The Rules of Supervillainy (The Supervillainy Saga Book 1) (21 page)

“They’re busy with other threats,” Gabrielle said. “Equally bad ones.”

I nodded. “Okay. I’ll stop these.”

“Thank you, Gary.”

“For Mandy.”

Gabrielle looked down. “I see.”

“You know, I always thought the monsters of the Torah would be less...literal,” I muttered.

“Live and learn,” Gabrielle said, smacking her fist. She then blew out the observation deck windows and flew off.

The Human Tank smashed her fists together and said, “LET’S KILL THESE BITCHES.” She then ignited her rocket pack before wings stretched out from her backpack and she took off into the air.

The others followed, each content to fight for the world.

While I had been content to rule it.

Damn, did I feel lousy.

Scared too.

This was way above my paygrade.

“
This is why I kept the Solar Devastator around. You never know when you’re going to be facing Kaiju
.”

I took to the air, levitating. “Cloak, shut up.”

As terrifying as their current skyscraper-sized forms were and as keenly aware as I was it wouldn’t take that much for one of them to puncture a hole in the side of Avalon’s dome to kill us all, it helped to remember Gog and Magog weren’t newcomers.

Again, I hadn’t realized the Nephilim were literally the creatures from my rabbi’s lessons I’d learned growing up, but I’d heard of giant monsters going by that name fought by the Society before. It said something about the kind of world we lived in that this was something I only vaguely recalled.

“Gog is the stronger of the two,” Cloak said, his voice a low whisper. “The smarter as well. He will spawn all manner of horrors from himself and make deals with mortals to subjugate the world in the service of Chaos. Magog, by contrast, is nothing more than a mindless force of destruction.”

As I levitated towards the two towering monsters, Magog spit forth a house-sized ball of hellfire toward a crowd of people. Bronze Medalist got all but a pair of them away as it descended, only for me to grab both and turn us insubstantial. Because the fire was magical, I lowered us to the level underneath us and dropped them before ascending.

“Yeah, I’m getting all sorts of warm and fuzzy feelings from the creature spoken of as one of the primordial enemies of Israel.”

“
He may try to murder you first
.”

“...seriously?”

“
When we say these things are literally the things from the Old Testament, we’re not making fun. They follow the rules of the masks they wear.”

Shadow Team Seven divided into groups. General Venom used an energy-construct pegasus and his energy sword to fire blasts of light at Magog while encircling him. Bronze Medalist evacuated as many people as he could from the area before starting to use his inertia to send massive chunks of debris at it. Black Witch unleashed pretty much every offensive spell in Dungeons and Dragons, attempting to strike down the massive corpse creature. The Human Tank did what tanks did best, firing at it repeatedly. The Red Schoolgirl assaulted the dozens of corpses falling from its body to form a miniature zombie apocalypse.

Which left Gabrielle to face Gog alone.

She started by conjuring a building-sized Ultraforce claw hammer and then wailing the crap out of it.

Then got nasty.

I wasn’t sure what, exactly, I could bring to bear in this encounter but I’d made a promise I intended to keep. I might not be winning any Humanitarian of the Year awards given I was a bank robber and multiple murderer but I had standards, dammit, and I intended to keep to them. I would probably come to regret that but, fortunately, would in all likelihood die before that became an issue.

“
You frighten me
,” Cloak said.

“I try,” I said, cheerfully.

In the end, I decide my best strategy was to join the Red Schoolgirl in destroying the various zombie demons which were falling off the side of Magog. Despite being made up of countless corpses fused together, more than the entire population of Avalon put together, Magog was shedding bodies like dandruff. These bodies, rather than rejoice at being freed, started moaning and running at anyone they could attack.

Icing their legs, I proceeded to hurl handfuls of fire at their faces. “I’m not a huge fan of zombie fiction. I make the occasional exception in video games but I’ve got to say, the number of knock-offs lately are saturating the market.”

My fire seemed to have a surprising effect on the creatures, every single ball of flame I hit them with caused the zombies to catch fire before burning to nothing in seconds. It took me a second to realize why that was before I remembered the Reaper’s Cloak was designed to send wayward souls on their way. I may put the psycho in psycho pomp, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t take advantage of that fact.

