A Karma Girl Christmas

  I headed to the front of the building and made sure the revolving doors were secure and the bars and shutters were in their proper places over the plate-glass windows. Then, I went around to all the various exits on the first floor and did the same thing. Everything was locked up tight, but my inner voice kept whispering to me, warning of danger … danger … danger ...

  I walked back to the windows at the front of the store and stood there, peering out through the bars, but all was calm, all was quiet. The entire city had shut down for Christmas, and not even a taxi could be seen driving down the street. A light snow had started to fall, coating the street lamps and sidewalks in a powdery coat of crystalline holiday cheer.

  Still, my inner voice kept right on murmuring.

  I shook my head and turned away from the door, ready to head back to the toy tree—and that’s when I first heard the smash-smash-smash.

  Uh-oh.

  #

  I froze, wondering what the noise was and where it had come from.

  Smash-smash-smash!

  It took me a few seconds, but I realized the sound was someone very determinedly breaking the glass on one of the building’s side doors. I stood there, waiting for the store’s alarms to start blaring—but nothing happened.

  No alarms, no sirens, no flashing red lights—nothing.

  Whoever was forcing their way inside must have disabled the security system just as Lulu had earlier. Now, no alarms would be tripped, and nothing would alert the police or the Fearless Five that someone was breaking into the department store.

  Which meant it was up to me to stop them—and for Karma Girl to come to the rescue.

  I hurried toward the toy tree as fast as I could, running through racks of clothes and then past the makeup counters. I got back to that same cardboard cutout of Swifte, stopped there, and slowly peered around the side of the superhero’s grinning face.

  A man stood in front of the Christmas tree, staring at all the toys just as I’d done, but instead of wonder, an expression of disgust curled up his lips. He wore a pale green costume, with matching boots, gloves, and a utility belt. A long, flowing white cape swirled around his rather thin, bony body. His mask also was white, with a faint, sparkling sheen. A symbol shimmered in dark green sequins in the middle of his chest. I squinted, trying to make out what it was in the glow from the tree’s lights.

  Was that—could it be—a spearmint leaf?

  Weird. Even for Bigtime.

  I quickly flipped through my mental dossier of all the male ubervillains in the city, alive, missing, and presumed dead. Captain Sushi, Frost, Scorpion … it was a pretty long list, and it took me several seconds to figure out who he was—the Mintilator.

  That made things even weirder. The Mintilator was a germophobe more than anything else. Usually, he lurked outside of public restrooms and either berated or physically dragged folks back inside to make them wash their hands if they hadn’t already. Occasionally, he’d make them floss too. Which, really, weren’t bad things, especially compared to what the city’s other villains cooked up. Every once in a while, he’d hatch some elaborate plan to kill Halitosis Hal, because the superhero’s exceptionally bad breath went against all the minty goodness that the Mintilator stood for. But overall, the Mintilator was pretty low on the threat level list when it came to ubervillains. So what was he doing here tonight?

  A movement across the aisle caught my eye, and I spotted Lulu waving at me. She must have heard the glass breaking because she’d hunkered down behind several female mannequins dressed in bright, colorful, shockingly skimpy negligees that I recognized as Fiona Fine originals.

  The Mintilator was still busy staring up at the tree, so I took the opportunity to quickly cross the aisle and slide into the shadows next to Lulu.

  “Is that the Mintilator?” Lulu whispered, peering around the mannequins. “I thought he was harmless, except for the whole forced hand-washing thing.”

  “Apparently not,” I whispered back.

  “I don’t even know what kind of power he has, do you?”

  I shook my head. “No, but there’s one way to find out.”

  I reached for my empathic ability and looked at the ubervillain, doing my best Clint Eastwood squint. Sure enough, pale green waves pulsed around his body. Everyone’s energy had a slightly different feel, but the sensation was always amplified when it came to heroes and villains. Usually, I could tell what kind of power someone had just from looking at their energy waves. The reddish ones around Fiona were always hot, given her fire-based power, while the ones around Sam were a cool, soothing, sapphire blue, given his regenerative abilities.

