“Bon. Shall we begin?”
“Hold on,” said Dark Flutter. “Before we go all Justice Team here—”
“League,” I interrupted. “It’s Justice League.”
“Whatever. I have a question. If Gordon the World-Eater is invincible, how can we defeat him?”
I was about to explain precisely how, but Josh aka Shark Flutter beat me to the Doomsday-sized punch.
“Happens all the time,” he said. “All-powerful characters regularly get defeated. Apocalypse, Juggernaut, Darkseid, there are loads. Just because you’re invincible doesn’t mean you’re unbeatable.”
“Uh, that’s exactly what it means,” said Dark Flutter.
Shark Flutter shrugged. “Not in comics. Right, Luke?”
“Right,” I said. Shark Flutter was looking at me oddly. “Something bothering you?”
“It’s just weird seeing you with superpowers, Luke-meister. Quite a relief, to be honest. In my universe you missed out and you’re really miffed about it. All. The. Time. Won’t stop going on about it. My Luke’s kind of a pain, actually.”
It was a good job Other Luke couldn’t hear what Shark Flutter thought about him.
“Excuse me?” said an indignant voice. I’d forgotten that my telepathic power was still on. “What does he think about me?”
Awkward. I pretended that there was static on the line. “Sorry, S.C.A.R.F. leader, CRRK BZZZ. You’re breaking FZZZ up.”
“You don’t get radio static on a telepathic connection. Oh, never mind. Just get on with it, Stellar.”
Suddenly more voices entered my head. It was Mum and Dad. Seemed they had recovered enough from their fall to take in what was going on around them. I could see them far below, heading along the street to rejoin Other Luke.
“You wanted a personal appearance from a superhero – well, you got one,” said Mum. “Actually, you got six.”
“But how?” said Dad. “This is … they are … impossible.”
Of course! He didn’t know it, but Dad had landed on the thing I’d been rooting around for since the four superheroes shot from their gerbil-holes. I felt the faint stirrings of hope once more as the world’s newest superhero team formed up in a delta pattern about me. Six supers. One mission. And a name.
“OK, Impossibles, let’s save the world.”
The name was the last thing I heard over Stellar’s telepathic connection before he shut down all communication to concentrate on the daunting task ahead. He had accomplished the first part of my plan by bringing the Impossibles to this universe. Now he put part two into action. Extending a hand he moulded a new gerbil-hole out of thin air and directed his power to expand it. The single spot lengthened and widened. In a few minutes it would be big enough for its purpose, but not yet. And until then, Stellar and the rest of the heroes had to hold off Gordon the World-Eater.
The High Street blazed with a firestorm of shrink rays, heat rays, cyclone breath, energy beams and more, as he unleashed every power my six-year-old self had granted him.
“Luke, come on.” It was Mum. “Boys, we’re leaving. Right now!”
Before I could object, she and Dad herded me, Serge and Josh along the street towards the last evacuation helicopter.
Above us, the Impossibles ducked and looped, threw up force fields, deflected lightning bolts and sonic blasts, but though they confounded each fresh attack, Gordon the World-Eater always seemed to have one more to hurl at them.
Star-Serge drew out his asthma inhaler but instead of taking a puff, aimed it at Gordon and squeezed the top, releasing some kind of enveloping gas cloud. Gordon simply inhaled the cloud and a moment later discharged a cosmic burp.
The helicopter sat ready to depart, rotor-blades spinning, hold groaning with passengers. More scrambled aboard through open doors on both sides of the aircraft. At each entrance, airmen helped those they could. Dad lifted me up and I was gathered inside. Josh and Serge followed. Pressed into the crowded compartment, I made a decision. My brother was out there somewhere. He needed me, whether he liked it or not. I had to get off that helicopter.
Mum and Dad were among the last of the evacuees. As soon as they were in, the airman on that side closed the door. It locked with a resounding clang. The door on the other side of the aircraft was already sliding shut. I wriggled through the crush of bodies, squeezed through the narrowing gap and slid down to the ground. In the confusion of the evacuation I’d made it out without my parents noticing.
