Free A Karma Girl Christmas by Jennifer Estep

neon pink codpiece. No man would be puzzled over why his wife had a strange collection of whips and an odd affinity for black leather. No mother would wonder why her son could never be on time for anything. Not if I could help it.  
    I started out small. After work and on the weekends, I traveled to neighboring towns and cities on my crusades, learning all I could about their respective superheroes and ubervillains. I looked at their Web sites and promotional materials. Read their poorly written autobiographies and rambling manifestos. Even bought a few plastic action figures for research purposes. Naturally, all of the superheroes and ubervillains had colorful names like Killer and Slasher and Halitosis Hal. The only things more flamboyant than their names and personalities were their costumes. The two groups never met a skin-tight, spandex outfit studded with rhinestones they didn’t love.  
    All the superheroes and villains had strange, sometimes frightening powers, like the ability to move objects with their minds or shoot red-hot flames out of their fingertips. Since the goals of the heroes and villains were at odds, they often engaged in long, lengthy battles that destroyed bridges, overpasses, and municipal buildings. Some of the bigger cities had several superheroes and ubervillains all battling it out for supremacy and leveling skyscrapers right and left. And they all wore masks to hide their true identities and thus avoid paying for the public property they decimated on a weekly basis.  
    I had plenty of time to spend on my mission. My dad had died in a car crash when I was a kid, while my mom passed away from breast cancer a few years ago. I didn’t have any other family, and Karen had been my only real friend. Everyone else had been Matt’s friend before they were mine. They all drifted away like smoke after my story came out. In a week, I went from the belle of the ball to an outcast. I preferred it that way. There was no one left to lie to me, no one left to hurt me.  
    I perused police reports, scouted out battle sites, and examined torn bits of masks and costumes. I worked up flowcharts of people kidnapped and saved by villains and heroes. I even recorded powers and weaknesses and costumes and symbols in a color-coded journal. I’d always had a knack for organization and a good memory, and both helped me immeasurably as I sifted through mountains of raw data.  
    In the end, it was ridiculously easy. There was always someone the superhero saved over and over and over again, whether it was a wanna-be girlfriend or a boyfriend or a kindly widowed aunt. All you had to do was find that special person and see who was closest to them. Then, bada-bing, bada-boom, you found your superhero.  
    As for the ubervillains, their hunger for money and power tripped them up. Most villains had buckets of cash gotten in less-than-legal ways and were often involved in shady, land development deals.  
    Accidents involving radioactive materials also raised a big red flag, since radioactive waste was a great way for heroes and villains to get their powers. So were magic rings, bites from rabid or otherwise altered animals, and the old-fashioned, natural, genetic mutation.
    I soon learned that I had a knack for uncovering secret identities. All you had to do was dig long enough and hard enough and deep enough, and you’d uncover that one piece of information that would solve the riddle. I’d find a scrap of evidence, something seemingly inconsequential, and everything would fall into place. The dots connected. The picture cleared. I’d always loved puzzles, from crosswords to jumbles to word searches. Uncovering the identities of superheroes and ubervillains was the ultimate human jigsaw puzzle. And I was rapidly becoming a master.
    Six months after my botched wedding, I left the Beginnings Bugle for a larger newspaper that wanted me to uncover the identities of the resident superhero and ubervillain. Three months later,