The Rivalry of Renegade X

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  “Hey. Mom does alright. She almost took over the city that one time.” I mean, I’m the one who stopped her, but still. She tries.

  “She’s one of the most dangerous supervillains in Golden City,” other me says. “Probably in the world.” He wraps his arms around himself and leans his head back against the wall.

  “So she made a name for herself.” I can’t help the bitterness in my voice. But I guess Mom was right—without being stuck with a baby to raise, she didn’t have anything holding her back.

  “The heroes of Golden City are constantly struggling to keep her and the Red Demon in check. If they get their way…” He winces.

  “The Red Demon?” Kat asks.

  “Her son. My… half brother. Technically.”

  “What?” I sit up straight. “Xavier? You’re saying Xavier’s actually, like, a legit villain?” That can’t be right. “People are scared of him? You’re sure they’re not just annoyed by him?”

  Other Damien’s eyebrows come together. “He’s the worst.”

  “Well, we can agree on that, at least.”

  “He’s just as dangerous as the Mistress of Mayhem. Maybe more than that. And he’s only sixteen. When he grows up…” He makes a face. “That’s why I have to get my H. I have to be a match for him.”

  “Whoa, wait a minute, back up.” I hold up a hand. “Xavier is not sixteen.”

  “That’s your takeaway from that? And yeah, he is. He’s starting at Vilmore this fall. It was all over the news.”

  Kat squints at him. “Are you sure he doesn’t just look sixteen?”

  “I don’t really understand the question, but yes?”

  “He’s only a year younger than me?” But that means Mom still had a baby in her early twenties. It means somehow she managed to raise Xavier just fine all while still making a name for herself.

  Other me shrugs, like he wishes we weren’t talking about this. “Look, we’re not close or anything. We’ve never officially even met. All I know is what I’ve heard in the news. He’s sixteen, he’s starting at Vilmore next year, and there’s a rumor that he’s engaged to the heir of Wilson Enterprises. But that’s probably—”

  “He’s what?!” Kat shrieks. She grabs my arm with her hand, her fingers digging into me.

  “Ooh,” Amelia says, obviously enjoying every moment of this.

  “It’s just celebrity gossip,” other me says.

  Kat points to herself. “But I’m the heir to Wilson Enterprises! Unless he’s marrying Rachel, who apparently my dad thinks has ‘more potential than anyone he’s ever seen.’” She rolls her eyes at that last part, playing it off like she’s being sarcastic, but I hear the hurt in her voice.

  “You’re Katherine Wilson?” other me says, sounding incredulous. He looks her over again, like he’s seeing her for the first time. “Katherine Wilson had her hands down my—”

  “Okay,” she snaps. “We get it.” She presses her hands to her face and makes a frustrated sound. “How can they be engaged? We’re not even engaged.” She gestures to the both of us.

  “It might just be a business arrangement,” other me says.

  “Like that makes it better!” She shudders.

  “Anyway, me and Sarah figured out they took the portal device. Even though it wasn’t working, Sarah was really worried about it being in the wrong hands. We both were. So I snuck into the Mistress of Mayhem’s lair to steal it back. And that’s when I overheard the Red Demon telling her he was ready to take control of Golden City, that their plans could finally be realized. I saw the portal device sitting on her lab table. I grabbed it and was about to get out of there, but that’s when they noticed me. They had me cornered, and the Mistress of Mayhem was firing her laser eyes. I didn’t have a lot of options, so even though I didn’t think it would actually work, I pushed the button on the portal device, and that’s how I ended up here. Only, as I was going through the portal, one of her lasers must have hit the device, because it’s, um, not exactly in working condition anymore.”

  “It’s in my room,” Amelia says. “In my treasure chest that you don’t have a key for. I’m keeping it safe.”

