Secret Origins

by James Riley

  “I don’t know what I’m doing!” Mr. Black said, backing away again. “I just write stupid comic books. Half the time I steal old Batman plots. None of this is new anyway, it’s all the same stories Shakespeare told, and the Greeks before him, and storytellers for thousands of years before that. I was just trying to give people some fun, some joy in their lives!”

  “What better way to do that than by helping the millions of people of Jupiter City?” Nobody said, stepping forward eagerly. “You must see why you should do this, Mason. Certainly you won’t leave them like this?”

  “You have heroes here,” Mr. Black told him, his eyes flashing upward for a second hopefully. “My world doesn’t even have that.”

  “Because you won’t become one,” Nobody said, and stepped closer. “And don’t worry, we won’t be disturbed by any unforeseen heroic interventions. I’ve made sure of that.”

  Mr. Black sighed, sliding down the back alley wall. “I’m sorry, I can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “I just can’t.”

  Nobody stared at him as his face melted away. “I didn’t want it to come to this, but you leave me no choice.” His clothing melted into his skin, and his featureless arms reached for Mr. Black, who began to scream over and over as each subsequent panel got farther and farther away from the alley, Mr. Black’s screams echoing throughout Jupiter City. . . .

  Until they cut off abruptly, as if he disappeared.

  Owen backed away from the wall of comic pages, shaking his head in horror. He definitely, definitely should not have seen that! Was this who Nobody was? Not some guardian of the fictional world, but someone willing to attack his own writer, kidnap him, then take him who knows where?

  And more importantly, had Nobody ever brought Mr. Black back?

  With one more glance over his shoulder, Owen turned the page to find out.

  CHAPTER 36

  Your father’s sidekick?” Kid Twilight said, giving Bethany a confused look. “What are you talking about? Doc Twilight doesn’t have any kids.” He narrowed his eyes. “This is just a ploy to get me to reveal his secret identity, isn’t it!”

  “I know who he is!” Bethany whispered, trying to keep her voice down, since several of the villains nearby had gone silent, like they were listening. “He’s my dad, and he has been since I was born. That’s how it works, actually!”

  The boy stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. “Can’t be real. Maybe, maybe, you’re some alternate dimension’s daughter of Doc Twilight, but not this one’s. I knew Doc Twilight too well. He’d never have kept such a big thing from me.”

  Bethany briefly imagined punching this Kid Twilight in the face and let herself enjoy how satisfying it’d be, but she held herself back. After all, he apparently was important to her father. Her eyes went up to the portrait of the two of them side-by-side, and she swallowed hard.

  “Forget about this for a minute,” she said, holding her millions of questions until later. Right now, all that mattered was getting her dad back. Then he could explain to her exactly how he’d had a sidekick all along and never brought up his family. “All that matters is finding my . . . Doc Twilight.”

  “He’s not your Doc Twilight,” the boy said. “I’m his partner. And I’m the one who infiltrated the Lawful Legion’s hall looking for clues as to where he went. I didn’t find any, which means he must have disappeared because the Dark captured him, and—”

  Bethany started to interrupt, then realized she didn’t exactly want to get into why her father had disappeared.

  “If that’s the case, it’s too dangerous to stay here any longer,” the boy finished. “We need to get all of these people out of Jupiter City. We’ll try to meet up with heroes elsewhere who haven’t been taken over yet.” He tried to step around her, but she pushed back in front of him.

  “We’re not leaving,” Bethany said. “The Dark just captured Doc Twilight last night. We still have time to get him back!”

  He gave her a pitying look. “And how would you know that?”

  “Because I saw it happen!”

  The boy rolled his eyes. “Assuming that’s true, then it just confirms what I said. We can’t stay here. Don’t you get it? The Dark is something we can’t fight!” He pointed at the portrait. “Used to be that me and Doc, we’d go out on patrol and take down a few muggers here or there, stop a bank robbery or two. The costumed villains were a special event, but it was always some kind of game. Half the time they wanted us to figure out their plans, maybe so they could trap us, maybe just because it was more fun. Sure, we’d be in danger sometimes, but no one ever got more than a punch to the face, and then they’d go to jail until one of their friends broke them out.”

