Secret Origins

by James Riley

  “Well?” Charm shouted. “This arm’s not as strong, so I’d talk quick!”

  “Okay!” the banana said, practically sobbing. “I’ll tell you what you want to know. You’ve peeled it out of me!”

  It took Gwen and Bethany combined to pull Charm away from the edge after that, but fortunately they got the banana back onto the roof safely. “This isn’t over, banana!” Charm shouted as Gwen held her back. “Not one more pun, you hear me? Not one more!”

  “I’ve got ears, I hear you,” the Rotten Banana said, staring at the ground. “Not like that poor Psycho Potato. Completely deaf. But wow could he see with all those eyes!”

  “I’ll handle things from here,” Bethany said to Gwen, who struggled to pull Charm away. Gwen whispered something to the half-robotic girl, and Charm finally turned and walked away, muttering under her breath, kicking at random things on the roof.

  “The Dark’s going to love her,” the Rotten Banana told Bethany. “Probably hire her on the spot. She’s already worse than the people the shadows took.” He glanced around the roof as the afternoon sun began casting shadows in various places.

  “Why are you doing this?” Bethany asked him, trying not to be distracted by the shadows. “You’re a grown-up dressed like a banana.”

  “It was our thing!” the Rotten Banana said, not looking at her. “Me, the Potato, the Tomato Terror, and Outrage Orange. We were the Fruit of the Loons, the rotten apples who were ruining the whole barrel.”

  “I don’t think potatoes are fruit,” Bethany pointed out.

  “You’re not the first to say that,” the banana said with a shrug. “And trust me, I know we’re ridiculous, but that keeps you safe. The less threatening you are as a criminal, the lower level of superhero who comes after you. We were small time, which means we mostly got the kid sidekicks, or maybe someone like Mr. Nose. Guy rode around on a Snot Rocket.” He made a disgusted face. “Might take four showers to clean that off of you, but at least you wouldn’t get punched through a wall.”

  “Why not just find a real job?” Bethany asked, kneeling down beside him. Someone had to play good cop (or detective) with Gwen busy holding Charm back, after all.

  The banana sighed. “Because sometimes you just have a fruit-costumed villain inside you, and you either let it out, or you regret it for the rest of your life. If I could leave it all behind now, I would. The Dark has turned this whole city into a dictatorship. Everyone who hasn’t already fled is either taken over by his shadows, or hiding as best they can. Trust me, if I had any money, I’d take it and split!”

  Bethany winced. “I’m trying to keep my friend away from you. The least you could do is hold off on the puns.”

  The banana actually looked embarrassed at this. “Sorry, I don’t even know I’m doing it anymore. Keeps the game fun when the superheroes come after you. But the Dark hates it too. It’s not a game to him. The Fruit of the Loons, we never hurt anyone. Sure, we threaten, but we’re not evil, you know? Just a bit rotten. But the Dark, he’s got some screws loose somewhere. His shadows are everywhere at night, so they’re practically invisible in the dark. And whenever they find a superpowered hero or villain . . .” The Rotten Banana shuddered.

  Bethany felt a chill, and this time couldn’t resist taking a quick look around at all the shadows on the rooftop. “So where is he? Help us find him, and we can put a stop to him, fix all of this.”

  The banana turned and stared at her in disbelief. “You three? Teenage girls with the power to bash amazing wordplay? You wouldn’t last two seconds. No one knows who he is or where he came from. Just showed up out of nowhere and declared his stupid laws. At first, no one took him seriously, but after his shadows took over Captain Sunshine, everyone started paying attention. The rest of Jupiter City’s heroes took him on, and all got taken over. Any villains who stood up to him, he made disappear.” He shivered.

  “Disappear?” Bethany said. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they’re gone, kid,” the banana said. “Not even taken by his shadows, just gone. Are they dead? Held in some jail somewhere? Who knows. No one knows anything about him. Villains think he’s a hero who went bad, while I hear the heroes think he’s a small-time crook who found a lot of power somehow. None of that matters, though. Smart crooks are in hiding. There’s no one left to stand against him, except a few powerless stragglers here and there. Those are the only ones the Dark didn’t hunt down.” The banana shook his head. “You seem like a decent kid, so don’t go looking for him. Do the right thing and just let me go.”

