Secret Origins

by James Riley

  The half-robotic girl rolled her eyes hard. “Said no one ever. Now, who’s next?”

  “Who’s next?” Bethany said, her eyes widening as she let go of Gwen and Owen. “Did you not see what you just did to me? You were supposed to give me the power to turn into an animal!”

  “And you did,” Charm said, shrugging slightly. “So what’s the problem?”

  “I was made of stone!”

  “And you looked like an animal!”

  Bethany’s mouth dropped, but Owen yanked her away from Charm. “This was probably the accident thing I mentioned,” he said, his face flushing a deep red. “I guess maybe Charm knows what she’s doing too well, and so something accidental had to happen. But at least you’re okay, right?”

  “Okay?” Bethany said, and concentrated for a moment, then POINKed into a brass monkey, followed by a paper dinosaur, then a turtle made of pencils, before turning back into herself. “All I can do is turn into inanimate objects, Owen! How useful do you see this superpower being in a fight?”

  Owen’s mouth opened and closed silently for a second before his eyes brightened. “Maybe you can turn into a bulletproof shield for the rest of us!”

  Bethany glared at him, all of her newfound peace completely gone now. Oh, to just be stuck as a statue for the rest of my life. But unfortunately, she had things to do.

  And those started with a little revenge.

  “Owen’s turn!” she said, shoving him toward Charm.

  “Okay, so like I said, you won’t actually be running fast,” Charm said, grabbing the now-terrified Owen by his arm and pulling him toward a different machine. “The plan is to give you the same effect as moving at the speed of light without weighing as much as two or three galaxies. And I think I’ve figured out how to do it! Science really does always save the day.”

  “I’ve actually changed my mind about this,” Owen said, trying to pull his arm out of her grasp but not getting anywhere. “Why don’t you just make me some rocket boots or something?”

  “Boring,” Charm said, strapping him onto a lab table beneath what looked an awful lot like the death ray she’d been playing around with earlier, only larger and with intimidating alien lettering all over it.

  “Can you read that, Charm?” Bethany asked, a cruel smile on her face. “I’m guessing not.”

  “Sure can’t!” Charm said, cheerfully tightening the straps until Owen yelped in pain. “But it’s probably just some warning of danger or something. I’m pretty sure I know what the machine does, though, and worst case scenario, it just knocks a few years off his life.”

  “A few years?” Owen said, trying to escape the straps unsuccessfully.

  “I said that’s worst case,” Charm told him, fiddling with the machine as it lit up and started making some really awful noises. “It’ll probably only take off a few months, tops.”

  Bethany smiled at that, but enough was probably enough. “Okay, I definitely enjoyed this, but let him go.”

  “Let him what?” Charm asked, pushing a button.

  The death-ray-looking thing grew even brighter, and the noises became almost earsplitting.

  “Turn it off!” Bethany shouted, running over to Owen to try to free him from the straps. Unfortunately, he was frantically trying to do the same thing, and they kept getting in each other’s way.

  “It’s fine, stop worrying so much!” Charm shouted over the roar of the machine. “Trust me, it’s all going to be great. I’d stand clear, though!” And then she pulled Bethany out of the way just as the machine went off, shooting a ray right at Owen.

  The bright light hit him with a force like an explosion, making the entire room pulse outward like a wave. The force of it knocked all of them to the ground. Even Charm looked surprised. The pulse then immediately reversed, flooding back into Owen with a weird sort of pop, just as the machine shut down.

  Bethany slowly pushed to her feet, staring at Owen on the table. “Are you okay?” she asked, her eyes wide.

  Owen blinked. “I think so? Help me off of this?” He started to pull against the strap, only to stop, staring at his arm.

  His hand was shaking. Shaking a lot.

  “Charm?” he said, holding up his hand as it began to vibrate faster and faster. His arm started trembling too, while his hand was moving so quickly it was hard to even see it.

  “Charm?!” Bethany shouted as the strap holding Owen’s vibrating arm ripped right off the table, and the rest of his body began to shake harder and harder.

