The Rules of Supervillainy (The Supervillainy Saga Book 1) (7 page)

Mandy paused. “...no?”

“Then joke I will continue to make,” I said. “Anyway, I defaced corporate property. I got help from the computer department and whistleblowers to hack corporate records and expose the truth. I also sabotaged some Omega Corp dolphin nets during trips with my girlfriend at the time and her father.”

“That sounds less like supervillainy and more like social activism,” Mandy said.

“Yeah,” I said, throwing away the bottle in the trash bin. “So I decided to blow up Omega Chemicals.”

Mandy stared at me. “Goddess.”

I stared at her. “That may be a bit dramatic. I was going to set a bomb to blow up their pumping station on the weekend after hours and expose they’d been leaking stuff into our groundwater for decades, causing gross mental illness and homicidal rages.”

They’d settled the lawsuit last week.

Still in business.

Mandy said, “That’s still terrorism.”

“Maybe,” I said, sighing. “In the end, I couldn’t go through with it. A bomb wasn’t my style. I might have been willing to go up to the CEO’s office, put a bunch of pictures of dead children on his desk, and shoot him in the face but I wasn’t going to risk bystanders. What if my
Anarchist’s Cookbook Revised
-made bomb was found and someone died? No. After it happened, Gabrielle talked to me, and I agreed to hang up my wetsuit for good.” I stared down at my outfit. “Until opportunity knocked. I owed her a lot for persuading me—but this feels different. It feels right.”

Or maybe I was just a helluva lot angrier than I was back then.

And more sick of the system.

“Gabrielle Anders? She was your other girlfriend, right? The one aside from Cindy, I mean.” Mandy always hesitated to bring her up, for much the same reason I didn’t like bringing up Selena.

I tried to play it off. “I’ve had tons of girlfriends, Mandy. I mean aside from you three I can name off like thirty I’ve slep...” I noticed her stare. “Sle...Sl...okay I can’t think of a good word I can substitute. Yeah, Gabby was my only other serious girlfriend.”

Despite the fact I was an enormous nerd, I’d had a significant advantage over my socially challenged kin in both high school and college. A secret I had exploited to its fullest extent in dating: I treated women as human beings who probably wanted fun dates or satisfying sex as much as I did. It had worked staggeringly well until I’d met Gabrielle. As much fun as Cindy and I had on a regular basis, the two of us had always been more partners in crime than anything else. Well, literally so, now. Gabrielle had been different. My usual charms had worked like a spoon on a steak, leading me to become entirely focused on winning her over.

She’d worked as a reporter for the college newspaper and was more focused on her studies than anything else. I would have written her off as uninterested in dating and moved on if not for the fact we’d bonded over our shared love of superhuman battles as well as criminology. She’d always gotten the best shots of Ultragoddess pounding the Black Witch and her monsters. Which was amazing because she always seemed to disappear when those battles were happening on campus.

Probably getting the best shots she could.

“
Oh for Chrissakes
,” Cloak muttered.

“What?” I asked.

“
Nevermind
,” Cloak grumbled.

In the end, Gabrielle and I had fallen in love. It was the one secret I kept from my wife, as I did my best to pass off my relationship with her as over and done with. Which it was, but not emotionally. We’d gotten into all manner of wacky hijinks together, checked out all manner of strange leads, and even talked about moving to Atlas City together after graduation. Then she’d started disappearing for longer and longer periods, coming home with injuries she wouldn’t explain, and flat out lying to me. Even living together for six months didn’t bring us closer together. After the Cackler had kidnapped me out of some perverse belief I was related to Ultragoddess, she’d broken it off with me. I still had a fuzzy memory of her telling me something but every time I tried to recall it, it slipped away. I also felt like something was keeping me from reaching some sort of obvious conclusion.

“
Ultra-Mesmerism
,” Cloak said.

“
What
?” I said asked, immediately forgetting what he said. “
What was I asking about
?”

“
It doesn’t matter
.”

“We met at one of my concert’s after-parties a week after you broke up, as I recall,” Mandy said. “You were hitting on two of my exes and I’d heard you were a good lay. Strange how it managed to blossom into what it did.”

“Yeah,” I said, looking down. “Amazing how the brother of Stingray and girlfriend of the Black Witch ended up getting together at the same college.”

“Eh, not really. Falconcrest City University has the best unusual criminology department in the country and doesn’t discriminate on past associations or records. There were, like, seventy active superheroes and villains on campus while we were attending, according to my father.”

