“One benefit of being a superhero is that your access to decent childcare services goes up. They attend Guardian Super Elementary School, which allows me to try to be a superhero during the day, and when I’m off at night I can set them up with the Ultragod Robots at the Observatory. They haven’t murdered any superheroes or tried to take over the world since Gizmo reprogrammed them to obey only her. I’m sure they’ll be great guardians.”
Jane stared at me in horror.
“Or they’re with their grandmother,” I replied. “My mom’s house is protected by General Sherman’s ghost army according to Kerri. I don’t know because then I’d have to send them all away and that would mean I’d have to find new protectors.”
Jane looked at me like I was crazy. It had been a common look when she had first come to our world. Still was to an extent. “I literally don’t know which answer I prefer.”
“Clearly, you haven’t met my mother,” I replied. “Then you’d definitely think they’d be better off with the robots.”
Jane snorted. “It’ll be good to see them again.”
“You plan on staying long?” I asked. “You also didn’t ask why you’re with me rather than your team.”
Jane looked sad. “They don’t need me. Not really. It was nice returning to this world after I was unceremoniously banished—”
“You mean sent home,” I replied, keeping an eye out for Sheriff Injustice or his deputies.
“Banished,” Jane replied. “However, I’m not a superhero. Everything is just so vast, cosmic, and weird here. Being a weredeer just feels like small potatoes.”
“Heroes come in all shapes and sizes,” I replied. “Some don’t even have any powers or specialized equipment.”
“How long do they last?” Jane asked.
I grimaced. “About a week before they die horribly, usually. Things have gotten even worse since my wish after the tournament.”
“Do you regret making it?” Jane asked.
“Sometimes,” I replied, honestly. “So are you here permanently?”
Jane looked at me. “I don’t want to be. It’s tempting, but I have a boyfriend back home now. Friends, family, and loved ones. This is the magic land of Oz for me, but I have to eventually click my heels and return home.”
“You know Dorothy actually returned to Oz, took her aunt and uncle, and stayed permanently. I’m also fairly sure she began a lesbian relationship with the fairy queen Ozma but that’s just my interpretation of the books,” I said.
“Oddly mine too,” Jane said, scrunching up her nose. “I can’t stay here permanently, Gary.”
“But what if you could visit?” I asked. “Like, say, with the ninth level Plane Shift spell that is included in your Merciless’ granted spell book.”
Jane looked at me. “You want me to regularly commune to another dimension?”
“I don’t have that many friends, Jane,” I replied, neglecting to point out that plenty of television shows had alternate dimensional travel: Fringe, Sliders, and Doctor Who. I just wanted one that hadn’t been cancelled. “It’d be nice if I had one more.”
I regretted sending Jane away. I regretted it from pretty much the moment I did it. I also regretted sending away Case, but it seemed like he’d made a life for himself in the cyberpunk hellworld he came from. I also thought he might actually kill me if we ever saw each other again. I’d been afraid of losing both of them to Tom Terror and in the end, I’d lost them to myself.
Jane didn’t respond immediately. “I’ll think about it. You really need to talk to Diabloman, though. Even if you did send his sister to Hell.”
Ouch, she heard that. “I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you forgive.”
“Maybe if you got her out,” Jane said.
I paused. “She did things to me, Jane. Things that I will never forgive.”
“Yeah,” Jane said. “I know. You forgave Diabloman for a lot worse, though.”
“That was different. It was crimes against other people but not me!”
Jane gave me a sideways glance.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a hypocrite.” I sucked in my breath. “I dunno, maybe I’ll send her to another planet. Compromise.”
Jane smiled. “You okay, David?”
David was sitting in the back of the Blue Meanie, a seatbelt covering both his wings as well as well as belly. A bottle of Jack Daniels was half-drunk beside him and I was curious how a bird managed to hold the bottle, let alone drink its own body weight of it. Then again, he was a magic bird so maybe that explained everything.
“I’m doing fine, toots,” David said. “All we need to do is head into Satan’s Swamp, find Dracula’s castle, and rescue the president’s daughter. Then we’ll be heroes.”
