The Rules of Supervillainy (The Supervillainy Saga Book 1) (11 page)

“
No need to be sarcastic
.”

“
There’s
always
a need to be sarcastic
,” I snapped back.

“
I’m getting that feeling…with you
.”

My hesitation vanished when the doors opened to reveal the Night Tower. It was a mixture of retro and ultra-modern, embodying what a well-equipped badass the Nightwalker had been. There was a huge wall of monitors, a giant computer, a brachiosaur skeleton, a disassembled giant robot, and of course the massive clock-face behind everything. Scattered between these items were multiple platforms filled with the Nightwalker’s equipment, vehicles, and trophies.

Weirdly, most of the place looked unused. The one part which looked used was a large section to the back. There, two dozen plain wooden bookshelves were covered in spellbooks and other occult paraphernalia. There was also a small table nearby with a map of the city and a big black scrying orb beside it. I knew what the latter was because it looked like the crystal ball the Wicked Witch of the West had in the
Wizard of Oz
. The incongruity between the two sides of the Nightwalker’s hideout didn’t keep me from being awed by the place, though.

“I am
totally
buying this joint.”

“Where did the Nightwalker get the idea for something like this?” My wife asked, sounding impressed.

“
Comics. That’s where all the big names got their ideas. You know, back when they were still about fictional characters
.”

“It explains a lot,” I muttered, still stunned by the place.

“
Don’t be too impressed. Master Warren’s brother tried to give us a proper secret lair and equipment but it’s all for show. There’s no point in driving around a super-car if you want to sneak up on a subject. Plus, it’d be easy to follow back to your headquarters. The Nightwalker drove around the city in an anonymous white van and turned into his costume form whenever he wanted to make an entrance. I never had the heart to tell Arthur—”

“Does the car come with the place?” I asked, having stopped listening around the word ‘super-car.’

“Absolutely!” Big Ben flashed a salesman-like grin.

“Sweet!”

Big Ben had already begun the ten million dollar tour, gesturing with his cane as he walked. “As you can see, he was a well-prepared little twerp. From what I could tell from his notes, he started fighting crime after his wife and child were killed, and he somehow got his magical cloak from... someone. Local legend says he made a pact with the Devil.”

“
The Grim Reaper, actually.”

“Shush,” I told Cloak. “I want to hear this.”

It’s impossible for a cape to roll its eyes, but I sensed Cloak was doing the closest approximation he could.

“This place has been untouched ever since,” Big Ben said.

Except for whoever gave me the cloak. I wondered who it was. It clearly wasn’t Big Ben.

“
You’re only now just wondering that
?”

“
I’ve been busy
,” I said back.

We passed a row of mannequins in display cases. These held a Nightwalker costume for every day of the week. They were all lacking his trademark cape, however. That didn’t make any sense, though. The cloaks permanently bonded with a person. If he had these, then that meant he never wore them and must have gotten them from someone dead.

“
Good
.
We’ll make a detective out of you, yet
.
This was where I stored the other cloaks to keep them out of the hands of evildoers
.”

Big Ben pointed to the display case with his cane. “Here was where the Nightwalker stored his uniforms. Sadly, when I recovered this place, all of his spare magical cloaks were missing. There are still many benefits to be had, though.”

Spare magical cloaks?

“
It’s a long story
,” Cloak said. “
There are seven Reaper’s Cloaks. The Nightwalker stored them, though, rather than wore them
.”

“Someone took them?” I said, suddenly feeling very anxious. I didn’t like to think about the possibility of six or seven other Merciless-es out there. I could stand another Nightwalker but I had an image to maintain.

“
This is unfortunate. If the Reaper’s Cloaks have fallen into evil hands…well evil-er hands… the entire world could be in danger
,” Cloak said, sounding concerned.

I paused a second, looking down at my attire. “Listen, you’re going to have to give me the whole story now. This is a pretty big bombshell you’re dropping on me.”

“Yes, I’m afraid we don’t know who acquired them,” Big Ben answered, assuming I was talking to him. “All seven cloaks were present when one of my informants found the place. Admittedly, one was on dear old Lancel Warren’s back. Who’d have ever thought that old coot was the Nightwalker? His brother didn’t last much longer after him. Still, when I came up here, they were all gone along with a few other knick-knacks. Very strange.”

That’s when I decided to switch subjects.  “Tell me, Ben, why such a low price?”

