Hey Shimmerphiles,

In case some of you haven’t noticed I’ve begun a new superhero blog serial – True Blue and the Southern Cross Six, chronicling the adventures of an Australian superhero team battling monsters from the Dreamtime. It’s only in its infancy, so I recommend you get in now.

Why isn’t it on this particular blog? Well, the reason is simply that the chapters are shorter, so they’ll likely come out with greater frequency, and the last thing I want to do is drown out the Glimmer Girl content I’ve currently got on the front page. So, True Blue and his mates needed a new home, and you can find a link to it in the sidebar, or follow updates on Twitter or either of my Facebook fan pages.

Look forward to new Shimmer coming out soon, and until next time, take care!

Love and laughs,
Miranda Sparks

Tanya Truman, my best friend, the ever curious puppy dog when she had her guard down, earned another laugh. “Probably,” I shrugged. “There’s been so much crazy $#&% happening that it’s hard to keep track.”

She grinned wryly and leaned into me. “Good thing I know about your secret identity. Now you don’t have to juggle all those lies – at least with me.”

I bounced impatiently as the elevator climbed. It would have been easier to just fly, but Tanya insisted on coming along, meaning we had to take the beetle, meaning we were going to be late because of traffic. Probably not a good thing for a semi-official parole officer to fall behind schedule – Jason was going to let me have it, I just knew.

It figured that he would be waiting at the door when we showed up, just to rub it in. He completely ignored the nasty vibes Tanya was blasting him. “You’re late,” he said, as if I needed reminding.

“You want to maybe can the attitude so we can get this over with?”

Just over a month had passed since the nightmare with the Technocracy and things were only just beginning to settle. You wouldn’t even know that human civilization had almost come to an end – the only real change was that I was made responsible for my opposite sex parallel reality twin, who with his spiked hair dyed black didn’t look all that much like me anymore. He was crafting his own identity as Jason Stone and leaving Jason Cade behind.

The air was as thick as it was bitter as he and my BFF stared each other down. She still hadn’t forgiven him for locking me on a prison planet, and he thought she was a bitch for not getting over it. Me, I was stuck in the middle, not really wanting anything to do with their drama, wishing they would just get the hell over it.

“Nice dye job,” Tanya jabbed. “Now you just need the emo bangs to complete the look.”

“Hey, is that a new haircut?” Jason poked back. “It’s really great – it almost makes you not look like a fat douche.”

“Guys! Do you really have to?”

Salvation came in the form of a dark skinned woman. Her attention turned from the baby in her arms and to the gathering of teens looming in her doorway. She studied Tanya for a moment and finally offered her hand to me. “You must be Kaira,” she deduced. “I’m Agent Cameron Fox.”

I accepted her greeting with a bashful smirk. “Hi,” I all but blurted out. “This is my friend, Tanya. She’s cool – she knows all about Glimmer Girl and TASK and stuff. She just wanted to meet a real secret agent.”

The woman’s lip curled as she considered my words. “I hope you didn’t tell her too much,” she remarked, “or else I would have to kill her.”

My shoulders stiffened at her little joke, but Tanya wasn’t fazed. “And a sense of humor, too!” she cackled. “Is dry wit a pre-requisite for being a spy, and does it come with a laser pen that cuts through walls?”

Cameron shot Jason a knowing grin. Either she really liked the girl or she was planning something insidious. Should I have been worried?

“Why don’t you take Aiden while I show Tanya around,” the agent said, offering Jason the child. “You and Kaira can have your parole meeting on the balcony if you like.”

Jason took the boy who made happy blubbing noises in his arms. Already he seemed to fit in here and was safe, comfortable – gods, I was almost envious of him, a feeling that only intensified the more I saw of the apartment. Though it had all been baby-proofed the rooms bordered on the futuristic, with lights and plasma monitors kicking to life the second somebody entered. It was like something out of a lifestyle magazine which suburban girls like me could only dream of.

Sliding open the glass door Jason led the way out. A gentle wind whipped against us, bombarding our senses with the taste of the city. From up so high you could see it all – from the river to the InfiniTech building, and to the surrounding mountains in the distance.

“What do you think?” Jason asked.

“I think you really hit the jackpot, tiger,” I told him, hoping he’d get the reference. He wasn’t smiling – maybe they didn’t have Mary Jane Watson on his world, or maybe it was something else. “You okay?”

He let himself get lost looking at the drooling kid, as if he could escape his heavy thoughts. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

Jason looked even more lost, but still he smiled, shrugged. “What do you want me to say?” His chuckle was empty. “There’s a lot to get used to, I guess. Gods, I spent three years eating pellets and drinking from a tube. Whenever I’d escape I’d sometimes find cans of beans or stale candy bars. Now there’s fresh meat and vegetables, fruit, cereal, soda! I don’t have to sleep with my arms strapped to my side with machine parts sticking into my skin… and the people! Do you have any idea how long I waited just to go outside again? Just to have a conversation?”

It was hard to forget the kind of hell he’d been through – I’d seen it firsthand. Maybe that’s why Tanya wasn’t so forgiving, because she had no way of grasping the scale of what had been done to him. Remembering that put a halt on my jealousy – Jason deserved this life. This was his light at the end of the tunnel, and no way was I going to let anyone take that away from him.

“Things are better now,” I told him, and he agreed.

“Doesn’t mean I don’t regret how things went down,” he reasoned, “and on top of that I miss the hell out of flying. Some days I forget how grounded I am now, and almost jump.”

“That’s got to drive you crazy.”

“You’d know.”

I really did feel for Jason – I couldn’t help it. Like me, it’d been years since he was a regular human. Flying, dancing through the air, dashing at the speed of light was normal for us, and to suddenly have that taken away was the stuff of nightmares. I cringed at the knowledge of what TASK had done – inserting a nanomachine payload into his brain, blocking the very specific synapses required for transformation. They’d probably learned by studying me, and now he was theirs with gravity as his prison.

Sensing the need for a change in topic Jason nudged my arm. “Don’t let me get you down,” he laughed. “What about you? How are things with Mom and Dad?”

Gods, could he have asked any more complicated a question. “Good, I guess.”

“You guess?”

I shrugged. “They’re still adjusting to the whole me-as-a-girl thing. Dad doesn’t exactly know how to talk to me all the time, so I have to keep prompting him whenever he’s curious. Mom and I, we keep fighting all the time, but it’s different now.”

Jason leaned closer. Aiden mimicked him. “Different how?”

“Well, instead of fighting about her not accepting me, now we’re fighting about how she thinks I should do things, like how I should wear my hair, or how I should co-ordinate what I’m wearing, or blasting me for either wearing too much or too little make-up. She thinks she’s helping, but she’s not.”

“Sounds like a normal mother-daughter relationship,” Jason snickered.

“And I think that’s what’s freaking her out. Hell, it’s freaking me out!” I admitted. “Neither of us is used to it yet.”

He shrugged and bounced the baby in his arms. “If it’s not one drama it’s another,” he mused. “But that’s the life of a superhero, isn’t it? It’s just a soap opera except with punching instead of kissing.”

I grinned. “Honestly, I prefer punching. It’s less messy.”

We stood and stared at the skyline, ranting about this thing and that. This was the new status quo – it was going to take some adjusting to.

* * * *

The beetle ride into the city was quiet, or at least I was. My thoughts carried me far away from Tanya’s ramblings about satellite footage and hacking the accounting databases of foreign national powers – all the stuff of a TASK desk jockey that she never knew could be exciting. I was in my own little world, not processing anything as much as I was lost in a feeling.

Things were balancing out again, but that wasn’t good enough.

“Earth to Kaira Cade,” Tanya whistled. “Are you in there, or do I have to call a SWAT team?”

My head rolled in her direction so I could rest my eyes on her. “Keep talking, I’m listening,” I told her, certain that the next thirty seconds could bring me back up to speed.

“What’s with you today? You’ve been a real space cadet.”

I shrugged. What did she want me to say? Even I didn’t know what was wrong. “Maybe I just need some chai,” I figured aloud.

Tanya grinned and flicked the indicator. “Right. Lovin’ Spoonful it is.”

“Not yet. I need to make another stop first.”

That was the first she’d heard of it, of course, and she let me know with an incredulous glance. We’re supposed to be sharing secrets, it seemed to say, but some things just needed to be kept private.

