“Of course she’s not,” said Mum in a hurry, and while I knew she would have said anything to get us out of this situation… it was the first time I had heard it from her lips, that Solar was legit not my Dad. I’d never brought myself to ask her directly, and she had probably never known how much it mattered, that I didn’t know for sure.
It was an enormous relief. Only after that sank in did I realise that The Dark had denied it at the same time, in unison with her. What made him so sure?
“I’m not,” I repeated, because Megadethra was still looking smug. “I spoke to him on the phone for the first time ever, this week. I told him Tina Valentina, his precious Girl Reporter, was missing and he barely blinked. He didn’t just lose his powers. He’s not—the hero any more. He doesn’t care about the same things. And he’s not my Dad. So, this bait isn’t going to lure…”
Oops did that mean she would just kill us? Possibly I should have thought the speech through a little harder.
“He will come,” said Megadethra with confidence. “For all of you. The Girl Reporter. The daughter.” She swung her pointed finger past the rest of us. Astra. “Teammate.” Solar. “Legacy.” The Dark, and a longer pause. “Best friend.” Griff. “Best friend’s sidekick. He will come for all of you. And I will make Solar great again, before I bring him to his knees.”
We’d all done a great job of avoiding the food and drink. We should have been more cautious about the adorable robots.
There was a buzzing sound. Solar hit the ground like a crumpled doll. They all fell—Griff and Astra, even The Dark. I turned to my mother, but the ground rushed up to meet me before I could even check that she was all right.
Dizzy waves washed over me, and another buzzing sound, along with a burst of bright pain.
You’ve Been In The Pipeline
WHEN I AWOKE, I WAS handcuffed to a long pipe that ran the length of an enormous metal tunnel. It was like I was inside some giant-sized version of a superhero machine. The wall at my back hummed.
So this was how it felt to be damselled. I’d been kidnapped before, don’t get me wrong. But not for years, and not like this—not to lure in Solar, of all people. Tina Valentina had always been the real target, the one that the bad guys wanted to grab or blackmail or…
Also, I wasn’t alone.
Further along the tunnel, out of my reach, I saw the crumpled figure of my mother. I was pretty sure she was breathing, but I couldn’t reach her. It was the most enraging moment of my life.
Still fuming, I turned my head to look up the tube, and found another prisoner, equally distant from me, hanging by cuffs from the pipe.
A stranger, wearing the long black cape of The Dark, but not his mask and cowl.
No.
Be smarter, Friday. Put it together. That’s not a stranger.
I was looking at The Dark’s face. His actual face. I’d never seen it before. The cowl and cloak and gloves and armoured battle-abs and boots meant that every inch of him was covered up all of the time.
His eyes snapped open, and he glared at me with a fierce, blinding grouchiness. Oh yes. This was definitely him.
“Wow, you’re—” I stuttered, and stopped.
I didn’t know how to process that The Dark wasn’t a white bloke. Which is, in retrospect, one of the most inane things I’ve ever thought, but there you go.
My mind raced, putting the pieces together like I was mentally editing a documentary about this revelation.
The #SuperheroSpill wasn’t telecast live in Australia until after The Dark joined the team. The Heroes of the Eighties got to live their super lives without the rest of us being bombarded with media montages of their former lives, their neighbours, what they ate, where they worked, and that one time they won 3rd prize in a relay race at primary school.
Solar let a few details about himself slip over the years, not least because of Mum’s influence. Thanks to Tina Valentina’s regular interviews, the general public knew all about the secret history of Clancy Bunning, who ran a modestly successful florist shop and volunteered with his local fire service before he become the Bachelor of Steel.
The Dark had managed to avoid such publicity. To this day, no one knew a single detail about his former life. Obsessed with this figure of mystery, the magazines and current affairs shows fell over themselves to make up stories about who might be under that cowl. Even the rumour that he used a wheelchair remains unconfirmed.
There are multiple conspiracy websites dedicated to finding out “the truth” about where he came from. My favourite is the one that cross references the lives of various 80’s celebs with The Dark’s timeline, in the hopes that he will turn out to be someone at least slightly famous. There is an entire sub-fandom based on the theory that he is Guy Pearce, because Guy Pearce is never in as many Hollywood movies as you’d expect.
The real The Dark did not look like Guy Pearce. No, The Dark was all taut cheekbones and permanent grumpyface. He had to be in his fifties by now but looked a healthy 40 or so. His dark curls were cropped short, and his skin was rich, dark brown.
“But everyone thinks Surf was the first indigenous superhero,” I blurted, which was less embarrassing than other things I might have said in my shock.
The Dark gave me a scathing look and then shrugged, despite the handcuffs attaching him to the pipeline. “I’m not the first either. There were black superheroes in this country long before those Machines arrived.”
“Wait—what?” Either he was joking, or he was telling the truth. Either way, mind blown. “Why does no one know about this? I mean, about you, not the apparent lost history of Aboriginal superheroes which we are going to discuss further when I have my phone to record notes.”