“I’m already a hero where I’m from,” Jane said.
“Yeah, I don’t think rescuing the president’s daughter will get me off for killing a previous president,” I said.
I knew killing President Omega would have some fallout, but I figured since he was sending giant robots to attack the rest of the world, I would have gotten more breathing room. Instead, a lot of people had actually agreed with his extremist views. There were already Omega apologists and people who were trying to claim he had some hidden motive before Super supremacists assassinated him. Well, they were right, he had the hidden motive of wanting to kill a bunch of people for fun. He’d been a time traveling Nazi from the future who’d come back to make sure his utopian future never came to pass because it was too boring. I mean, I was a crazy anarchist who misused time travel and even I found that disgusting.
“Hey, President Omega’s presidency was annulled!” David said. “He’s like, an anti-president. A Jefferson Davis, not a Lincoln.”
“Well, given he wanted to kill all the Supers in the world, you could say he’s more a Hitler,” I said. “I think I’ve gotten all of the alternate universe versions of him in my immediate Multiversal cluster.”
“You are so goddess damned weird,” Jane said, shaking her head. She’d developed a case of freckles since I’d last seen her and they were adorable on her. According to a couple of people, we were alternate versions of each other due to some quantum physics logic I didn’t understand. Personally, I didn’t see the resemblance, but I felt a strong brother-sister bond with her that rivaled the one I had with my actual twin. Or maybe I was just desperate for a friend. I’d driven away a lot of my old ones and lost others to vampirism or death.
That was when my driving was interrupted by an enormous cypress tree falling down in the middle of the road. I slammed on the brakes before we hit it, only to immediately hit the reverse. In the bush around the road, I saw a trio of eight-foot-tall alligator men pulling on ropes that were attached to the tree.
“What’s going on?” Jane asked.
“Ambush!” I shouted.
I didn’t get a chance to move very far before another cypress tree smashed down right behind us. This time, I didn’t hit the brakes fast enough and the back of the car struck the second tree. Both my taillights broke as I cursed under my breath.
“Weregators?” Jane asked, finally catching up to speed. “They’re like dragons!”
“Clearly spoken by someone who has never fought a real dragon,” I said. “No, it’s not them I’m worried about.”
Jane’s unspoken next question was answered by the sound of a police siren going off from behind the front cypress tree. A light rain started pouring down as a pair of sinister-looking lights turned on, outlining the modified cruiser that Sheriff Injustice used. He stepped out of the driver’s side as a much shorter woman stepped out of the passenger’s side. She wasn’t that short, it was just that Sheriff Injustice was huge.
Media has made most crooked sheriffs fit a certain mold: short, fat, Southern, and ugly. Sheriff Injustice didn’t fit any of these categories, at least in appearance. He was about six-foot-seven and built like a tree trunk. He didn’t look to be any older than his thirties despite there being records of a Sher
iff I.N. Justice dating back to the Sixties. I remembered reading an article about him being investigated by the Foundation for World Harmony eight times, only to have all-local juries dismiss the charges. He spent a few years in prison for voter intimidation before President Omega had pardoned him. Somehow, the sonofabitch had gotten himself elected again in the wake of my archenemy Merciful’s brief takeover of the state.
Strangely—and this is a quality that I am weirded about noticing—Sheriff Injustice was also a good-looking man. He had that kind of modern country music star thing going on with long blonde hair and stubble. A part of me could not help but imagine him sucking dry people of their magic in order to maintain his youth a la Dracula. Mind you, I was coming here to hunt the actual Dracula, so maybe I should be focusing on the real vampires.
The girl I didn’t recognize looked to be a teenager, about five foot four, with long blonde hair and a bright smile on her face. She was dressed in a deputy’s uniform despite her age and was carrying a modified cattle prod that sparked like a firework on the end. On her lapel, I could see the name “Carrie Anne Justice” sewn under her badge.
“I take it this is Sheriff Injustice?” Jane asked.
“Yep,” I replied. “In all his redneck glory. I think the younger one is his daughter.”
“At least her name isn’t a pun,” Jane replied.