“What do you mean?” Big Ben coughed, one of his henchmen giving him a whiff off an oxygen mask.

“Even if you could access his files, which I doubt you could. The equipment alone is worth many times the mere ten million dollar asking price. What is your game?”

Before Big Ben could respond, we were interrupted by an indistinct figure in a bright yellow and white costume who leaped down in front of me from one of the platforms above us.

“For the shining rays of justice!” the figure cried out, giving me a roundhouse kick to the face. It didn’t hurt at all.

Big Ben’s henchmen didn’t hesitate to defend their boss, however. Since I was right next to him, they were also aiming right at me. Thankfully, my assailant threw a set of smoke pellets at their feet.

These spewed forth noxious black smoke and sent the chimney sweeps down to the ground gasping for air. Big Ben was the only one to remain standing due to his oxygen mask being within easy reach.

Ironic.

“You shall not defile the Nightwalker’s tower of nobility, fiend!” the man assaulting me said. He punched me in the chest and face, the blows feeling like light taps against my skin. To be fair, I suspected that they would have been devastating attacks to a man who didn’t have limited invulnerability. It took someone like Diabloman to kick my ass.

“Do you want me to handle this?” Diabloman asked, as unconcerned as I was.

“No, I think I can deal with this guy.” I caught the man’s next blow and head-butted him. It hurt like hell, but it sent the guy to the ground with a thud. It didn’t knock him out, which surprised me, but it allowed me to get a good look at my attacker.

The first thing I noticed was the man was old, not quite as old as Big Ben, but still showing his years. My father was sixty-five and they looked roughly the same age. The next was he was dressed up in a bright superheroes’ outfit, complete with a big sun symbol on his chest and a little white domino mask.

I recognized the attire as a Sunlight costume. It was one of the less regarded parts of the Nightwalker legend he once had a series of rivals for the position of top superhero in Falconcrest City. The Sunlights used flash bangs holograms, smoke pellets, and gadgets in place of the supernatural. For whatever reason, perhaps because no one liked bright and airy heroes in Falconcrest, they’d never achieved the same level of popularity as Lancel Warren.

“Dude, why are you dressed up as Nightwalker’s old rival?” I couldn’t help but ask. “I mean, the guy retired when I was still watching cartoons.”

“You
still
watch cartoons,” Mandy said.

“Shh! No one else needs to know that.”

“
That
is
Sunlight. One of them at least.
”

I stared at the old man who was already back on his feet. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“
Specifically, Robert Warren, Arthur’s grandson. He developed a serious drug problem in the Eighties after failing to save a school bus of children and had a nervous breakdown. Master Warren had to have him committed
.
His two sons briefly took up the mantle.
Up until a month ago, he was living in a Canadian retirement community under an assumed name
.”

The sexagenarian superhero pointed at me with a sun-shaped shuriken. He shouted in a high somewhat boyish voice, “Now, evil doer, I arrest you for trespassing, consorting with criminal trash, and defiling the cloak of the greatest superhero of them all!”

One of the chimney sweeps on the ground pulled out a sword from his broom handle and swung at Sunlight from behind. The aged champion of justice smashed the man’s face in with the back of his fist, broke the man’s knee with the reverse kick, and head butted him unconscious, all without ever turning around.

“Pretty spry for an old guy.” For whatever reason, I wasn’t frightened of Sunlight. Maybe it was the fact the guy was one of the old school superheroes who helped people and not the sort who gunned down people’s brothers. “How does he keep in shape?”

“
Ancient Tibetan calisthenics Robert learned in Shambhalla from the Iron Dragon while studying for a way to match the Reaper’s Cloak
.
I…Master Warren never approved of his family following him into the superhero business, but that didn’t mean they were incompetent
.”

“Uh-huh. Listen, Sunlight—”

I was about to ask what the hell Sunlight was talking about when Cindy interrupted me. “You want me to kill him? You know; if your wife is okay with it?”

“I am
not
,” Mandy said, her tone withering.

“I think it’s bad karma to kill geriatric superheroes,” I said. “Even if they are still kicking ass. Diabloman advised me not to kill any good guys.”

“That’s what’s stopping you?” Mandy asked.

Sunlight aimed another shuriken at me. “Surrender now or face the scourge of the Underworld!”

“Uh, okay.” I raised my hands up for the second time this week. “I surrender.”

