but every genre. You can have Superman fight aliens, wizards, gangsters, mad scientists, Zeus, and the Devil without ever breaking canon. There are no limits what is possible in their stories and that makes their stories all the sweeter. Indeed, whenever I make a reference to something insane (like Ultragoddess dating a flying werehorse) then you can bet that is a reference to something that actually happened in comics.
One thing I was always proud of when reading these sorts of books was when our heroes ventured to the Lost Worlds of their respective settings. Places where ancient temples, tribes, lost civilizations, dinosaurs, and more were all true. Arthur Conan Doyle invented the concept, but it took comic books to refine it. Explorers and adventurers in real life often brought as much misery as joy to the places they discovered but hopefully Gary will prove more Marco Polo than Cortez. At least our hero’s adventures will be taking him against the one enemy we can all agree deserves not to have control over such a place.
One he and Indiana Jones share a loathing for.
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 i
n 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 we
re 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.”