“Ms. Carrie Anne Justice?” I said, letting her put together the wordplay in it. “Miscarriage of Justice? Come on, work with me here.”
“Goddess, I hadn’t even thought of that!” Jane said, grimacing.
“I thought weredeer liked puns,” I said.
“That’s a vicious stereotype!” Jane snapped. “Even if it’s true.”
“Listen, this probably isn’t the best time to reveal this,” David the Raven said, “But I’m like high as a kite right now. I’ve got like a brick of reefer hidden under the seats and more than a little LSD hidden under my feathers.”
Both Jane and I looked back at David in confusion. That was when both of us felt Sheriff Injustice’s anti-magic field hit us simultaneously. It was difficult to describe for someone who had no talent for magic. I’d spent most of my life as a Muggle and it was only the Reaper’s Cloak that had introduced me to magic. However, once I had magic, I could not live without it. It was like the internet or regular sex.
The Justice family’s auras washed over me like a pair of wet blankets. I could feel his daughter’s power add to her father’s. It made me feel dizzy and nauseous at once. Looking at Jane, who had grown up with magic, I saw her look like someone had given her a bad set of mushrooms. Worse, there was something about draining our magic that made both seem taller as well as more menacing. I’d cut myself off from the Primal Orbs out of fear for what their power would do to Sheriff Injustice. It would be giving phenomenal cosmic power to, well, someone worse than me.
Sheriff Injustice made his presence unambiguously known by first smashing out a headlight with one of his teel-toed boots. He then proceeded to swing his fist down on the front of the Blue Meanie’s hood, caving it in and destroying the engine underneath. The car, predictably, stopped running and we were left trapped in the middle of the road.
“Looks like you’re having some engine trouble,” Sheriff Injustice said, speaking with a thoroughly non-Michigan Southern drawl.
“Looks like it,” I said, grimacing.
Jane looked at me and mouthed, “What’s the plan?”
I shrugged. I had no idea.
Sheriff Injustice proceeded up to the front driver’s side tire and kicked it out of its frame, causing the vehicle to lean to one side. He then walked up to the driver’s side and looked down at me. “Well, if it isn’t Gary Karkofsky, aka Mercilass.”
I wasn’t sure if he was mispronouncing my name due to his drawl or a deliberate attempt to mock me. He needn’t have bothered. I wasn’t that petty. I was much too scared to be. Weird how I was more afraid of this guy than Entropicus. “Hello, Nordbert.”
“It’s Integral,” Sheriff Injustice said. “Nordbert is my middle name.”
Miscarriage moved up behind him and shoved her cattle prod onto the side of the vehicle, causing me to jerk away.
“Don’t you forget it!” Miscarriage hissed.
I was feeling all too human now and they were superhuman. Still, I did my best to control my emotions. A part of me was wondering if they were psychically generating fear or it was just the reptilian portion of my brain that knew how much danger I was in right now.
Speaking of reptiles, the four weregators moved out from behind the fallen cypress trees to surround us. They were all huge, scaly, and unpleasant looking things that were pretty much what you’d expect to see when someone described the word “weregator.” They had the long mouths of their animal sides, tails, and a hunched-over bipedal body covered in scales. Strangely, they were wearing custom-fitted deputy outfits with little sewn-on stars. None of them had names, though, but just letters patched onto them.
“New hires?” I asked.
“Not really,” Sheriff Injustice said. “Shifters have always been a problem in the Hollow. Shape-changing vermin making it hard for poor put-upon humans.”
I resisted the urge to point out he and his daughter were about as human as the creature from The Thing. They were Supers at the very least, and more likely aliens. “Ya don’t say.”
“Yep,” Sheriff Injustice said. “I did my best to rid the Hollow of them and was making good progress until that damned Swamp Beast ruined things. Still, I managed to get their Big Mama in the swamp and all her eggs. I raised them as One, Two, Three, and Four. They’ve helped me track down their awful scum of a race.”
Jane stared daggers at Sheriff Justice. He knew what she was and was baiting her.
