by Greg James
Before he could wonder much longer, the brush in question had been placed in his hand.
‘Ah, here it is,’ said Carl gratefully. ‘Thanks, Little Nell.’
The other four Zeroes stared in amazement at Nellie, who had located the brush behind some paint pots within seconds.
‘Now grab me the Allen keys and we’ll see if we can get this fixed and fitted, shall we?’
Nellie trotted to the other side of the garage and started rummaging in a large metal toolbox.
‘Hang on … who, wha – how does Nellie know where everything is?’ Murph wanted to know.
‘Hasn’t she told you?’ replied Carl.
‘Told us what?’ replied Mary. ‘She doesn’t really tell us anything much, so … no.’
‘Well then, Super Zeroes: meet my new apprentice.’ Carl gestured towards Nellie, who was now marching back over, dangling a set of Allen keys from an oily finger. ‘Nellie’s been helping me out with the repairs to the Banshee all summer.’
Nellie squeaked slightly with pride as her four friends gazed at her enviously.
‘Wow. How cool! You’re full of surprises!’ said Murph to Nellie. ‘Carl only ever trusted me with the sweeping,’ he added, feeling a little jealous but also proud of his friend. ‘You haven’t flown it without us, have you?’ he added urgently, turning back to Carl.
‘Nah, she’s not quite ready for that yet,’ the caretaker replied, ‘but we’re not far off now, are we?’
‘Indeed no,’ replied Sir Jasper, spinning his chair around and motoring over to inspect the miraculous flying car. ‘Do you remember when we first worked on her together, eh, old sausage? Sixty-five, it must have been. Miraculous, shiny lady that she is,’ he added, tapping a hand affectionately on the bonnet.
Mary prodded Murph gently in the ribs. He knew that she was keen to get questioning Sir Jasper about how he’d lost his Cape, but now Murph was dying to know all about Jasper and Carl working together back in 1965. Between Magpie, the Banshee and Nellie’s secret summer, Murph’s brain was swimming with so many questions it felt like an overcrowded fish tank, and he didn’t know which to ask first.
‘Have questions!’ he blurted out finally. Everyone stopped and looked at him.
‘Well, let’s hear them, then, young sir,’ coaxed Sir Jasper. ‘An enquiring mind is a wonderful thing. Almost as wonderful as a delicious pork pie with a suggestion of fine English mustard.’ He smacked his lips.
‘Question one: did you … help build the Banshee?’
The old man seemed surprised, stroking his neat beard before saying, ‘Yes, in part. Carl and I have worked together for many years. He’s a brilliant engineer, and when I still had my Cape – tele-tech, you know – we were a great team. He did the mechanics, I sorted the electrics. The Alliance still uses a lot of our inventions.’
Murph thought of the electric helicopter that had flown him to Shivering Sands. He was sure that Jasper must have had something to do with it.
‘In fact, Jasper here is one of the very few people who knew my secret identity while I was still operational,’ Flora said quietly. ‘He’s been a loyal friend for years.’ At this the Super Zeroes gasped – very few people knew Flora’s secret identity, even now. If she and Carl had trusted Jasper with it for so long, he must be very special.
‘They were good days,’ Sir Jasper went on. ‘I inherited the old family pile, of course. Witchberry Hall. A large country house,’ he explained further, seeing Murph adopting his notorious ‘confused owl’ expression. ‘Gave us all a place to work – and a little cash to start out with as well.’
‘Uh-oh,’ Flora broke in. ‘I can see this is ramping up into a full-on reminiscence session. I had best put that kettle on. We’re all going to need a cup of tea for this.’
‘In that case,’ said Murph, ‘question two: can I have a hot chocolate instead?’ Before anyone could answer, Hilda burst in:
‘And question three, can I have a coffee, please?’
Drinks requests took them all the way up to question six, but a few minutes later, while Flora was away in the kitchen preparing the most complicated tea round ever, Murph was ready to ask question seven, the most pressing of the day.
‘Right, next question. Why did you say in assembly that tele-tech used to be your Cape? What happened to it? Was it … Magpie?’
