Astra II: second half of 2010. Killed during Solar’s biggest ever battle with Megadethra in Kakadu National Park. Returned as fourteen clones of herself, which reunited to form a giant figure that Nine News thought they were so clever for calling the Astra Projection. Only Astra to date who actually stayed dead.
Astra III: first half of 2011. Sacrificed herself to save a school bus full of children from being hit by a falling robot after the great mecha invasion. Haunted an android body for several months before her original body was restored by a freak reality-warping event, which is also the reason that Darwin was the capital of Australia, and all wombats had five legs for a brief time. Astra’s ability to see across multi dimensions was particularly strong in this holder of the Legacy, and it was she who shifted reality back to its original tracks, with the convenient loophole that she remained alive.
Then there’s our own flippy-haired, bright smiling, Eternal Astra IV. She made it three terms before Joey was selected by the lottery to step up as superhero, and everyone expected Joey to take her place. Instead Astra stayed; they both did. Astra’s now on her fifth year, setting new records for the staying power of female Australian superheroes.
She hasn’t died yet. It started out as a running joke, and then a meme. Somewhere along the way it became something that all superhero commentators took completely seriously. And I guess, based on current evidence, the Machine takes it seriously too.
Astra can’t step down until she dies, at least once.
Griff drove me out to meet with Astra III. According to Billy, she was my mother’s confidante in all matters extra-dimensional. I didn’t know what to expect. III was the least distinctive of all the Astras—her superhero-self looked so similar to the previous two that I always needed to stop and check small costume differences to tell them apart.
“I asked The Dark about her,” said Griff, when we were about 20 minutes away from Kedgerah, the small Blue Mountains town where this Astra hung her hat. “He said she was odd.”
“I’m sorry, The Dark said that? A man who lurks on rooftops in the same cape he hasn’t taken off in thirty years? The actual Dark?”
“Don’t shoot the messenger.”
“The only superhero whose therapist needs therapy?”
“Oh, you’re in a fun mood today.”
Kedgerah was a tourist spot, which wasn’t surprising in this neck of the… well, mountains rather than woods. The town had a rich hippie vibe to it, with at least four boutiques dedicated to wind chimes, healing crystals and/or clothing made from hemp. Silk kites fluttered in every window. The single cafe advertised the world’s best veggie burger, made of quinoa and blueberries.
Darlena Serenity, formerly Astra III, formerly Darleen Dempsey, lived on a bush block just out of town. The letterbox was crooked, with a peace sign and the name “Serenity” painted over the rust. The driveway, which we had to traverse on foot because it was so overgrown, was a scraggy trail of gravel, tea-tree branches and rainbow wind chimes, leading past a puddle of a dam up to a caravan.
Oh, and Darlena Serenity Astra had twelve brightly-glowing Cosmic Eggs spread out in a circle around her caravan.
“Fuck,” said Griff, when he saw them.
I already had my iPhone camera on, because I thought it would be cute to do a series of “which dimension is Tina Valentina in” vids to upload once I had my mother safely home. Now I lowered the phone, and turned off the recording. “Um. Those are illegal, right?”
“So illegal,” Griff breathed. “I didn’t know we had any in the country.”
“We didn’t,” said a cheerful voice. Darlena stepped off the steps of her caravan and surveyed us, hands on hips. “I stole them,” she declared proudly. “From three different countries. And it was so worth it.”
She didn’t look like Astra. Sure, it was years since Darlena had stepped out of the Machine and back into civilian life. But she was shorter than her Astra self. Brunette, with white-person-dreads woven inexpertly into her curly hair. Thirty-something barefoot boho, wearing a peasant blouse and tie-dyed skirt.
Crazy eyes. They were the feature that leaped out most obviously. Or they would have, if I hadn’t been so busy staring at the eggs.