  Her “treasure chest” is just an old trunk from the antique shop that she begged Helen to let her have. It does have a lock and key, but it’s not the impenetrable vault she’s making it out to be. “Whatever, Amelia.” Plus, does she think I couldn’t blast it open if I really needed to? Not that I would—I’d just steal the key from her or else have Kat unlock it with her shapeshifting ability—but still. “I don’t need yours, anyway. Sarah said she made a portal device, too, but it didn’t work. I’ll just take that one over to Mom and ask her to—”

  “No!” Other Damien’s face suddenly goes pale and his hands are shaking. “You’re not letting her anywhere near it.”

  “But she can probably—”

  “No!” He gets up from the floor and paces across the room a couple times before storming over to me. “I let it fall into the wrong hands once already—I can’t do that again. You don’t know what she’ll do with it!”

  “You mean fix it? Make it work?”

  “You just said she already stole something from Sarah once. I’m guessing it didn’t go so great?”

  I open my mouth to correct him on instinct, then realize that he’s right. “She wouldn’t do anything like that again.”

  He tilts his head at me, giving me an annoyingly knowing look. “You’re absolutely certain about that?”

  “Well…” I’d like to think she wouldn’t, at least. I’d like to think she wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize our relationship or screw me over again. But I’m not sure I’m ready to test that theory.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “I’m not going to her with this. I can’t risk it, even if it means I’m stuck in this awful dimension for the rest of my life.”

  Chapter 12

  JESS TUGS ON OTHER Damien’s shirt at the breakfast table the next morning. He leans over, and she whispers something in his ear, and then he smiles.

  And I clench my fists as I munch on a bite of soggy cereal and try really, really hard not to just murder him. At least, not in front of everyone.

  “So,” Alex says, talking with his mouth full and sounding way too excited about all this, “you’re really from outer space?!”

  “He’s from another dimension,” I tell him. “He’s not an alien.”

  “It’s like a parallel universe,” other me says. “Everyone here is there, too, only… different.” He has the nerve to make a face at me when he says that.

  Alex’s eyes go wide. “What about me? Am I there?”

  “Of course. We hang out, like, all the time.”

  “Cool!” Alex smiles real big at him, then glances over at me, pursing his lips and looking kind of uncertain. “Why don’t we hang out all the time?”

  “Because—”

  “Because he’s always too busy flunking out of school and getting in trouble for ruining everything,” Amelia says.

  I glare at her.

  “Amelia,” Helen scolds, though she doesn’t sound like her heart’s really in it. Possibly because she agrees with her and is just saying that to be polite, or possibly because she and Gordon both still look super dazed about this whole other-me thing.

  “We hang out,” I tell Alex.

  “Not all the time.” He pouts.

  Great. Now everyone at this table thinks my impostor’s better than me. I mean, Jess might not think he’s better, but she’s certainly treating him like my equivalent, which is just as bad. Though, to be fair, I don’t think she has much of a grasp on interdimensional travel and has no idea what’s really going on.

  Other me glances down at his bowl of cereal, then at me and Gordon, giving us hesitant looks. “So, is this a typical Sunday breakfast or…?”

  “Or what?” I ask, squinting suspiciously at him.

  He shrugs. “Nothing. Just that me and my dad always make chocolate chip pancakes for everyone on Sunday morn
ings before church.”

  Right. Of course they do.

  “You do?” Gordon says, emotion clouding his voice. “Me and my dad used to do that, too, when I was growing up. It was our tradition.”

  “He taught me when I was little. We’ve been doing it for years.”

  Gordon looks over at me, a sappy look on his face that may or may not be full of nostalgia and regret.

  “I already know how to make pancakes,” I tell him, hopefully putting a stop to any ideas he might have. “And I’m busy Sunday mornings.” Busy not being up at the crack of dawn.

  He shakes his head and sighs. “To think how different things would have been if you’d grown up here.”

  Amelia slurps up the last bit of milk in her bowl, then scowls. “I was here. You could have taught me.”

  She actually makes a good point for once. “See? Amelia wants to learn. And she has no life, so she’s available.”

  Helen gets up from the table. “Are you done with that?” she asks Amelia, reaching out for her bowl.