  To my surprise, the waves of energy pulsing around the Mintilator felt hot, rough, and caustic, like I’d suddenly scrubbed my skin raw with harsh lye soap.

  “I think he has some sort of acid-based power,” I told Lulu. “That’s what it feels like to me. What he can do with it exactly, I don’t know, but he’s not using it to destroy the toy tree. Not on my watch. I can probably take him out myself, but you stay here out of sight. Just in case the Mintilator has some tricks up his sleeves.”

  “Like what? Squirting you in the eye with some of that super-strength hand sanitizer he always carries on his utility belt?” Lulu asked.

  She snickered a little at her own bad joke, but she nodded her head. Despite how harmless he appeared to be, the Mintilator still dressed up in a costume and tried to make life miserable for other people, which meant that he had a few screws loose somewhere.

  Then again, here I was lurking in the shadows wearing silver spandex in a department store on Christmas Eve. Maybe the Mintilator wasn’t the only one with some loose screws.

  I scanned the area, but I didn’t see anyone else on either side of the tree, and I didn’t sense any more energy waves indicating there was another ubervillain on the premises. It looked like the Mintilator was alone, so I stood up and walked toward him. Maybe I could talk him out of whatever crazy plan he’d hatched. Heh. That would definitely be a Christmas miracle. Really, it would probably be a waste of breath, but I had to try. Superhero etiquette and all that.

  Sometimes, I thought it would be so much simpler being a villain—they never, ever had to play fair or take stupid chances like this. Plus, they almost always got to blow something up. Yeah, villains totally had more fun.

  The Mintilator stiffened at the sound of my boots clacking on the floor, and he slowly turned around. I stopped about ten feet away from him, still holding tight to my empathic ability. If he tried to use his power on me, I was ready to reach for it myself and turn it back against him. Ubervillains could dish it out, but they could rarely take it.

  “Karma Girl.”

  “Mintilator.”

  We stood there facing each other, hands clenched into fists and our bodies tense, despite the cheerful holiday trappings around us. Up close, I could see that the Mintilator’s mask was a narrow strip that just covered his eyes. Deep lines creased into his forehead and around his mouth, as though he was always frowning. He looked to be about fifty or so, with thin, wispy white hair that had a few faint streaks of gray. His eyes were green, though—as bright and green as his costume.

  “What brings you to Oodles o’ Stuff this late at night?” I asked.

  “I suppose I could lie and say I needed one last present, but we’d both know that’s not true. Fact is I’m here to take all of the presents—every last one.” He had a pleasant, if slightly scolding voice, one that made me think of a teacher constantly chastising a student.

  The Mintilator turned back toward the tree, making the sequined spearmint leaf on his chest sparkle and gleam. He seemed content to just stand there and stare at the toys, so I took the opportunity to creep a little closer.

  “But why steal a bunch of toys?” I asked. “Especially when they’re supposed to go to needy kids? That’s pretty harsh, even for an ubervillain.”

  He turned back to me and gave me a triumphant smile. “Exactly. In fact, that’s rath
er the point of my whole little endeavor here tonight. Tell me, Karma Girl, what do you know about me?”

  “I know you’re really, really, really into hand-washing,” I said, creeping forward a little more. “You like to steal delivery trucks full of hand sanitizer, mouthwash, and toothpaste, and Halitosis Hal is your archenemy.”

  He gave me a thin smile. “And that’s it, right? That’s all you know about me?”

  I didn’t know what he wanted me to say, so I just shrugged.

  He sighed. “That’s the problem, you see. No one thinks of me as a real threat, as a real ubervillain, despite the fact that I’ve been kicking around this town for thirty years now. I’m just some kooky guy who goes around Bigtime forcing people to practice good hygiene. I’m not even a B-list ubervillain. I’m barely even D-list.”

  His voice was calm and pleasant, but I could hear the cold anger in his clipped tone. No, definitely not harmless.