“What?” Cindy said, staring. “You can’t be serious. We can take him! He’s just one guy.”

“A statement made by many a supervillain before getting their asses kicked,” Diabloman said, raising his own hands. “Though, Red Riding Hood is correct, we could at least give a token resistance.”

“I’m not hitting Sunlight!” I replied. “Merciful Moses, I used to wear underoos with his picture on them!”

“
Too much information
.”

Before Cindy could reply, I heard the sounds of Big Ben’s men cocking their guns at us again. The smoke had cleared and they were ready to start shooting. Sunlight turned around, only to be almost decapitated by Big Ben’s bowler hat. During the distraction, one of the men ran up and clobbered him on the head, forcing him to the ground.

“Make sure he’s dead!” Big Ben coughed between words. He made no apologies for almost gunning us down earlier and seemed focused on killing Sunlight. Probably because the later had been a thorn in his side since before I was born.

Mandy looked at me, clearly not happy about Sunlight’s imminent execution. “Gary, we need to do something!”

“Applaud?” I asked. Yeah, it was hypocritical, but there was a difference between killing a hero yourself and letting someone else do it.

Mandy glared.

“Fine,” I muttered, sighing. If I didn’t do something then Mandy would and God knew how many bodies that would lead to. “I’ll save the superhero’s life. But only because I’m under the impression Big Ben is going to betray us.”

Not at
all
because I thought the old guy seemed like a decent fellow who deserved to be protected. Geez, if that got out, I’d never be able to show my face at a supervillain bar again. Not that I’d ever visited one.

How the hell did I keep getting into these situations?

Big Ben had never read the Evil Overlord’s List and was taking time to gloat. “Sunlight! Ha! Now this is a red-letter day! I just thought I’d lure a bunch of rubes to waste a fortune buying the Night Tower...”

A couple of the Big Ben’s goons turned their guns on my group. Their weapons were an M16 and Uzi both shaped like chimney-brushes. Being held hostage by a bunch of Dick Van Dyke look-a-likes was a new experience for me.

I didn’t like it.

“Huh,” I muttered. “I guess I was right.”

“Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” Cindy shouted, shaking a fist at Big Ben’s gang.

“Then I’d kill them,” Big Ben continued to monologue, “but this! This, I never expected! I spent
decades
in prison thanks to this nincompoop. The forties to the nineties, languishing in and out of jail because of the Nightwalker’s idiot sidekicks! Well, I didn’t get to kill the Nightwalker, but I’ll at least get to kill... argh!”

That was when Big Ben burst into flames, his suit going up like a piece of dry kindling. He seemed surprised, yelping in shock as his men watched the sight in confusion. It looked like word hadn’t gotten around yet that I had the power to set people on fire with my mind.

Amidst the crime lord’s screams, I iced over the guns of the henchmen threatening me before Diabloman charged, tackling the thugs to the ground.

“Shall I kill them, Boss?” Diabloman asked, holding two of the thugs up by their necks.

“Yes. Do that thing you do.”

“With pleasure.” Diabloman crushed the necks of both before tossing their bodies to the side.

I didn’t think Sunlight would approve of us villains slaughtering the bad guys about to kill him but that was one of the benefits of being a bad guy. We didn’t have a higher standard to aspire to.

Grabbing both Cindy and Mandy, I turned intangible as the remaining henchmen fired upon us. Their bullets passed harmlessly through our forms before I froze the wire suspended platform above their heads.

The metal cracked and shattered before dumping its contents on their heads. Unfortunately for them, its contents included the Nightcar: a customized black vehicle as much tank as it was sports car. Two henchmen and the still-burning Big Ben were crushed.

Sunlight, on the other hand, escaped unharmed. He was standing over one of the bad guys who’d been prepared to kill him. Said villain was the only one to survive our attack. “Alas, poor Big Ben. He never realized that it was the cold hand of death that awaited his life of evil and not the fortunes of ill-gotten loot he envisioned.”

“Are you on drugs?” Cindy asked, staring at Sunlight.

“Clean for decades!” Sunlight giving a thumbs up. “I have to arrest you for murder. I will, however, argue it was in self-defense.”

“I killed Big Ben too?”

I looked over at the Nightcar and saw a bloody mess leaking out from under it.

“Yeah, people are going to start thinking you’re a good guy the way you’re knocking off bad guys!” Cindy pointed and laughed.