“
Demons and Nephilim collect the souls to mortals to use as power reserves
,” Cloak added. “
If you remove these bodies and send them off to their true afterlives, it will weaken it enough to perhaps send it on its way
.”

“Is that any different from throwing fireballs at them?”

“
...no
?”

“Thanks, that’s really helpful.”

“I am the promised doom of all nations!” Magog shouted, its voice a hideous choir of a thousand dead. “All beings will know and rue my apocalypse.”

“The smell is definitely apocalyptic,” I said, blasting yet more zombies as they seemed to come faster and more numerous towards me.

“Why are you quipping in combat?” the Red Schoolgirl said, slicing through one, decapitating another, and then bisecting a third. I’d say she was cutting through them like wet tissue paper but I’m pretty sure that would have given more resistance.

“Don’t most heroes and villains?” I asked.

“No!” the Red Schoolgirl said. “Besides, they’re zombies! They don’t care.”

“Well I care!” If you’re going to do a fight with a hideous world-ending evil then the best thing was to do it right.

The Red Schoolgirl shook her head and sliced another through the head down to its groin. “Weirdo.”

Magog wasn’t a one-trick pony, however, and shot forth a storm of red lightning from its chest in every direction. The Human Tank was struck by one of these bolts and ended up falling from the sky, only for Bronze Medalist to propel himself through the air and grab her before settling safely down. That proved to be a trap, though, as another bolt struck them both in the back and caused them to fall down onto the ground.

I wasn’t sure if they were unconscious or dead but the difference was mostly academic to superheroes. As long as you didn’t get brain or entire body destroyed, the Society of Superheroes could revive you. It said something about the world the Society of Superheroes hadn’t been able to get that tech to the common man despite their best efforts to do so.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to deal with that as the numbers of zombies falling from Magog doubled, then doubled again. I had to throw far more fireballs just keep up and was rapidly running out of juice, especially since the moon wasn’t exactly a center of necromantic energy. General Venom didn’t last long in the air, either, getting struck by a whip-like appendage composed of the living dead. This knocked him from his horse right into one of the Black Witch’s spells.

“We’re not exactly covering ourselves in glory here!” the Black Witch said, summoning a host of shadow construct ravens which started tearing away corpses from Magog’s body and eating them.

“The society took a few hours to beat Magog alone last time,” the Red Schoolgirl said, her sword starting to glow as she grew faster and more brutal in her attacks. Her voice started to shake and change to something lower. Almost mannish. “
Kill, maim, destroy
!”

“Is that normal?” I called to Black Witch.

“No,” she responded. “That’s a bad sign!”

“I never would have guessed.”

A frightening berserker’s fury came over the Red Schoolgirl as she intensified her attacks a dozenfold, and started screaming in archaic Japanese Cloak couldn’t translate. Glowing red kanji appeared all over her body as she threw all caution to the wind. She did much more damage to the zombies but they started clawing at her, biting her, and weighing her down with their massive ranks. Not even my blasts were doing much to keep them off.

“She’s being possessed by her ancestor, Oda Nobunaga!” the Black Witch said. “Get her away from the horde before he gets her killed and absorbs her soul!”

“What kind of outfit are you running?” I said, going closer and throwing most of my remaining reserves at her.

“A mixed superhero/supervillain team, dumbass! I thought we established that!” Black Witch said, conjuring a shielded bubble as Magog transformed into, I kid you not, a gigantic dragon made out of linked together corpses. The thing spread out its wings, pulled its neck back, and breathed out a tidal wave of hellfire down on her. Everything around her was scorched to ashes including the building she was on but her shielded bubble held firm.

“I am way out of my league here,” I muttered, running up at Black Witch and dodging my way out of the zombies I’d done my best to keep a safe distance from while pitching flaming death at.

“
Be careful, Ms. Ishikawa’s blade is capable of killing Reaper’s Cloak wearers even in their intangible form
,” Cloak said. “
I lost friends to the Mad Samurai in World War 2 when he wielded it
.”

“That is such a racist codename.”

“
He called himself Divine Warrior of the People but he killed hundreds of innocents so my response is screw that guy
.”

