Secret Origins

by James Riley

  “I’m fine,” Bethany said, glaring at Charm. “And that wasn’t funny.”

  YES IT WAS, Owen said in her head.

  YOU, be quiet! Bethany thought back.

  In spite of all the noise they’d made, between breaking the window on the three hundred and fiftieth floor and then falling to the ground with a jet pack roaring, no one had come to investigate what was going on. Instead, the city was just as empty as it’d been when she and Owen first arrived. Not surprising, with the Dark in control. Had most people escaped the city when the Dark started his attack, or were they all hiding somewhere? Or if they were all shadow infected, was there a whole city full of enraged people somewhere waiting to attack? That wasn’t a fun thought.

  “Since we don’t know where this Dark guy is, we need to find a source of reliable intelligence,” Charm declared, pulling out her ray guns. “Someone who can direct us to him. Kiel and I got it down to a routine that I called nice guy/smart girl. He’d be polite and I’d be myself.”

  “Good detective/bad detective,” Gwen said. “That’s a classic! Can I be the good detective?”

  Charm gave her a long look, then started walking up the street without a word.

  Not knowing where else to go, Bethany led her friends in the same direction she and Owen had come from last time, toward the rooftop where Doc Twilight had rescued them. The morning sun gave everything a slightly cheerier look now, but the empty streets still felt like some kind of postapocalyptic world.

  But they quickly left the skyscrapers behind, moving into the creepier, seedier area where they’d been following Doc Twilight. Even here, where it felt like some criminal was waiting around every corner, no one was to be found, not even a raving old lady this time. Where was everyone?

  “We can’t get intelligence without people to interrogate,” Charm shouted, waving her ray guns in annoyance. “We’re not going to find the Dark this way.”

  “You want to find the Dark?” said a rough, gritty voice from a dark alley beside them. “Sounds like I’m not the only one who’s gone bananas.”

  Charm immediately aimed her ray guns into the darkness, but Bethany put a hand up to stop her. “Who’s there?” she said, stepping forward to see better.

  In the dimly lit alley between two houses, she could barely make out a man dressed in a weirdly clean banana costume, leaning against a Dumpster.

  “Someone too slippery for the likes of you,” the banana said. He gave them a close look, then stepped back in surprise. “Wait, you don’t have shadows in you?”

  “Not yet,” Bethany said, not wanting to share too much. “Are you . . . a superhero?”

  The banana laughed ironically. “Don’t pretend you don’t recognize me. I’m the Rotten Banana, the uncatchable criminal!” He leaned back against the Dumpster, his suit making squeaky noises as it slid against the metal. “I’m the scourge of Jupiter City! Doc Twilight himself considered me an archenemy, sort of, at times at least! And I led the Fruit of the Loons, the craziest team of criminals this side of the Clown and his College!”

  “I think we found a source of intelligence,” Bethany whispered to Charm.

  “It’s a banana,” Charm said, giving Bethany a doubtful look. “Unless you’re looking for a giant monkey, I think you’re doing this wrong.”

  “Trust me, this is exactly the sort of person we’re looking for,” Bethany told them. “But be careful. I don’t know what, but he probably has some kind of superpower.”

  “Do you think I can’t hear you?” the banana said, practically spitting. “Not the most a-peeling bunch, are you?”

  Bethany heard Charm’s ray gun begin to power up, so she gave the half-robotic girl a careful look. “Good detective/bad detective, remember?” Bethany whispered. Then she turned back to the banana and raised her voice again. “We’re looking for the Dark, Mr. Rotten Banana. Do you know where we can find him?”

  The banana sneered. “Orange you going to say please?”

  Charm shot the banana over and over, screaming profanities as she did.

  “Hey!” Bethany shouted, pushing Charm backward as the banana slumped to the ground, not moving. “We needed him!”

  “It was set on stun,” Charm said, glaring at the banana. “And he had it coming, trust me. I hate puns. Besides, I don’t think it did much.”

  “You shot him!” Bethany shouted, pointing at the banana, before realizing he was pushing himself back up to a standing position, his costume not even scorched.