  Bethany rolled her eyes. “You’re a supervillain. How would letting you go be the right thing?”

  “Because you’d be saving my life,” the banana told her. He made a puppy-dog face at her and put his tied hands together like he was begging. “If the Dark heard that I helped you find him, it wouldn’t just be his shadows after me, it’d be him. And he wouldn’t have a problem with my costume, not like his shadows.” He shivered. “Please? Please just let me go?”

  Bethany stared at him for a moment, then shook her head sadly. “Charm? It’s your turn again!”

  “Finally!” Charm shouted. Gwen reluctantly let her go, and Charm began to make her way back toward them, grinning widely.

  “No!” the banana said, pushing to his feet awkwardly and holding his hands up in surrender. “Don’t let her near me again!”

  “Where can I find him?” Bethany demanded, done with this whole good cop/bad cop routine. “Talk or we leave you alone with her!”

  The banana’s eyes widened. “Okay, okay! I was telling the truth, I really don’t know where he is. But last I heard one of the Lawful Legion heroes freed themself from the shadows for a bit, so he probably had to take care of that. Try the Legion’s headquarters. He might still be there, or maybe he left a trail or something. I swear, that’s all I know!”

  “The Lawful Legion?” Bethany said, putting a hand up to stop Charm. “Who are they?”

  “The worst of the worst,” the banana said. “Captain Sunshine, Athena, the Flying Duck, you name it.”

  Bethany paused, then tried to keep her voice calm. “And Doc Twilight?”

  “He used to be a member,” the banana said. “But then he disappeared a few months back, and I don’t think the LL ever found him. This is all his fault, anyway. Jupiter City was supposed to be his city, and look at what he let the Dark do to it.” He shook his head. “Doc Twilight? More like Mock—”

  Bethany punched him in the face, knocking him out cold.

  Charm put an arm around her shoulders as Bethany winced, shaking her hand in pain. “I take back all the horrible things I’ve said about you,” the half-robotic girl said. “That was amazing.”

  Bethany gave her a look. “You’ve been saying horrible things about me?”

  Charm grinned. “As Kiel would say?” And then she winked.

  CHAPTER 29

  Okay, apparently there are a lot of back issues, Owen thought as he stopped to catch his breath from all the walking. He wasn’t sure how far he’d come, but it felt like he’d been walking along the comic pages wall for at least an hour. Plus, to get back to the “present” in the pages, it’d take him just as long to walk back.

  Reading comics had never been this exhausting back home.

  It was time for a rest. Owen slumped to the floor, making sure not to touch the wall in case he erased or rewrote something by accident. There had to be a better way to do this, didn’t there? Why couldn’t this behind-the-scenes world be more like reading a comic, anyway? All you had to do was flip a page, and you’d be there. No one had ever had to do this much exercise just to read a comic!

  “Turn!” Owen shouted out of frustration, making a page-turning motion with his hand.

  As if listening to him, the entire wall seemed to jump by one page to the left. Every single page.

  “Are you kidding me?” Owen shouted, pushing himself to his feet. He slowly reached up and made the same gesture, then watched as every
page moved over by one page length to the left. He reversed the gesture, and they all jumped by one to the right.

  Really? After all that walking, he could have just been turning the pages like any regular comic? “I’m not okay with this!” he shouted at the behind-the-scenes world, gesturing wildly with his hand to make sure whoever heard knew he meant it all. That sent the pages flying so quickly he couldn’t even see them, so he held up his palm in a “stop” gesture, and that froze the pages.

  He shook his head, cursing himself. Why exactly hadn’t he tried this before walking for miles?

  When he looked up to see where he was, he found that the pages had stopped right where he and Bethany had first seen Doc Twilight enter the comic book world through the manhole. Now this was where he really should be giving advice. Don’t go in there! he should write in their thoughts. You’re going to get Owen trapped in a nowhere space outside of the comic, while Bethany gets to do all the cool things with Charm and EarthGirl and maybe some guy in a banana suit!

