by Eirik Gumeny
“I don’t think you understand, sir. No amount of additional resources would have helped. I mean, it’s not like we have nukes.”
“The Walt Sidney Company has multiple stockpiles of nuclear warheads, Loki. There are three in Nevada alone.”
“Oh,” said the god of mischief, pausing. “Wish I had known that.”
“So do I.”
“Sir, once I get back to the office, I can –”
“No. You’re fired, Loki. I’m done with your scheming bullshit,” roared the floating head on the other end of the phone. “I’ll take care of them myself.” Then he added, “Even though I’m supposed to be starting on performance reviews ...”
“At least I got rid of the cyborg and the hedgehog, right, sir? Doesn’t that count for any–”
“Your things will be waiting for you in reception,” boomed Walt Sidney. “Goodbye, Loki.” There was a lot of sloshing on the other end of the phone and then a brief pause. “I can’t believe the one I fired turned out to be the competent one ...” mumbled the jarred CEO.
“I can, uh, I can hear you, Mr. Sidney. Your phone’s still on, sir.”
“What? I thought I ...” There was more sloshing and then the line went dead.
“You don’t have to be rude about it,” muttered Loki. The scrawny Norseman squinted forward again, then he took a few steps and squinted behind him. He was completely turned around. Everything was a dense, grey cloud.
And then out of that cloud came an enormous black armored tank, something that looked like the Batmobile and a stretch limo had a baby.
The luxury vehicle plowed straight into Loki’s back.
The grille shattered his spine in several places, flipping his torso backward against the hood. His legs, meanwhile, buckled, caught between a chunk of asphalt and the underside of the car.
And then the cowardly and conniving chaos god was torn in twain.
The luxury tank skidded to a stop, partly because it had hit something and it was the right thing to do, but mostly because Loki had a lot of blood and most of it was covering the windshield. Carissa Romero-Patel stepped out of the car.
“Shit,” she said, looking at the lime green corpse halves in front of her.
“I think we just killed Lex Luthor,” added her wife Amber.
CHAPTER EIGHTY
The Home of the Braves
Amen-Ra, former Egyptian god-king, stood on the side of the battered interstate, smoothing out a paper map on the hood of his rental car. He stared at the map for a moment, then looked up to the enormous sinkhole swallowing everything he could see before him.
“That is not on here at all,” he muttered.
Behind him, Artemis and Catherine the Great LXIX ran off into a patch of high grass, holding hands and giggling in a way the sun god felt was wholly inappropriate for their age.
“Are you two not going to help with this?” he called after them. “Do you no longer care about our divine retribution against this Belgium of a man?”
“We will in about twenty minutes, Ra,” shouted the Greek goddess, briefly bobbing her head above the grass.
“There are probably ticks in there, girls.”
Catherine the Great LXIX tossed her bra into the air in reply.
“This is unbelievable.” The sun god shook his head, then, noticing something off in the distance, he squinted and looked down the highway they had just traversed.
A small speck on the horizon, trailing columns of steam, quickly grew larger. In a matter of moments, the dot revealed itself to be an enormous gallimaufry of a war machine, cobbled together from the remnants of other, smaller war machines. Enormous treaded triangle wheels took up most of the rear of the vehicle, with smaller caterpillar treads in the front. Several helicopter wings, laden with missiles, thrust out asymmetrically from the sides. An antique and filed-down snow plow tore up any exposed greenery before the machine, and serrated spikes covered almost every other surface.
“Not again ...” Ra braced himself, repositioning the sun directly above him, the orb burning with wicked intensity.
“Set,” called the god-king, without breaking his gaze, “come here, boy ...”
As the armored vehicle neared, though, gently slowing, the sun god could see that the machine’s prodigious quantity of weapons was clearly disarmed, cannons and guns tucked away or otherwise disabled. The targeting apparati seemed to be minding their own business.
The war machine stopped and a hatch in the center popped open. A tall, middle-aged man with white hair and a terrible mustache clambered out and stood atop the towering vehicle for a moment, before climbing down and then down some more. He stepped to the asphalt and Ra noticed a container of fluid strapped to the man’s back, a series of thick intravenous tubes running the liquid from the plastic canister and into his arms.