At the mention of Magpie, Carl peered anxiously round the corner of the workshop, as if to see if Flora could overhear what was being said. ‘Where in blazes did you hear that name?’ he asked, unusually sharply.
‘Oh, it was just something Mr Drench said in a lesson last year, that’s all,’ Mary broke in, hoping to cover their tracks.
‘Now listen, my young friends,’ said Sir Jasper, exchanging a significant glance with Carl before gliding over towards them with a serious expression. ‘There are some things that are best left in the past, you know. Some … events that we don’t really talk about. I won’t talk about how I lost my Cape, but perhaps I can tell you about the first time Magpie appeared.’
At this Carl seemed to relax a little, before coughing and standing up. ‘I think I’ll see how Flora’s getting on with those drinks.’
Once he had left, Jasper brightened. The twinkle in his eye returned. ‘Very well, then, you curious little cauliflowers,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you about the first hero to have their Capability taken away from them. It’s not something you need to fear these days, so I don’t see that telling you about it can do too much harm. What I am about to relate happened, oooooh … at least thirty years ago …’
10
The Dashing Escapades of the Dandy Man
It’s flashback time. Everybody ready?
We are now going to travel back in time more than thirty years. It’s a complicated process, and you must follow our instructions very carefully. First, you must put your socks on your hands. Then go to the nearest window and shout ‘I AM LORD BANANA HEAD!’ as loudly as you can.
Now run round in circles going ‘Wee-oo-wee-oo-wee-oo’ until you are dizzy. Then do the same thing backwards until you feel better. Pop off and do all that, and we’ll see you in the next paragraph.
All finished? Great. Welcome to the past. Don’t we all look young?
1985
It was a Friday evening in the 1980s, and multimillionaire Wayne Blaze was making a snack in the kitchen of his mansion. He sang to himself as he buttered two slices of bread, dressed in nothing but a black silk dressing gown embroidered with a huge dragon, satin pyjama bottoms and a pair of unacceptable slippers with straw soles.
‘Jitterbug …’
Blaze slipped one of the slices of bread into his very latest high-tech gadget, a brand new sandwich toaster. He added a few pieces of cheese, followed by the second slice of bread, and closed the lid. He started to sing louder.
‘JITTERBUG …’
‘Is everything OK, Master Blaze?’ came a voice through the doorway. It was his butler, Butler.
‘Ah, Butler! Come in here and take a look at this!’ marvelled Blaze as smoke began to stream from the sides of the toaster. Butler slid into the room, dressed as usual in an impeccable black suit. He looked at his employer’s dressing gown with mild alarm.
A ping sounded. Blaze flipped up the lid of the toaster.
‘Incredible,’ he enthused. ‘It’s toasted both sides of the sandwich … at the same time! And look at the delicate seashell-like pattern that it’s branded on to the bread. Modern technology is incredible!’
‘Most impressive, sir,’ agreed Butler insincerely, thinking how difficult it was going to be to clean.
Wayne Blaze was now trying to extract his cheese toastie from the hot metal plate to which it had become fused. He managed to get a knife underneath, but then half the sandwich came away with it, spilling molten orange 1980s cheese all over the marble worktop.
Just then the phone rang.
‘Blaze Mansion, one Friday evening in the mid-1980s,’ began Butler. ‘A hostage situation, you sa
y? He’ll come right away. Goodbye.’
He turned back to his employer, who had burned his tongue trying to bite into his hot sandwich too soon.
‘Wha’ wa’ tha’?’ Wayne Blaze asked, flopping his tongue out to try and cool it off in the air-conditioned atmosphere of the kitchen.
‘Apparently there’s an emergency at Nakamura Tower,’ replied Butler.
‘Tha’ sows li’ a ’ob for ’andy wan,’ mumbled Wayne Blaze dramatically, still with his tongue out.
‘That sounds like a job for the Dandy Man?’ clarified Butler helpfully. ‘I couldn’t agree more, Master Blaze.’
Together they raced through to the oak-panelled room next door, delayed only slightly when the pocket of the black silk dressing gown got caught on a door handle.