  “Oh, let me do that,” Other Damien says, jumping up and snatching up their dishes

  Helen’s mouth hangs open in shock. “That’s not necessary,” she tells him, though I notice she doesn’t actually do anything to try and stop him, either. “You’re our guest.”

  “No worries, I’ve got this. It makes me feel more at home.” He takes the dishes to the sink and starts hand washing them, even though we clearly have a dishwasher.

  Helen sinks back down into her chair, still looking shocked.

  “This is part of our tradition, too,” he explains, throwing Gordon a towel. “We always wash the Sunday breakfast dishes together by hand.”

  Gordon stares at the towel like it might bite him.

  Other me falters a little and reaches out to take it back. “I mean, you don’t have to. It was just—”

  “No, no, it’s fine,” Gordon says, smiling to himself as he gets up and takes a clean bowl from other me and starts drying it.

  I don’t know what he’s so happy about, but I don’t like it. Not one bit.

  Helen carts Jess off to the bathroom to get her cleaned up, since she has a fair amount of milk on her chin and a piece of cereal smudged across one cheek. Alex sits there, restless, for a few moments before running off to play video games, but only after he makes other me promise to play with him later.

  Amelia stays put in her chair, her eyebrows coming together a little as she watches Gordon and other me do some traditional father-son dish washing.

  “Are you done with that?” Other Damien asks me, glancing down at my bowl of half-eaten cereal.

  It’s super soggy now, plus I’ve kind of lost my appetite. I push it toward him.

  “This is just…” Gordon takes a deep breath. “My father and I used to do this, too. Washing the dishes by hand. Most of the time, I had to share everything with my brothers, including time with my parents. But Sunday mornings, that was our thing.”

  I roll my eyes at Amelia, but she’s too busy frowning at them to notice. “We could have a thing,” she says.

  He either ignores her or doesn’t hear. He looks at other me. “So, Damien—”

  “Other Damien,” I correct him, which gets me a scathing look from other me, though he doesn’t actually complain.

  “You’re the one who was on the news, who saved that orphan from the well? And that boy at the water park?”

  “I was just doing what my dad taught me. Maybe it’s wrong to interfere in another dimension, since I don’t belong here, but I couldn’t just ignore people in need. Not when I knew I could help.”

  Gordon’s eyes light up at that. Like he’s just super proud of him, even though he’s not the one who raised him. Some other Gordon in a parallel universe did.

  Ugh. I get out my phone to see if Sarah’s responded yet, since I texted her half an hour ago, saying that other me was staying at my house and that this was a serious emergency, because we need to send him home now, before he ruins my entire life.

  She hasn’t.

  “What else do you and I—er, your dad—do?” Gordon asks as he puts the last bowl away.

  “Lots of stuff. Like, last weekend we went to League Headquarters. He wasn’t supposed to, but he got them to let him give me a tour. To see where I’ll be working once I finish up at Heroesworth.”

  Gordon opens his mouth, but doesn’t say anything, looking uncomfortable. We exchange a look.

  Other Damien’s eyes dart back and forth between us. “What? Did I miss something?”

  Amelia jerks her chin in my direction. “Damien destroyed the League. We don’t really have it anymore.”

  He makes that face that everyone claimed I make, with his forehead wrinkled and one eyebrow higher than the other, which I’ve definitely never done before. “You… what?!”

  I scowl at Amelia. “I didn’t destroy the League. They’re still around.”

  “But they’re a lot smaller than they were. You basically ruined it for everyone else.”

  Other Damien’s staring at me. One side of his face twitches. “How could you possibly… The entire League?” He shoots Gordon a worried look, like he’s not sure how he could have let this happen. Like maybe he’s not as great as the Gordon in his dimension.

  Gordon clears his throat. “It wasn’t the entire League. And a lot of us are forming independent groups. It’s actually been a very interesting challenge.”

  Yeah, except for the part where he felt like his entire life up until now had been a lie. “Stop looking at me like that,” I tell other me, since now he’s giving me his worried look, like he thinks I’m some monster. “The League was corrupt. I just helped expose it, that’s all.”