“I need to go to the zoo,” I told her.

“What’s at the zoo?”

The answer filled my stomach with dread. “So you know who Simon Simian is.” Of course she knew who Simon Simian was – countless jokes had been made about who Simon Simian was, and our… well, colorful history.

“Ah, so you’re finally having that second date,” she teased. Tanya laughed. I didn’t.

What part of ‘I did it to save the city’ was so hard to understand? It felt as though I’d told the tale a thousand times. He was a rampaging supervillain, I was the hero – he was trying to turn Milestone City into a jungle, I was trying to stop him, he fell in love with me at first sight… and the rest is history.

‘I’ll turn myself in,’ he’d said, ‘for but a simple kiss.’ For as long as I’ll ever live I’ll never forget that moment – the loneliness in his eyes, that glimmer of hope, and three hundred hostages that needed me to act. Do you really think I had a choice? I puckered up, smooched those leathery lips and in exchange he turned himself in. Sad, really, that someone would do something so drastic for the slightest affection, but that’s beside the point – Tanya was still being a jerk by dragging it up.

“They’ve got him working odd jobs,” I told her.

Tanya looked confused. “Wait, you mean they haven’t got him locked in one of the cages? Who let him out of prison?”

“Prison’s not about throwing bad guys away and forgetting about them. It’s about rehabilitation. Even supervillains get released for time served. Simon got out early for good behavior.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah,” I told her sharply, “and I’m proud of him for it. From the sound of things he’s really turning it all around.”

She regarded me cautiously, as she probably should have, because I was in a mood. No more jokes – she got the picture, but still she had to ask “are you sure he’s not doing all this because he still holds a candle for you?”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know.

* * * *

There were only a handful of people who knew Simon Simian’s origin, and I was one of them. Maybe if more people knew about what he’d gone through and where he’d come from they’d be more sympathetic, or maybe not – the world doesn’t spare much thought for the villains. That job is usually left to the heroes that put them away.

The way I’d heard it told Simon was the son of an old school, red scare era mad conqueror called the Apelord. Where did the Apelord come from? Well, that’s where the story gets a little fuzzy. Rumor has it that he was the product of an early Soviet rocket experiment in which Russian scientists thought it would be a great idea to shoot a gorilla into space. Crazy, right?

Of course the Russians denied it, especially when their experiment was bombarded with cosmic rays and returned to Earth with super-strength and enhanced intellect. Officially on paper it never happened, yet there were the heroes, fighting a very real threat.

Read any history book in the last fifty years and you’ll see Apelord’s name cropping up in the weirdest places. Most kids in class laugh about it, a megalomaniac gorilla, like it’s a cartoon or something, but it happened, and anyone who was around to remember knew to be scared.

Eventually Apelord got it into his head that he wanted to start a dynasty. Apparently his dream was to recreate the Planet of the Apes – a dream that fizzled when the world’s greatest heroes raided his compound and found new homes for his children. That’s where Simon comes in.

It couldn’t have been easy for a kid like Simon, to suddenly be stranded in a world where there was nobody like him. A foster family tried to raise him like a normal child, but not even they could get completely past his appearance. He was picked on in school, laughed at by girls, and even though he’d inherited his father’s incredible cognitive abilities he didn’t earn any respect.

Faced with that brand of daily hurt a lot of people would turn inward, become isolated, but not Simon. He made a choice to go the other way – to become every bit the villain his father was.

At least that was his plan at first. Simon didn’t have the same kind of fury in him that the Apelord had. He was just a kid who was acting out. All he needed was a push in the right direction. Somehow fate decided that push would come from me, Glimmer Girl, who somehow showed him that not all people were jerks.

When I found him he was in the tiger enclosure, pruning branches off a tree. Dressed in khaki overalls he was a far cry from the villain I knew. He was just an average Joe now – that is if Joe was a six hundred pound gorilla wearing wire rimmed glasses. At a glance he looked happy enough, but this was a social call. If he’d gone to all the effort to reform the least I could do was say hi.

“Please don’t tell anybody I didn’t pay the cost of admission,” I joked.

Simon turned, not even a little surprised to see a masked girl floating beside him. Like the children below who were excited to see a real, live hero he beamed. “Oh my goodness gracious! Glimmer Girl! It’s been a very long time!”

“It’s only been a year and a half, but I suppose time’s a lot slower on the inside.”

“Only if one has nothing with which to occupy one’s self,” he mused. “Despite its cold and gloom the Chamber brags a very impressive library. I have had ample opportunity to become reaccustomed with the greats – Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn, Gogol, Shakespeare, Dickens…”

“Dan Brown, Stephanie Meyer.” Simon was not at all impressed. “Kidding! Kidding! You think I read that trash? Gods, I don’t even have time for good authors.”

“Perhaps, then,” the gorilla suggested, “you should ‘make’ the time.”

“Knowing my luck I’d get to page three, then the world would blow up.”

Simon chuckled and swung to the next branch. “Your sense of humor has always been your most admirable trait, though I think a little more optimism would not go astray.”

“Hey! I’m all about optimism,” I protested. “Just because I expect the worst doesn’t mean I don’t hope for the best, and there’s always a silver lining. Crisis is Chinese for opportunity or something like that.”

“You mean that the Chinese use the same word for ‘crisis’ as they do for ‘opportunity’,” Simon snorted. “Which is exactly why you are here, isn’t it? To see how I am adjusting to my new role in human society.” Ever astute, Simon was. He furrowed his brow and sat himself on a branch. “It is sometimes difficult. While I do believe that most humans mean well they are very poor at demonstrating the fact. I have been the recipient of many types of look…”

My heart went out to him. Poor guy – he was all alone in the world. It took everything I had not to fly closer and give him a comforting hug, but it probably would have sent the wrong message. “I know what that’s like,” I told him. “I mean, it’s not exactly the same. People see me and they see another human… most of the time.”

If there was one thing Simon and I could relate on it was the number of people who called us ‘it’. Who would have thought that transgender girls and gorillas would have something so tragic in common?

“You are the only one who truly understands,” he sighed.

“I-I don’t know about that.”

Simon paused and looked up the same way a lost child might. “While I was in the Chamber I had a lot of time to think – you were in my thoughts often.”

Okay, definitely didn’t like where this was going. “Simon, listen…”

“I understand if you don’t feel the same way,” he lamented sadly. “Love that only goes one direction is no love at all. I only meant to say that you were the first person who ever showed me kindness, and for that I am grateful, and it is for you that I am trying to make an honest living.”

“That’s really sweet…”

“Yes, it is, rather,” he interjected.

I smiled and flew in closer, again careful not to send the wrong signal. This was going to take every bit of diplomacy I had. “You’re a really great friend,” I nodded, “and I’m proud of you. I know that none of this is easy, but you – you’re taking the first steps toward something amazing. Most guys don’t have the stones for this.”

Yeah, I know – putting a lonely villain in the friend-zone is a fast-track ticket to a rampage, but there was no other way it could go down. Besides, I had more faith in Simon than that. Even if he was disappointed he would move on and grow, because he really did care about doing the right thing – or at least that’s what the parole board had determined.

Simon fumbled. Despite the awkwardness he still tried to face me and smile – his pride wouldn’t let him be upset. “My shift ends soon. Maybe we could go for coffee.”

Ugh, of all the times. “I’d love to, but I’ve already got plans,” I told him, “and a ton of homework! A lot of classes have to cram since the whole Technocracy thing brought the city to a halt, meaning no social life for me.”

“I could do your homework for you.”

“That would be awesome,” I laughed, “but I think the teachers would notice if I suddenly developed super-intelligence. Brilliant as you are, I don’t think you could play as dumb as me.”

He looked hurt on my behalf. “You are not dumb.”

It was hard not to be taken by his outward nature, but then you had to remember this was the same guy who tried to destroy Milestone City once. Of all the wonderful, great things I had to say about Simon Simian they were all tempered by this fact – well, that and I didn’t feel the lightning attraction he did for me, which always makes things weird.

“Sometimes I am,” I told him and lifted higher into the air. “Listen, Simon, I’ve really got to jet. I’m glad you’re doing okay. I’ll probably stop by again in the next couple of days. Cool?”

“Cool,” he said, and raised his thumb in approval.