Cosmic Eggs were leftover from all those inter-dimensional invasions that were so popular in the 90’s. For a while there, the planet couldn’t go a week without a wormhole opening up and delivering a scary army from the planet Zog (or just as often, a completely different version of the planet Earth that was better at battle tactics than ours). The Cosmic Eggs were used as power sources by a variety of different Scary Space Empires, and were supposed to all have been rounded up and returned to their appropriate dimensions during the Big Magical Items That Don’t Belong On Earth Amnesty of ‘03.
Only the sneakiest, most paranoid governments hung on to theirs, denying all knowledge of the Eggs.
This former Astra had managed to get her hands on twelve of them. I don’t know how she did it, without her old powers. Surely you don’t just wander into foreign countries and steal their most valuable hidden assets.
Unless, of course, these particular Cosmic Eggs had been held back from the Amnesty right here in Australia, by someone who used to be a professional superhero.
When not propelling spaceships across the universe and other dimensions, Cosmic Eggs could also be used as viewing windows into other times, dimensions and realities. These particular eggs were all tuned to various incarnations of my mother. Tina Valentina, 20-something and ready to burn down the patriarchy. Tina Valentina, 30-something style queen and ruthless war reporter. Tina Valentina, author and stateswoman. Media mogul. Chat show queen.
Those were the Tinas I recognised, close enough to our reality’s version to feel like my Mum. But there were other Tinas in the mix, images of them flicking back and forth so fast it made me dizzy.
Scientist Tina. Astronaut Tina. End of her rope stay-at-home Mum Tina. Tina selling fruit on a market stall… designing her own embroidered jeans… training for the Olympics. Tina as Member of Parliament. Tina as Home and Away matriarch. Tina as bank manager. Wedding planner. Kindergarten teacher.
Tina as superhero. Oh, this was amazing. There were multiple dimensions in which Tina Valentina wore a cape and cowl; spandex and a smile. She was The Dark, she was Solar, she was Catsuit, she was Astra.
Always extraordinary, even when she was ordinary.
Not one of them was my Mum.
I had never missed her so much in my life.
When I started paying attention again, I realised Griff and Astra/Darlena were arguing.
“Why can’t you tell us where you sent her?” he demanded.
“I didn’t send her,” Darlene said prissily. “She sent herself.”
“You can’t tell me she didn’t use this set up of yours. You know how many international laws you are breaking by having Cosmic Eggs on your property, let alone using them?”
“What do you understand about any of it?” Darlene said bitterly. “Mr Kid Dark. Everyone knows you didn’t give your powers back like the rest of us. These Eggs are the closest I can get to being Astra again!”
“Please,” I said, hoping to appeal to her sense of fair play. “I need to find my Mum. Are you sure you can’t tell me which dimension you sent her to?”
“I didn’t send her,” Darlene said flatly. “She used me and my eggs for reconnaissance. But I couldn’t find the exact dimension she needed, and besides, I can’t travel dimensionally. I’m not that powerful. Even as Astra I couldn’t do that. If Tina Valentina left this dimension, it wasn’t my doing.”
I wasn’t sure I believed her. I knew that Griff didn’t believe her. But what could we do or say to get her to change her story?
“Hey,” said Griff, his voice taking on a whole different tone. “Should that Egg be making that sound?”
Next thing I knew, I had a mout
hful of bush gravel, because Griff threw me to the ground, his body covering my own. As I coughed and gasped for air under the weight of him, I saw rainbow light pouring out of one of the Cosmic Eggs. There were bits of… was shell the right word? Dimensional shrapnel, scattered all over the ground.
Griff swore and rolled off me, shaking some of the bits off the back of his shirt, which now had several fizzling holes in it. The shrapnel was not hot, I realised, as Griff tore the remains of his t-shirt off him. Where it touched the shirt, and the ground, matter disappeared.
“You’re not invulnerable,” I said, punching him in the arm. “Don’t think anyone’s impressed by your bare chest.”
“Wait, stop,” he said, ignoring me completely.