  He’s shaking his head before I even finish saying that. “The League’s the opposite of corrupt. The League Treaty ensures that everyone involved follows the same rules and beliefs.”

  “Yeah, well, one of those beliefs involves capturing and torturing villains.”

  “Who must have deserved it for some reason. I mean, they’re villains.”

  “Check your X. So are you.”

  His face turns red. “I might be half villain, but I’m not like them. And if the League was torturing anyone, it must have been for a good reason.”

  “Like what? That they had V’s on their thumbs? Some of them had never done anything criminal in their lives. They just existed, and the League wasn’t okay with that.”

  “No, they must have done something—”

  “It’s true,” Gordon says, interrupting him. He takes a deep breath and folds his hands together. “The League did horrible things, and not always to people who deserved it. I wasn’t part of any of that, I didn’t know it was going on, but… I couldn’t stay after I found out. A lot of us couldn’t. Those weren’t the ideals we’d signed up for.”

  Other Damien takes that in. “Maybe the League’s like that in your world, but not in ours. They would never—”

  “That’s what people said here, too, and they were wrong,” I tell him.

  He gives me a withering look. “If they’re torturing anyone, I know it’s for a good reason.”

  “Because there’s ever a good reason to torture people.”

  He looks at Gordon and Amelia like he feels sorry for them. “And you have to put up with this?”

  “All the time,” Amelia whines.

  “Uh, all I said was that torturing people was bad.”

  “You mean torturing villains.” He shakes his head again. “You only think that because you are one. You don’t know what it’s like to be a hero, to be part of something bigger than yourself, and to have the responsibility of looking out for everyone else. We have to do what’s right, even if it’s hard. Even if—”

  “Are you serious right now?!” I push my chair back, electricity running up my arms. “I can’t believe—”

  “That’s enough,” Gordon says, holding up a hand. “We’re going to be late for church if we don’t go get dressed. D
amien—er, Other Damien—you’re welcome to join us if you want.”

  “No, he’s not.” I glare at other me. “You’re not stepping one foot in that church looking like me. And besides, we have work to do. We’re going to see Sarah.”

  “But seriously,” Kat says, “me and Xavier? I’m old enough to be his mom.”

  “Not in his world you’re not,” I tell her, jerking my chin toward other me, who’s standing awkwardly in the middle of Sarah’s room.

  “This is so weird,” he says, gaping at his surroundings. “I mean, it looks almost exactly the same as Sarah’s room. Er, my Sarah’s, I mean.”

  But hers probably doesn’t have the framed pictures of her and Riley at Prom and Homecoming, though I don’t think he’s noticed those yet.

  Sarah swallows, looking slightly uncomfortable, though I can’t tell if it’s because Other Damien weirds her out or if she doesn’t like the idea of another her living her life almost exactly the same. Either way, she gets a hold of herself, her eyebrows coming together as she holds out her hand. “Did you bring it?”

  We all look at other me.

  “You’d better have brought it,” Kat says. “It took you long enough to get here.”

  “We watched an episode of The Crimson Flash and the Safety Kids while we waited,” Sarah explains. “I know Kat’s a fan.”

  “An episode and a half,” Kat says through clenched teeth, giving me a look. “And she actually shushed me when I asked her to pause so I could go to the bathroom.”

  “You were missing the best part.”

  “We got here as quickly as we could,” I tell them.

  Other me shakes his head. “We could have gotten here a lot sooner if you hadn’t taken forever on the stairs.” He says that as dismissively as possible. Like he’s not wearing my clothes and my shoes, not to mention the fact that I’m pretty sure he’s been using my toothbrush. Though I’m also too afraid to ask about that, since I don’t think I want to know the answer. “If you could fly, you wouldn’t have this problem. It’s like you were made to take after your villain side.”

  Sarah gasps at that and Kat’s mouth falls open. She bites her lip and looks over at me.