I felt guilty about how glad I was to get away. Somehow it didn’t seem fair, to him or to me. It pained me to know how alone Simon felt, but I couldn’t be the solution to that, especially while I was juggling three secret identities – Glimmer Girl, Kaira Cade and her former persona, Justin, who was quickly becoming a ghost of the past. To drag someone else into that nightmare just wouldn’t be fair.

* * * *

One tall chai latte, served before I’d even ordered. The ‘Norse God of the Bean’ had sensed my arrival, and for that I thanked her. That was the great thing about the Lovin’ Spoonful – they never kept you waiting, and after the day I’d had I really needed the pick-me-up.

Tanya beamed as I approached our usual spot. I just knew there was a crack waiting. “So, did you get lucky?” Like that one.

I flopped on the leather seat, tired of the jokes as I was of everything lately. “Can we not even go there? Please?”

“Friend-zoned, huh?”

“Yeah. By me. Now drop it.”

Her eyes hardened – the disapproving glare like that of an older sister was in full effect. Whatever. What did I care? She was the one being a jerk. “You’ve been really pissy with me lately, young woman,” she observed.

I leaned in and whispered harshly, “you ever think that maybe I’m pissy because I don’t like it when you joke about me kissing gorillas?”

“It’s got nothing to do with gorillas,” she tutted. “KC, usually you can roll with it when I’m trolling you, but for like the past month you’ve been in a freaking mood. Everything sets you off – you’re on a hair trigger. Whatever it is you’re sitting on, you need to deal with it.”

“I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”

Tanya almost laughed – almost. “Bull you don’t. Ever since you kissed… what’s his name? Mark? You’ve retreated into yourself. You were on such a high after coming out, so sure of yourself, and now… I don’t know. You’re moping, I guess.”

You know how some people know you so well that they’ve always got you pegged? Gods, I hated her for that, but she was right on the money.

“Nothing’s going to happen with Mark,” I told her.

“Why not?”

“Because,” I continued, as if it needed explaining, “guys as a habit generally don’t like girls who aren’t really girls, and freak when they find out after they’ve kissed them.”

“Kaira, don’t be a moron. You are a real girl.”

“Now is not the time to be the super-supportive best friend in the whole world,” I groaned.

“I’m sorry, you’re right. Let me just flick the bigot switch in my brain that’s kept me from saying all the horrible transphobic things I’ve been meaning to say all this time. Seriously, KC, you’re doing this on purpose. I get that you’re scared of being rejected, but I doubt you’d have let yourself like him if you thought he was one of those types of guys.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that it wasn’t fair not to tell him,” I said, “and it’d be even more unfair to keep fooling around while keeping him in the dark, so I’m going to stop. Quit while I’m ahead.”

Tanya frowned. Yeah, I was being stubborn, but there was a reason for it. “Why don’t you just tell him now?” she offered.

Did I really need to spell it out? “Because even if I do that changes everything. Even if he doesn’t freak out he won’t want me. Why spoil a good thing?”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“I’m not going to take the chance,” I told her. “Besides, who has the time for boyfriends? It’s not like things aren’t complicated enough already.”

Her stink eye said it all – this discussion wasn’t over, but I didn’t care. I was still right, wasn’t I? That and I really didn’t want to worry about relationships. Everyone I ever knew that had one under the age of twenty was the subject of rumor, gossip, judgment – who needed that? Not me.

So there I sat, Kaira Cade – forever single. It was probably for the best.

* * * *

There was dignity in his work, or so he continued to tell himself. Simon remembered the words of his rehabilitation officer and what he’d been told time and again, ‘none of this is going to be easy, but ultimately it’ll be worth it.’ It was an idea upheld purely by faith and the promise that he would no longer be seen as a monster, but the equal of humans – that it would be kindness that vindicated him, not malice.

However, such thoughts did not come naturally to one such as Simon. Having spent years under the careful watch of the Apelord, his father, he was indoctrinated with radical teachings that were far divorced from such notions as justice or compassion. ‘Respect is the product of fear,’ he could remember him saying. ‘It is not earned, but taken. Dash the head of a human, or any creature, against a rock, and you may watch the rest bleed respect for you.’

For a portion of his life Simon had thought it the truth of the world, until he saw those who would not bow to fear – the heroes. Apelord, and Simon too, had made attempts to overcome their power, and each time were put down, imprisoned, and isolated from the world. Though while the Apelord raged from behind bars Simon learned a lesson in humility, and for that reason vengeance did not fully take root in his heart.

Scaling the wall of the gorilla enclosure Simon removed the sack of assorted fruits from his shoulder and did his best to ignore the curious eyes above. Human beings – they did love to stare. At least the other members of his relative genus had the sense to keep to themselves, at least until it was their turn to be fed.

Simon plodded through their ranks and considered their position. Like him they were imprisoned – they in a pen, he in the constraints of a human society to which he did not belong. Yet they seemed content with their lot. So long as these simple creatures received regular meals and room to play what need did they have of worry? In that Simon took both envy and pity on them.

“Whoa, check it out! One of the monkeys is wearing clothes!”

In the few days that Simon had held his current position he had been frequently been bombarded by similar remarks, and each time he would correct them the same way. “You mean to say that there is an ape wearing clothing,” he said pointedly.

The youth, of course, was not interested in being educated – rather he and his friends were more taken with this new spectacle. “The monkey can talk, too!”

“He just said that he was an ape, dumbass,” one of his friends pointed out.

“Ape, monkey, whatever! I want to know if he can sing.”

Was this what his existence had been reduced to? In the far echoes of the subconscious his super-ego roared with the voice of his father. Smash their heads, break their skulls – it would have been so easy to bring them to their knees. Did they not know who he was? How dare they disrespect his birthright! The son of Apelord, however humble, was still above such ridicule.

With strength and agility surpassing that of his brethren Simon pounced and landed on the stone ledge above the enclosure where he sat eye to eye with he who would mock him. It brought him great satisfaction to see the boy tremble, though his scowl revealed only the fury he nursed.

“It would only be fair to inform you that my former opinion of humanity has been waning of late,” he snarled, “though the actions of individuals such as yourself are slowly tipping the scales toward the negative. This would be an unfavorable conclusion for you, agreed?”

The boy didn’t answer, at least not directly – the way in which he quivered was enough to satisfy Simon’s beastly urges.

As it was not befitting to leave a former super-criminal completely to his own devices the zoo had employed a chaperone, who until that moment had not yet seen the event transpiring. When she saw the aggressive stance that Simon had taken she sprinted through the crowd, pulled the boy away and placed herself between them.

“Simon, what the hell?”

Of course Simon was beyond discussing the matter. “Ms. Jackson, thank you for employing me. It was very kind of you, but I did not take this position with the understanding that I would face belittlement on a daily basis.”

“Simon, come on. It was just another dumb kid.”

Plodding to the exit on all four limbs Simon grew more impatient when his supervisor tried to block his path. “I tried to be polite,” he explained, “but since that failed allow me to evoke a modern idiom. ‘Take this job and shove it!’”

Another tremendous burst of strength launched Simon into the air past all reach. To live the life of a normal person – what a farce that turned out to be.

* * * *

To be continued…

Justin, that was to say Jason, searched the room to no avail. Even after pulling out drawers, emptying the wardrobe and upturning the bed he couldn’t find what he was looking for.

Crap, he cursed. Why then? Right when Kaira needed him most what could have been the key to her salvation had to disappear into thin air! Had their parents found it? Even if they had they probably would have thought it was a toy and left it alone, and there would have been no reason to pack it in the evacuation.

Marching into the hallway still in his Starbolt costume he considered searching the other rooms, even the ones that would have no business housing the device he was after. Gods, how desperate was he going to get? There had to be a logical explanation as to why a freaking mind-body transfixator what-cha-ma-thingy had to have disappeared!

Little did Starbolt expect that said explanation would appear and have it pointed directly at him. “Looking for this?” Tanya fumed, ready to unleash whatever hell the device had in store for them.

He turned slowly and dreaded the voice from behind. It made sense that it should happen this way – after all, why would the gods deem anything he ever did to be easy? “Hey, Tanya,” the boy winced. “I get the feeling you’re not just going to just let me have the gun, are you.”

“Not a chance.”