Butler strode over to a huge bookcase and pressed the spine of a large leather-bound volume entitled THE WIT AND WISDOM OF GARFIELD.
All at once, one of the wall panels slid smoothly to one side to reveal a gleaming fireman’s pole and, arranged on a chair beside it, the costume that would transform Wayne Blaze into his alter ego. Butler politely turned away as the dressing gown slid to the floor like an unfashionable snake and the slippers were kicked away into a corner, where they belonged. Within moments, they had been replaced by gleaming black riding boots, tight trousers, a white shirt with huge frills down the front and a massive highwayman’s hat.
‘Time to save the eighties once again,’ yelled the hero as he shrugged himself into a military-style coat with epaulettes on the shoulders and adjusted his black eye mask. ‘The Dandy Man is coming!’
With a final incomprehensible shout that sounded something like ‘Da diddly qua qua!’, he leaped on to the fireman’s pole and dropped out of sight.
Butler rolled his eyes and went to try and scrape congealed cheese off the kitchen.
Several floors below, the Dandy Man was struggling to open the complicated doors of his sports car. Instead of opening sideways like normal doors, they flapped upwards like beetles’ wings. Finally he located the handle and just managed to step back in time to avoid being hit on the chin as the door sprang up.
It knocked his hat off as he sat down though, and he had to lean uncomfortably out of the low driver’s seat to pick it up. Then he realised he couldn’t reach the handle to close the door and had to get halfway out of the car again to grab it.
Eventually though, the Dandy Man was ready to roar into action. He pulled out a small lever marked choke and turned the key in the engine. After mere minutes of making an odd coughing noise, the powerful car burst into life and sped out of the secret garage into the city night.
The guests at the party to celebrate the opening of the city’s tallest skyscraper, Nakamura Tower, were all dressed in the very latest fashions. Fingerless lacy gloves and neon leg warmers mingled underneath an array of frankly alarming hairstyles.
But halfway through the evening, things had gone very wrong. With a shout of ‘Everybody freeze!’, several men had burst in carrying guns and proceeded to shatter the huge windows that looked out from the top floor. The guests huddled in the centre of the room as broken glass flew everywhere, feeling increasingly chilled by the night breeze that was now whistling through the building.
‘So sorry to break up the party,’ a measured voice had said finally.
Some of the braver guests raised their heads to see a nondescript-looking man wearing a long black coat over a black suit coming through the door, surveying the scene calmly.
‘I shouldn’t have to inconvenience you for much longer, but do please stay exactly where you are for now or my colleagues here will … deal with you.’
The man in black selected a comfortable chair, brushed the broken glass from it and sat down to wait, lacing his fingers together and carefully crossing one leg over the other.
The Dandy Man’s car squealed to a halt beside Nakamura Tower. ‘Vogue!’ he exclaimed to himself, squinting up to the top floor, where he could see light streaming through the missing windows.
After only a minute or two struggling with his car door, the hero was striding towards the entrance lobby, his feet crunching on the broken glass that littered the road.
The Dandy Man took a flying leap at the doors and aimed a kick at them with his high black riding boots, his frilly shirt and tricorn hat flowing in the breeze as he went. As he burst through, he was surprised to find just the one guard inside, armed with a single small knife. This was something of a disappointment, as he felt that his dramatic entrance had been wasted, but he didn’t let it faze him. Striding up to the guard, the Dandy Man pointed at his weapon and chuckled.
‘That’s not a knife,’ he taunted the guard. ‘This is a knife.’ And with that, the Dandy Man’s hands began to elongate and transform into shimmering metal blades, until finally his arms were tipped with two gleaming swords. He brought them together in front of his face in an X shape with a resounding clang.
Then he paused. ‘Well, in fact it’s a sword. A pair of swords,’ he said.
‘Well, this also isn’t a knife,’ replied a guard who had been hidden at the other end of the room. ‘This is a high-powered assault rifle, and I’m about to shoot you with it.’ Which was a fairly persuasive point.
With a huge roar and a flash of flame, the guard opened fire – and the Dandy Man leaped into action. It didn’t actually happen in slow motion, but it’s far more fun to imagine it that way.