Darlena half-walked, half staggered towards the broken Cosmic Egg. Her peasant blouse shrivelled where the shrapnel had hit her, and she ignored it as the holes hummed open, leaving her in a saggy bra that had seen better days.
Griff hauled her back by the waist. “Don’t get near that thing.”
“Do you know how long I’ve waited for this?” she howled at him, struggling to be free. “I can be Astra again!”
“Touch what’s inside that egg and you won’t become a hero. You might become a hole in reality...”
“I’ll take it,” she snarled.
Griff threw her.
I’ve seen just about every piece of footage, found and official, that documents the public heroism of Jay Jupiter, AKA Kid Dark. I’ve seen him tuck and roll out of a burning building. I’ve seen him leap over five cars, and a stainless steel robot tyrannosaurus. I’ve seen him swing on a literal vine.
But all that wasn’t real. It was on YouTube, on the TV, at a distance. It wasn’t my mate platonic guy-friend brother Griff doing that. I’d never seen him perform more than a single one armed-push up in my presence.
Until now.
He threw Darlena like she was a bag of laundry. She landed hard in the scrubby gravel, several feet from us, and tipped her head up to growl at him. Her eyes glowed all the colours of the rainbow. “I want that Cosmic Egg.”
“I think you already inhaled half of it,” I put in helpfully.
Darlena ran at the broken Cosmic Egg, coloured lights bleeding from her eyes. Griff got in her way again, using a shoulder throw and back flip combo that shouldn’t exist outside shonen manga.
She got in his face, one glowing hand clawing into his eyes and mouth. Griff screamed.
I had nothing. No weapon, no superpower. Only my phone, and the horrible urge to film what was happening so the world would know how Kid Dark went down.
Yeah sometimes my inner thoughts scare me.
There was a cracking sound, like thunder and opera. The atmosphere changed fast enough that my ears popped. Solar’s fist slammed into The-Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Astra-III, closely followed by Solar herself.
Solar, I had seen fight before. When it came to the current line-up of Aussie Beaut Superheroes, I’d filmed live battles, done my time among the paps that lurk around the Tower, and begged my way past the tape at every officially sanctioned public appearance that didn’t laugh in the face of my Provisional Press Pass (New Media).
Watching her work was always the highlight of my day. She was sunlight and fire and pure brute strength.
Darlena tried to suck some kind of otherworldly power from the broken Cosmic Egg, but Solar was having none of it. With one mighty punch from the curve of her left arm, she sent Darlena flying all the way to the dam. Darlena splashed hard into the dusty mud. With a perfect kick, Solar sent the broken Cosmic Egg after her.
I personally might have thought twice about reuniting the crazy lady with the dimensional weapon she wanted to absorb, but as it turned out, Solar had the right idea. The water and mud of the dam cancelled out the bright shiny rainbow lights, and by the time I had Griff back on his feet, the idyllic bush scene before us included one angry wet woman, a whole lot of broken shell pieces, and Solar looking amazing. Also, some unimpressed native hens.
Griff and I stared at Solar in a shared moment of awe and respect.
“She’s so great,” he breathed.
I elbowed him. “You can’t crush on her. Just saying.”
“I can’t?”
“She’s my age, perv.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “You’ve dated women my age. Tell me the real reason I can’t have a crush on her.”
I stepped on his foot, hard. “I saw her first.”
Griff laughed at me. “There it is.”
“I hate you so much.”
I’ve been wanting to kiss Solar for about four years now.
It’s not the blonde thing, though I’ll admit that the high percentage of blonde female superheroes I happen to be hot for isn’t helping my case.
It’s her smile.
Four years ago, we lost Solar: the Original Series. No one saw his retirement coming. Solar and The Dark were institutions on the team, going back decades. They were rock solid. The other three places were always rotating, but those two? Lifers.
Until sixteen-year-old Joey Marriott stepped up, all freckled and blonde and brave, and took him away from us.
