Tournament of Supervillainy

by Phipps, C. T.

  “Wait, Mandy and Gabrielle were on opposite sides?” I asked.

  “Instead, we just did what rational folk did and hid our families away. Our kids.”

  “I have another child than Leia?” I asked, intrigued.

  “Spoilers,” Old Gary said, putting his pointer finger in front of his lips.

  “And this isn’t?” I asked, annoyed.

  Old Gary gave a dismissive wave. “Cities were destroyed, continents were ravaged, and maps were redrawn. The public, showing its usual compassion as well as decency, revived President Omega’s genocide plans. They targeted every single superhuman in the world, innocent or guilty, along with their families.”

  My blood ran cold. “Which would include Leia.”

  “Yes,” Old Gary said, narrowing his eyes. “They went after my family.”

  “I hope you killed every one of them,” I said, putting down my refreshments then balling my fists.

  Old Gary’s eyes were haunted and empty. “Yes, I killed them all.”

  I immediately lost some of my enthusiasm. “How many?”

  “The number sort of loses its significance after a certain number of zeroes but that wasn’t enough for me,” Old Gary said, sighing. “It wasn’t enough that I kill them. I wasn’t going to let the baby-killing pieces of crap be martyred and academics talk about how they went so bad years later. I wasn’t going to let the David Irvings or Alt-Rights of the future talk about how the Pure Human Movement was misunderstood or engage in ironic genetic supremacy. So I took the Prime Orbs and I used them to make sure everybody knew exactly what it was like. I made them feel the pain, the fear, and the horror of their victims by inaction.”

  I let that sink in. “How’d that work out?”

  Old Gary looked out the window. “It broke humanity. I didn’t leave myself out of the equation but I always knew what I was. What was left turned to me for leadership and generation after generation left me in charge. There hasn’t been a war since and violence is pretty tame. The shadow of what we were hangs over us still.”

  “Sounds almost too good to be true,” I said, sensing just how much agony my future self was in.

  “Is it?” Old Gary asked, sighing. “The fire has gone out of humanity because we lost our ability to self-delude ourselves about heroes and villains. We’re a grey race now, neither good nor evil, and simply existing. I always had an ironic name because I never wanted to be merciless but in the end, I was the most merciless one of all.”

  I made a really tiny violin noise.

  “Really, Gary?” Old Gary asked. “That’s what you take from all this?”

  “World peace and all the murderous bigots in the world are dead,” I said, frowning. “Oh you poor bastard, however will you survive being the absolute ruler of everything you survey?”

  “God, I was an immature dipshit,” Old Gary muttered.

  “Very true,” I said, picking up my Merciless Cola with both hands and drinking from it. “Besides, I don’t believe in fate. You may be a sad sack of spent misplaced idealism and guilt for being a mass murderer but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be. Besides, if you really didn’t think this universe was the best possible one then you could just use your powers to go back in time to fix it.”

  “Maybe I didn’t believe I could make things better,” Old Gary said. “Maybe I thought I could take responsibility for my actions.”

  “Ha!” I said, throwing my half-drunk cola to one side then pointing at him. “My theory is proven true: you’re not actually my future self! You’re a projection of the Primal Orbs trying to do some mind-whammy on me! I never take responsibility for my actions!”

  “Mind-whammy, really?” Old Gary asked, raising an eyebrow. “Where the hell did you get such a ridiculous notion?”

  “I dunno, television maybe? There’s a lot of stories about magical artifacts trying to influence their users with visions,” I said, not quite buying my theory anymore.

  Old Gary put his arms on my shoulders. “Gary, I’m going take your advice, as ill-formed and badly conceived as it is. You need to do things differently in the past. You need to change what occurred before and do things differently. You need to let Entropicus win.”

  “What?” I asked, staring at him then brushing off his hands. “That’s moronic!”

  “There’s a reason!” Old Gary said, conjuring a pair of fireballs around his hands. Apparently, my future self was immune to flame.

  “No!” I said, falling back on the carpet behind me.

  Everything went white again.