There was a blast of noise and dust as the helicopter took off.
“Attends, wait for me,” said a voice from behind.
“Serge?” He’d followed me out. And he wasn’t alone.
“OK, Luke-meister,” said Josh, rubbing his hands together. “What’s the plan?”
Before I could answer, a downdraught blew us off our feet. Hurled across the street, I smacked against the side of a bus stop and slid to the ground. I lifted my spinning head to see the sole of Gordon’s massive sandal descending at attack speed. Just before I was turned into pavement chewing gum, That Kid swooped in and threw up a force field. The sandal bounced off the invisible barrier, the brute strength of the attack cracking open the road. In the breach, a broken water main spurted, severed electrical cables sparked.
The brooding figure of Star Cara put herself between us and the monstrous Gordon and placed her hands either side of her headband. The collection of stars glowed like supernovae and a second later ejected some kind of starburst. It struck Gordon on the shoulder.
He shrugged off the blast, planted his feet and responded with a magnetic beam attack that wrenched off Cara’s headband, removing the power from her arsenal.
Without pausing he dispatched a cluster attack of his own at Shark Flutter, raining down balls of glowing lava. Shark Flutter twisted and turned, but couldn’t evade all of them. A fiery chunk caught him. He spun out of control and for a moment it looked like he’d been neutralised. He tumbled from sight, below the level of the buildings, and I held my breath along with the others. A second later he soared up again, held aloft by Dark Flutter and her birds.
“The gerbille-’ole, it must be big enough now,” said Serge.
The hole was a gaping wound in the sky, a hundred-metre-high rip in reality.
Stellar had made the same calculation. His cape whipping behind him, he marshalled the other superheroes to form a semicircle around Gordon the World-Eater. In position, they focused their telekinetic powers like a lens on a single point. I can never remember if it’s convex or concave, but it was one of them.
This was the final part of my plan. It had to work.
“Do it,” I muttered. “FIRE!”
The Impossibles unleashed the power of five universes.
Unlike laser-beams and fire-breath, telekinesis was usually invisible. However, the force of their combined effort warped the air into a kaleidoscopic beam that struck the World-Eater full in his star-filled face.
He stumbled, driven back towards the yawning hole. In that moment I could tell that he understood what I intended for him, but too late. A howl of hate spilled from his mouthless void.
“That’s it,” I hissed. “Send that thing back where it came from.”
The gerbil-hole opened behind him like the maw of a much bigger fish. The Impossibles pushed. The gravity of the gerbil-hole pulled. There was no way back.
“It is working!” yelled Serge.
But he had spoken too soon.
Raising each of his sandalled feet in turn, Gordon the World-Eater dug in his massive heels. And played yet another card.
He started to grow. In seconds he was twice his original size, and then he doubled again, so tall now that he pierced the clouds. A hundred times more powerful than before, he inched his way out of the gerbil-hole’s grip, back towards the Impossibles.
“Non!” cried Serge, clasping a hand to his mouth.
“He’s too strong,” said Josh.
With horror I realised I had been wrong about his name
from the start. Gordon really was now big enough to eat the world.
And then it happened.
Above us, the thunderclap of the sound barrier yielding to powers beyond understanding.
A glowing streak in the sky.
Serge shielded his eyes against the intensity of the light that spilled from what we now saw to be a speeding figure. “He is alive!”
Soaring over our heads, cape rippling like a knight’s banner, eyes locked on his destiny…
Star Lad joined the fight.
Now the Impossibles were seven. A much better number for a superhero team than six, in my opinion. He took his place beside Stellar in the semicircle.
It was time. Or the end of time, if the next few seconds went the wrong way.
“One more push, mon ami,” Serge muttered grimly. “You can do it.”
The universe can’t hold its breath, of course, but if it could then in that moment I’m sure every raging supernova, every noisy gravity wave, every fizzing sun from here to eternity would have fallen silent.
There was a gathering pause, into which Star Lad and the others poured the combined might of their telekinetic powers.