This he knew was going to be a delicate operation. He tried to explain further: “Tanya, I need the mind-swapping gun or Kaira will die. Please give it to me.” Way to sound like a supervillain, he chided himself, not that there was any time for niceties.

Her fury was palpable. Lifting the ray so that the sights met with her searing glare she snarled at the hero. “What the hell did you do to her?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Starbolt pleaded. “Didn’t you see the end of the world out there!? One minute we’re fighting robo-bugs and space clones and the next…!” She wouldn’t believe him – not after he’d thrown away Kaira’s life once already, but this was different. Somehow he had to show her. “I’m trying to save her.”

It wasn’t surprising to see his words fail to stir the girl. She was Kaira’s best friend, after all – to hear that she was still suffering pushed her to the very edge. That and taking into account all of the hero versus villain, good against evil, end of the world apocalypse type stuff, it was a lot to take in. Sometimes Starbolt forgot how little the problems of mere mortals could be, and how the world of superheroes could be so terrifying.

“You know I’ve been looking out for her my entire life,” Tanya muttered darkly. “I’ve bled for her, been in loads of trouble for her, and screamed my @#$%ing lungs out for her. I’ve been there for every bully, every bigot telling her she’s going to hell, and right up to you who actually sent her there!”

Starbolt looked away in shame. “I’m sorry,” he said. His response was cold, automatic – being threatened at gunpoint he couldn’t summon the kind of remorse she wanted from him, and that it seemed was going to be a huge problem.

“#$%@ you! #$%@ you! #$%@ you!”

She had every right to be angry, of course, but it wasn’t helping the situation any. Starbolt had only one worry on his mind, and that was to save the bleeding Kaira. “Tanya, I need you to give me the gun,” he repeated slowly. “Without the gun we can’t save Kaira. Please. We haven’t got much time.”

Somewhere in that split second between hissing and pulling the trigger Starbolt knew she wasn’t going to listen. Before the energy eruption had even begun he was already in motion, dashing at sub-light speeds to one side of the room and back again, returning with a grab and a sharp elbow to the girl’s face.

Tanya collapsed to the ground, her glasses shattered and blood pouring from her nose. Starbolt had the gun. He’d been in this situation a thousand times before – really, she should have known better.

Lifting herself from the ground the girl sputtered in a daze. He’d only given her what he’d call a ‘tap’, but even that was probably more than what most could handle. She winced as she looked up and practically spat when she told him “I’ll never forgive you…”

Starbolt turned and aimed himself at the window, ready to shoot off into the sky. “That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll never forgive myself either.”

The all-too-human girl stumbled. Even without any powers she was still a fighter. Starbolt couldn’t help but think how lucky Kaira was to have a friend like her – gods knew he was when he had Tommy to watch his back.

“Where’re you going?” she coughed helplessly.

He could have left her there without an answer – it probably didn’t matter one way or the other if he said anything but all the same he wanted to explain. “I know what kind of bastard you think I am, and you’re probably right. What I did to Kaira was the king of all dick moves. But… things changed. The Technocracy came after us and we won. It was a battle I fought for years and now it’s over… and I owe her for that.”

“What’re you gonna do?”

Starbolt shrugged and blasted from the room with tremendous force. Actions, he supposed, were louder than words. Maybe if he played his cards right he could still redeem himself – at the very least Kaira Cade would get to keep her life, and even better, the life she deserved.

* * * *

The last thing I remember was being weightless in freefall. Where’s the tunnel? That was the all-consuming thought going through my… well, I didn’t have a head anymore, I supposed – but there were lights everywhere. They weren’t white lights, either, which was the weird thing. Instead they were all translucent splotches of color like what you see when you close your eyes too hard.

Was this death? If it was then it was nothing like the stories. Really it was more of a mood than a place, somewhere between annoyance, apathy and acceptance. A mild ennui, perhaps? A listless Sunday afternoon?

Suddenly there was a tug. It was a shock, as if it were the first time I’d ever encountered something with substance. Whatever was pulling at me didn’t have a face, but while I was still deciding whether or not I should have tried to resist I heard a voice. It spoke as if directly into my mind’s eye.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and I knew.

Next I was laid back with eyes wide open staring at the rough texture of the off-white ceiling. I was in the hospital again, reeling in pain. How had I gotten there? I tried to prop myself upright, but it was a battle. And then…

“Justin! Oh Lord, I’m so glad you’re okay.” There was no escaping my Mom’s grip as she pulled me into her shoulder, not that I would have wanted to. Wait, why did she recognize me? Not unless…

I looked to my fingers and that was exactly what I saw – my fingers! Not the thin little digits that Jason had left me with after the body-swap but those I was born with. My soul had been reunited with my original flesh, and though we mightn’t have been on the best of terms it was comfortable and familiar – in other words it just felt right.

Through the heady mix of confusion and relief I almost forgot to spare a thought for my body-double. Where was Jason in all of this? What had happened that things should suddenly go back to normal? Then again those questions could wait – I was too much enjoying being with my Mom.

She pulled away to get the doctor, but I stopped her. Last thing I needed was to be poked at, especially after dimension-hopping for as long as I had. “Can we stay and talk for a bit? Then I’ll let the doctors probe me and not complain. Promise.”

A look of fear fell across her face. Recently we’d done more fighting than talking – my guess was that she didn’t want to start again the second we had our happy reunion. Still, she agreed.

“What do you want to talk about?” she offered, forcing a smile. As if she didn’t know.

“About everything,” I shrugged. “I know I’ve been grabbing a lot of attention lately, and I’m not sorry about expressing myself, but… I’m still sorry that you guys got hurt.”

As if right on cue my body started shaking – the weeks that had past were finally catching up. It turns out getting lost on countless parallel Earths, leaving your family and life behind and even being stranded in a body that doesn’t rightly belong to you takes its toll. Every day I struggled not to think about home and about the people I’d abandoned, just because I thought they’d be better off without me. Now that I was back where I was started I didn’t have to be strong anymore, and the dam walls collapsed.

Mom swooped in dutifully and wrapped her arms around me, but I was still a million miles away. She asked me what was wrong and I answered breathlessly, “I wish you could just love me for who I am.”

Of course she was confused. “What are you talking about, Justin? I do love you, now and always.”

And like clockwork I recoiled. She was hurt. Great. Last thing I wanted to do was to cause any more drama and that’s what I’d done by opening my big, stupid mouth. I curled up even tighter, wishing that somehow I could disappear, wishing that there weren’t at least three other patients in the ward staring directly at us. If not for them, my Mom and my stupid secret identity I might have flown out of there all the way to the ends of the Earth – maybe even the moon.

“Justin,” she whispered, this time climbing up onto the bed with me, “I will always love you. Gay, straight… transexual…” Figured that she had to choke on that one. “I’ll always be here for you, no matter what. I just honestly think this is a phase, that’s all. I think that by chasing this that you’re making a mistake.”

“Then let me make my mistake,” came my plea. “I’m not asking to have surgery tomorrow, or to do anything dramatic or irreversible. I just want to be honest with myself and for you to be happy for me while I work it all out. That’s all.”

She looked away solemnly in thought. Back and forth, back and forth, she was just as tired of this discussion as I was. Somewhere something had to give, and it did. “If you do this,” she said, “it’s not going to be easy.”

“You think I’ve never dealt with hard stuff before?” Of course she didn’t know the half of it. Bullies and bigotry were one thing – it was a probably good thing she didn’t know what else I got up to.

I could see in her eyes the last grain of resistance blow into the wind. “Okay,” she said. “Just promise me that if you ever need anything, or you’re ever in danger…”

“You’ll be my first port of call.” After either Tanya or TASK, of course.

Confusion lingered between us. Was this it? It didn’t feel like a victory, but it wasn’t a loss either. It was progress, and that was worth the awkward hug, right? I tried to tell her that everything was going to be okay, but it was obvious that she couldn’t bring herself to believe that. Maybe it was because I was just a kid and hadn’t seen the world like she had, or maybe it was just her job as a mom to worry, I don’t know. At least I could be honest without feeling guilty anymore.

“Excuse me,” followed a voice. Prying myself away I was in no way surprised to see the handsome, tan, blond haired doctor standing at the doorway. “Hello, Justin. It’s good to see you awake.”

