Chapter 35

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

Friday 9th April 1999

This might sound silly coming from the guy who’s been wielding a super-powered sword against bizarre monsters for the past nine months, but something weird is going on.

Neither Kayleigh nor Will have attended school since the whole affair with Nick (or rather, since the day before). It took a week or so before it was proclaimed that they had been signed up to a six-week Prince’s Trust course or something along those lines. Easy enough for most people to swallow, at least once it stopped being a sudden oddity sprung upon them and became the new norm. We knew better, though. The two of them had fled the scene as we went toe-to-toe with a Lokon-empowered Nick, so unless they’d enrolled a while back as part of some peculiar contingency plan, it seemed like this was a convenient cover story.

That said, how could they have made it happen? Out of Nick’s shadow, they were just two teenagers without any conceivable way to pull strings and accomplish the bluff, let alone the real thing. And if it was a contingency… with Nick down, what did it matter now? He seemed to be the driving force behind it all, hell-bent on getting the weapons back… Then again, maybe the whole thing with Will was just a bluff itself, and there was a greater plan that we’d simply played into?

… what is it with us and seemingly-unsolvable mysteries?

Still, we’re now into the Easter holidays, a two-week break from school where the absence of Kayleigh and Will has mostly drifted from the forefront of our minds.

I’m not religious, so the only part of Easter that really interests me is the excuse to eat chocolate (not that I need an excuse to do that). I’m surprised how long I’ve managed to make two Easter eggs last, considering I’d normally have half of one a day. That’s how things go when you’ve got a load of friends to hang out with.

(Yes, I know how lame that makes me sound. “Back when I only had a couple of friends, I’d sit around and eat chocolate!” It’s not exactly like that…)

You’d think having two weeks off of school would lead to all sorts of wacky adventures, or even some kind of American Spring Break shenanigans (ha! Us? Me? In a country where Spring Break isn’t even a thing?), but true to form, we spent at least half the time hanging out at Dakota’s. Us deciding to meet up in town and spend some time there instead was about as exciting as the Easter holidays seemed to be getting.

We arranged to meet at midday, so naturally Dakota and I wound up barely arriving on time. Everyone but Zahid was already present, hanging around the wooden seating that encircled a tree in the middle of town. Kendal and Lucy were running around, unsurprisingly, but Bao and Harriet were sat in the tree’s shade, and her arm was wrapped tightly around him while his head hung low.

Dakota must have seen that as soon as I did, because the moment I’d noticed, she took a firmer grip of my hand and increased her pace a little.

“Hi guys,” she addressed the four as we reached earshot.

“Hey,” I added after her, waving a little with my free hand.

“You two made it out of bed, then!” my sister bleated while rushing past us, practically pirouetting. My free hand inexplicably turned into a two-finger salute aimed squarely at her and her cheek.

“Hi,” Harriet smiled up at us gently, almost apologetically.

Bao’s greeting came in the form of a barely-legible grunt, quiet.

I crouched down in front of him out of concern, still holding onto Dakota’s hand all the while.

“’sup man?” I asked him with a light smile of my own.

“Nothing.”

That simple.

“Just having a shitty day…?” I pressed on.

“It’s nothing,” he reiterated glumly. “Leave it. Not worth worrying about.”

This didn’t feel good at all…

“You sure? Because if there’s anything I can do-”

“Can you stop treating me like a kid…?”

“I’m not…”

“You’re literally crouching down to tend to me.”

“… yeah, I am, aren’t I?”

I’m not sure how I’d not realised…

“Yeah.”

“I’ll stop now.”

“Mhm…”

With that, I stood upright, feeling rightly awkward over my actions. Dakota finally released my hand, giving me a pat on the shoulder instead. As ever, she could read me like a book.

“He’ll be fine,” Harriet assured us baselessly, rubbing his back all the while.

It was at that moment that I wondered what it was with girlfriends and comforting gestures.

“Sooooo,” Kendal began while lunging over to us, “any idea where Zahid’s gotten to? He wasn’t doing a driving lesson today, right?”

“This evening, I think,” Dakota told her.

“Then I don’t get- oh, never mind!”