  “Help me!” Owen shouted, his voice sounding like it was echoing from several different places. And then his hand and arm completely disappeared, while his remaining body sped up.

  “Charm, fix this!” Bethany shouted, turning to look at the robotic girl who was watching with fascination.

  “This is what he asked for,” Charm said, though even she looked a bit doubtful. “Don’t worry, he’ll get it under control.”

  But he didn’t. Owen’s leg disappeared next, followed by his other arm and the rest of his body, leaving just his face hanging in midair, like he was drowning in the ocean and could barely keep his head up.

  “This isn’t how the Flash does it at all!” he shouted. “This isn’t—”

  And then his face disappeared too, with a tiny pop.

  For a moment there was only silence. Then, finally, Charm let loose an explosive breath.

  “You know what, I don’t think these machines were calibrated correctly,” she said, tapping the death ray machine she’d used to shoot Owen. “I think that was the real problem here.”

  At her touch the entire machine began to vibrate just like Owen had, shaking faster and faster until it imploded in on itself, leaving just a tiny cloud of smoke in its wake.

  Charm winced, and she slowly pulled her hand away, mouthing the word whoops to Bethany.

  CHAPTER 23

  Slow down! Owen screamed in his own head, desperately trying to stop whatever was happening all around his body. But the vibrations only got worse as the world began turning different colors. First everything was dark, pitch-black, but quickly that exploded into a sort of cyan shade of blue. Then the blue shifted to yellow, followed by a reddish magenta.

  STOP THIS NOW! he shouted at his body, and exerted every ounce of willpower he had, focusing on just . . . slowing . . . down. He squeezed his eyes closed as hard as he could, trying to force himself to a stop with sheer willpower.

  And then the vibrations did stop, just like that.

  Owen quickly felt all around his body. His torso, arms, and legs . . . they seemed to be where they were supposed to be, and not shaking! “Hey, it stopped!” he shouted, opening his eyes. “I’m back!”

  Except he wasn’t back. Not in the lab, at least. Instead, there was just white space as far as the eye could see.

  And that white space looked way too familiar.

  Uh-oh. “No no no no no,” he said, pushing himself to his feet and stepping out into the nothingness, a nothingness that looked exactly like the same empty space that the Magister had stuck him in, back when he and Bethany had first jumped into a Kiel Gnomenfoot book. “No! Don’t tell me I’m back here!”

  This was the void between pages, where there was just . . . nothing. No people, no crazy supervillain robots, nothing. How had he gotten here? Charm was trying to give him superpowers so he could move fast, not throw him right out of the comic. And he had been moving really fast. Vibrating, sure, but still. So if it had worked, why would that have taken him out of the story?

  “Ugh, I hate this place!” he shouted to no one, turning around in a circle, only to stop abruptly. Maybe this wasn’t the same place as he’d been when the Magister trapped him. Because this place wasn’t empty.

  Right in the middle of the nothingness, what looked like enormous comic pages rose ten feet tall from the ground, rising into the air like the Great Wall of China or something. Pages and pages ran off as far as he could see in either direction, each page showing different scenes of
a comic book, with panels and everything.

  It was as if he had been shrunk down to the size of the characters in the comic and was staring at the life-size panels, only not just one panel at a time, which would be normal. Instead, he could see what looked like an entire issue. Or maybe issues, depending on how far it went to either the right or left.

  Owen walked closer to the nearest page and noticed that off to the left, Bethany had turned into a bear statue, and Owen was yelling at Charm. “She’s a statue!” he saw himself say in word balloons. “How can she do anything? She’s made of rock. Is she even still alive?”

  But this time Bethany wasn’t silent. A little cloud above her head said, “I have to turn back to stop this. Even though this is really, really nice.”

  This was them in comic book form. Their story! How was this happening? Where was he? Was this some kind of behind-the-scenes place where all the comic pages were stored? Was there a giant comic book artist somewhere, ready to draw more pages?