  “So you what?” I asked. “Decided to come here and steal the toys from the charity drive so people would take you seriously?”

  He shrugged. “It was the most evil thing I could think of. Besides, do you know how much some of those toys cost? I can make a fortune selling them on the Internet. Not to mention the solidium the tree is made out of. Do you know how valuable that metal is? I can make several million breaking up the tree and selling off the branches. More than enough to fund my long-awaited retirement. And that’s exactly what I plan on doing. Taking the money and running. I hear Cypress Mountain is especially nice this time of year.”

  Sadly, it wasn’t the strangest or most bizarre ubervillain plan I’d ever heard. Truth be told, it was pretty damn clever—not to mention profitable.

  I shook my head. “We both know that I can’t let you do that. If you won’t be reasonable, then at least be logical about this. Even if you could knock me out or even kill me, how would you get all of the toys out of here? Not to mention the tree itself? There’s no way you could get them all out the door before the store opens in the morning.”

  “That’s something else no one knows about me—the fact that I always come prepared,” the Mintilator said.

  He pushed back his white cape, and for the first time, I realized there was a holster clipped to his utility belt, one holding something far more deadly than hand sanitizer—a gun.

  The Mintilator pulled the gun out of the holster and held it up where I could see it. The gun was an overly complicated-looking thing, with lots of little buttons, switches, and most worrisome, a glass tube filled with a strange green gas. In my experience as a survivor of radioactive goo, any gas, liquid, or pill that was neon-colored never, ever did anything good.

  “What’s that?” I asked, wondering which way I should dive when he decided to point that thing at me and pull the trigger. Right, I’d dive to the right and put the sacks of presents between us.

  “Oh, it’s just a little something I found in one of Frost’s old labs,” the Mintilator said. “You’d be amazed at what you can find in abandoned ubervillain hideouts. I’ve found more goodies there than I could create in a decade on my own. In a way, I suppose I have you and the rest of the Fearless Five to thank for this particular gem, don’t I?”

  He was closer to the truth than he knew, because I was the one responsible for Frost’s disappearance. During my fight with the Terrible Triad, I’d used my new empathic power to open the cages where Frost had kept the poor critters he’d experimented on with his freezeterium. The mutated animals had wasted no time tearing into Frost with their genetically altered teeth and claws. That was the last anyone had seen or heard from the cold-hearted ubervillain.

  “I’m not sure what Frost called it, and honestly, I don’t really care. As for what it does,” the Mintilator said. “How about a demonstration?”

  “No! Don’t—”

  Before I could stop him, he turned toward the tree and pressed a button on the gun. That strange green gas shot out of the end of the barrel and hit the trunk.

  For a second, nothing happened. Then, the gas solidified into a liquid that started oozing over the entire tree, leaping from one branch to another and somehow going up as well as down. In less than a minute, everything on the tree—all the toys, all the clothes, all the lights, all the ribbons—was covered with a thin layer of glistening green goo.

  And then, it all started to shrink.

  Down … down … down ...

  The tree seemed to draw in on itself, taking all the toys and everything else with it. I felt like Alice who’d just drunk the wrong potion in a Christmas-themed Wonderland and was watching everything around her suddenly get so much smaller as she grew and grew and grew.

  In less than a minute, it was over. The tree stopped shrinking, and the green goo evaporated like fog off the solidium branches, dissipating into the air. The Mintilator walked over and stood beside the tree, which was now only ten feet tall—and easily transportable.

  I’d seen some strange and amazing things since coming to Bigtime, but this was definitely up there in terms of sheer weirdness. I shook my head, pushing away my confusion. Shrinking tree or not, I couldn’t let the Mintilator leave with the toys—even if I didn’t know exactly how I was going to get them back to their correct size in time for Christmas morning.

  “All right,” I snapped. “You’ve had your fun.”

  The ubervillain smirked at me. “Why, I’m just getting started in the fun department.”