  I blinked several times as I found myself surrounded by a bunch of zombie Nazis who’d been shot up, stabbed, and torn apart. I did a double take at my surroundings before noticing Mandy, Gabrielle, and Cassius were beside me. So was Jane Doe who was covered in Nazi blood and carrying a glowing staff.

  “Okay, what the hell did I miss?” I asked, my head pounding.

  “Shooting, stabbing, and strangling Nazis!” Jane said in her best rural Midwesterner voice.

  “Dammit, that’s my favorite thing!” I said, pausing. “After sex and snark. Well, depends on the day really.”

  “Jane and Agent G won their second rounds,” Mandy said, pausing. “Unfortunately, their last battle was with Nazi Necromancer and General Furher so the battle spilled over here. I think it was an attempt to eliminate you.”

  I took a deep breath and looked around. “Yeah, maybe, or maybe he was trying to clean up loose ends. Is everyone alright? I don’t see G here.”

  “I got stabbed and he freaked out so he went to the bar,” Jane said. “Thankfully, I heal.”

  “Which way to the bar?” I asked, looking around.

  “That way,” Jane said, pointing down the hall.

  “Thanks,” I said, looking over at Mandy. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go get rip roaring drunk. Can you coordinate the salvation of the world in the meantime?”

  “Sure,” Mandy said, picking up a broken fang up off the ground. “It’s not like I’m going to be winning the tournament directly.”

  “Gary—” Gabrielle said.

  “We played into Entropicus’ hands,” I said, shaking my head. “I need a drink to think of a way I can get stupid enough to be unpredictable.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DROWNING MY SORROWS (AND OTHER PEOPLE’S)

  It didn’t take much effort to track down the bar on Hell Island. It was the kind of dark, smoky, alien and fictional character-filled room that you expected to find in sci-fi movies. Really, I regretted not packing a blaster because incinerating people with my mind just wouldn’t have the same effect.

  It didn’t take long to find G because he was sitting next to a four-armed looking reptile man wearing a red pair of speedos. I recognized the guy and wondered how he felt about Entropicus ripping off his universe so badly. The bar was tended by an enormous spider that I assumed wasn’t Shelob because she wasn’t killing and eating people. Still, it meant only two people were sitting at the bar and there was ample space to get your drinks.

  I sat down beside G and tapped the counter. “Blue Milk and keep it coming.”

  “Blue Milk?” G asked, nursing his own drink.

  “I figured this bar contains everything in all of fiction so I wanted to drink something from the Star Wars galaxy,” I said, smiling.

  G looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “I suppose that would be a minor fantasy you could fulfill. Have you considered looking for Rey or Young Leia?”

  I glared at him. “First of all, I’m married, and second of all they both have people who can love them back on their home universes. Leia is set up to be with Han and Rey will end up with the star of my fanfics Jet McAwesome.”

  G grinned. “So you don’t think there’s any value to pursuing a relationship while we’re here?”

  The bartender served a big glass of blue liquid with a distinct smell of alcohol added. Huh, who knew Luke and the Lars family were such lushes? Still, he added a milkshake sized straw and I
tried it. Not bad. It made me wonder what they grew on Tatooine to make grain alcohol milkshakes. “Relationships are different from hooking up, G-man. Which are you talking about?”

  G paused and stared forward. He had the expression of a man who was fighting off a broken heart—that was weird since we were only here a day. Then again, he was drinking a kind of weird glowing scotch and that couldn’t be good for your mood. “Jane.”

  “The teenage weredeer?” I asked, surprised.

  “She’s twenty-three,” G said, frowning. “The first few books happened a long time ago in her past. It’s like meeting Hermione as an adult and being like ‘hey, you look like Emma Watson’ but people getting upset because they think of Hermione as a child.”

  I stared at him.

  “What?” G asked.

  “Sorry, it’s just I feel like we should be best friends,” I said.

  G chuckled and shook his head. “That’s part of the reason why I’m irritated. Jane is smart, funny, and doesn’t mind the fact I’m a robot assassin.”

  “Those are qualities you need to cross universes to find. Either that or go to the local comic con,” I said, slurping my drink.