With her usual inexplicable level of energy, she started jumping up and down on the spot, waving her arms wildly, her attention over my shoulder.

“Zahid! Over here! Zahiiid!”

Traumatic flashbacks to the first day of the school year plunged into my heart like steak knives. I turned to see maybe a couple dozen shoppers staring at us, and Zahid trying his best to look like he had nothing to do with us. I couldn’t blame him.

Eventually, begrudgingly, he joined us.

“Do we need to wire a volume control into you or something?” was the first thing he said, glaring unapprovingly at Kendal.

“You wouldn’t have heard me if I whispered,” she reasoned with a shrug.

Apparently choosing not to argue that, Zahid instead looked at Bao, who barely showed any sign of registering his presence. To his credit, he made no attempt to tend to Bao, simply leaving him be.

“Where first, then?” he asked the rest of us instead.

“I thought maybe we could go to the comic shop first,” Harriet informed him. Knowing her, that was clearly for Bao’s sake and not hers.

“Sure…” Zahid conceded gently, his disinterest tempered by Harriet’s intentions.

“To the nerd store!” Lucy declared as we set off. Yeah, she was going to make this difficult…

“I’ll pay for anything you want,” I heard Harriet informing Bao. “So don’t hold back. Batman, Spider-Man, X-Men…”

That seemed to be the entirety of her superhero knowledge. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume Superman and the Hulk merely slipped her mind.

“Err, the Revengers… no, Avengers!”

And that was presumably the result of her dating someone like Bao for the past six months or so.

“Mhm,” came his plain reply.

“You been to this place before?” Dakota asked me.

“Yeah, used to visit it every now and then when I was a kid,” I smiled back fondly. “Once a month, Dad would take me there and to Toys’R’Us to let me spend my pocket money.”

“Cute,” she purred. “I remember Mam and Dad taking me to Toys’R’Us every now and then…”

A fond smile, delicate happiness, was gracing her face when I looked at her. I spent a moment revelling in her beauty.

And promptly walked straight into a lamppost.

Stunned, I stumbled backwards and collapsed on my backside for good measure.

Dakota clearly didn’t know if she should laugh or tend to me, as her sweet smile had turned into something that looked like concern binding amusement.

“You okay…?”

“Yyyeah…” I groaned while easing myself upright, still a little unsteady. The others had stopped too, but continued on their way once they saw I was fine. On her part, Dakota softly kissed the side of my head that had borne the brunt of my collision.

The rest of the trek to the comic shop was swift; it was tucked away in a relatively-quiet corner of town, sandwiched between a Danish patisserie from which a drool-inducing aroma emanated, and a watch repair place that never seemed to have customers. Big display pieces of Batman and Wolverine, apparently trying to outdo each other in looking fearsome and badass, were in the windows. And there, in large pop-art lettering above the door, the name that was either brilliant or ridiculous and I could never decide which, “Cosmic Comics”.

“Batman, and… Wolverine,” Harriet noted aloud, testing herself as she led Bao through the door. Kendal, Zahid and Lucy followed, while I waited for Dakota to stop literally sniffing around the patisserie.

It was only a quick glance back in my direction that alerted her to my continued presence.

“I miiiight buy myself something after we’re done in the comic place…” she told me sheepishly.

“Delicious idea!” I replied, most likely showing my hungry approval on my face as I did.

While she skipped away from the baked goods, I pushed open the door to Cosmic Comics and headed inside.

Like some kind of bizarre optical illusion, what was inside wasn’t what I’d seen through the windows and the panes in the door. No, those rows of shelving and cardboard display pieces were nowhere to be seen; what now confronted me, my friends and my sister was a series of towering bookshelves, stretching ahead of us and to either side in regular intervals for what seemed like forever. And if all the others were like the ones I could clearly see, every single one of them was stocked with comic issues, covers facing forward.

“… hey…! They redecorated…!” I chirped in a confused effort to make light of this mind-boggling situation.

“Why does every one of these things have to top the last one in degrees of weirdness…?” Zahid asked in exasperation.