I stared at her. “Huh. That explains so much.” Like, why I was rejected for every college I applied to but Falconcrest U.

“Do you regret where your life ended up?” Mandy asked. “That you’re the brother of Stingray and not Merciless ten years earlier?”

I looked at her. “Are you asking me if I regret marrying you?”

Mandy looked away. “If the shoe fits.”

“Merciful Moses, no!” I said, staring at her. “God, no!”

“Then what are you saying?”

I looked at her. “Life has a way of going in directions we don’t expect. I didn’t like being kicked out of the Unusual Criminology program for getting kidnapped and missing finals. I didn’t like trying and failing to get a teaching position anywhere decent for five years. I didn’t like being forced to work at that damned bank while they cheated every single customer and hid money from the government. I may be a supervillain but that’s just wrong. But you? You, Mandy? I regret
nothing
about our relationship. I would have gone
insane
without you.”

Mandy looked at me.

I looked back.

“We’re going to pretend you’re not clearly insane, okay?” Mandy said.

I smiled. “For tonight at least.”

“I’ll support you in pursuing your dream,” Mandy said, sighing. “Maybe it’s time we both revisited the ways our life has gone off track—and how they’ve succeeded.”

“I never had any doubt.” I kissed my wife passionately and the two of us began taking each other’s clothes off.

It was a good night.

It would be the last for a while.

.

The next hour was beautiful.

Exhausted, my wife and I fell asleep afterward, only for dreams to take me. I was a frequent sufferer of nightmares due to past events of my life. For all the fact I didn’t have any sense of guilt for killing the Ice Cream Man or the Typewriter, I still saw their dead faces and other people’s in my dreams.

My brother Keith.

Shoot-Em-Up.

Gabrielle.

My parents.

Mandy.

The dream coalesced out of the random imagery into a memory. It was a memory I’d revisited several hundred times over the past two decades. A memory which had continually repeated itself and wormed its way into my mind. It was one which haunted me, shaped me, and controlled me. It was an inescapable memory which defined the way I chose to live my life to this day.

It was the day my brother died.

The weather was hot in New Angeles, a heat wave having hit the city not long after the recent Atlantean invasion. It was incredibly humid and the majority of the citizens were staying indoors until it passed. The Silver Lightning, Aquarius, and the rest of the city’s superheroes were cooperating with the Foundation’s Eco-Warriors in the clean-up but it wasn’t going fast enough for most of our tastes.

I was lying on the couch wearing jean shorts and a t-shirt showing the words ‘Superhumans Unite’ around a D.N.A helix held by a fist. Half my head was shaved; the other dyed purple. I had two gold piercings in my ear and was wearing a pair of shades indoors. I was fourteen and quite the little hell-raiser. I was presently flipping through a copy of
Tights
, which had a nude pictorial of the newest Larceny Lass. I’d found it an excellent palette cleanser after finishing
Anarchism in a Post-Human World
by Emanuelle Goldenstein (pseudonym) and
The Spirit of the Laws
by Montesquieu.

The room had seen better days, with my family having to move into a worse house after Papa Karkofsky got fired from his job for having a supervillain son. Joel Karkofsky was currently watching Foxhound News from his easy chair and complaining about every little thing he thought I might be listening to as well as plenty he didn’t.

He was an overweight man in his late-forties wearing a button-down shirt and dress pants. Joel was missing his right eye and wore an eye-patch over it at home since we couldn’t afford a decent cybernetic replacement since being dropped by our insurance provider. The wall had a framed picture of his medals from Vietnam II, showing how he’d lost it. I mentally vowed that when I became a supervillain, I wouldn’t ever do any work for P.H.A.N.T.O.M after what they did to my dad.

“This is all that damned abominable new President’s fault,” Joel muttered, pointing at the television. “We never should have elected one of
them
.”

“Dad, don’t be racist,” I didn’t bother looking from my magazine.

My dad pointed back at me. “It’s not racist if he’s a robot. We should have elected Clinton.”

“Android John was made in America, he can be President,” Keith said, talking from the kitchen. “Besides, the economy has never been better.”

“Not that we’re seeing it,” Joel said, over to the kitchen. “Also, you can’t tell me you approve of humans marrying robots.”

I looked up. “Ultramind II is pretty damned hot in her digital avatar.”