“People know about me,” said The Dark with his usual deadpan delivery. “Teammates. People who matter. We share a locker room, I don’t actually wear the cowl 24-7 in the Sky Tower.”
“Why was it even a secret?” I blurted.
He rolled his eyes at me. “I didn’t expect it to be. It wasn’t as much of a circus in 1989. Only a few officials knew the lottery picked my name. Brought me into the Sky Tower by the back way because of the wheelchair, or so I thought. The Machine happened to choose a costume that covered every inch of me. I reckoned staying anonymous would protect my family, my community. Allow me to integrate back into my old life when… when it ended.”
Wheelchair story confirmed. That was a thing. I didn’t even have time to enjoy knowing such a colossal secret. So many questions to ask, so little time. “You thought supervillains would go after your family? That’s really the old chestnut you’re pulling out here?”
“No, Friday,” he said between gritted teeth, twisting against the cuffs that held him in place. “I thought whitefellas would go after my family.”
I stared at him and felt sick. I’d been thinking about the opportunities lost. The revelation that one of the most popular and iconic superheroes of our country’s history was an Indigenous Australian would make the world a little bit better, surely. He had a platform. He could be a spokesperson on so many issues. Why would he not use that kind of power? He’d had twenty-eight years to think about how to do it right.
“Don’t you think,” I started to say, and then stopped.
He looked at me with a dangerous gleam in his eye. “Go on, kid, finish your question.”
But I couldn’t, of course I couldn’t. I was a rich white girl who lived in a mansion, how could I possibly ask him about (accuse him of) failing to step up as a role model?
I can’t even pretend that it would be better now than it was in 1989. There had been a lot of ugly political bullshit around Surf when he was chosen, and whenever progress was made, you always had to brace yourself from the backlash.
“That’s a long time to keep a secret,” I said finally.
“Yes,” said The Dark.
“The wh
eelchair,” I said hesitantly.
He raised his eyebrows at me. Oh, he could still do that intimidating stare without the cowl and visor in place. Good to know. “Spinal injury.”
“Did the Machine give you a choice? About whether you could walk again, in your hero form. Because… I mean, with Joey…”
That flat look again. “I was twenty years old,” said The Dark, and oh. Information just kept coming. He had to know I would never use it, never share it with the world, but how did he know I could be trusted with that? “Your age, Friday. Still angry, two years after the accident.” That right there was probably enough to seek out his original identity, if I wanted to. Newspaper archives are all digitized now, and I had his first name… “So yes. It’s possible that I was given a choice between being a superhero on wheels or on both feet, but at the time it seemed like an obvious choice to make.”
“And now?” I breathed.
“Knowing the cost would be twenty-eight years of my life?” His mouth remained flat, unsmiling. “I would probably make the same choice. But not for the same reasons. ”
I longed to dig for more, but I had already pushed him well beyond his comfort levels. I couldn’t resist one more though, something that was at least slightly my business. “Did my Mum know all this?”
The Dark huffed a laugh. “Oh, yeah. Tina Valentina knows all our secrets. You all right over there, Girl Reporter?”
I heard a cough and whipped my head around so fast I banged my cheek on the pipe we were all chained to. “Mum?”
She made a gagging sound and then opened her eyes. “Can’t even fake unconsciousness around you, Aaron.”
“I was worried,” I told her sternly.
“Excuse me, darling, I’m busy feeling humiliated about some of my recent life choices, and I don’t have the energy to make you feel better right now.”
Oh yes that was my Mum, right there. “Would it help if I promise not to mock you about banging Megadethra until after we get back to our own dimension?”
“It would actually, yes.” She stretched a kink out of her neck and coughed again. “I really thought when Solar retired that my era of being villain-bait had rolled to a comfortable close.”
“Some of us would have preferred to avoid the experience altogether,” The Dark said acidly.
“Oh,” said Mum, a beatific expression of joy lighting her up, halo-style. “This is your first time.”
“Shut up,” he grumped.
“As bait.”
I’d never thought of these two being friends, but it made sense. She had known him almost as long as Solar. A sudden thought occurred to me. “Hey…”
“No,” The Dark said promptly.
“You don’t know what I’m going to ask.”
“I’m not your father.”
Mum laughed and coughed at the same time, and nearly choked on it.
“I didn’t say you were,” I said quickly.
“I could hear the idea forming in your mind,” he growled. “Why would you even…”
“Hey, it’s not that big a leap,” I snapped back. “You are the grumpiest and most disapproving man in my life.” A thought occurred to me. “Why isn’t Griff here, bait with the rest of us? And Astra, and Solar?”
“That’s worrying me,” my mother agreed. “We need to get out of here.”
I glanced up at The Dark, and saw an empty handcuff hanging from the pipeline. “Hey! You’d better not…”
I swung back and saw him at my mother’s side, helping her out of her own handcuffs. No idea how he got past me. “Don’t think I wasn’t tempted to leave you here,” he said with a pointed glare in my direction. “But my sidekick is fond of you both, and he sulks when things don’t go his way.”