“We’re still visible from outside,” Dakota pointed out from behind me. “And look…”

I turned to see Dakota holding the door open, and through the door’s glass, the expected normal store layout was visible. As the others crowded around, she waved the door to-and-fro to further display how it was now acting like some magic window into the version of reality we expected to see.

“So, it’s like a pocket dimension or something?” Harriet suggested. “Right, Bao…?”

“I guess…”

Still down. Neither the prospect of coming here nor the apparent billions of comics in this bizarre warped version had lifted his mood. Whatever had upset him did a fearsome job of it.

“D’you think any of these comics are real ones…?” Kendal suggested, wandering over to a shelf now. “Like, Batman #72 or something.”

“I’d probably recognise some issues I got years ago…”

I turned back to the seemingly endless shelves, each one easily standing ten feet tall.

“Might take a while to find one, though. Maybe a couple of years…”

“Bao, you might have a better shot,” Dakota spoke, in full leader mode now.

“Probably,” he sighed as though the idea pained him.

“Odd thing to get hung up on,” Zahid commented while watching Lucy dance playfully on the other side of the open door. She appeared to be in the regular store too. Zahid didn’t seem particularly impressed with her antics.

“I want to test just how thorough this is. If whatever it is that creates all these monsters and warps is powerful enough to recreate real comics.”

With that, she began striding down the aisle with authority; enough authority that the rest of us followed after her without question. That’s how it felt, at least.

There appeared to be no rhyme or reason to how the comics were organised in this unusual realm. While each one was pristine and neatly placed on the shelves, everything was arbitrarily mixed together. Not just Marvel and DC dating back decades; not even merely Image stuff thrown into the mix; but all manner of books, from all manner of genres, in all manner of languages. Asterix in its original French, a Japanese Pokémon collection… it really did seem like every single comic ever produced was recreated here.

As we explored, I took a stray Flash comic from a shelf and flicked through it. While I was unfamiliar with it – it seemed to be from the 60s, maybe the 70s, definitely with the old Flash – it seemed genuine enough. Real art, real words, coherent story as best as I could tell from a fleeting look. I made sure to put it back where I found it, just to be safe.

“Seen anything yet, Bao?” Harriet asked sweetly, looking this way and that to take in as much as she could.

“No…”

“Who knew there were sooooooooooooooo many comics…?” Lucy droned while striding along.

“Do you guys reckon this is like the time the park turned into a huge jungle, and there aren’t any monsters here?” Kendal proposed. “You’d think we would’ve seen something straight away…”

A wild flurry of comic pages burst through from an adjacent pathway so abruptly that it could’ve been a jump-scare.

“It’s okay! I didn’t jinx it!” our afro-sporting friend assured us with a panicked tone. “It’s not a monster!”

“Don’t say that-!” I cried out against reason and fate.

The comic pages span upwards in a tiny tornado, somehow cascading together and morphing into humanoid form, with all the trappings of a superhero and none of the charisma. It posed with papery hands on papery hips, a shallow and menacing attempt at triumph.

“No, it’s okay…! It’s…”

Rather than finishing her excuse, Kendal just shrugged.

“Harriet, Lucy, get out of here,” Dakota commanded as her spear manifested in her grip.

“But it just got exciting…!” Lucy whined back, and even then her voice trailed off as she spoke thanks to Harriet dragging her off in the direction we came. They narrowly avoided more paperheroes stomping out from all around and surrounding the rest of us.

I barely had to think to summon my sword, and we all blasted our Painter gear on in unison… except for Bao, whose flash of yellow hit the corner of my eye a few seconds later.

“Push them back, spread them out.”

Dakota raised her spear in preparation.

“So long as they don’t surround us, we have the advantage.”

“Got it,” Zahid replied, and then the fight began.

I swiped in the direction of the first paperhero, sending a wide arc of blue which it swiftly dodged. Its movement was almost like something from a flip book, rapid frames with subtle changes in shape and colour. Not true, smooth movement. I hoped that would give me an advantage of some kind.

It threw its fist at me, fast enough that I had no time to react, and the blow knocked me back into one of the shelves. Thankfully the shelf didn’t even waver, or else I would’ve set off one hell of a domino effect.

Then again, that may’ve been more convenient a battlefield than an endless number of aisles.