Mom collected herself and hurried to her feet. “Sorry I didn’t call you right away, Dr. Finch. I just got caught up…”

“Quite alright,” Artemis smiled and turned his attention back to me, “but I was wondering if I could run some follow up tests and have a private word with your son here.”

“I’ll be fine,” I told my Mom. Besides, it wasn’t like I hadn’t had these sorts of encounters with ‘Dr. Finch’ before. Reluctantly she released me from her watch and allowed the orderlies to wheel me out. It was time for my de-briefing with TASK and not a moment too soon – I had a whole lot of questions that needed answering.

“So,” I asked the cloaked spy, “what did I miss?”

* * * *

The Chamber – abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

In Laser Lass’ world it was an impenetrable fortress and the base of operations for the mercenary terrorist organization, FANG. In this reality, however, it was a TASK operated prison facility for superhumans positioned in the crushing depths below the Arctic Ocean. Those who went in did not come out.

Glimmer Girl’s counterpart sat in the concrete corner of her cell to stew. There wasn’t much else to do – the nanomachine injection administered by staff had left her neutered of her powers, just like every other poor son of a bitch in the block. What’s more the girl found herself placed among the men, not that she personally minded all that much – maybe she could have some fun, assuming they didn’t get too rowdy with her.

TASK’s resident interrogator, a deceptively pleasant man working under the guise of ‘psychiatrist’, sat on a steel chair between two guards and leaned forward. It had been the same story for the past week in which he’d had one-way conversations with her, gently probing for details about her home.

Of course Laser Lass thought him an idiot – had they really wanted something from her they’d have been better off applying torture. Then again the rules in this world were different – even in a secret prison TASK wouldn’t attempt using ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ on a minor. That a people could be so weak was laughable to her.

“So, what’s an average day like for you, Kaira?” he asked for what was probably the hundredth time. The answers he received usually weren’t very informative.

“Well, first I wake up and eat a hearty bowl of go #$%@ yourself,” she grinned, “then I punch guys like you so hard that they can taste their own scrote.”

Many of her answers were less charming still.

Meal time came and went seemingly at random, as did the lights. It was always the same old slop and a paper cup of water. Day and night quickly became a distant fantasy, as did the concept of days themselves. Sometimes she would even catch the room shrinking. Next to the guards talking about metric tons of water sitting above them coupled with mind-boggling numbers the girl’s claustrophobia began to sneak up on her. Stupid mind games – she wouldn’t let them break her.

“Your friends aren’t coming for you,” the psychiatrist remarked. “Mark Trent and Brent Cassidy, also known as the Vanquisher and King Claw. They were with you, right?”

“$%@# you,” the girl spat.

“Interestingly enough they told me the exact same thing.” He frowned at her, tired of these one way talks – not as tired as she was, though. “They were taken into custody mere hours ago, but they won’t be coming here, at least for a while. The director has approved the surgical extraction of information in the event that you don’t answer any of my questions.”

Laser Lass giggled facetiously, lost between amusement and delirium. “You won’t do that. You’re the ‘good guys’ – this whole universe is full of @#$%in’ pussies.”

“Yes, we are the good guys, and we’ve been nice until now,” the still nameless man told her pointedly, “but don’t think we’re afraid to get our hands dirty.”

He was bluffing and the villain knew it. Did he really think he could scare her? Her eager grin challenged him to try, though the poor fool wasn’t even aware of the two bodies behind him that had yet to strike the ground.

Before the first of the guards fell the doctor was pulled back from his seat with a yank pull and thrown into the hallway. The impact had only lift him winded, which was just as the masked would-be murderer had intended.

“Took you long enough,” Laser Lass groaned, searching for the energy to bring herself back to her feet.

The Vanquisher huffed and stared down at the interrogator, imposing on him feelings of absolute terror. Don’t even think of hitting that alarm button, his eyes said, though he knew it was bound to happen the second they left.

“Claw and I made contact with the Mechanic,” the scoundrel rasped. “Dimensional gateway is open. We can go home whenever we want.”

Music to Laser Lass’ ears. “Then let’s not screw around here,” she grinned and clung on to her lover’s arm. As she strolled from the cell she paid a final thought to the doctor on the ground and wondered why he was still breathing. By fortune the villainess discovered one.

“I want you to pass a message on for me,” she said. “Tell Starbolt and what’s-her-face… Glitterbug or whatever – it’s not over. I’ll be back to stomp a hole in both of them.” It seemed only fair to her – after all, Jason was the one that tried to screw her first.

With a gentle tug the Vanquisher ushered the girl away. The sooner they were out of that backwater reality the better.

* * * *

Nobody expected the invasion to have hit Milestone City as hard as it did. With a solid portion of the power grid being taken out a lot of homes lose the ability to store food among other things. Stores were overflowing, some ransacked – turns out a lot of people just weren’t prepared to deal with the fallout of an inter-dimensional disaster and were suddenly desperate for spam.

Lucky for most the army was on top of things, keeping the peace as well as providing food, shelter and light for those who needed it. Those who returned so soon after the evacuation were welcomed back with a renewed sense of community, or so I’d been told. I hadn’t seen it yet in the three days the hospital kept me back for observation – but when I did come back it was like being part of a days-long block party, but without the music. Despite the hardships everybody was smiling and glad to see each other, even the ones who were confused when I showed up dressed like a girl.

Inside of the next week things were back to normal. The power had returned, as had a lot of the residents – businesses were getting back on their feet and school was set to start again the following Monday. That was a mixed blessing, but at least it meant getting to see my friends again – all two of them.

It wasn’t until that Sunday that I finally got to see Tanya. I was at the mall, one arm slung over a third level railing, the other nursing a chai latte that just wasn’t as good as the kind you get at the Lovin’ Spoonful. All the while I couldn’t stop thinking how fragile it all was, this false sense that all was right in the universe. Who knew when the next set of space-bugs could come crashing into our laps? That was why I was going to keep fighting, even if Glimmer Girl seemed… I dunno, soiled, I guess.

“Hey there, Little Miss Emo-Pants,” Tanya grinned, appearing from nowhere with a push to shake me from my funk. Best of luck to her.

Still, it was good to see her again. Way better than tweeting. With a smile I turned, wrapped my arms around her and collapsed pathetically, playing dead and generally making an ass of myself. She protested mildly and plunked me down on one of the nearby chairs.

“Tell me everything,” she demanded, but I wasn’t in the mood. “You okay, chick?”

My look cut right through her. No, of course I wasn’t alright. “I nearly had it all,” I chided. “It was right there. The body I always wanted, the family I always wanted… and then I’m lied to, dragged from universe to universe, and saw the people I care about most nearly killed. It’s one thing pummeling the crap out of a super-creep on a rooftop, but @#$% gets real when it affects the people closest to you.”

I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was being selfish to talk that way. After all, my crap was so much smaller than everything that was almost lost – that was why I’d swallowed it and pushed it to one side while the city was recovering. Feelings I didn’t even know I had were swelling up, like telling Jason I’d forgiven him – I mean I had, but I guess that was still a raw point.

Tanya, my superhero, understood completely, or at least she seemed to. There was no way for her to grasp the end of the world type stuff that Glimmer Girl faced, but she saw me hurting and was there, and that was what mattered the most.

“Look on the bright side,” she offered weakly. “At least things are back to normal, yeah? I mean, sure, we all got jerked around, you especially, but in the end you didn’t really lose anything…”

“Actually,” I mumbled back, “Mom’s going to let me go to school as a girl.”

Looking to Tanya I almost laughed as she paused, not sure what to say. She lifted her sunglasses despite the black eyes behind them and blinked incredulously. “You’re kidding,” she gasped. “Are you sure it’s your real mom and not some evil parallel mom?”

“I think she figures that if I’m going to get pushed around anyway I may as well do what I want, as long as I don’t do anything permanent.”

“Is she going to call you Kaira now?”

Gods, Tanya was hilarious. That was probably the funniest thing I’d heard all week. “Not a chance!”

She punched me in the arm for mocking her excitement, just hard enough to tell me to quit being an ass but while still smiling hard enough to admit that it was probably stupid to hope so high. It was good to be back in easy company again and in the presence of someone I could tell everything to. Well, almost everything.

“Listen,” I started cautiously, “there’s something else you need to know.”