“You don’t say,” I replied, trying to figure out how I could take out someone like him without my magic. I’d brought a few trinkets and tricks with me, but I wasn’t sure any of them would actually work against him. Still, I reached into the space between the corvette’s seat and grabbed hold of the grenade I’d hidden there.
“You remember what I told you when I first beat your ass?” Sheriff Injustice said. “Never come back here or I’ll kill ya.”
“You tried to kill me and threw me in the swamp,” I said. “You never said anything.”
Sheriff Injustice smiled. “Oh well, in that case, let’s just cut to the chase.”
That was when Jane pulled her gun and fired first.
Oh hell.
Chapter Eight
Southern Hospitality Is a Boot to the Head
Goddammit, Jane.
I’ll be honest, there was no chance of this not ending in violence and it wasn’t like Sheriff Injustice didn’t have it coming. I generally tried not to kill cops, but I’d met plenty over the years who were just another flavor of criminal themselves. There was a reason that Falconcrest City’s Police Department had been listed as the eleventh most dangerous gang in America three years running. Sheriff Injustice gave them a run for their money, and I meant the entire department.
Jane’s pistol fired and went off against the side of the Sheriff’s cheek. It burned a hole against it, only for it to immediately heal over. I could feel there was magic inside the bullet but the very remnant she’d probably been counting on pushing it past Nordbert’s defenses had empowered his healing.
“You are guilty of assaulting a police officer, Pocahontas,” Sheriff Injustice said, grinning like it was Christmas. “I am authorizing use of deadly force against you and your Jew boyfriend.”
“Do you want to point out he’s a frigging alien or should I?” Jane asked.
“Racists are not big on ideological consistency,” I replied, dryly. “Russian Nazis, Irish white supremacists, alien rednecks.”
Sheriff Injustice didn’t wait for me to finish my quip—which was just rude—and grabbed me by the throat. He proceeded to rip me from the Blue Meanie and hoist me up to his face. “It’s time to make America last,
son.”
That was President Omega’s slogan by the way, just in case you didn’t get it. I regretted not permanently killing that scumbag. All I’d managed to do was dissipate the jerkass for a few millennia, which was a questionable obstacle to a time-traveler. It galled me to know the jackass still had supporters who felt he’d been railroaded by the Jewluminati baby eating cult of pizza-rapists. Which was like, literally, the only bad guy group that didn’t really exist. Believe me, I’d know as I belonged to the proper Illuminati and was deeply annoyed there was no Jewish conspiracy to take over the world beyond myself.
“You’re certainly making America last,” I muttered, trying to figure out what ways I had to deal with a guy who could trade blows with Ultragod.
“Funny, boy,” Sheriff Injustice said, before punching me in the stomach and cracking two ribs. “But who’s laughing now?”
I was completely drained now but that didn’t mean I was helpless. The Nightwalker had confiscated literally hundreds of super-technology gadgets from various supervillains over the years and I’d swung by the rebuilt Falconcrest City Clock Tower in order to pick them up. Unfortunately, the kind of objects I’d brought along were mostly the kind of things that fit into small containers around my belt. I couldn’t even rely on the Reaper’s Cloak’s magic pockets since that was the sort of thing Sheriff Injustice was capable of draining the power from too. Instead, what little gizmos and toys I had were all tied in a golden metal belt that served as a Swiss Army knife for superheroes. Sort of a “utility belt.” Huh, I was going to have to remember that name for the future.
Reaching down, I picked a metal ice cream cone “toy” and then shoved it onto Sheriff Injustice’s face. The thing exploded with highly corrosive acid that was capable of melting through even hardened superhuman flesh and caused the Sheriff to cry out in pain. He dropped me to the ground, and I hit it with a thud. My chest was still hurting tremendously but I’d developed a remarkable tolerance to over the years as I was getting my ass kicked.
“Red, White, and Blue Neapolitan,” I replied, reaching for another device on my utility belt. “Courtesy of the Ice Scream Man. Who knew he’d ever had a patriot phase.”
The Supervillainy Saga (Book 7): The Horror of Supervillainy Page 7