  What would the giant comic book artist do if he saw a tiny Owen had escaped from his story?!

  Owen immediately looked over his shoulder, but as far as he could tell, no one was there, let alone any kind of giant ready to stab him with a ten-foot-long pencil. He turned back to the pages, hoping there’d be more of an explanation there.

  The balloon over Bethany’s head, the one that said, “I have to turn back to stop this. Even though this is really, really nice.” That looked like a thought balloon, the kind that showed what comic book characters were thinking. While the other ones, the dialogue balloons . . . that’s what they were saying out loud. Okay, that made sense. This really did feel like he’d been pulled out of the comic book and was looking at it from, like, way above the page somehow.

  He walked backward away from the pages, hoping to see how far they went. Far off to the left, he could make out a few pages of mostly black panels except for a few dialogue balloons here or there.

  “Ha! You like that, shadow thing?”

  “Whoa, it exploded! How did you do that?”

  That was when they’d been attacked by the shadows. And past that, Owen thought he could make out what looked like the basement with the glass costume cases, and the four of them standing over the manhole before Charm opened it.

  Okay, so he was outside of the comics pages somehow. Panels were like frozen time to him, and he could see them like they were drawings. Did that mean he could somehow get back in, if he pushed into a panel?

  Owen walked back closer to the giant wall of comic pages, and slowly moved his hand close to one of the all-dark panels. He gingerly stuck one finger out, ready to yank it back at the first sign of danger, but instead it touched the panel and stopped, as if there was a window separating him from the world inside the comic.

  Well, that wasn’t good. Apparently he was just as stuck here as he was last time, only without Nobody to save him.

  Wait a second. Would Nobody be able to save him?

  He turned around to face the nothing behind him. “Nobody?” he shouted, then waited for a response. But there wasn’t even an echo.

  But that brought up an interesting question. They’d just (maybe) found Bethany’s father out of nowhere, (maybe) reappearing after having gone missing for years. And suddenly, Nobody wasn’t around either. Coincidence?

  But if Nobody was Bethany’s father, that meant the Dark had captured him, which meant he wouldn’t be rescuing Owen anyway. Not good.

  With a sigh, Owen turned back to the wall of comics pages, and walked alongside them back toward the right. He passed Bethany’s power experiments and stopped at a page with an image of himself being strapped to a table by Charm.

  “Don’t do it!” he shouted at himself, but instead, his stupid comic book self went right ahead and did exactly what he wasn’t supposed to do. That Owen began vibrating on the page (which looked so weird ), then parts of him began to disappear.

  Owen moved to the next page, expecting to see himself in the nothingness. Except the comic stayed with Bethany, Charm, and Gwen.

  “You know what, I don’t think these machines were calibrated correctly,” Charm said. “I think that was the real problem here.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Owen shouted at the drawing of Charm in the panel. “Not calibrated? That’s what I get? I’ve been missing you for months, you almost kill me, and you blame the machine? At least use it to bring me back!”

  And then the machine itself began to vibrate in the next panel and finally exploded in the last panel of the page.

  GREAT.

  The bottom of that page had an ominous To Be Continued . . . note, followed by what looked like a page full of text, which Owen was a bit too close to see. He backed up and started reading from the top of the page.

  WHO is the Dark? WHERE does he come from? And WHAT does he want?

  All good questions, because here in Jupiter City, the Dark is rising!

  I know, that’s the name of a book by Susan Cooper, but it’s also appropriate here. The Dark is a new kind of antihero, one who doesn’t let anything stop him from saving Jupiter City his way, whether the city wants to be saved or not! If you think Doc Twilight and the Lawful Legion were fun but wondered why they kept letting villains like the Clown and Dr. Apathy break out of jail all the time, I’m with you. And I created all of them!

  But times change, and so do I. And now I’m embracing the Dark. Will you join me in the shadows, or are you AFRAID? Stick close, and you might even learn the secret origin of the Dark in the coming months.