“Oh, I doubt that.” I wondered if there was a limit to the number of people you could kill before self-defense stopped being a defense. I was about to make another crack when I noticed one of Big Ben’s henchmen was missing from the body-count I was compiling. Turning around, I saw he was behind me and carrying a futuristic-looking gun he had to have looted from the Nightwalker’s various trophies.

“
Death’s scythe, he’s got the Solar Devastator
!” Cloak shouted, stunning me with his tone of genuine horror.

“The what?” I asked.

Mandy moved before anyone else, doing a roll on the ground to grab one of the late henchmen’s guns, lifted it up, and shot my attacker repeatedly in the chest. It was magnificently executed, just the way her father had trained her, even as I could see the look of dawning horror in his eyes as the figure fell.

“
Gary, stop the weapon from hitting the ground
!” Cloak shouted again.

I froze the futuristic gun and the resulting snowball landed on the ground, nothing happening as it did.

“What would have that done, Cloak?” I asked, wondering what all the fuss was about.

“
Tom Terror miniaturized the power of a nuclear explosion into handgun form during the Fifties
.”

“Why
the hell
would you keep something around like that?”

“
Kaiju. I could never get the cloak to generate enough power to destroy them outright
.”

I blinked. “Ask a stupid question, get a stupid—”

I noticed Mandy was shaking, staring at the corpse, her gun, and then me. I immediately went to her side and wrapped her in a hug. She pushed the safety on the gun then returned my embrace.

“It’s all right, Gary,” Mandy said, taking a deep breath and returning my embrace. “I just never hurt anyone before.”

“You did wonderfully!” Diabloman said, nodding in approval.

“Bravo!” Cindy enthusiastically applauded.

Mandy stared at them both then narrowed her eyes.

Both of them blanched as if terrified.

I continued hugging Mandy. “I am sorry. I did not mean to get you into this situation.”

“Eh, it’s okay,” Mandy said, sucking in her breath. “I don’t think this is your fault, actually.”

“Ahem.” Sunlight cleared his throat. “You’re all under arrest.”

“Yeah, we heard you the first time,” I said, unconcerned. “I think you should realize this was all in self-defense.”

“Three of you have outstanding warrants,” Sunlight pointed out. “The woman dressed like it’s the Forties is innocent, though.”

“I have a warrant on me?” I asked, shaking my head. “I thought the Chief and I had an understanding.”

“Never trust the cops in this town,” Cindy said, starting to look through the Nightwalker’s stuff, presumably for something to steal. “They’ll disappoint you every time.”

“I can assure you that the judge will take in your attempts to help me during sentencing,” Sunlight said.

I ignored him, not really caring. It wasn’t like he could seriously threaten us. He hadn’t exactly been kicking ass out there. “Could you give me a minute with my wife?”

“Of course,” Sunlight said.

“Do you want me to beat him, Boss?” Diabloman asked.

“No,” I said. “Not yet.”

“Not ever. We’re going to work this out peacefully,” Mandy said before sniffing the air. “What smells like pork?”

“That’s just burning human flesh.” I gestured to where Big Ben had been crushed. “You get used to it.”

Mandy scrunched up her face.

“I probably should have kept that part a secret.”

Mandy nodded, slowly.

Cindy, meanwhile, was holding an armful of stolen weapons and supervillain memorabilia. Walking over to a nearby crate where I presumed she’d store them, she passed by the unconscious thug who’d shot her.

“You know, I just realized you saved my life.” Cindy gave the unconscious thug a swift kick. “None of my previous bosses would have done that.”

“Uh-yeah,” I said. “They were all assholes. Try and keep up. A little gratitude would be nice too.”

Cindy jumped in my arms, wrapped her arms around my neck, and kissed me. “Thank you!”

“Off my husband.” Mandy’s voice was low and dangerous.

Cindy jumped off me like I’d shocked her.

Taking one look at Big Ben’s henchmen, or what was left of them, Sunlight said, “Thank you for your assistance. Perhaps you are not a complete disgrace to the Nightwalker name. Now, are you going to come along quietly or do I have to thrash you?”

Diabloman glared at him. “Even I am beginning to wonder if it might not be a good idea to make an exception to the ‘no killing heroes’ rule.”

“That won’t be necessary, I hope.” I really wanted to beat this guy up but I wanted to forestall an argument with my wife. “Sunny, show some gratitude for saving your ass! If not for my wife, you’d be Swiss cheese.”