Fair enough. I found myself dodging flying limbs, legs, heads, and worse when I got near the berserk and increasingly battered looking Red Schoolgirl. She had several bad bite marks and I was never more glad the whole ‘zombie infection’ thing was one of the few myths which was just that. I’d hate to face the Red Schoolgirl when she was dead, cannibalistic, and hungry.

That’s when I ducked under one of her wild swings. “
I will skin you alive, gaijin, and nail your pelt to my door
!”

“Okay, the racism here is just getting really annoying,” I said, blasting three zombies out of the way before freezing her sword in her hands. She growled as it suddenly lost its bisecting power. Ironically, she didn’t drop it but started using it like a bat to knock away zombies instead.

“Sayanora, Schoolgirl,” I said, grabbing her by the shoulders and causing her to turn intangible as we both fell down to the level below and landed in a maintenance closet. She promptly clobbered me with her iced over sword but while being hit in the face with an icicle wasn’t fun, it was a lot better than being decapitated by it. Besides, if there was one thing I knew how to do right, it was take a punch.

Falling backward into a pile of mops, brooms, and buckets, I iced over the door to the room to prevent her escape, then levitated, insubstantial as a ghost. The Red Schoolgirl screamed numerous obscenities at me in modern Japanese but was unable to catch me as I disappeared. I didn’t know anything about her powers but I figured being unable to kill anything would help her regain control over herself. She could worry about getting all of those demon zombie bites disinfected.

Coming back up to the battlefield, I found myself surrounded by a large number of demon zombies. They looked decidedly brassed off at having been denied their prey. Worse, I could see the Black Witch’s shields buckle under Magog’s zombie dragon form—shooting lightning from its eyes. That was, seriously, pretty sweet to look at, but bad for our tactical situation.

As the zombies around me descended, I prepared what little fire I had left to deal with them, only to see a gigantic Ultra-Force fan blade slice through them like a lawnmower moving around me. I was covered in demon-zombie bits and gore but never felt so relieved. Looking up, I saw an Ultra-force battleship was conjured in the air beside Magog and had started unloading with every one of its two hundred gun emplacements on the Nephilim.

Gabrielle had defeated Gog and come to reinforce us.

I’d never been so happy to be rescued in my entire life.

“No one takes out my friends, so says Ultragoddess!” Gabrielle shouted, not really being all that good at the mid-battle banter. I wasn’t about to call her out on it, though. Even if I wasn’t able to add much more to this battle than cheerleading, I was all for it.

That was when a gigantic Ultraforce, science-fiction cannon the size of a WW2 artillery piece appeared on the top of a nearby building. It had a gigantic telescope on the top of it leading to some sort of sniper’s scope occupied by a small individual. I, for a second, thought it was Ultragod, before seeing the prominent P.H.A.N.T.O.M skull and lightning bolts emblem on the side.

Tom Terror.

Shit.

“GABRIELLE!” I shouted, waving my hands.

She didn’t hear me or just thought I was trying to flag her down. A bolt of Ultraforce energy fired from the canon, undoubtedly enhanced by the complicated circuitry and physics Tom Terror could visualize in his mind. The bolt struck against Gabrielle and caused her energy reserves to blast out of her mouth, arms, and legs. Gabrielle started falling like an angel from Heaven, only for me to throw the last of my energy reserves into levitating and cushioning our fall. Even so, we hit hard against a hover-car hood in front of a Chinese restaurant. In the distance, I saw Tom Terror flying off, not even bothering to see what had happened to Gabrielle. He was utterly confident his sneak attack had worked.

He might have been right.

“Stay with me,” I said, holding Gabrielle, ignoring the immense pain I felt from having hit it head on.

Gabrielle looked alive, a little singed but otherwise fine. The weapon had just drained her of everything she’d had left.

Leaving us both powerless before Magog.

“You will die, little human,” Magog grumbled as the dragon moved over me. “The Brotherhood of Infamy will destroy your hometown, murder your family, and bring the Great Beast into this world. I will enjoy the feast which my father will leave for this world. Now, though, you will go to meet your mistress in Hell.”