Like Superman preparing to pound a villain, the paperhero drew its fist back to make another hit. I raised my sword and let the fake hero strike that instead of me: the weapon took the force of the blow with ease.

“D’you mind? We’re just here to browse some comics,” I told the enemy before unleashing an almighty blast from the blade. The paperhero was thrown into the opposing shelf while I felt nothing more than a light breeze.

“It feels wrong to fight something that looks like a superhero… and that punch really hurt…”

Another paperhero came around the corner, immediately looking at me as its cape blew choppily. It dawned on me that, with a possibly-infinite number of comics here, there was ample material for thousands of these.

“Don’t suppose either of you would give me a clue on how to stop you all…?” I asked as the two began to round on me. I shimmied along the shelf with my attention laser-focused on them, ready for anything.

As I reached the edge of that shelf, a third monster approached me from behind. I hadn’t been ready for that.

I struck out with my sword, and managed to slice clean through the paperhero behind me; I dashed out through the dispersing flurry of pages and made some distance between myself and the other two. As I turned to check on them, I could see that everyone else had fanned out across the warped store too. Other than a faint flash of colour here and there, I had no clue precisely where they were.

Still, that wasn’t my priority. I took in the advancing paperheroes… while crude, they each had their own individual designs. One of them wore gold and red, and was more overtly muscular than its blue and orange, cowl-sporting companion. I’d made sure to stop in an open point between aisles so I had a better view of any approaching figures, and true to form, several more emerged from all around and began making heroic strides towards me in flip book fashion.

“You’re really not playing fair now…” I told them purely for my own sake; then I span my charging sword around, and thrust the blade into the floor. Glowing blue lines shot out in every direction. If it had worked against the Mokwai, it could work here.

Spears of blue shot up beneath each of my opponents, and maybe half of them were instantly shredded back into stray sheets of printed paper. Unfortunately, some of the other paperheroes had tricks up their spandex sleeves. A couple of them simply caught and broke the spears; another few sped away; one of them floated out of the way; one turned intangible and let the construct pass right through him.

I drew my sword back out and bounced off of the web of blue lines beneath me like it was a trampoline: momentarily level with the flying hero, I launched another arc of blue at her and let it disassemble into numerous bullets. Her attempts to evade were in vain, and her component pages scattered all around.

Landing back down was less than comfortable, though I blunted my fall a tad with a cushion of blue. I had no time to recover as one of the speedsters charged me, throwing me down another aisle with the force of her super-powered sprint. Another brawler stood in wait for me, Hulk-sized and terrifying.

“Wait-” I managed to splutter before he punched me with frightening force. I don’t know how far it sent me, but I wound up a crumpled pile. Every nerve in my body screamed out in agony for a few seconds, and then I felt remarkably soothed. The joys of Lokonessence, I suppose. Weakened, but not down, I dragged myself back to my feet.

The brick wall of a paperhero was steadily approaching from several aisles down, his footsteps genuinely thudding.

Unless he ran, I had time to prepare an attack, but what could I even do? Enlarging my sword’s blade could work, but I would still rather avoid getting close. Bullets wouldn’t do much, the ground-web attack would be futile when he could easily snap spears or break through binding tape…

And every second I thought, his long strides brought him closer.

Time was running out. I was beginning to panic.

Could I create a substance that would trap him? Maybe generate a cage, and reinforce it somehow? And how many other paperheroes was I going to have to fight after that?

He entered the last aisle before the one I was in.

And then a line of sheer white seemed to zip open from the top of his head and all the way down his body.

The two halves began to fall in opposite directions, only to burst apart in pure white droplets that dissolved in mid-air.

Just behind where the giant had been, a female figure stood in… well, in Painter gear. Black clothes, with white detailing, and an emblem almost like a radiation or biohazard sign emblazoned on her chest. In her hand was a large scythe, with its blade glowing white, and golden detailing here and there on its head and shaft. Her identity was obscured with a white mask, vaguely skull-like, black lenses over the eyes, unsettling. Short brown hair was all that I could make out.

“Thanks…” I addressed her uneasily, before noticing the paperheroes approaching behind her. She must have noticed the shift in my gaze, as she turned to face the monsters.