  “Like this guy?” Gwen asked, pointing at a half man, half bird wearing stripes like a prisoner with the name JAILBIRD across his chest. Jailbird looked deeply, deeply depressed.

  “He doesn’t like when people point,” Kid Twilight said, pushing her hand down. “Anyway, everything was fun and games, but then the Doc disappeared a couple of months back, and things started getting darker.”

  Wait. A couple of months? Bethany frowned. Had her father really been coming back to this world for the past twelve years? And if that was the case, how recently had he taken on Kid Twilight as his sidekick, since the boy seemed to be about the same age as she was?

  Or maybe time worked differently in comics. After all, they came out once a month in the nonfictional world, and sometimes would only cover a few hours of actual time in the issue. So maybe time went by much slower here compared to the nonfictional world. She gritted her teeth, just wishing any of this made sense.

  Wait. She didn’t have to wonder, not when she had an expert at hand. Owen would know!

  Owen? She yelled in her brain, but just like before, there was no response. And that was starting to really worry her too.

  “I don’t know who’s to blame, the villains or the heroes,” Kid Twilight was saying, “but people started getting really hurt, or worse. Sometimes the heroes would even kill.” He gave her a disgusted look. “What kind of hero would kill a person, even if they were a criminal?”

  The police sometimes had to, but Bethany realized that wasn’t what he was talking about. It’s not like the police had superpowers, anyway. And this world, the superhero world, was supposed to be inspirational, filled with heroes making the world a better place, standing up to the bad guys and fighting until evil was beaten. Wasn’t that what superheroes were about?

  “Suddenly everyone started carrying guns,” Kid Twilight said, shaking his head. “Not just the villains, either. The heroes, too. Even when they didn’t need them. The Beige Candle guy even started carrying one. He has a magic bracelet that can do anything, and he needs a gun? It made no sense.”

  “Did the Dark change things?” Bethany asked him. At the name, several supervillains nearby seemed to flinch. “Did he start making things . . . well, darker?”

  “I don’t know,” Kid Twilight said. “No one knows who he is, or where he came from. The villains all think he’s a hero who went insane. I used to doubt that any hero could go this wrong, but who knows? Lately it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys anyway.”

  “Whether he started it or not, why don’t you try to beat him?” Bethany said. “If we take him down, then at least people can stop living in fear.”

  “How?” Kid Twilight said. “You want to use that sleeping gas on him? You think that’ll stop his shadows? They don’t breathe. For all I know, neither does the Dark. You can’t even get close to him, not with his shadows. You’d need some kind of army to even try it.” He sighed. “The worst thing is, if you could get through and take him down, I’m pretty sure the shadows would go away. When he fought the Lawful Legion the first time, Captain Sunshine got one hit in. One. It staggered the Dark, though, and his shadows began to fade out. But he recovered and just flooded them with shadows, and that was it.”

  “All that tells me is that he can be beat!” Bet
hany said. “Just tell us where he is, and we’ll fight him.” Gwen stepped up next to her, as did Charm, if a lot more reluctantly.

  “With what?” Kid Twilight said. “What’s your plan? How are you going to get through his shadows? And then how will you fight the Dark himself? I saw how you took on the Lawful Legion. If I hadn’t been there, Athena would have taken you down and you’d all be slaves to the shadows now.”

  Bethany gritted her teeth. “Where is he?”

  Kid Twilight growled in frustration, then moved over to one of the computer terminals and pulled up a 3-D holographic map of the city. “You think you know everything, how about you tell me? I’ve been trying to track him since I first heard about him, if just so we know when he’s coming. But I’ve come up with nothing, and I’ve checked everywhere: the Museum of the Flying Duck, the dimensional gateway to Mount Olympus, even the Terrorovia Embassy.” He shivered a bit. “Empress Terror’s armor was there, completely burned to a crisp. Fortunately she wasn’t inside it.”