  See you next month! And send your letters or e-mails in, and be sure to mark them OKAY TO PRINT! I want to hear what you think!

  —Mason Black, writer

  Mason Black. Hadn’t Doc Twilight mentioned that name, something about how this was all his fault? So was The Dark just like a reboot of an old comic, turning a character into something more extreme? Owen sighed. Why did they have to mess with the classics? Okay, not that Doc Twilight was exactly a classic, but still.

  The next page had no panels, just what looked like an ad for a comic shop locator service. But the page after that almost made Owen’s heart stop.

  This couldn’t be. He backed away from the comic page wall, shaking his head. This wasn’t happening!

  The page looked like a comic book cover, with The Dark title at the top, all the way down to the price on it, and a “#3” in the upper left corner. And on the cover the red-eyed creature that was apparently the Dark stood over an unconscious Bethany, Charm, and Gwen, his arms raised in triumph as he shouted, “No one can extinguish the Dark!”

  No! How could this have happened? Last he’d seen them, they were all fine and still in the laboratory.

  Owen quickly ran to the next page and found Bethany right where he’d left her, yelling at Charm about Owen disappearing. He scanned the page quickly, then ran to the next, and the next. Bethany was having Charm try to bring Owen back, but it wasn’t working. A few hours passed. . . .

  And darkness filled the panels again. The shadows had come back, and this time the creatures managed to overwhelm his three friends.

  “Run!” Owen screamed at the page, but the shadows captured them and held them in place as the Dark entered the laboratory.

  “You thought you could break my laws?” the monster said, his word balloon all black with white words. He walked up to Bethany and stared her right in the face. “Criminals! Now you face the justice of your own foul selves, as shown to you by my shadows!”

  He gestured, and the shadow creatures attacked, pushing their ways inside his friends’ mouths, infesting them. Someone screamed, but Owen couldn’t tell who. He just kept shaking his head, not able to believe this.

  And then the next panel had the Dark standing in a now-empty laboratory, his fists clenched. “I will make this world bow to my will,” he said. “This world . . . and all others.”

  The panel shifted, showing a blue-fire circle reopening in front of him.

  “Come, m
y shadows!” the Dark shouted. “We shall bring justice to this new world, in the name of the Dark!”

  CHAPTER 24

  Calibrated?” Bethany shouted. “Where did Owen go?!”

  Charm stared at the spot where the machine had been, frowning. “I think it worked. He just probably needs to slow down.”

  “You think it worked?” Bethany said, jerking Charm around to face her, then slamming her against the wall. “He’s gone, Charm! Owen disappeared! Is he okay? Where is he?”

  Charm’s eyes narrowed, and she shoved Bethany off of her. “This was his idea, not mine. I was trying to help. He wanted to be able to move faster than people could see, so I did that. He should now have the power to speed up his own personal time.”

  “He’s moving in time?” Gwen said, her eyes widening. “Bethany, can’t you go find him then? You can travel in time too!”

  Bethany forced herself to ignore Gwen, keeping her eyes on Charm. “And how does that make him able to run fast?”

  Charm rolled her eyes. “Think about it. If your time moved so fast that it basically stopped for everyone else, you could move a few feet, then restart it. To the rest of us, it would look like you moved so quickly we couldn’t see. That’s all speed is, how fast you move through space and time. I couldn’t make him move fast enough without collapsing space, so I changed the time instead.”

  “So he’s still here, just speeding through time?” Bethany said, glancing around.

  Charm shrugged. “Or maybe he can see all of time as frozen moments, like pictures. I don’t know, he’s the one who messed it up. I don’t even know why he’s playing this game, acting like he’s someone he’s not. Explain that to me.”

  “He’s not Ki—” Bethany started to shout, then just growled in frustration and turned away. Why had Owen insisted on doing things in the supervillain’s lab? Not everything had to be so authentic to whatever type of story they were in. There were ways to get superpowers other than by almost killing yourself . . . or trapping yourself in time!