Free The Rules of Supervillainy (The Supervillainy Saga Book 1) by C.T. Phipps Page A

father, she looked at it. He was a slightly balding man wearing a blue military uniform with numerous patches indicating the various alien invasions, robot uprisings, and anti-terrorist operations he’d been involved in.
    Colonel Summers hadn’t liked me.
    “I had a dream too once.” Mandy said, surprising me.
    I knew what my wife was referring to but I also knew she wanted to talk about this. “I take it you don’t mean your music career.”
    Mandy looked down. “No.”
    “You mean wanting to join the Foundation,” I said, sighing. “Like your dad.”
    The Foundation for World Harmony was the institution which existed for the explicit purpose of cleaning up after the superhuman, supernatural, extraterrestrial, and ultraterrestial so a modicum of sanity might prevail in this world. Its agents were outmatched by even low-level supervillains but they did a bang-up job fighting P.H.A.N.T.O.M and the International Crime League.
    Good guys.
    Mandy got a little misty eyed. “Yeah.”
    Her father had passed last year from congenital heart failure.
    It had been rough on all of us.
    “My father was never a liaison to the Society of Superheroes or even one of its members but he was always there fighting the good fight,” Mandy said. “I remember him pushing me from day one. Ballet, martial arts, gymnastics, linguistics, mathematics, criminology, gunplay, ethics, and computer programming. That was just my high school years.”
    “I still think he pushed you a little too hard.”
    Mandy put up the photo. “He did, and I was wound so tight, I snapped when I got to college. He’d wanted to make me into the perfect candidate for the Foundation for World Harmony or even a superhero myself.”
    “Lots of parents do.”
    “And lots of parents ruin their kids that way,” Mandy said, looking back. “I came to Falconcrest U wanting to be the perfect student, only to end up smoking dope and screwing everyone I liked within a week.”
    “Oh, you monster,” I said, heavily sarcastic. “They should just throw the book at you.”
    “You know where this leads, Gary.”
    “I’m sure I don’t.”
    “The Black Witch.”
    Oh.
    I bit my lip. “Then I guess I do know where it’s going.” We actually hadn’t discussed that part of her life in detail. I knew my wife had been involved with her and some of her gang in the past, but aside from statements about ‘bleak poetry speaking to her’ and distancing herself, I didn’t really know how close they were. “Sort of.”
    Mandy looked down. “Do we really want to go here?”
    I also knew it was perhaps better to leave some things buried in the past. “I think we’ve been together long enough to share everything without judgment.”
    “Perhaps not without judgment.” Mandy said, looking down. “But with love? Yes. Gary, I loved Selena Darkchilde.”
    “Loved?” I asked, wanting to make sure it was in the past tense. It was unfair of me since human emotions weren’t so easily shut off. If you loved someone in the past, it didn’t go away just because you wanted it to. God knows, my parents’ lives would have been simpler if they could have just disinherited Keith and me.
    Mandy nodded. “Yes, loved. I was never her henchwench but I knew who she was, what she was doing, and what she planned to do. I was an accomplice because I never tried to stop her or even suggest she should.”
    I blinked, staring. “Wow. So, uh, you didn’t just know about her crimes after she was finally captured by Ultragoddess.”
    Mandy crossed her arms. “No. I knew her when she was just a mousy occultist before her experiments with Professor Thule made her Hecate’s champion. Which, in retrospect, yeah, with a name like that he was going to become a supervillain.”
    I pointed at her. “I never liked that guy. Swastikas being harmless Asian good luck sigils, my ass.”
    Mandy blinked. “I thought it was all good fun. Striking at the system, getting revenge on people who’d wronged us,