A brief Mexican stand-off ensued; they seemed unsure what to make of her, while I could only imagine she was sizing them up.

She moved first, striking through the first speedster; the second bolted for her, but she was prepared, slicing them just as swiftly.

The powerhouses fell as she weaved between them. The intangible one couldn’t resist her scythe.

In the space of ten seconds, she was the only one left standing.

“Thanks again,” I spoke, now dumbfounded. Had I been that bad at fighting them that it took barely any effort to fend them off? Then again, her weapon had ploughed through them all so much more easily than mine.

A new Lokon weapon…

“I wanna say you’re an ally…” I continued. “I’m Alex Matthews. Who are you?”

She laughed lightly.

I knew that laugh. I hated that laugh.

“See what I mean about masks?”

Her free hand reached up and pulled off the creepy mask to reveal the face of Melody Hill.

“How well they hide the real us?”

My brain surrendered.

“What…? What’s happening? How are you-?”

“All in good time,” she replied, struggling to contain her proud, smug smirk all the same. “But for now, I have a message for you. A plea, almost.”

“You shouldn’t know about… about this…” I insisted, taking a step back for reasons I couldn’t fathom. “No one knows!”

“Alex. Listen.”

She stepped forward in turn.

“Give up the Lokon sword. Give up being a Painter. Stop now and you’ll save yourself so much pain.”

That gave me pause. Her phrasing, more than her message, snagged on my mind.

“When have you ever cared about me being in pain…?”

“I know you can’t trust me,” she observed, “but I have no reason to lie to you right now. No ulterior motives. You don’t understand what you’re doing.”

“No, you don’t- what the hell are you even doing here?!” I spat.

“Look. As a sign of good faith…”

Her scythe blade charged up, a corona of white manifesting around it. With one almighty swing, she sliced through every shelf – every last one in every direction, the entire store emptied of every display and every paperhero. My scattered friends were suddenly visible, each one taken aback by what had happened. Melody lowered her mask again, and with her hair cut shorter than usual, she was suddenly unidentifiable once more.

“Up ahead,” she gestured behind me with a nod.

I turned my back on her, and saw a wooden pedestal still standing with a single comic enshrined upon it.

And of course, when I looked around again, Melody was gone, with only a white tear in space where she had been, already sealing itself up and dissolving away.

“Alex!” Dakota called out from across the barren expanse. “Who was that?”

“Melody,” I replied, loud enough for her and the others to hear but as unenthused – shaken – as I could possibly be.

“Whaaat?!” Kendal screamed out.

Otherwise, no one replied.

Nothing was said as the four of them made their way over to me.

And nothing was said as we headed over to the pedestal.

Nothing, until…

“Huh.”

“What is it, Bao? Is this a special comic or something?”

He didn’t answer Kendal, just staring at Action Comics #583 with its cover of a sad Superman flying away as other characters wished him goodbye. As down as he seemed, there was a light in his eyes now.

“Yeah,” he finally told her. “I’ve never read this one before…”

He took hold of the issue and the shifted reality faded back into the little store I knew. The comic remained in his hands.

…

Our battle aside, the day went pretty well. Harriet bought the comic for Bao and, while he was still gloomy, he was at least glad to have it. We bought lots of nice pastries from the patisserie and indulged in them at Dakota’s, where I finally recounted Melody’s appearance and her message.

“I’m sick of mysteries,” Zahid grumbled earnestly. “Let’s just call her and ask-”

“It’s Melody, I don’t see that working…” I reasoned.

“We can’t give the weapons up,” Dakota insisted. “Not without a good reason. Not when these monsters and reality shifts keep happening.”

“That reminds me…”

Bao spoke up from the armchair.

“Did anyone else find those fake superheroes familiar…?”

“Didn’t recognise them,” I told him. A consensus followed with a chorus of “nope”s and “afraid not”s, accented by some head-shaking.

“Okay…” he murmured.

“Maybe you’ve seen them in a comic before?” Harriet asked. “That could be a lead to follow…?”

“Perhaps…”

Dakota leant forward.

“No more twiddling our thumbs. We need to get to the bottom of this.”