The Australian press didn’t know how to deal with her. For weeks all they talked about was the tragic loss of Our Mightiest, as if it was a disaster on par with Gallipoli, and whatever’s been happening in test cricket lately.
Where Did He Go? Where Is He Now? Why Did He Have To Leave Us?
It was brutal.
Meanwhile, there was a new Solar (not Solargirl, or Ms Solar, or Solarantoinette or any other girly moniker that the press attempted to bestow). She was cute as hell, and tried hard to be a good sport in front of the cameras.
The media nearly wrecked her. Every interview was bland, awful. They asked her about fashion and boy bands and her beauty regimen. Most of all they asked her about Solar: about how it felt to rob Australia of its greatest hero icon. Or they didn’t ask questions at all, filling airtime with statements about how brave she was to go public with her disability, like she was supposed to what, wear some kind of glove to pretend she had two hands?
Angry straight white men filled up the comments sections and the forums, blazed across Twitter and Facebook in their outrage. Death threats. Protest groups. Violent, aggro memes likening her to every other imaginary woman who stole a job from an imaginary man.
The story became the story. Newspapers reported the Twitter drama. Twitter reported the newspaper drama. Feminist blogs and superhero blogs went to war against each other, which was super messed up because some of them were the same blogs.
Solar gave up on interviews altogether. She smiled and waved and saved the day, and she froze the media out apart from the occasional peppy scheduled Tweet. The Tower only let her get away with that for so long—PR is the engine that funds superhero team resources. Eventually (so I heard) they forced her to pick one media outlet to host an exclusive, warts-and-all profile interview at the end of her first term, shortly before (everyone assumed) the Machine was going to rotate in some new cute young thing in to replace her.
Solar picked me.
By picking me, she chose to support a YouTube channel run by another teen who had a fraught relationship with traditional media. (Let us never forget that time a major newspaper implied that I was responsible for my own kidnapping by mad scientist supervillains because I “used my minor celebrity status to invite attention” when I was fifteen years old.)
By picking me, Solar stuck her middle finger up at the whole lot of them. She wanted to speak to the world on her own terms.
I got my first legit press pass to visit the Tower. I sat opposite the bright ball of sunshine in the business, and I discovered after ten minutes of small talk that New Solar/Girl Solar/Millennial Solar was a goddamned treasure. All you had to do was get her chatting about gender and disability awarenes
s, or beating supervillains to a pulp, or being a role model for little girls everywhere, and she lit up like Luna Park.
That interview still brings more views to my channel than any other, years later. The gif I made of Solar leaning in with a cheeky smile on her face and saying “Sometimes you just want to punch something” remains my all-time most clicked, most liked, most appreciated piece of media.
And, yep, from that day onwards, getting to kiss her was extremely high on my bucket list.
Joey stood there in the middle of the scrubby bush block, barely breathing hard. She had just contained the double threat of scary Darlena/Not-Astra and her broken Cosmic Egg, using aerodynamics and a quarter-full dam.
“How did you know we needed help?” I asked, feeling like the damsel in the last act of one of those early 90’s Solar films starring Craig McLachlan and Dannii Minogue.
“I didn’t,” said Joey with her dazzling Solar smile. “Lucky, I guess. I came to find you and Griff because I found out how your mother was planning to travel between dimensions.”
Okay, then. Back to business.
I should keep my kissing impulses to myself until after we rescued my mother. But after that? All bets were off.
We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boffin
I WASN’T SURPRISED THAT THE Aussie Beaut Mightiest Heroes Super Team of Villain-Punching Awesomefaces had a secret science lab that provided their specialised tools, vehicles, medical support, etc.
I live on the Internet, after all. Everyone knows that superheroes must have boffins to Q them up before every mission. There used to be an official Innovation Hub, which provided high-tech gadgetry and all-around smart people support, but that was closed down a couple of political terms ago, when the government started slashing all the science funding they could get their hands on.
Girl Reporter Page 4