Leaning back Tanya gave me an odd look, as if there couldn’t be anything else I could possibly tell her. “You’re in love with me, aren’t you,” she stated flatly. “I knew it. It was bound to happen eventually. My milkshake doesn’t just bring boys to the yard.”

I snorted. “You wish.”

“Sometimes,” she teased, “but it’d never work out. You’d get too introspective and over-analyze @#$% and I’d talk so much it’d drive you loony.” Arching her brow playfully she leaned closer so that she might force me to chuckle – we both needed the laugh. Then it was back to business. “Seriously, though, what’s up?”

Dread filled my gut. She wasn’t going to like this. “Remember when you pulled the gun on Jason…?”

The look on her face turned deadly serious. Of course she remembered – she was still nursing a broken nose from it. “You still need to tell me the whole story about that,” Tanya said. “He said that you’d been hurt, and that he needed it to save you. So, what, he switched bodies back?”

I nodded.

You could see it in her eyes, the frustration and regret as they blended into a cloudy mixture. “What happened to him?” she asked, certain that the answer was going to confirm his worst fears.

Suddenly another voice erupted from behind us – a high voice that on first notice might have belonged to a young boy. “He spent three days in a coma while TASK micro-surgeons pieced together the hole in his heart,” Jason mused bluntly. “Then they took his powers away and put him in a foster home. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than life with the Technocracy.”

Tanya stood wide-eyed in shock as if she were staring at a ghost, but alas Jason was right there in front of her. Yeah, he’d changed a bit – for starters his blond hair was dyed black, and for the time being he was walking with a cane, but it was definitely him in the world of the living.

Tension filled the air. Tanya looked like she was going to explode while Jason pretended like he didn’t care, even though he did. Something was going to boil over soon.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” he said angrily. “What I did I did because I was desperate and stupid. Now that I’m settling down I promise not to be a supervillain anymore. Cool?”

“No,” Tanya growled, “not cool.”

Gods, here we go. “Kaira forgave me. Why can’t you?”

I could see the thoughts bubbling away in her brain – the byproduct of knowing each other for as long as we had. She was glad he wasn’t dead, but was too stubborn to admit it when she’d felt so slighted. Oh, how she wanted to hate him, even after he’d redeemed himself. The fact that Jason was being a real smart-ass wasn’t helping his case, either.

“Stand still,” she ordered him. Before he could even think to ask why Tanya’s hand flew out across his cheek, hard, knocking a trail of spittle over the ground. This was her revenge for the black eyes and nose and… well, everything, I guess.

“There,” Tanya smiled easily. “Now I don’t hate you anymore. I still don’t like you, but I don’t hate you.” With that said she looked back, her knowing glance inviting me to the Lovin’ Spoonful. It was just what we both needed.

Standing with Jason after she’d marched off I laid an assuring hand on his shoulder. “She’ll like you eventually,” I told him, and followed my friend’s path. If the world was going to make sense again I needed a proper latte.

* * * *

Things were getting back to normal, or at least that’s what I kept hearing – the ebb and flow of daily life continued as usual, seemingly undisturbed by the near extinction of the human race. It was something we were all glad to put behind us.

Meanwhile I found myself stuck in the same place, staring at myself in the mirror, desperate to find the girl that had vanished since my return. All I could see was Justin, and I hated him – I hated his shoulders, I hated his jaw, I hated his hands and feet, the way his voice was forced uncomfortably into a higher pitch. At face value most people mightn’t have seen a boy at all, but to me it was all that was left. My life, my curse.

Yeah, yeah, some people have real problems. Cry me a river, right? For days and nights I flew out to help with the recovery effort, mostly because that was my job as a hero, but there was a selfish part of it too – I was trying to lose myself, just like I always did when I buried myself in the Glimmer Girl persona. It was a pity that in the end I didn’t even have that to take comfort in.

I had to get away – away from Milestone City, away from myself, and there was only one destination I could think to go. High in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and far from the winding roads leading to civilization was a place – Jorge called it ‘Olympus in miniature’, but really it was more of a holiday home for teen heroes. That was what the Young Sentinels were about, after all – giving each other the support they needed, even if it was just a place to chill for a few hours.

The HQ had everything needed to cut loose. There were the showers and bedrooms, a number of which were assigned to specific Sentinels, a training facility for the times when you just really needed to blast the crap out of something – and really, it doesn’t get better than knocking around giant robots – but I wasn’t there for those. All I wanted was a tub of Ben and Jerry’s, Joan Jett cranked on the stereo (blame Tanya) and a chance to jump on the furniture barefoot. With nobody else around who was going to stop me, right?

Running high on the chocolate rush, leaping from sofa to sofa and screaming lyrics at the top of my lungs I almost managed to forget myself. It was the freedom that came with utter isolation, which really made me wonder why people didn’t do it more often. Turns out it’s because you can’t trust any place to be completely empty, even out in the wilderness.

“Nice moves,” I heard someone say. Crap! I turned to see Noble standing by the kitchen counter, his cowl pulled back so that it hung from his cape. He was wearing an amused grin. Ugh, how embarrassing.

With a gesture of my hand the automated system was silenced and I was left to simmer in my shame. Nobody had ever seen me dance like that, ever – that my awkward crush was the first left me lost for words.

“Guess I’m busted, huh.”

Noble, that is to say Mark, laughed it off. “Could be worse. For a minute I though Wild Knight had dragged another girlfriend in here.” That was when I caught it again – that boyish twinkle in his eye, the one that made it seem like he was the most trustworthy guy in the world. Of all the times to swoon…

I avoided his gaze and scooped up the empty tub. Gods, I’d really made a mess of this place, and I was still in my tights with no boots, no gloves and no mask – and my hair was a disaster! Note to self, Kaira – next time you go head-banging put a damn lock on the door.

It should have been obvious that Mark would pick up my discomfort. I mean, he was an empath. “Hey, uh… Kaira,” he coughed. Hearing him say that name was just weird, but it stopped me. I couldn’t believe he really remembered it.

As casually as I could I smiled back to him. “Yeah?” Even though I couldn’t see myself I’d bet any amount of money that I was failing at cool.

“Listen, I heard about what happened,” he started cautiously. “Not just about the invasion, but also about your dimension hopping…” Oh gods, nobody told him about the body-switch, did they? Did he know about me? Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t – either way my sudden terror stopped him in his tracks.

Noble reached out for my hand and cradled it gently. I could feel tenderness emanating from his fingertips while I struggled not to tremble. “I wanted to make sure you were okay but didn’t get a chance to before now,” he said.

Everything came flooding back. Damn it. So much for escapism. A part of me hated him for the reminder, but the rest was too tired to care. In fact his bare hands felt good against mine, and if I were being completely honest…

No. This was too weird. I was vulnerable and had to work this out alone. As much as it pained me I pulled away and forced a grin.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “I mean, yeah, it was rough being bounced around universes and getting lost for all that time, but I made it home to my family and friends. Now we can focus on everything getting back to normal.” Evasive as normal was I had to find it again eventually, right?

He half-smiled and turned away like I’d disappointed him or something. What’s more was that he seemed to be entirely expecting it. Crap. I hadn’t done something else stupid, had I?

“I know everything’s not okay,” he said. “You don’t have to talk about it. I just wanted to tell you that I’m here if you need me.” Really, I should have known better than to cross a human lie detector. His hand continued to hold mine and gave it a warm squeeze. Sometimes he was so perfect I couldn’t stand it.

My smile was for real this time, and I wanted to believe him – really I did. “Thanks,” I said, still not able to bring myself to meet his gaze – and then he drew me back in.

“Kaira…”

There was no escaping the cool, crystal blue filled with kindness. I could have fallen right then and there and known I would be completely safe, but I had to hold on – I didn’t want to hold on, but I had to! It wouldn’t be fair to succumb, not to him or to me.

Leaping between the gap Mark took away the uncertain ‘if’ and brought his lips to mine. I could have pulled away… oh, who am I kidding? No way could I have pulled away! He was just so sweet, soft and strong, absolutely irresistible, and even though he was wearing the same aftershave as my Dad for the first time ever I found the scent desirable. Gods, I could have breathed him in forever.

Even after he’d pulled away I could still feel him there, still taste him. I couldn’t bring myself to open my eyes. What if this was all a dream – a silly, wonderful, amazing dream in which time had completely stopped? When I finally did open them again Mark was still there. The kiss was real, and I felt lighter than air, utterly transformed by such intimate contact that up until then I’d only ever dreamed about.