  Bethany clenched her fists, wanting to hit something. “Well he’s got to be somewhere. He’s found us easily enough. And now he’s got the portal thing from Dr. Apathy, so it’s even more urgent that we find him before he leaves and goes to—”

  Kid Twilight turned to her, his eyes wide. “What did you say? He has an Apathy machine?”

  She nodded. “Yeah? Didn’t I mention that before?”

  “No,” Kid Twilight said, and began frantically pushing keys on the computer. “If he’s got it hooked up and turned on, there’s bound to be some kind of energy that we can track.”

  Yes! Superheroes were always tracking villains through energy trails or the makeup of mud from their footprints or something. Why hadn’t she thought of that before now? It was a total cliché, and she hadn’t even considered it.

  This is why she needed Owen, because he knew all of this stuff!

  She regretted leaving Owen wherever he was even more, in spite of what he’d said. Was he okay? Had he gotten more lost? This is why she should have had Charm go after him, no matter how long it took. Now Owen could be anywhere, and—

  “Found him,” Kid Twilight said, slamming his fist down excitedly.

  It took Bethany a second to realize who Kid Twilight was talking about. “The Dark? Where is he?”

  Kid Twilight paused, reading the map. “Oh no. There? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Bethany leaned in closer to the holographic map, pushing Kid Twilight out of the way. It looked like the blinking light was at the top of some hill called—

  And then the map turned off.

  “Confidential,” Kid Twilight told her as she stood back up with her mouth hanging open. “Let’s just say that this hideout isn’t Doc Twilight’s main headquarters, and somehow, the Dark found the real deal. There’s no way he should have been able to get in there, but somehow, he’s got the machine inside of it.”

  “So let’s go then!” Bethany said. “I don’t care where it is. Blindfold me if you have to, I just need to find Doc Twilight!”

  “Nope,” Kid Twilight said. “I’m going alone. You’ll just slow me down, you and the other two. Not to mention the banana. I can do this myself.”

  Bethany’s eyes widened. “You’re joking.”

  “I don’t joke, not since the Doc went missing,” Kid Twilight said, gathering his gear together. “You’ll be safe here with the supervillains. They’re not big on protecting people, but they’ll make sure that no shadows get in, if just for their own selfish reasons.”

  “I’m coming,” Bethany told him. “Don’t make me force the issue.”

  He glared at her. “Force the issue? You?”

  Bethany punched him in the face, knocking Kid Twilight over. He tumbled to the floor, completely unconscious.

  Her hand hurt a lot, but part of her had to admit that felt really good. Not to mention that no one ever got knocked out with one punch in real life, so that was fun.

  But there was no time to enjoy this. Instead, she needed information, and fortunately, she had a good idea where to go for it. “Who here can read minds?” she shouted at the supervillains.

  One of them stood up, wearing a crystal ball over his head like he was going scuba diving or something. “I am the Great—”

  “Don’t care,” Bethany said, gesturing at Charm, who pushed her way through the villains, picked up the man by his waist, then carried him over to where Bethany waited. “Read his thoughts,” she ordered the Great Whatever. “I need an address, the place that he was thinking of just a minute ago.”

  The man in the crystal ball tugged on his shirt to straighten it, giving Charm an indignant look. “You’ve got quite the violent mind there, you know,” he told the half-robotic girl.

  She just glared at him for a moment, and he gasped. Charm smiled. “There’s more where that came from,” she told him.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Bethany said, and pushed the man down toward Kid Twilight. The villain glared at her, but the last thing she was going to let him do was read her mind, so she turned his crystal ball toward the obnoxious boy sidekick.

  “I’m sensing . . . a telescope,” he said, his face scrunched up as if he was concentrating far too dramatically. “The Jupiter City Observatory. But no, he was thinking of a place . . . below. Down below the Observatory, down in . . . the DARK!” His eyes flew open, and he shoved himself away from Kid Twilight. “Whoa lady!” he shouted, his pretentious accent dropping away. “You’re going after the Dark? That’s insane!”