“And about as touchable as your pornography,” Joel said, shaking his head. “Don’t tell your mother I said that.”

I made a zip gesture over my mouth. “So, Keith is dinner almost ready?”

“You’ll love what I’m doing. It’s a seafood recipe which uses all organic ingredients plus a new flavoring,” Keith said, walking out of the kitchen wearing an apron, jeans, and a Grateful Dead t-shirt. Aside from the scars on his face, arms, and New Angeles Highwaymen tattoos, you couldn’t tell he’d ever been a supervillain.

It was disappointing.

“You’re still trying to become a chef now,” I said, looking at him.

“It’s honest work,” Keith said.

I tried not to roll my eyes. I didn’t have much of an opinion of honest work given how the System worked. It was deliberately designed to prop up the one-percent and protect the establishment at the expense of social mobility, non-military superhumans, ethnic minorities, and non-capitalist systems. I’d tried explaining this to Keith but he’d looked like, well, I was a fourteen-year-old trying to explain how the real world worked.

“Uh-huh. How’s that working out for you?” I asked.

Keith looked away. “It’s working out.”

“Just remember, you have to look after your little girl,” Joel said, getting up from his chair. “That’s the most important part of your life now. A man is a breadwinner and it’s his duty to provide for his family.”

“Trust me, I know,” Keith said, wiping his hands off with a cloth. “I thought I could make her a princess but all I did was let my shit roll down on my family.”

Joel stared at him. “I’ve heard that speech before, Keith.”

“Right before you tried to seize the Atlantean throne, which was fucking awesome!” I said, looking up. “You totally hit Aquarius’ evil sister, right?”

“You shut up boy.” Joel pointed at me.

Keith looked to one side, guilty. “This time, I promise you. It’s different. I’ve got a clean slate from the government and—”

A wailing siren sounded, threatening to deafen everyone in the house. Looking outside the window, I saw a NAPD cruiser tricked out with armor and machine guns flashing its lights outside. It had a pair of speakers attached to the top with the words ‘Shoot-Em-Up’ spraypainted on the side. I blinked, wondering what the fuck this was about.

Seconds later, AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” started playing on loudspeakers. I was confused as all get out before the door to our living room was kicked down and a man wearing riot gear spray-painted with a SEU in a diamond in the center stepped on in. The visor on his helmet was down and had been outfitted with a mirrored front. In his hands was a laser-sight equipped, advanced, hand-gun which looked like it had probably cost more money than most cops made in a year.

“THIS IS THE AGE OF PUNISHMENT!” Shoot-Em-Up shouted, lifting up his gun at Keith’s chest.

Everyone but Keith was too stunned by the anti-hero’s sudden appearance.

Keith pushed Joel to the ground and shouted to me, “Get down!”

I started to move toward him, however three bursts of bullets came from Shoot-Em-Up’s gun into Keith’s chest and showered me with gore. Shoot-Em-Up stayed long enough to put an additional set of rounds in Keith’s face before looking down at us both and saying, “Scum comes from scum.”

The memory became fragmented and a swirl of imagery as I tried to keep my head clear of the gory remains of my brother.

They picked up Shoot-Em-Up, a disgruntled police officer named Theodore Whitman, about an hour later and it turned out he’d visited two other inactive supervillains’ homes before Keith and was on his way to blow up a fourth’s with a rocket launcher. That one had probably saved a lot of lives since the last target was attending his six-year-old daughter’s birthday party.

Despite this, there was no changing the media reaction to Shoot-Em-Up. The police deliberately botched the investigation and he was let off with a technicality. Everyone across the country, seemingly, supported his actions and there had been promises of a book deal as well as promotional tours.

His actions helped trigger a slew of imitators ranging from Bloodscream the Retributive, to the Extreme. Many normal heroes grew a lot more comfortable with killing, too, even though the Society of Superheroes officially condemned their actions. But for my family, it was the end of everything.

I found my own way of coping.

I hated this next part.

And loved it.

Shoot-Em-Up didn’t exactly keep a low profile after his initial murders were resolved and was back on the streets in months. None of the gangs, crime lords, or supervillains would touch him because they were all too afraid of him.

They didn’t realize he wasn’t a superhero, just a cop in a cheap costume. I gave credit to the Silver Lightning, he attended my brother’s funeral and tried to give his condolences. But the Silver Lightning didn’t bring in Shoot-Em-Up and a lot of ‘unsolved’ murders started to pile up. I was wearing a hoodie and gloves, a backpack over my shoulders, walking up the stairs of a ratty hotel in the Southside of Falconcrest City. My parents had moved there in hopes of getting a fresh start, but they hadn’t realized just how much worse things were there. It had, ironically, attracted the very bane of our existence.