They lashed Gordon the World-Eater with an impossible amount of energy.
He stumbled and dropped to one knee. We felt the shockwave of his impact roll over us.
Somehow he hung on.
The Impossibles were at maximum power. It flashed through my mind that they had no more to give. Clearly, that thought hadn’t occurred to my brother.
Like everyone else in the world I’d watched the satellite feed of Zack knocking out Nemesis. I was with him aboard the sue-dunham mothership when he took on the invaders, but back then he’d been weakened by alien flu. So this was the first time I’d seen him, in person…
Go. Full. Star. Lad.
My brother leapt from the circle of superheroes and in the blink of an eye accelerated to maximum speed. He was a blur as he struck Gordon the World-Eater full-force in the chest. The monster staggered backwards. And this time he couldn’t stop himself.
He toppled back into the hole.
There was a noise like ten thousand people sucking the last of a thick milkshake through a straw, and the dark boundary between worlds sealed itself up. Green auroras of light licked at the edges of the fading tear and then vanished. In the late afternoon sky all that remained of the epic confrontation were palls of smoke rising from the devastated High Street and a bunch of exhausted superheroes.
Gordon the World-Eater was no more.
After the noise and chaos came the hush, the only sounds the breeze in the bare branches of the trees that lined the street and the distant thump of rotor-blades. For one terrible moment I thought Zack had gone through the gerbil-hole with Gordon. But then a cloud slid past and he emerged from behind it, a slight figure floating in the unexpected quiet of what had turned out to be a very strange Saturday afternoon.
Zack’s voice whispered in my head. It was weak, thready. His telepathic power faded in and out.
“Next time,” he said, “how about a nice game of Boggle? I reckon even you can’t turn Boggle into a multi-dimensional apocalyptic menace.”
“How often do I have to say it – this wasn’t my fault,” I complained. But right then I really didn’t care. And whatever I’d once thought of Stellar, I couldn’t deny that he had come through in the end. For that he had earned my grudging respect. OK, yes, he could’ve been a bit more careful about nearly causing the end of the world in the first place, but we’ve all been there.
Star Lad wasn’t moving. He hung there in the blue, like a swimmer far out at sea exhausted by the current. The fight had utterly drained him. He’d need hours exposed to starlight to recover his strength. And as I wondered how he was keeping himself up, suddenly he wasn’t.
Nearby, in the same patch of sky, Stellar shot out a hand and used what remained of his own powers to catch the falling Zack and guide him gently down on to the roof of the comic shop. As soon as my brother touched down, I began to make my way the short distance back to meet him.
“What is he doing now?” asked Serge.
Stellar dotted the sky with four new gerbil-holes. As soon as the first one appeared, he waved a hand and launched That Kid through it.
“I think he’s sending the Impossibles back to their worlds,” I said.
Shark Flutter went next, yanked unceremoniously back to his universe.
“Not fair,” objected Josh. “I wanted to meet myself and tell me what an excellent job I did.”
Stellar seemed to be in a hurry. He dispatched the remaining superheroes as if he was trying to catch the last post. If I hadn’t just watched them team up and save the world, I’d have said he didn’t want them around. But why, after all they’d done? Unless…
“Oh no.” I had a terrible premonition.
“What is wrong?” asked Serge.
Even though we’d just defeated an invincible megademon, I had a horrible feeling that something worse was about to happen.
“The Impossibles were the only ones who could stop him,” I said.
I picked up the pace. Now I was in a race with my Evil Twin. Stellar’s plan to lure Zack to his world had failed spectacularly, but he wasn’t finished yet.
The three of us reached the comic shop. Inside was a wreck. Shelves were overturned, comics trampled by fleeing customers, but I barely noticed the mess as I made a dash for the stairs. Serge and Josh were a little way behind, but I couldn’t wait.
I stumbled through the roof door, banging it open. Stellar stood with his back to me. Alerted by my not exactly stealthy arrival, he turned round. He held Zack’s limp body in his arms.