  Wow, was I hallucinating banthas or was that a vision from the Force? Nope, it was just the kick of the Blue Milk.

  G leaned in. “It’s not the fact we’re in love or anything. We barely know each other but it’s the fact I won’t be able to that bothered me. My world doesn’t have dimensional travel. Hell, my world doesn’t have magic. Quite a few people don’t believe in anything like gods or a purpose to the universe.”

  “Eh, same in my world,” I said, shrugging. “Familiarity breeds contempt. It’s hard to believe in an all-powerful god when you have actually all-powerful people trying to help where the real deity seems so hands off.”

  G gave a bitter chuckle. “Believe me, I’d still take your world over mine any day.”

  “What is your planet’s deal, anyway? I get Jane comes from the Cabin in the Woods meets Underworld.”

  “Careful on the pop culture references,” G said, pausing. “Too many and you dilute their effect.”

  “I’ll try and avoid saying anything that requires a doctorate in nerd,” I said, raising my glass to him. “But yes, what’s your thing?”

  “Cyberpunk,” G said, chuckling. “Cyborgs, conspiracies, megacorporations, and so on. It started as being all behind the scenes but eventually morphed into a full-on Gibsonian dystopia. Life is cheap and freedom is expensive.”

  Cindy had actually clued me into a lot of details about his and Jane’s life. Apparently, both of their lives completely went to crap in the third books of their series.

  “Ouch,” I said, pausing. “Mind you, I’ve always felt like my world was a cyberpunk dystopia. It’s just instead of being edgy rebels against the Man, it was just the Man versus a bunch of dissatisfied office drones. More Office Space than Blade Runner.”

  “Well, speaking as the artificial human enslaved by the system, Blade Runner isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” G said. “It’s a world with no love, friendship, or trust.”

  “Really? You’ve got no one to call Mrs. G? You have to cross universes for a candidate? I would have thought a good looking assassin like you would be fighting off the ladies with a stick. You look more like the James Bond sort of secret agent than middle-aged pudgy CIA bureaucrat.”

  “Sex isn’t the issue,” G said, finishing off his drink. “Anyone can get laid if they’re sufficiently determined. It’s only when you self-identify as an obnoxious unlikable misogynist little troll like some of the jackasses on the internet you have trouble with it. Intimacy is the problem. When everyone is a liar and trying to manipulate you then you can’t even have friends let alone lovers. I envy you, Gary, you and your wife clearly have an open and loving relationship.”

  “It sounds like you need a better class of people to hang out with,” I said, thinking about his claim Mandy and I had a good relationship.

  “Perhaps,” G said. “Still, it’s going to be disappointing when this tournament ends and we’re all going to go our separate ways. It’s like catching a flash of something greater and more wondrous in the universe, only to have it stripped away from it.”

  “We could also all be horribly killed,” I said, being honest with him. “You could also get the wish and save the multiverse. Wish yourself a 7th level Plane Shift spell.”

  “I’m strictly Cyberpunk 2020 not Dungeons and Dragons,” G said.

  I laughed. “Totally besties. But my advice to you, G, is not to sweat the details. If you like Jane and want to be with her then you should cherish the time you have with her. Maybe it’ll be only a couple of days or maybe something miraculous will happen like you immigrating to comic book verse.”

  “Is that an option?” G asked.

  “Would your universe even exist if you weren’t there to star in it?” I asked.

  “That’s a sociopathic way of looking at things,” G said.

  “Supervillain!” I pointed out.

  G nodded. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll go talk to Jane and ask if she’s up for a summer romance except replace summer with video game crossover tournament.”

  “Just don’t sing the ‘Summer Loving’ song from Grease,” I said.

  “Why would I do that?” G asked, a confused expression on his face.

  “I dunno, not every one of my references can be a winner,” I said, finishing my Blue Milk. “Also, I don’t know what’s in this but I think I can levitate.”

  “You could already levitate,” G said, looking at me strangely.

  “It’s working retroactively!?” I asked, stunned. “I’ve got to have another!”