My first real kiss…

We both felt a pang of guilt upon rediscovering each other’s gaze. Did that really just happen? Had we crossed a line into the forbidden? Even if we had it didn’t seem to matter – what we’d shared felt good and given the chance I would probably do it again. Gods, did I want to do it again!

Mark smiled bashfully and took a step away. “Sorry, I have no idea where that came from.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

The redness of his cheeks deepened with his grin. “That was, uh… that was my first time…”

No way! As if it didn’t feel special enough already! Taking a brave step forward I bit my lip and took his hands. “Mine too.”

What lingered between us was electric. We couldn’t fight it even more – why even try? Our arms flew around each other, our lips drawn together like magnets. Joined with him, alone in the mountains, just the two of us, we were were filled with the joy of life. This was what it meant to be born – to be connected, and to be free.

From the corner of my eye I discovered the mirror, and in it my reflection. Suddenly I could see her again, the girl in me, but something was different – she’d grown. Maybe things were going back to normal, but it wouldn’t be like it was before – after all, the more things stay the same the more they change.

* * * *

END OF VOLUME ONE

NEXT ISSUE: Love and apes. Need I say more? “The Curious Case of Glimmer Gorilla.” Stay tuned…

In every world it was exactly the same.

“You’re not going to believe this,” I told them, and for the most part I was right. My word was considered dubious in the Commonwealth States of America, the vast imperial homeland of the New Monarchy, just like it was in the Soviet guarded No Man’s Land, aka what remained of New England in a world where the Cold War turned red hot. The people of a Milestone City plagued with zombie superheroes were too distracted to hear me out, and though the residents of Regent who mistook me for a goddess were eager to listen they were too primitive to help with my tech problem.

The Gadgeteer, I mean Ari, or at least some vague, distant version of him turned his focus away from the bracelet and pondered me in the same way he would a… I don’t know, quantum flux generator, or whatever it was fabulous geeks like him were into. “Try me,” he offered, prodding me to continue my harrowing tale.

I sighed, ready to tell the story for what seemed to be the millionth time: about the day Jason showed up and how we’d switched bodies, about how he’d tricked me into thinking his world wasn’t some sort of messed up machine ruled death field, about how a mysterious second evil dimensional twin showed up and tried to kill me, and everything that followed. I told him about the weeks of running, bouncing from dimension to dimension with the rules changing each time, not knowing whether I was getting closer or moving further from my home.

That was usually when it got emotional. “I’m never going to see them again,” I moped. There would have been tears at this part of the story, but I’d used them all up in the countless tellings. The violent struggles had left me perpetually guarded, even in a place as seemingly peaceful as this.

Ari turned away in typical Ari fashion, needing to keep his mind on the technical over the personal. Still, he gave enough of a damn to ask vacantly, “why did you make the switch?”

It was a laughable question, or at least it should have been. Who didn’t want to switch out of their skin from time to time? Then you had people like me, the ones caught in the crossfire between a mismatching sex and gender, and it felt like enduring anything would be worth it to have peace in mind and body. Except it wasn’t worth it, and somehow that made me guilty.

“Does this world have a Glimmer Girl?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“You knew her, right?”

“We fought together,” he mused, “back when I was still the Gadgeteer, before the Event.” By ‘the Event’, of course, he was talking about the day millions of humans from the thirty-first century appeared in the present to escape Armageddon, after which they shared their technology and helped form a blissful utopia… but you already knew that, right?

“Don’t you think she would have done the same thing in my shoes?”

“Not sure,” he replied manually. “My understanding is that she was extremely satisfied with a traditional medical transition: although your testimony indicates that our medical science is far more advanced than yours, so that may be the reason why.”

Good for her, I silently chided. I hadn’t expected him to understand. Nobody who hadn’t lived through it could really understand, even the ones who reached out and really tried.

A sudden shiver had me rubbing my arms. Strange how even in the ‘correct’ body I still felt out of place, like being alien was so embedded into my personality that no matter how many times I switched I’d still be carrying it with me. It was a grim thought, and one that had me pining for home and the handful of things that made sense: things that had nothing to do with robots, wizards or, uh… bleeding. (Actually that last part was what freaked me out the most.)

Ari smirked then pulled away from the bracelet. “There. I think I found it.”

“Huh? Found what?”

“Your Earth.”

“My Earth!?” As if repeating it made it any less stunning. My brain had to backtrack to see if I’d heard him right. “How? I was told going back was impossible!”

“Jason lied, again,” he said. “It’s true that dimensions pull closer and drift apart rhythmically, but at most it affects the relative flow of time.”

“I think I understood about half of that.”

“You could always go home, Kaira. In fact you’ll have only been gone for a couple of days even though here in the outer worlds it’s seemed like weeks.”

“You’re $#&%%ing me.”

“I $#&% you not,” he beamed. “Would you like to see?” As if that were a question.

A click of a button was all it took to open a window back to my world and to my version of Milestone City! Except that it didn’t look like my Milestone City, what with the screaming and the panicking and so much sky falling that Chicken Little would have had a heart attack by now.

“Crap…”

* * * *

Later:

There’s one thing you need to know about superheroes, and that’s that saving the world is our job. Okay, when we say ‘saving the world’ we don’t always mean stopping the universe from blowing up: usually it’s just hyperbole and you save the human race a little bit at a time. You take baby steps, and that’s okay, because after a while you’ll look back and see that the miles you’ve walked really have made a difference.

This was not one of those times. On the day the sky cracked open and the Technocracy came flooding through the human race were going to need one giant leap to survive the next few hours… or a Glimmer Girl with some tech that was literally from out of this world.

The beam bore down like fire from Olympus, attracting the insects at the bottom to it. If I’d understood what Ari had told me the beam was a solid broadcast of the Technocracy’s central intelligence, all part of a last ditch effort to transfer its knowledge into a new brain before the old one was kaput. All I had to do was stop the crossover, which was simple enough, right?

Like hell. Fighting my way to the base of the rift was like navigating the heart of a twister. Good piece of advice for people who don’t have superpowers: don’t ride tornadoes. They’ll land you in a morgue before they get you to Oz.

For miles I rocketed skyward, high beyond the stratosphere. With each second the rift seemed to grow wider, but that wasn’t it: it was just me seeing it up close for the first time. The sheer size of it and knowing that the fate of the whole planet was at stake did nothing to ease the tension. It was all down to me and whether or not I could do exactly what Ari had told me to.

Why me? I was nobody, just some kid who wanted to escape himself… herself. Next thing I know I’m a hero, switching bodies, and juggling the fates of planets. It was just too big!

Focus, Kaira, the little voice of reason barked. You’ve got this, because face it, there’s no other choice. Yeah, that was real comforting, brain.

The force of a reality flowing outward like an ocean torrent slowed my approach. Just a little bit further and it could be sealed: all I had to do was hit the button and launch the ball in my hand, letting it solidify a portion of space-time and halting the Technocracy before they reached full power. Imagine, a locked patch of the entire universe fixed in stone with nothing able to get in or out. Sounds perfect, right?

Every ounce of strength I had pushed to hold on. Just a little closer, and then… release. From up close it was like watching water spiraling down a sinkhole. When a moment before I’d been struggling to fight my way in I was suddenly struggling to get away from its black hole pull.

In the battle of myself against the universe I barely came out in one piece. I couldn’t believe it: I had literally saved the world. Well, for a moment anyway. There was no time for self-congratulation, especially if what the other world’s Ari had shown me was anything to go by.

Plunging through empty blue skies I shot down in the direction of home. Milestone City was calling for Glimmer Girl.

* * * *

Things weren’t going so well for Starbolt. The sky had somehow closed and the robotic flood of Technocracy drones had mysteriously ended, but that was the least of his problems.

It was supposed to be his big break: get the hell out of Dodge and settle on a new Earth, but disaster wasn’t letting him go that easy. Following him across the dimensional barriers came not one, but two forms of Armageddon, both of which dwarfed him absolutely.

He didn’t scream when the Vanquisher’s psi-blades cut through him: the Technocracy had inflicted far worse, but the assault was enough to keep him off his feet. There was nothing he could do against the two sadistic villains constantly beating him to the ground, but he fought back anyway as best he could. It wasn’t over until the cities started burning, and thank the gods that hadn’t started yet.