I’d gotten a tweet about Shoot-Em-Up’s location from a guy who’d caught him on his camera phone not ten miles from my location. I wasn’t a great believer in divine intervention, but that seemed like it to me. The smell of the Rusty Scabbard, a lovely name for a hotel which charged by the hour, was horrible. It was like someone had combined vomit, a men’s’ bathroom, pot, and desperation into a single odor. I passed by a collection of passed-out drunks as well as prostitutes. A few of the latter said I’d have to wait in line, ignoring the fact I was fourteen or perhaps counting on it since some of them weren’t too much older.

Reaching Room Fifty-Two, I took a deep breath and went over my escape plan in my head. The building was old and still had fire escapes with an exit just down the hall which lead to a window. I knew this because I’d made sure to get a good look at the place first. I should have gone over the details with a fine toothed comb but I was still a kid.

And seething for revenge.

Looking at the red door with a pair of numbers painted on, I pulled off my backpack, unzipped the top, and looked in to see the gun with a silencer inside. It hadn’t been difficult to acquire. This was Falconcrest City after all. The wretched hive which gave wretched hives a bad name. Holding the grip tightly with my right hand, the backpack’s strap keeping it in place, I knocked on the door.

“Go away!” Shoot-Em-Up shouted. “I’m paid for the next three hours!”

“There’s a guy who wants to see you about a television interview. He says you’re on something called Superhero Watch.”

“What?” Shoot-Em-Up said, and I heard him come to the door. It swung open and he looked down at me. He wasn’t in uniform, wearing just a pair of boxers and a wife-beater t-shirt. He wasn’t an impressive looking man, ginger hair and a receding hairline, but I’d recognize his face even if I were blind.

I pulled the trigger.

Shoot-Em-Up fell a step backwards as a red hole appeared in his chest.

I pulled it again.

And again.

I just kept pulling the trigger and soaking up the recoil even as he fell on the ground. I ended up emptying the chamber into him.

And I kept pulling the trigger still.

It felt good.

And horrible.

But mostly good.

My hand shook as I held the gun; where was a big hole in my backpack from where the bullet had passed through. Shoot-Em-Up’s uniform was lying strewn about the crappy hotel room along with a platoon’s worth of guns. Either Shoot-Em-Up was a great believer in overkill, or the majority of the weapons were for show.

Then I saw the witness.

She was lying on the bed, her crimson hair tied in girlish pig-tails, in a little pink dress. The girl was no older than I, her hands duct-taped together. The girl didn’t look particularly upset by what had happened to Shoot-Em-Up and was currently chewing off her restraints.

“Crap.” I debated what to do. The smart thing to do was to shoot her but I wasn’t that sort of villain. “You didn’t see anything!”

“We go to the same school, Gary,” the girl said, chewing her restraints off.

I blinked, recognizing her as a girl from class. Which made this so much worse. “Uh, Cindy?”

“Yeah,” Cindy said, stepping over Shoot-Em-Up’s corpse and picking up his wallet from the desk and his watch. “Wow, there’s like a thousand bucks in this. Not to mention credit cards with false names! Sweet!”

“Uh, keep it.”

“Awesome,” Cindy said, not looking up. “You’re learning already. Pity about the average height thirty-something guy who shot him.”

I blinked.

Cindy looked at me. “Oh, you should dump the gun in the dumpster at Seventh and O’Neill. The International Crime League processes the weapons put there. They’ve been making inroads in town recently.”

I slowly nodded, stunned. “Uh, are you all right?”

“Eh, a girl has to make a living. At least according to my drug-addict mother,” Cindy muttered. “This should take care of her for about a week, at least.” She looked over to the nearby weapons. “Or maybe longer.”

I slowly backed away.

“See you at school?” Cindy asked. She sounded hopeful, like she’d made a new friend.

Which she had. Just not for any bonding we’d done over my recent murder. I needed to befriend her to keep her quiet. I admit, though, my fourteen-year-old-self was impressed by her attitude. She was handling the murder far better than I was. I wanted to find a toilet and throw up, which I would in a few minutes. “Sure, I guess. That sounds great. See you Monday.”