“Swiss cheese?” Cindy said.

“I’m still working on my supervillainous dialogue,” I said, “it’s supervillainously difficult.”

“Please, stop using supervillain as an adjective,” Mandy said.

“Why?”

Sunlight, if you can call a sixty-five year old man boy, looked chagrined. His next words confused the hell out of me. “You’re correct; I owe you a debt of honor. From this day forth, until the day I return the favor, I pledge to teach you the path of justice!”

I looked between my henchmen and Mandy. “Is he serious?”

“
I’m afraid so
,” Cloak said. “
Then again, he may be right. Sunlight has a surprisingly good skill at rehabilitating supervillains. Since recovering from his breakdown he’s delivered sixteen back to the path of righteousness
.
That’s not including all of the various superheroes and delinquents he mentored
.”

“Never use the words path of righteousness in a non-ironic context again,” I said to Cloak.

“Sunlight sounds about as serious as you do,” Mandy said. “Which is pretty serious about some pretty ridiculous stuff.”

“There’s nothing ridiculous about supervillainy. In any case, Sunlight, what are you doing here?”

“I confess…I have a tendency to let nostalgia color my actions. At times like this I forget it’s not the Sixties. I do owe you my life, and I also know you rescued the Douglas girl last night. So when I speak about rehabilitation, I’m quite serious. I also suspect I know more about you, Mister and Mrs. Karkofsky, than you know about yourselves.” Sunlight removed his mask, looking serious.

“Wow,” I said. “My secret identity didn’t last long.”

“It rarely does for supervillains,” Diabloman said. “One of the hazards of frequent arrests.”

“You know us?” Mandy asked.

“I do,” Sunlight said, putting away his mask. “I’ve been watching you, along with other exceptional civilians of note, for a long time. It’s part of the duties I do for the S.O.S as a retired superhero. It helps keep me sane, knowing I’m doing at least some small part to fight evil.”

“This sounds ominous,” Cindy said, checking her stolen loot. “Do you get your kicks off spying on Jewish couples?”

“Mandy’s Wiccan,” I corrected. “And about as gentile as they come.”

Mandy clutched me tight, making a ‘zip it’ gesture with her fingers. “Let Sunlight finish.”

“I heard about the death of the Nightwalker the day it happened,” Sunlight said, sounding regretful. “He and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but he was a great warrior against evil. Some days, I might have even called him friend. All of them, I called him family. So, I came down here to guard his legacy. Falconcrest City was always a den of inequity and predators who made lives miserable for the common folk. However, the Nightwalker was a symbol that evil didn’t always prosper. He was a torch in the night and it wasn’t right for him to fall with no one to pick it up.”

For a moment, a very brief moment, I regretted I, instead of a superhero, was the one wearing the Reaper’s Cloak. Still, if he was going to ask me to join the Boy Scouts then I wasn’t biting. “Yeah, he was all sorts of awesome. Listen, Sunlight, I’m a supervillain. It wouldn’t work out, you trying to teach me to be a good guy. So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to help myself to your friend’s secret headquarters and equipment. Show yourself out and we’ll call it even.”

“
Oh yes, that’s going to convince him
,” Cloak muttered. “
Brilliant
.”

“Hush you,” I snapped. “I’m trying to avoid setting the old guy on fire. I have a ‘kill only one senior citizen a day’ rule, at least as of today. Now, are you going to leave me alone or not?” There was no way I could continue to use the Nightwalker’s base, not with the fact Big Ben’s goons knew where it was and however many other people he’d sold it to, but I could take everything here to a secure location and repurpose it.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Sunlight said. “All of this equipment belongs to the chosen heir to the Reaper’s Cloak.”

“What?” I asked, shocking out of my fantasy. “I didn’t know there was a chosen heir.”

“
There isn’t
,” Cloak said. “
I’d know
.”

Sunlight nodded, heading over to the huge computer in the middle of the room. “According to the Night Computer, there was one person in the whole of Falconcrest City worthy of receiving the power of my mentor’s mystical cape. By feeding all personal data about the citizenry into the computer, I was able to deduce an appropriate heir and send them a disguised set of packages. These packages would give them everything they’d need to know to begin their superheroic careers.”

A cold chill ran up my spine as I realized where this was going. There was only one reason someone would drop a package containing the Nightwalker’s cloak on Mandy and my front doorstep. “Oh, really?”