  And for a second he considered it. Could he give himself thought balloons too? Maybe warn himself about getting trapped in this other world, and so ensure it never happened?

  But then he would never have been behind-the-scenes to give himself the thought balloon to begin with, which meant he’d just end up back here again. He winced, already feeling his head begin to ache. This was why time travel never worked. Too many paradoxes.

  “Enjoy your own mistakes, me,” Owen said to the page, briefly waving at himself, which again flung the pages back and forth. He quickly stopped them, then sent them flying backward toward the right, in order to find the Dark’s origin in the past. Panels flew by so quickly he could barely make them out, but he let them go for a few seconds, not entirely sure what he was looking for but knowing it had to be a while ago, in comic time.

  Finally, the pages began to slow down, and Owen put his palm out to stop them. They ground to a halt, and Owen found himself staring at the last person he ever expected to see here, right in the face.

  Bethany’s mother glared right at him from a panel as big as he was.

  “Mrs. Sanderson?” he said in shock, taking a step back without realizing it. “What are you doing here?”

  But she didn’t respond. Well, not out loud.

  Owen stepped closer, staring at the speech bubble above her head. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” the bubble said. Whoa, had she heard him? It seemed like she was responding to his question.

  But no, she couldn’t be, not from the other side of the comic page. But how was she in this story, this comic book? Was it the same title that he and Bethany were in, or some other series? Why weren’t things labeled better here?! Comics needed titles and issue numbers on each page, like books!

  Wait a second, though. Something was off. Owen took a closer look at the woman before him, and started to realize something. This was Bethany’s mom, but she looked years and years younger.

  He glanced over at the next page and realized why.

  “I’m Doc Twilight, of course,” said a man in a purple-and-red costume with a setting sun and three little stars on it. He stood in an alley that ran between two houses that looked very familiar, with a portal of blue fire open on the ground between the houses. “That’s right, the superhero.” He grinned, showing off some perfect teeth. “Did you happen to see an evil henchman of Dr. Apathy running this way? He jumped through that portal before I had the chance to stop him.”

  Hold on. Was this Bethany’s mother meeting Bethany’s father?

  Bethany’s mom responded to her future husband in a way that reminded Owen exactly of her daughter: She sighed deeply in annoyance. “This isn’t funny,” Mrs. Sanderson said. “It’s not Halloween. What are you even doing, dressed up like that?”

  Huh. Apparently they didn’t have cosplay conventions back then.

  “All part of the job,” Bethany’s father said, looking past her. “Now if you’ll excuse me, ma’am, I believe I’ve spotted my target.”

  “Ma’am?” Bethany’s mother said as Doc Twilight took off past her, a twilight grapple in his hands. “I’m probably younger than you are!”

  “That doesn’t justify treating you with disrespect!” Doc Twilight said, throwing a smile over his shoulder as a rope shot out from his twilight grapple, snagging a fleeing man’s legs and tying them together. The apparent villain collapsed to the ground with a grunt. Doc Twilight then clicked a button on the launcher and the rope retracted, dragging the criminal back to him.

  “This one led me on a playful chase,” Doc Twilight said. “Didn’t get far, though, did you, lad? Just because Dr. Apathy builds an untested dimensional portal to a land peopled by beauties beyond compare doesn’t mean you can escape justice!” He gave Bethany’s mother a side look, and Owen’s mouth dropped open in horror.

  Was Doc Twilight flirting with her?

  Owen choked down his bile as best he could before turning the page with a gesture.

  “Yeah, I’m calling the cops,” Bethany’s mom told the superhero, then began looking around the street as if she didn’t have a cell phone or something. “I don’t know who you two are, but you can’t just attack people like that.”

  “Thank you, calling the police would be a great help!” Doc Twilight said. “And let her castigation be a lesson to you, foul criminal. You indeed cannot attack people like that. Truer words have never been uttered by such an angel.”