  “Nice try, Space Girl,” the banana said with a sneer. “But I think you’ll find the Rotten Banana is a lot more slippery than—”

  Charm started firing again, the ray gun’s blasts drowning out whatever the banana was trying to say. Finally, Bethany yanked the ray gun out of her hand and pointed to the scorch marks all over the nearby buildings. “It’s not working!” she shouted. “The rays are just sliding off of him.”

  The Rotten Banana gave them an annoyed look. “Now you’ve done it! You three really should have split while you had the—”

  Charm shot him again, this time with her other ray gun. “No more puns!” she shouted as Bethany grabbed that one too.

  “Rotten Banana?” Gwen said, stepping forward. “Why are you hiding in this alley? You look like you could use some help.”

  “Help?” the banana said, looking surprised. “Help? Who’s even left to help us now? All the superheroes have turned evil, infected by shadows. I’m the last supervillain left not in hiding, and that’s only because my suit keeps his shadows from touching me. Though they still try, every night. It’s like a horror movie!” He shivered. “Ever have that nightmare where something’s chasing you, but you can’t move? That’s how it is. Those shadows terrify me, and I turn into a frozen banana!”

  “He’s asking for it again,” Charm said, but Bethany stepped in her way.

  “I’ve got no hideout, I’ve got no henchmen,” the banana continued, ranting at the nearby wall. “And I can’t tell you the last time my wallet had any cabbage in it!”

  “That’s it,” Charm said, trying to grab her ray guns back from Bethany, who moved them out of her reach.

  “Let us help you,” Gwen said, stepping closer to the banana. “We can get you something to eat, and maybe find you a place to stay. All we need to know is how to find the Dark.”

  The banana looked at her with confusion. “But why would you do that? I’m a villain! I usually rob people like you with my banana gun!”

  “I just think there are better ways to solve these things than with threats of violence,” Gwen told him, holding her hands up to him. “Now, why don’t we just all calm down for a second and talk things out.”

  The banana just stared at Gwen for a moment, then sighed. “That sounds really nice, actually. You know, I don’t even like bananas. But once I started monkeying around with this banana suit—”

  Charm leaped forward, punching the Rotten Banana right in the face, and he collapsed to the ground. “What did I say about the puns?” she shouted, standing over him with her fists in the air. “What did I say?!”

  Gwen leaned over to Bethany. “Wow. She’s amazing at this bad detective thing!”

  CHAPTER 27

  Owen reread the panels of Charm beating up on the banana over and over again. He couldn’t stop grinning, in spite of his rotten luck. Of course he was stuck out here instead of hanging out with Charm. She even confirmed that she thought he was Kiel, so that was totally an opening to tell her the truth!

  At least this way he got to enjoy the banana scene as much as he wanted. So that was something.

  Sure, he could explain everything right now, put the thoughts directly in her head. Tell her that he hadn’t been Kiel and really was Owen. That he’d saved her in the last book, and that he’d missed her ever since.

  She’d be mad, but she’d hopefully understand eventually. But then a strange thought occurred to him.

  If she was mad, then couldn’t he just cross that thought out, and
make her happy about it all?

  What? No! What was he thinking, changing what someone thought? This was Nobody’s whole point. Besides, he couldn’t just rewrite Charm’s thoughts or emotions that way. It was messed up to even consider it!

  No one should have that much power over someone, fictional or nonfictional. It wasn’t right.

  Owen walked over to the next page, hoping that things in Jupiter City could take his mind off of things with Charm. The following panels had them interrogating the banana on a roof while holding him by his hands out over the edge, which Gwen did not seem happy about. But at least they were still safe, with no shadows anywhere yet.

  That was good, because the next page had a large MEANWHILE . . . at the top in a caption box, and things changed dramatically. Everything on the page was dark, creepy, and hard to make out, like all the color was missing. And the same all-black panel went by a few times, like nothing was happening, until finally—

  “I know you’re there,” said a word balloon. “You’re not as much a shadow as you think.”