“Luke, be careful!” The cry came from above. Lara dangled high over the roof, as immobile as a pinned butterfly. She must have figured things out too, and Stellar was using his powers to keep her at bay. She fought against the telekinetic bonds, but it was useless. He was too strong for her.
Behind me I heard footsteps. It was Josh and Serge. With a nod of his head, Stellar used the same power to swing the door shut in their faces. He held it there, barring them from the roof.
Now it was just me and him.
I took a step closer. “Is Zack…?”
“Stay there, please,” Stellar said in a warning tone. “Zack’s fine, just exhausted. Don’t worry, he’s safe with me. I promise I won’t let anything happen to him.”
Over his shoulder I glimpsed an object shooting across the sky. For a second I thought it was a meteorite, but then it drew closer and Stellar plucked it out of the air using telekinesis. It was a metal cube painted blue and streaked with layers of a glass-like material. Some kind of desk ornament.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Call it a loose end,” said Stellar. “And now it’s time for us to leave.”
“I won’t let you take my brother,” I said, although I had no idea how I was going to stop him. And we both knew it.
“Gerbils and rocket shoes were one thing, but until today I didn’t know I could send people across universes. I came here in Zorbon’s ship, but I don’t need it any more.”
He blinked. Behind him a gerbil-hole appeared, at first no bigger than a raisin, but in seconds it loomed above the comic shop like a gigantic cinnamon swirl. An accompanying tremor shook the foundations, sending clouds of dust and debris into the air.
He turned towards the portal.
“No. Wait.” I was growing desperate. “What do you need Zack for?” I gestured to the devastated High Street. “I think we’ve pretty much established that there’s no actual supervillain in your world for him to fight.” Stellar remained silent. “Why would you even want him? He outshines us at everything, everyone likes him better than us. But most of all, why would you want my Zack when you’ve already got one of your own?”
Stellar studied me through the haze of dust. He seemed to be making up his mind about something.
“You once asked me what it’s like to be a su
perhero. There’s a lot of talk about power and responsibility, but I didn’t appreciate what that meant until it was too late. When Nemesis threatened my world, I was the only one who could stop it. I had all that power and I couldn’t wait for the chance to prove myself. But…” His throat dried up and he choked out the next words. “I failed in my responsibility. I was hailed as a hero for saving the earth, but when I returned from space after diverting Nemesis, I found my home blasted to pieces by a stray chunk. It was a miracle that Mum and Dad survived. But Zack…” He looked down at the unconscious figure in his arms. “I saved my world, but I couldn’t save him.”
Zack was dead. Atomised by Nemesis.
I heard a weird buzzing in my ears and I felt sick. Life without Zack was unimaginable. No one eating the last of the good cereal every time, no one using up all the hot water so I had to have a cold shower, Mum and Dad not dismally comparing my school reports to Zack’s. It would be a world without endless squabbles over pointless stuff. It would be awful. The sick feeling turned into stomach ache. Even just the thought of losing my brother physically hurt. The reality might drive me crazy. Stellar really had lost Zack. His Zack, I reminded myself. Mine was right here on this roof with me. Alive and…
I realised with stone-cold dread what Stellar was up to, why he had undertaken such a hazardous journey to my world. At first I’d assumed he wanted to replace me. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
He was replacing his brother with mine.
“I never got the chance to say goodbye,” said Stellar quietly. “This is yours.”
I couldn’t – wouldn’t – say it. All that came out of my mouth was, “Don’t!”
I stretched out a hand. A futile gesture. Maybe I was hoping that I’d suddenly acquired superpowers. That in this, my moment of need, some last-page-of-the-comic-twist would prevent evil triumphing over good. Instead, I could only watch as Stellar stepped off the parapet and flew him and Zack towards the churning hole. I heard myself let out a cry, which was swallowed in the tumult of the whirling portal.
Two figures star-bright against the darkness. Zack raised his head. Confused and stunned, he met my gaze just for a second. And then he was gone.
My Evil Twin Is a Supervillain Page 11