“Hi, Ted Turner,” said the man, walking over and extending his hand. “What the hell is this sinkhole doing here? I’m trying to get to Sidneyworld.”
“Amen-Ra,” said Amen-Ra, shaking the erstwhile media mogul’s hand, “CEO of Heliopolis, creator of the universe. Did Walt Sidney destroy your company too?”
“Not exactly,” replied Ted Turner.
After the United States of America was auctioned off in lots following the fourth end of the world, Starbucks and Walmart engaged in a literal bidding war for chunks of the country, utterly decimating the city of Atlanta in the process and destroying most of Ted Turner’s media empire, as well as everything else that he held dear. Walt Sidney, up until that point a fierce frenemy of Turner’s, offered to buy the totaled remains of his Atlanta holdings, to help get him back on his feet and because that wasn’t the way Sidney wanted to win and blah blah blah. Ted Turner, not exactly having a lot of options, agreed, with the stipulation that the Walt Sidney Company not do anything terrible with the biohazardous land.
Walt Sidney built Western Atlanta Natural Gas and Electric directly atop the ruins of TBS and CNN, not even removing the bodies in some cases, before paving the whole of what was once Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida, and turning the city-state of Atlanta into the industrial hellscape Turner had specifically requested he not. Ted Turner went to Walt Sidney’s office to complain, paperwork in hand and lawyers in tow, only to find himself launched – via an officially licensed Lindsey Louse Lil’ Lapidator Trebuchet – into the mesosphere for his troubles. As luck would have it, Turner collided with the shuttle launching Richard Branson’s orbiting space station. The lawyers, meanwhile, ended up somewhere in the irradiated badlands of Eastern Europe.
Richard Branson, former CEO of Virgin All the Things Unlimited, and also screwed over by Sidney, peeled Turner from the side of the shuttle, taking him in and rehabilitating him in the station’s highly-advanced med-lab. By the time Turner was functional again, the space station was crazy in orbit, so the two executives settled in, living in the luxurious, well-supplied satellite for quite some time, circling the planet and plotting their revenge. Also, catching up on years of television.
Hearing about the decimation of WANG, the pair decided the iron was heated to a high enough degree that striking would be optimal. Turner and Branson gathered up what they needed, made some calls, and prepared to return to Earth. Sadly, Richard Branson died along the way, attempting to parachute back to the planet from the fringes of space. Ted Turner, piloting the space station back to the planet like a sane person and taking the whole of the revenging upon himself, picked up some military-industrial materials at auction, harnessed what was left of the quickly depleted Fountain of Youth to regain some of his youthful vim and vigor, and set out to right some wrongs.
The grass beyond the men began moaning and shaking vigorously.
“Do you have room for one more in there?” asked the sun god, motioning to the war machine. “These two ...” He shook his head. “They are not much help. And they keep making me feel like a third-wheel. It is not fun.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“And my great-grandson.”
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“Your ... great-grandson?” Ted Turner motioned to the nobody standing next to or around the god.
“Oh,” said Ra, turning in place. “I ... I could have sworn he was ...” He furrowed his brow. “Clearly he is not.” The Egyptian creator of everything deflated. “Nevermind, I suppose.” Then, giving the TBS namesake a brotherly nod, he said: “At my age, the mind, it goes on you.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, if I am being honest, it all started about five hundred and twelve years ago ...”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
Waffles, Waffles, Waffles
William H. Taft XLII was not a small man. As a clone of the fattest president of the United States, he never would be. After years of being bullied about his weight, he had come to terms with that. So the replica politician began working out, turning shame into fury and fat into muscle. The duplicated president was still not a small man. But now his stature was more like that of a half-giant, towering and intimidating and not someone about whom fat jokes would ever be made without grievous bodily harm befalling the one making the jokes.
Judging by the stacks of waffles and ice cream and disco fries before him, the mayor-king was trying to undo all of that in one meal.