  Um, who was that talking? Wasn’t this Bethany’s story? He leaned back, checking to make sure he hadn’t missed the sun going out or something in the last panel with his friends, but they were fine. So who was this? And what was with all the creepiness?

  Another two panels of nothing went by, and then: “What you’re doing is wrong,” said a word balloon in the same spot. “I don’t care what Mason did to you to make you this way. This isn’t how you were meant to be.”

  Two more panels of nothing ended the page, so Owen moved to the next and almost shrieked.

  Staring out at him were two bloodred eyes in the middle of a shadow-covered face, taking up the entire page.

  “You have no idea what I’m meant for,” the Dark said in white letters on a black word balloon, a light from above having snapped on to illuminate the monster. “This city destroyed me, but from my ashes a new world shall rise!”

  Owen shivered, then quickly moved to the next page and found himself staring at Doc Twilight, the same one they’d followed into Jupiter City. With his first good look at the superhero, Owen saw that the costume looked a bit too big for him, like it was hanging off of his body. Maybe he’d lost some weight or muscle, living in the real world? “What did he change?” the superhero said, his hands gripping massive bars that trapped him in a cell. “You were never like this. What happened to you?”

  “No one changed me,” the Dark said, his eyes flaring like flames. “The man I was before is dead. The world took everything from him, and he just let it happen. But not me. I will keep the same thing from happening to anyone else, because I will be in control. I will keep the people safe, even if I have to infect the whole city with my shadows. I will force this world to be what it’s always been meant to be, no matter who has to suffer.” He gestured, showing a massive wall of screens behind him that lit up in the next panel.

  Owen gasped. Monitor after monitor showed images of superheroes, all with blacked-out eyes and enraged faces, the same as the old woman they’d met in Jupiter City. A super-strong woman in a scuba suit put a terrified robber through a brick wall, almost killing him as she screamed curses at him. A man in a grasshopper costume was jumping over and over on an unconscious man in a business suit, shouting something about bank loans. And what looked like a snowman froze someone for jaywalking, then just left her encased in ice, maybe to freeze.

  “What have you done?!” Doc Twilight shouted. “You can’t let them do such things!”

  “They let this world become such a horror,” the Dark said, his back now to Doc Twilight. “It’s their failure that forced me to become what I am. Shouldn’t they make it right?”

  “Failure? What could they have done to deserve this?”

  The Dark slowly turned around to face Doc Twilight. Then he reached up to his hood of shadows, and pulled it off, revealing . . .

  “Turn around!” Owen shouted at the page, as it now showed the Dark from behind, his face shown only to Doc Twilight. “Are you kidding me?”

  “You don’t know what I’ve lost,” the Dark said, his word balloon now white with black letters, just like Doc Twilight’s. “You wear that costume to mock me, but I don’t expect you to understand. You’d never do what needs to be done.”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” Doc Twilight said softly, his eyes locked on the Dark’s. “That’s what this costume represents: doing the right thing, not the easy thing. You’re not making the city safe, you’re making it a police state!”

  The Dark leaped forward and slammed a hand through the bars, grabbing the fabric of Doc Twilight’s costume. Then, with one swift pull, he tore the twilight symbol right off the costume.

  “This represents nothing but time past and foolish dreams,” the Dark said, throwing the moon and three stars symbol to the ground, his face still annoyingly pointed away from Owen. “The past is gone, and I’m the one burying it. What happened to me will not happen to anyone else, not anymore. Not in this world, or any other.”

  Shadows behind him began to assemble something, and Owen gasped as he recognized the portal machine.

  The Dark replaced his mask, and his word balloons turned dark again. “Tell me of the portal,” he said. “Where does it go?”

  Doc Twilight just stared at him, not speaking.

  The Dark growled, and the bars holding Doc Twilight captive disappeared. A black glove shot out and picked Doc Twilight up by his costume’s collar, and his feet left the ground until he hung in the air. “I won’t ask again.”

  “You used to be a hero,” Doc Twilight said, his voice strained. “Now you’re just a petty tyrant. A bully. A villain.”

