Epilogue: A Whole New World

Previously on And When Two Villains Woo, the Kaboominator was fired! Candystriper’s robot arm fired! Explosions! Mayhem! Before we find out what happened, a short word:

The Malevolent Med-Student stalked through the door of the St. Cupertino emergency room, Candystriper in his arms. “She needs help,” he rasped. “Severe crush injuries, probable rhabdomyolysis, shock, trauma, everything, and you’ll want someone specializing in cybernetics too!”

Doctors and nurses converged on him. He ignored questions about billing or registration; his eyes remained fixed on Candystriper as they took her vitals and whisked her away, a doctor saying something about intensive care and stabilization. As the orange swinging doors closed behind her, he turned to a nearby intern as if he just remembered something. “Outside,” he said, his voice still scratchy. “There’s a cape. John Cute. He’ll be in shock too. Blast injuries. Should be fine. Mostly stunned.”

“You don’t look so good yourself,” the intern observed.

“I’m fine,” said the Malevolent Med-Student, wobbling on his feet. The robot arm had one heck of a blast radius. “I’m fine.”

He stared at the orange doors. He wanted to go after them, to do something. He still had the compact Pharma-Death Beam, mark three, although he didn’t think that would be any help. Come to think of it, the Malevolent Med-Student wasn’t sure what he could do to help at all. Every instinct in him as a supervillain screamed to charge in there after his minion and Do Something; every instinct as a human being screamed to Do Something, but … what could he do?

He was very good at inflicting trauma. For the first time, the Malevolent Med-Student realized, he didn’t have the slightest clue how to fix it. And so he sat and waited, or stood and paced, or stared out the window, and hoped with everything in him that Candystriper would be all right. The Malevolent Med-Student had to admit, if only to himself, that he didn’t know what else to do.

Some hours later, still waiting, he saw Captain Happily Married and Super Soccer Mom arrive. The Captain held the limp form of Professor Irreconcilable Differences. He said something to the desk and another ER team converged on them. Soon the Professor had been taken away behind the same orange doors. They started to go, and then the Captain saw the Malevolent Med-Student.

Everyone froze. Then Super Soccer Mom, seeing something in the Malevolent Med-Student’s face, raised her hand. “Let’s all just pretend we didn’t see each other tonight, okay?”

“Fine,” the Malevolent Med-Student said. “I’m not here for you anyway. It’s my minion.”

His voice actually wavered. Captain Happily Married couldn’t help asking. “Candystriper, isn’t it? Is she all right?”

“I don’t know,” the Malevolent Med-Student said shakily. “I don’t… they haven’t said.”

Super Soccer Mom, then or afterwards, couldn’t say exactly why she did what she did next, but she stepped forward and brought the Malevolent Med-Student into a hug, and he broke down on her shoulder in a way he hadn’t done since he’d become the Malevolent Med-Student. Captain Happily Married patted the supervillain’s shoulder in a gingerly sort of way, as if it might explode. “There, there,” he said. “You’ll be all right.”

---

Meg Atomic hadn’t gone to the hospital with her parents, which was probably for the best considering who else was there, as she’d stayed behind at the scene where the Professor had fired the Kaboominator. She had, after all, been on scene the last time the Kaboominator was fired, which was why the Captain had radioed her the second he’d recovered from the shock wave himself. She was now scanning the area, doing everything she could to work out exactly what had happened. The only traces of the explosion, besides the debris and wreckage strewn up and down the street, was a faint murmur in the air, almost like a mirage. “Like someone went and punched a hole in reality and it’s trying to pull itself back together,” she said grimly to herself.

The problem was, Sam Superlative Jr. had been standing right where that hole was. He wasn’t there now, so where was he? Even if someone had been disintegrated, vaporized, whatever, there was always something left: ashes, traces, quantum-sized particle variations. As far as Meg Atomic could tell, there was nothing. Sam had been scythed neatly from the universe.

“Okay,” she said, doing another graviton sweep, “So where’d you get scythed to?”

---

Everything was blurry at first, and his head hurt. Slowly he opened his eyes. It was dark outside. That was good. He hadn’t been out long. He heard birds in the distance. At least, he thought they were birds. It was a kind of low coo, maybe a hum. Doves, maybe. He hadn’t thought there were doves around the abandoned warehouse, but then again he’d been preoccupied with the Scarlet Shapeshifter and Professor Irreconcilable Differences and the Kaboominator-

All at once he stopped. He’d just glanced up at the night sky, which was a problem in itself as he could see the sky, which meant he wasn’t in the warehouse anymore. That wasn’t the problem, however. The problem was the moon.

Moons, rather. As in plural. As in three.

Sam Superlative Jr.’s stomach turned. He was on another world, and he was about to throw up. This wasn’t cool. This wasn’t cool at all.

As they say in the movies, Sam Superlative will return.