“Billy, you’re not going to be able to eat her back to life,” said Queen Victoria XXX.
“Blow it out your ass, Vicky,” countered William H. Taft XLII.
The president and the queen were seated on either side of Thor Odinson – the shirtless thunder god wearing the president’s blazer so he’d be let through the doors – in a circular booth in the corner of a facsimile diner trying and failing to replicate the spirit of the 1950s, on the outskirts of Area 51.[xlviii] They had driven to the nearest extant restaurant, an hour and a half away, while they waited for the mayor-king’s golden mansion to ground itself. The trio was tired and angry and sad and covered in the blood and guts of a dozen dismembered creatures and smelled like burnt pork.
“I am trying to be polite, god damn it,” the replicated royal replied.
“Which god?” asked Thor.
“Please don’t start with that again.”
William H. Taft XLII slammed his fist against the table.
“Why did Charlie get to survive? Why didn’t Bo?” he grumbled. “His fucking skin came off.”
“He was kind of an arrogant motherfucker,” said Thor.
“I did also have his brain scooped out and on ice within thirty minutes,” explained Queen Victoria XXX.
“Yeah ...” said the big man slowly. “That was ... weird.”
“It worked, though, didn’t it?”
“But you didn’t know that. For one thing, we had no idea any of my scientists survived, much less if any of them could do anything with a cooler full of the innards of Charlie’s skull. For another, brains shouldn’t operate under the same rules as pizza delivery.”
“But it turns out they do, so there you go.”
“Shit is so fucked up,” he mumbled, burying his face in his hands.
“How is Charlie, by the way?” asked Queen Victoria XXX, stealing one of the mayor-king’s waffles.
Begrudgingly, and delicately, his broken arm hanging limply at his side, William H. Taft XLII pulled his phone from his vest pocket, shaking off clumps of clurichaun innards, then thumbed around a little.
“His brain’s successfully in the new body,” he said eventually. “My guys aren’t Arahami, though, so don’t expect much.”
“Does he at least have a dick?”
“No.”
“Does he have a waist?”
“Kind of?”
“Good enough. We’ve got a couple strap-ons. We’ll be OK.”
“Could you put Catrina’s brain in a robot, too?” asked Thor softly.
“No, man. Weren’t you listening?” snapped William H. Taft XLII. “Aside from the fact that you would’ve had to desecrate her corpse within thirty minutes of her dying –”
“‘Desecrate’ is a little strong,” said the queen.
“– Catrina was human, she had a soul. It wouldn’t be right to bring her back without it. It wouldn’t be her.”
“Well ... what about those old lady ghosts we fought in Montana?” grasped the thunder god. “Can’t Catrina do something like that? Or come back as her own zombie?”
“Souls can’t possess their own corpses,” explained the large man, “it’s too traumatic. Death creates an irreparable schism between body and soul, between the physical and metaphysical.”
“Well, what about just the ghost thing then? Or what about someone else? Can she come back as some random corpse? I know where there’s a ton of ‘em.”
William H. Taft XLII seethed for a moment, then answered: “Ghosts – assuming the phantasmagraphic spectrum wasn’t borked, which I already told you it is – can possess other people, but it’s never really them. For one thing, they’re rotting, shambling cadavers, first and foremost. For another, even if you do recognize them somewhere in there, it wouldn’t be all of them. It’s never all of them. Every time they possess a corpse, they lose a part of themselves. And it gets worse over time. Layers get stripped away until there’s only vague notions of the person left, one-dimensional sketches of who they were, forever drifting aimlessly or sobbing or making toast or whatever.”
Thor grumbled. The restaurant shook slightly.
“Look, I’m sorry,” said the cloned president, softening. “I really am. About her, about barking at you just now, about the rules of the metaphysical world.” His voice resolidified. “But don’t forget that I have just as much reason to be pissed off about the way this all shook out as you.”
The brawny Norseman angrily shoved an entire pancake into his mouth.
“I still don’t get why Catrina did that,” said the queen. “That wasn’t really her style, right? She was never a ‘hit first’ kind of girl.”