‘I don’t think so!’ cried the Dandy Man, although since we’re imagining it in slow motion it sounded more like ‘Oooooooooh doooooooooooooooooon’t thoooooooooooooooooonk suuuuuuuuuuuue.’ He sprang up, chopping at the air with his hand-swords at a speed that defied belief, even in slo-mo.
Bullets pinged to the floor as he sliced them away, somersaulting down the long lobby towards the new guard. He landed in front of him with a thump of his black riding boots. The guard looked at him in amazement, and not just because of the tight trousers.
‘Stand and deliver,’ grinned the Dandy Man, swishing his swords.
Neither guard seemed keen on sticking around – they bolted along the hall and out of the doors. Their vanquisher looked after them with a satisfied sigh, then turned to the row of lifts beside him.
‘Well, that was suspiciously easy. But now for the main event. I am SUCH a righteous dude.’
Even at the time this sounded a bit embarrassing, so it was lucky that nobody heard him.
Some of the hostages screamed when they heard the clatter of a machine gun several floors below, but the man in black continued to recline calmly in his chair.
‘What is it that you want?’ a man in a suit with huge shoulder pads shouted at him. ‘Money? Gold? We’ll give you anything. Just please, let us go!’
The man in black silenced him with a wave of his hand. ‘Money? How quaint. That’s not what I’m interested in. There’s only one thing worth having in this world. Power. That’s what I’m here for. And unless I’m much mistaken, my delivery is arriving … now.’
Ping!
The lift doors at the end of the room slid open, revealing the impressive silhouette of the Dandy Man, his shirt fluttering in the breeze and his swords gleaming. ‘Release the hostages and I may spare your life!’ cried the hero in his most dramatic tone of voice.
The man in black stared silently at him. After a moment he flicked a hand at his two remaining guards, who were stationed by the window. ‘Let’s see what this frilly man’s made of. Attack!’ he told them calmly.
Someone uttered a high-pitched scream – it was the man with the huge shoulder pads. The guards started towards the lift and began taking what looked like rather lazy pot shots at the Dandy Man.
Before the guards could hit their stride, the hero immediately leaped into a perfect scissor kick with his shiny boots and slammed the bullets out of the air with his swords. He somersaulted towards the guards – knocking one unconscious with a flying roundhouse kick and booting the other into the now-empty lift.
&n
bsp; The doors closed.
‘Looks like you’re going down, creep,’ quipped the Dandy Man, and he turned to face his main enemy once more, hoping for a ripple of applause from the hostages at the very least.
One person did clap. It was the man in black, and if the Dandy Man hadn’t known better he would have thought that it sounded more than a little sarcastic.
The villain got to his feet and walked away from the hero towards the large windows that looked out over the city. ‘Well, it appears I have been beaten,’ he said, sounding anything but.
‘Does that mean … we can go?’ squeaked the man with the big shoulder pads.
The man in black shrugged.
It was all the crowd needed. They surged towards the exits in a tide of neon, leaving espadrilles and Alice bands discarded in their wake. Within seconds there were only two people left on the top floor of the skyscraper.
‘Swords for hands,’ mused the man in black. ‘An unusual power. Yes, I suppose that could be useful to have.’ He turned to face the Dandy Man, his face twisting into an expression of angry concentration.
‘Useful?’ laughed the hero. ‘It was more than enough to defeat – aaagh!’
Flashes of purple lightning had started to appear in the air. Like snakes, they wound around the Dandy Man’s arms, until the two men were linked by a bolt of dancing purplish fire. The Dandy Man’s eyes widened in horror as his twin swords shrivelled, shrank away, disappeared – and then popped back into existence on the ends of the arms of the man in black. These new swords were curved like scimitars: deadly-looking, and somehow even brighter and more impressive than his own had been.
At last the purple lightning flashes subsided. The Dandy Man staggered backwards and fell to his knees, his vision swimming. Desperately he tried to produce his swords – but nothing happened. He flapped his hands in front of him frantically, tears springing to his eyes.
‘In the name of Pepsi and Shirlie! My swords! You’ve taken them!’ he gasped.