I stared at the Crown Prince of Professional Brooding. “He sulks. He sulks?”
“You do want me to free you?”
“Yes, please.”
He could have freed himself from the pipe at any time. He stayed, and he answered my questions. I would remember that about him.
We slipped and slid our way down the tunnel, which branched into several more. The Dark picked the one on the left and we followed him. Next time they divided up, he chose left again. The tunnels kept getting narrower, so this would be a terrible time to develop claustrophobia.
“Have we given any more thought to how Megadethra’s architectural style is shouting Machine so loudly it hurts?” I asked aloud.
“I know what you mean,” Mum agreed. “I was composing the pitch for my next book deal while pretending to be unconscious.”
“You can’t break the story from here,” said The Dark.
“Oh,” I said. “That’s adorable, the way you think we need further motivation to escape this rusting, wifi-lacking hell dimension.”
He gave Tina an impatient look. “I can’t believe you made another one of you. One was already too many.”
“Says the man who was cloned by alien seahorses,” she said dryly.
“That was one time, and it was temporary!”
Something about their impatient banter with each other made me miss Griff. “Escape faster,” I urged them. “There are pretty girls to rescue.”
“Sweetheart, I love you,” said Mum. “But if one more person calls me a girl in this decade, I’m going to set fire to them.”
“I don’t mean you and me,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I mean the hot blondes with superpowers.”
“Your mother prefers green-heads,” said The Dark in a voice so flat, you could never tell he was joking.
I chortled so hard I nearly stopped breathing.
“You are both banned from this rescue mission,” said my mother. “From now on, I escape alone.”
The tunnel opened out into a brand new hellscape of metal, glass and giant mechanical bees, immobile and riddled with bullet holes.
“Oh,” said Mum, sounding all nostalgic. “Megadethra’s bee army.”
“That was a fun week,” said The Dark.
“When she realised that the Australian summer heat made their metal expand by so much that they wouldn’t fit back through the wormholes? Classic.”
“This way,” said The Dark, pointing to one of several identical arched doorways.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because whoever came through and shot these bees was wounded,” he said, pointing to a small blood smear on the tiling. “We have a rescue party to intercept and fast.”
“Before they get to the boss battle,” I agreed.
The Dark gave me a pained expression, but let the metaphor slide. I awarded thirty points to myself.
We found the remains of a variety of wrecked robots next, still groaning and grinding, giving up little purple sparks of surrender. They varied in size from the tiny drinks-wielding metal midgets, to the elegantly uniformed Nutcracker soldiers.
“If this is our rescue party,” I said, huffing as we sped along. Of the three of us, I was the one with the fewest regular gym hours. “How did they get here? There was only one Audrey.”
“There were three dimension ships,” said The Dark. “The others are called Rosalind and Ginger. I suspect that when he realised we were gone, Cl—our former Solar encouraged the repair of another ship. Time travels differently between dimensions. We may have been gone several months in the real world.”
“Wait, what?” I said in horror. “Months? I have classes. I have a Twitter account. My Patreon subscribers are not going to be OK that I went Internet silent for months.”
“It’s all going to be fine, darling,” said my mother.
“How is everything going to be fine?” I lowered my voice to an angry whisper, because if I went any louder, I was going to start screaming. “We all remember that Old Man Solar doesn’t have superpowers any more, right? I’m not imagining that?”
T
he next room looked like a space museum after the laser cannons have been through. There was beautiful rubble everywhere. An arm splayed out from beneath a fallen statue of Megadethra riding a space unicorn.
An arm costumed in blue and yellow, without a hand at the end of it.
“Joey!” I ran to her and wrapped my fingers around her curve, searching for a pulse. “Are you okay?”
Luckily, she did still have superpowers. A giant chunk of marble to the cranium barely slowed her down. Joey groaned and shuddered while The Dark and my mother rolled the heavy statue away from her.
“What happened?” I asked. She looked like she had been arm-wrestling with an angry planet. Half her pretty blonde hair was burnt and shrivelled on one side. I would have to take her to my hairdresser. She’d look great with a pink-dipped mohawk.
“Solar happened,” Joey said, spitting out dust and gravel. “The real Solar.”
I looked around at the damage and chaos. “He… did this?”
“We both did,” she muttered.
“What does that mean?” I supported her arms as she raised herself painfully to her feet, shaking broken bits of stone and coloured glass off her costume.
Joey looked dizzy, and sick. “Megadethra put some kind of jewel on my head.”
“Thoughtgems,” said The Dark impatiently. “An old trick of hers. We need to move.”
“On all of us, me and Astra and Griff,” said Joey. “It controlled our minds. I fought him! He’s not even a…”
The Dark was gone, moving ahead of us into the next chamber. We hurried after him, because yeah.
Old Man Solar had no superpowers. That he had survived a fight with a mind-wiped New Solar was impressive. And he could probably take out Kid Dark, let’s face it.
But Astra was a worry. Astra was so much more powerful than anyone ever remembered.
Either she was going to wipe the floor with him, or…
Girl Reporter Page 8