  I turned around and picked up a second glass the giant spider had laid down for me.

  That was when I’d noticed the six-armed man beside me had left and been replaced by Guinevere. She was still wearing her armor and drinking from a large stein overflowing with a frothy brown liquid—like she was straight out of a Medieval B-movie.

  “Hey Xena,” I said, lifting my Blue Milk to take a sip. “How’s it hanging?”

  “I see you’re still in the tournament,” Guinevere muttered, sounding more than a little drunk. “Disappointing. You must be happy, though.”

  “Yeah,” I said, frowning. “I’m just totally overwhelmed with joy at the fact my best friend died trying to save the world and I had to beat the crap out of my ex-fiancé.”

  Guinevere looked over at me. “Diabloman is dead?”

  “Yes,” I said, taking another drink from my glass. Wow, that stuff hit hard. I was never going to call Luke Skywalker a wimp again. Yes, I’m a Darth Vader fan. We all knew it.

  “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person,” Guinevere said.

  I put down my drink. “Do you want to throw down? Because we can throw down now, I can eliminate you, and the entire multiverse might end up fried because we’re ostensibly supposed to be on the same team. I can also insult you in funny ways like pointing out Guinevere is supposed to be pronounced Jennifer. Your superhero name is literally the same as Jenny from the Block’s.”

  “Who?” Guinevere asked.

  “Oh, the horror of aging,” I said, already half-drunk. “Every reference I make shall become dated within a year.”

  Guinevere sighed and put down her stein. “You have no idea how irritating it is to know you’re one of the Chosen Champions of the Universe.”

  “Chosen Champion of Death,” I corrected her, sighing. “It’s just Death wants the multiverse to survive.”

  “Yes,” Guinevere said. “If we succeed, you’ll be the biggest hero who ever lived.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say biggest…” I said, pausing. “Wait, shouldn’t you be happy about this?”

  “Happy?” Guinevere said, looking at me like I was crazy. “Why in the world should I be happy?”

  Guinevere proceeded to chug her stein.

  I looked at her like she was crazy. “I dunno, maybe
because it’s a good thing when people decide to do good things with their life? I’ve spent my entire life being a selfish bastard of varying degrees. You’d think the biggest remaining superhero of all time would appreciate the effort!”

  Guinevere stared down at her drink. “That’s not how it works, Gary.”

  There was an immense amount of bitterness in her voice. So much so that it surprised me.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, surprised at how much empathy I was feeling for a woman who literally beat the crap out of me. Also, I’m not using the word literally improperly. I’m very glad I had magic to clean myself up after heavy beatings like that. Most supervillains don’t.

  Guinevere felt the bridge of her nose with two fingers as if she was trying to stave off a migraine. “Do you really want to know why I loathe you?”

  “I have a pretty good idea the answer is ‘you’re a supervillain’ but I admit I don’t quite get why you’re particularly hostile with me. The Guinevere I grew up reading the comics of was all peace, love, justice, and feminism.”

  Guinevere looked appalled. “You read my comics growing up?”

  “Oh hell yes,” I said, putting my hand over my heart. “You have no idea how much I got laid in college due to the lessons I learned. Just make sexy times fun for everyone involved and you get a positive reception—like planning video game night. Don’t hit on everyone constantly but keep it confined to appropriate sexy time request zones like parties or bars. Don’t make ratings systems—”

  Guinevere actually banged her head against the bar counter three times.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I learned other stuff too!”

  “Gary, I fought in World War 2,” Guinevere said. “I saw horrors you would not believe.”

  I dropped my joking demeanor. “I actually would believe them, yes. There was a reason my mother made sure I understood we should just ignore grandma Karkofsky waking up screaming when she lived with us. My family didn’t come from Poland by choice.”

  Guinevere closed her eyes, adopting a soberer look. “There is no such thing as a Diet Coke of evil. There are good and there are bad people in this world. People often talk about the moral ambiguities of life but the fact is the line isn’t really that hard. Don’t rape, murder, torture, or steal. Good people don’t do bad things and bad people don’t do good. Do you understand?”