“She was angry. She felt justified, emphasis on the justice. Plus, the hammer,” the thunder god replied, chewing loudly. “It’s power incarnate. You feel invincible. You guys have to get that. You’re engineered to be stronger and better than most mortals.”
“You’re damn right we are.”
“But how did she do that?” asked the robust politician.
“Honestly, I don’t know.” Thor gulped down a cup of coffee. “I’ve got theories. I didn’t get my powers back for real until I was protecting you guys from Quetzalcoatl. Until I was overcome with actual righteous fury, using my anger for good. That was kinda my whole deal back in Asgard, and the hammer was built for me specifically, so ... I’m assuming that’s how Catrina was feeling. She was legit avenging Ali and helping the rest of us. The hammer amplifies that a thousand-fold.”
“Well then that explains how you became the fucking sky,” said Queen Victoria XXX.
“Yeah, about that ...” said William H. Taft XLII.
The Norseman shrugged his massive shoulders, the borrowed blazer threatening to tear itself apart. “There must be two levels of god powers or something.”
“Like Dragon Ball Z.”
“Exactly like Dragon Ball Z,” replied Thor, pointing a fork at the president. “Except less confusing. And there’s only the two levels. I think. I’m pretty sure I’m tapped out. I feel exactly like I did before those stupid scientists disproved me.”
“But why now? Why wait until something terrible happens? Why not get all your powers, y’know, the first time you got your powers?” asked Queen Victoria XXX.
“‘The power comes in response to a need, not a desire,’” explained the mayor-king.
“Yeah, that might be it,” replied the god.
“That was a quote from the show.”
“Oh. Right.” He paused. “So ... I’m a super saiyan?”
“Pretty much,” replied William H. Taft XLII. “Your hair did get more yellow.”
“Is it pointy?”
“No. Sorry, man.”
“You fucking nerds,” said the queen, stealing ano
ther one of the simulated president’s waffles.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
That’s Some Inscrutable Logic There, Sir
“Congratulations, A, you’ve been promoted to Chief Operating Officer,” said Walt Sidney, leaning back in his jar.
“Thank you, sir,” replied Ah Puch, the former Mayan God of Death, standing before him and smiling unsettlingly. “And who will be taking my position as Director of Public Relations?”
“No, you’re still doing that job too.”
“Oh. OK. Well, it’s still an –”
“I don’t care. What do you think we should do about Thor and whichever of his friends lived? I’m honestly a little torn on this one. On the one hand, they have information about the company I don’t want released, and it would bring me extreme amounts of pleasure to watch them all die screaming, but, on the other hand, hunting them down is starting to feel like a tremendous waste of resources.”
“Well,” said the skeletal old man, still smiling, “after extensive research into the issue, I think it would be in the company’s best interests to sit back for the time being.” Ah Puch slid a number of photos and print-outs onto the desk next to the frozen head. “The Las Vegas Massacre has been well publicized, covered by almost all major news outlets, social media sites, and office cafeterias, with William H. Taft XLII, Queen Victoria XXX, Chester A. Arthur XVII, and Thor Odinson coming out as the heroes, righteously defending the city from evil, despite the fact that the thunder god had a higher body count than any of his opponents, plus all the Expendables movies, all twelve of them, combined.”
“You’re sure about this,” rumbled Walt Sidney, his voice like an unbalanced dryer.
“I’m positive,” replied the manically grinning former god. “Going after Thor and his friends right now would be disastrous for the Walt Sidney Company image. Currently, public opinion seems to be that the entire massacre was little more than a spat between a tempestuous Satan and them, independent of us. No one knows Loki was there. We recovered his corpse, removed the credentials from both his top and bottom halves, and threw him into the mass funeral pyre with the rest of the city’s citizens. And while the media’s research does show Satan as the former director of Western Atlanta Natural Gas and Electric, they believe he was fired after an industrial accident under his watch. Your ties to him are clean. No one is aware of your proposition to rehire him if he got rid of the cyborg and the squirrel. Which, for the record, he did. Sort of.”