  For a moment everything got deathly quiet. Then the supervillains began murmuring to each other, their voices low and threatening.

  “She’s going after the Dark?”

  “No way, that’ll expose us all.”

  “Fighting the Dark is suicide, and then he’ll find out where we are!”

  “She’s not going anywhere. We have to stop her!”

  “Don’t let them out!”

  “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?”

  This last one came from a familiar face as the Rotten Banana sidled up next to Bethany. “Hey,” he whispered. “I think I came in late to this, since I just woke up. Not to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s looking like you’re about to have a whole roomful of very afraid, and therefore, very angry supervillains. I’m not one to take the coward’s way out, but if I were you, I’d definitely split.”

  CHAPTER 37

  This was getting dangerous. Nobody clearly was not a good guy, or Bethany’s father. Owen needed to get back to his friends’ pages, then figure out how to get out of this place, and warn Bethany about Nobody, before Nobody did to Owen what he’d done to Mr. Black. Whatever that was.

  Yup. It was definitely time to stop reading this.

  Owen sighed, then turned the page. Sometimes you just couldn’t put a book down.

  After Nobody disappeared with Mr. Black, the next page had a caption that said Much later . . . , and showed Mr. Black floating in a familiar white space, exactly like the one Owen had been trapped in by the Magister, and just like where he was now only without the huge comic pages. Mr. Black looked okay, though he wasn’t moving. Instead, he just floated for panel after panel, his eyes closed.

  Finally, a hand came out of nowhere and pulled him back into the story.

  Mr. Black landed on his knees in a tiny room with very few furnishings. There was a table and two chairs, but nothing else, and more creepily, no doors or windows. Mr. Black took a deep breath, then pushed himself to his feet and found himself face-to-face once more with Nobody.

  “Where was I?” Mr. Black asked. “What was that place?”

  “There are lands beyond the fictional and nonfictional, Mason,” Nobody told him, his mannequin arms crossed. “Lands with no story, where nothing happens. No time passes for you while you’re there, so I thought you might benefit from an outside view.”

  “No time passes?” Mr. Black said, looking around at the room as if looking for a clock. “How long
was I there?”

  “Five years,” Nobody said.

  Five years? Owen thought.

  “Five years?!” Mr. Black shouted.

  “When I first approached you, my creator, I hoped you’d rewrite me,” Nobody said, stepping closer to Mr. Black, who took a step back in spite of his shock. “You refused, so I learned to rewrite myself. Then I came to you, begging you to save my city, rewrite it into a veritable utopia. Again, you refused, so I set out to correct matters on my own.”

  “What did you do?” Mr. Black said. “You didn’t hurt anyone, did you?”

  “And now, I have one final request,” Nobody said, ignoring the question. “I’ve been back and forth to the nonfictional world. I know of the other stories out there, the other fictional lands. Those lands fall under the control of writers like you, monstrous creators who have no concern for the lives they ruin for the sake of entertainment. And I . . . I would change that.”

  “What do you want?” Mr. Black asked, backing up into the wall.

  Nobody stepped forward until he was merely inches from Mr. Black, putting his hands on the writer’s shoulders. “You are going to teach me to write. You will put me in control of the fictional lands. And I will protect them.”

  Mr. Black’s eyes widened. “What? I can’t just—”

  “You’ve refused me twice so far, Mason,” Nobody said, turning away. “I wouldn’t suggest doing so a third time.” He put his hands behind his back, then began to pace around the nearly empty room. “Things have changed in the last few years, you know. Your creation, Doc Twilight, now has a daughter. He and his nonfictional wife.”

  “He . . . what?” Mr. Black said.

  “You’re a grandfather, in a way,” Nobody said, his voice quiet. “But your granddaughter, Bethany, presents some problems. Problems that I will have to deal with, in order to protect my world.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She can travel between the worlds at will, Mason,” Nobody said. “Not only that, she can take others with her. She’s a portal, just like the one you had Dr. Apathy build. And I can’t allow these portals to remain open between the worlds. Not if I’m going to protect the fictional from you people.”