  The Dark growled in annoyance, but Owen noticed his hand shaking slightly. “I’m what this world needs,” he hissed, then threw Doc Twilight against the wall of his cell, the bars reforming instantly.

  “Is that what you tell yourself?” Doc Twilight asked, his word balloon groggy, like he was in great pain from hitting the wall.

  “I will open this portal,” the Dark said, his back to Doc Twilight. “I will find out where you came from, and I will fix that world, just as I have this one. No more criminals, no more lawbreakers, no more suffering.”

  “Unless you cause it,” Doc Twilight said, then coughed.

  But the Dark didn’t respond. Instead, he moved away, barely touching the ground as the lights disappeared, turning the panel dark once more. Two more panels went by before Doc Twilight said quietly: “You haven’t lost everything. Not yet. I can fix this, if you just release me.”

  Another pause.

  “Oh, no,” the Dark said. “I want you to witness what happens to your world when I get Apathy’s portal working. You’ll be with me every step of the way. And then, when it’s all over, you too shall be infected with shadow. Because there’s no escaping the Dark. Not when it’s inside of us all.”

  And then the comic ended.

  Owen backed away from the panel. What was happening? Who was the Dark, and what was this horrible thing that had happened to him? Apparently, he’d been a hero once, and Doc Twilight knew him. But what kind of hero turned into a villain? Sure, it was a comic book cliché, but that usually involved mind control, or a clone, or an impostor of some kind. But none of those things fit here, not after what Mason Black said in the comic. But what had driven the Dark to such horrible lengths?

  Looking to the right, Owen gasped. There was no next issue! Instead, the pages extending forward were just sketches, uncompleted, though it did look like someone was drawing them as he watched. That was pretty cool to see, but not exactly helpful in any way. Here and there were a few dialogue balloons, but they were too light for Owen to read.

  “Ugh,” Owen said, shaking his head. “Why can’t they reveal everything all at once? I don’t have time to wait for the next issue! Just tell me what happened! How did things get like this?”

  And then he slowly looked to the left and slapped himself in the forehead.

&n
bsp; In that direction, complete pages stretched out as far as he could see.

  Maybe the next issue wasn’t ready. But there was no reason Owen couldn’t find the Dark’s secret origin in the back issues somewhere, right?

  CHAPTER 28

  Better tell me what I want to know,” Charm growled at the terrified banana hanging over the edge of the building by his hands, which were the only parts of his body not covered by the superpowered, super-slick banana suit. “I don’t know how long I can hold you, and that looks like a long way down.”

  “Don’t hurt him!” Gwen shouted, reaching for the banana, but Charm moved him farther out over the edge, letting his little yellow feet kick in the wind.

  “That’s up to him,” Charm said. “Well, Rotten Banana? Where do we find the Dark?”

  “I don’t know, I told you!” the villain shouted. “His shadows are everywhere after the sun goes down. Why don’t you ask them?”

  “Maybe they’ll catch you before you hit the ground, then,” Charm said, narrowing her eyes. “Want to bet?”

  Gwen backed up to where Bethany watched uncomfortably. “We’re not actually going to drop him, right?” Gwen whispered. “Because I’m not letting that happen no matter what.”

  Bethany shook her head. “Charm’s just bluffing,” she said, hoping she was right.

  She is just bluffing, right, Owen?

  But there was no response in her thoughts. Maybe Owen was busy with something else? Hopefully he was okay, wherever he was. Bethany inched closer to the half-robotic girl, just in case.

  “Uh-oh,” Charm said, and the banana began to slip out of her grasp. “My arm is starting to get tired. . . .”

  “Please!” the Rotten Banana shouted. “I can’t! He’ll bruise me so much he’ll turn me into banana bread if I help you. I’ll be like the Psycho Potato, who got completely mashed—”

  “I’m dropping him,” Charm said to Bethany. “It’s not worth another stupid pun.”

  She released the banana, and the man shrieked as he fell a foot before Charm grabbed him again with her other hand, quicker than Gwen and Bethany could react.