  His green eyes looked past me, and he gave a sharp jerk of his head. Quick footsteps sounded behind me, and my inner voice started to wail.

  Too late, I realized that the Mintilator wasn’t alone. I’d just started to turn my head when a fist plowed into my face, and everything went black.

  #

  I woke up with a start.

  One second, everything was dark. The next, I had a migraine that was bigger than Fiona’s appetite. A bright, steady glow filled my vision, hammering against my closed eyelids and adding to the pounding misery in my head. I cracked open my eyes, squinted against the harsh glare, and realized the glow was the Christmas tree the Mintilator had stolen from Oodles o’ Stuff—and that it was the right size once more.

  Somehow, all the toys, all the clothes, and even the tree itself had been returned to their normal, original size. I supposed the gun the Mintilator swiped from Frost’s lab had a reverse switch on it somewhere. Despite my migraine, I let out a sigh of relief. Well, that was one problem solved.

  Now on to the next—figuring out where I was and how I could get out of here.

  I was sitting in a metal chair, my arms and legs securely shackled to it. I rattled the chains, but unless I missed my guess, the cuffs and links were made out of solidium. I wouldn’t be getting out of the chains without help. The good news was I still had on my costume, and my mask still covered my face, so I didn’t think my real identity as Carmen Cole had been compromised yet. It also didn’t seem like much time had passed, although I couldn’t be sure; I didn’t see any clocks on the walls.

  My eyes flicked over the rest of my surroundings. I seemed to be in an abandoned warehouse, judging from the smushed cigarettes, crushed soda cans, and other trash littering the dingy concrete floor. The windows had been boarded over, no doubt to hide the glow from the Christmas tree, and a pair of double doors off to my left were shut and probably locked.

  I sighed. Sometimes, I wondered if there was any other kind of warehouse in Bigtime besides abandoned ones. You’d think the city planners would raze them all to the ground, because they made such great ubervillain hideouts—

  “Well, it looks like Sleeping Beauty is finally awake,” a low voice murmured.

  Footsteps slapped on the concrete floor, and a man shuffled into view in front of me. Despite the December chill in the air, he wore only a loose, one-shoulder, toga-like garment done in a garish, black-and-white, zebra-stripe pattern. The only saving grace was that he had the hard, muscled body to actually pull off the look. His hair and eyes were both a light
brown, and a black mask covered his face, although his hands and feet were bare. An ebony club dangled from a slot in the leather belt cinched around his waist. Like the Mintilator, he looked to be middle-aged.

  My head might be pounding, but I still recognized him—Caveman Stan, another one of Bigtime’s ubervillains, one known for his incredible strength. Actually, the Caveman moniker was a bit of a misnomer, because Stan was quite articulate, hip, and urbane—except for his old-fashioned views when it came to women. Caveman Stan thought the female race had been created specifically to feed him peeled grapes, massage his hulking shoulders, and sing his praises—literally, like sing about how awesome he was.

  Stan attracted his share of willing women, but what he really liked to do was kidnap female heroes and villains and make them serve him. I supposed it made him feel even more powerful than he already was.

  Supposedly, Stan had been buried in a cave-in the last time he’d battled Fiera, but reports of his death had obviously been greatly exaggerated. They always were when it came to ubervillains. No matter how sure you were that they were dead, no matter how impossible it would be for them to survive something like, say, getting pushed into a wood chipper and spit out the other side in bloody pieces, ubervillains always found a way to survive. Cockroaches could learn a thing or two from them.

  Caveman Stan stepped forward and curled a lock of my auburn hair around his finger. “Normally, I prefer blondes, but I guess you’ll have to do.”

  “I’ll have to do for what?” I asked in a guarded tone.

  He grinned at me. “Why, to be my newest slave girl, of course.”

  Slave girl? Seriously?

  “It’s getting harder and harder to find good help these days,” he continued. “Women are so uppity now, with their power suits and fancy high heels and careers. You girls need to remember what life was like back in the good ole days, when you lived to serve your man and see to his every need. And I do mean every need.”