  “Stop it, you maniac,” Bethany’s mom said, looking up and down the street. “Why are there no pay phones around here?”

  “Here, use mine,” Doc Twilight said, tossing her a radio in the shape of a moon, with three stars as the tuners. “It’s set to police scanners already, so you should be able to reach them without any trouble.”

  She looked at the radio, then clicked the button. Nothing but static came out. “You’re literally insane, aren’t you?”

  He winked at her. “Just doing my job, ma’am.”

  A huge KABLAM filled the page, and Bethany’s mom was knocked to the ground. Coughing from a dust cloud, she picked herself up to find a familiar giant robot emerging from the blue-fire portal between the two houses, the robot’s oversized body distorted due to the small hole. As the robot passed through the portal, it seemed to puff up like a balloon, back to its full size. At the top of the robot sat an old man in a white coat, glasses atop his balding head.

  “Twilight!” the old man shouted. “Get back to Jupiter City where you belong. Or don’t! Just don’t interfere with me. Or do, I don’t care. But this is my world to rule if I decide I want to, and I won’t let you stop me, assuming it doesn’t take much effort, that is. Curse you for making me less apathetic!”

  A hand reached out to Bethany’s mom, and Doc Twilight helped her to her feet. “I believe I’m being called,” he said, grinning at her. “Give me a moment, and I’ll be back to continue our conversation.”

  “What is that thing?!” Bethany’s mom shouted, pointing at the killer robot as its buzz-saw hands began to spin.

  “Oh, I expect it’s just another killing machine from the brilliant yet evil mind of Dr. Apathy,” he said, shrugging. “The good that man could do if he weren’t so set on not feeling anything, all because his former assistant left him for his rival colleague. A true tragedy. Still, makes for an interesting night!”

  Doc Twilight flashed a grin at her, then shot out his grapple. It hit a building right behind the robot and sent the hero flying straight at the killer machine and certain doom.

  At least, that’s what the caption said. As Doc Twilight finds himself in a strange dimension, will Dr. Apathy’s robot spell certain doom for our hero? the caption asked. Find out next month, Doc fans!

  Owen just stared in horror. This was how Bethany’s parents had actually met? In a comic book fight with a supervillain? And even worse, someone actually wrote the phrase “Doc fans”?!

  Right before Owen was about to turn the page, something caught his eye. The henc
hman who Doc Twilight had caught a few pages before had freed himself, and was running away from the battle.

  Except he was running out into the real world, not back through the portal. The real, nonfictional world.

  Owen frowned. That couldn’t be good. He’d have been caught, surely. There was no way there was a fictional person running loose out in the nonfictional world, especially not an evil one.

  . . . Right?

  CHAPTER 30

  This is mean,” Gwen said, pointing at the Rotten Banana walking behind them, his hands tied together by a rope attached to Charm’s belt. “He helped us, after all.”

  “He’s evil,” Charm told her. “And if you remember, I didn’t want to bring him along in the first place. But at least this way, he’s contained.”

  “I’m not evil!” the Rotten Banana said. “Listen to the nice girl. I’m misguided at worst, and this is mean!”

  “We don’t have time for any of this,” Bethany said. “I think I saw the Lawful Legion’s headquarters when Owen and I first arrived, a big domed thing not too far from Apathetic Industries. But we’re still going to need to move fast.” She squinted at the setting sun, then looked around at the shadows now covering the ground. “The darker it gets, the worse off we’ll be.”

  “I could fly ahead and see what I find?” Gwen suggested, patting her jet pack.

  “Or you could give me the jet pack, and I could go ahead and just take out all the bad guys,” Charm said.

  “We’re staying together,” Bethany told both of them, even though they had a point. They did need to travel faster, and it’s not like there were any taxis around, even if they were willing to take three girls and a banana downtown.

  If only her stupid superpowers had worked like they were supposed to! Then Bethany could have turned into a giant eagle or a pterodactyl or something that could fly them all there. Instead, she was stuck with turning into inanimate objects. And what use were inanimate objects, anyway?