Laser Lass lingered nearby, content to let her boy-toy do all of the hard work. “I don’t know how you can live with yourself,” she mused. “If it were me and I’d condemned two worlds to death I’d have killed myself a long time ago. Well, assuming I cared at all.”

She didn’t care, but Starbolt did. None of this was supposed to happen. Nobody was supposed to be hurt. Except for Kaira, he thought, and that was only because he didn’t think himself strong as her.

“This is my planet,” Starbolt roared, “you can’t have it!” It didn’t matter that he was chronically being pinned like a worm on a dissection table, he still had a duty to fulfill and the strength to do it: if only he could reach a little deeper…

“So what you’re saying,” Laser Lass teased, “is that this planet is under the watch of a child with the powers of a flailing retard. Watch me shake in my boots.”

Starbolt fought but to no avail. He wasn’t going to save the world today, try as he might. Fortunately he wasn’t alone.

CRACK!

The look on Laser Lass’s face as her body collided through a thirtieth story window was priceless. When she came back she was going to be pissed, but it was her fault they had their guard down. Those monsters didn’t even see me coming.

Vanquisher’s assault ended almost immediately, but if anyone were more surprised than him it was Starbolt laid flat on the ground. “Glimmer Girl!?” the other hero gasped. You could tell from his panic he didn’t know if his day was getting better or worse.

“Good to see you again, JC.”

The remaining villain made a swift and guarded withdrawal. The tables had turned on him, but he was still at advantage while the bomb was in play. Funny, he was supposed to be a darker version of Noble, but whatever set them apart made the Vanquisher unrecognizable. There wasn’t a hope in hell of finding my fellow Young Sentinel in him, or myself in his companion.

“What in the name of the Anti-Christ was… you!?” Laser Lass was fuming. Even after I’d changed costumes she probably recognized me as the one to take her out on Jason’s world. Oh, what a complicated drama this was turning into.

Starbolt shivered and pulled himself together. Not a word had been exchanged but we knew: We’d been forced to team up again by dire circumstance. Everything we held valuable depended on it.

“They’ve got a bomb,” the boy croaked.

“I know.”

“Why aren’t we beating the @#$% out of them?” Laser Lass scoffed. She was ready to charge but was halted by her partner. “Vanquisher, get your damn hands off me or I swear to Satan…”

“She’s holding something back,” he replied flatly.

“You mean like she was the bitch who locked me up in robo-dungeon and not tranny boy here? Yeah, tell me something I don’t-“

“She’s done something!” he asserted more viciously. Just like Noble he was a human lie detector, sniffing the undercurrents of the motives of others. It was a painful ability on most days, but great when you really needed somebody’s attention.

Both Starbolt and Laser Lass were stunned. “What did you do?”

It would have been the perfect time to hit them with some cool one liner, but even I wasn’t sure what was going on. “I closed the dimensional gate,” I told them, “stopped the Technocracy signal mid-upload and… something else. Something about space-time being a viscous and creating a hard spot in the universe… or something. It sounded better when the Gadgeteer was explaining it. Either way you have to stop the bomb!”

“We don’t have to do anything,” my dark self spat.

Vanquisher sneered and touched his earpiece. “Yeah, we do. Claw, stop the countdown.”

“What are you doing!?”

“Saving our asses,” he explained. “Don’t you get what she’s saying? The road between universes is locked shut. We can’t go home for a while. If we set off the neutrino detonator now it’ll take us out with them.”

Laser Lass shot a fowl glare in my direction. Gods, it’s good to make the right enemies. “She’s lying,” she pouted, but Vanquisher knew better.

“She’s not. I’d know if she was.”

“We can still kick their asses,” she seethed.

“Yeah, and waste even more time while the world you’re stuck on is being taken over!” Starbolt growled, shooting up and rejoining the party. Apparently he’d decided he was happy I’d come, figured that I’d come along to help – at least that’s what his pleading gazes said. I didn’t know what I was going to do with him when this was all over, but that was a bridge we could all wait to cross.

“So here’s the deal,” I told them. “You help us, we let you leave. No more planets get blown up, everybody lives.”

No matter how many times I said it the thought was too big to comprehend. The four of us were arguing about an entire planet! One hundred and fifty something countries, even more languages, hundreds of thousands of years of history, six billion human beings, all of them holding on perilously in an argument between four freakin’ teenagers. Could you get any more surreal?

Vanquisher and Laser Lass didn’t care. How could two people hold so much apathy? They only cared about their own skin, which was okay – that was more than enough to hold against them. “Fine,” the villainess conceded. “We help with your robot problem, then we walk. Not to say that we won’t be back, however…”

She just had to, didn’t she? “Talk smack later. We’ve got work to do.”

“Lead the way, little girl.”

Starbolt nodded and shot toward the city, my male self beckoning my evil twin and I to the epicenter of destruction.

Worst. Team-up. Ever.

* * * *

There are times in the life of every hero and villain that you’ve got to put aside your difference and work toward a greater goal. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does you feel dirty – so dirty that even knowing you and everyone else would be doomed without them can’t cleanse you, but you live with it. All for the greater good, right? I probably should have been thankful that Laser Lass was so easy to convince thanks in no small part to Vanquisher’s in-built lie detector. Teaming up with Starbolt didn’t sit too easy with me, either.

We charged the city in pyramid formation. Laser Lass insisted on leading, all the while berating Starbolt and I and calling us ‘twisted clones.’ As if! She was the one with an Earth-B vibe, but I suppose everybody says that when they meet their extra-universal doubles.

“I shouldn’t even need your help,” Laser Lass scoffed, her nose upturned. “On my world it takes but a simple touch to destroy a machine.”

“Except these guys are insulated against our powers,” Starbolt remarked grimly.

Can’t say I didn’t feel their frustration. Usually it was the case that any sort of technology didn’t last long against a surge of raw primatter. “Then I guess we give them a triple charge!”

With hardened resolved we linked hands and let the eruption of power hurl our hard light bodies over the skyline. Like a three-headed comet we, the two Glimmer Girls and Glimmer Boy, shredded the Technocracy like tissue paper, leaving the hollowed bodies of metal bugs strewn throughout the streets. Soon they would only be a threat to the city’s cleaning budget.

It took everything I had to hold on. The sheer amount of energy put out was exhausting. The empty chasm at the end of my will grew wider beneath, tempting me to let go and fall. I couldn’t, not just for the sake of the world, but because Laser Lass’ fowl expression warned me of what would happen if I did.

“We need to find the central processing core,” Starbolt seethed. It wasn’t just enough to bowl them down, especially at the rate they were replicating, and we hadn’t much energy left to waste.

A sharp jerk from Laser Lass pointed us into the thick, teeming heart of the mass where we cut through a mountain of cockroaches. Gods, it was like there was a spring in the middle, vomiting insects and blackening the sky. They just kept coming and coming, slowing our progress, but we wouldn’t be halted – we just had to hold on for one… more… second…

Every ounce of strength went into pushing against the machine, but it pushed back just as hard. Starbolt, Laser Lass and I went flying back into the pavement, bodies smacking the ground, rolling and scraping. I might have even bruised a rib. Crap…

“I can’t believe you guys would do that to me!” a synthesized voice cried out. From the swarm a frowny face emoticon took shape and pointed meaningfully in our direction. “How could you, Jason? I thought you were cool.” Ugh, not this guy again.

Jason pried himself from the ground. He was shaking, not with pain but fury. “We can’t let up,” he hissed. “It has to be taken down now!”

Emoticon Sam pouted deeper, at least as much as you can pout with a string of closed parentheses climbing to the sky. “’It’? Jason, I’m hurt,” the machine said. “I’m Sam, remember? Your friend, your only companion for all these years!” Not to mention his jailor.

Laser Lass scoffed and clasped hands again. “Enough talk. Can we finish this already?” It was probably the only time she and I would agree on something.

In a blaze of light we rocketed forth, our goal very nearly in sight. Our powers combined burned as bright as the sun, but the three of us were riding on an empty tank. We screamed, digging painfully deep for whatever scraps were left – we had to make it through! We were so close… and all the while Emoticon Sam continued his taunts:

“It’s a stupid plan, you know. Trying to short-circuit us with a triple charge? Please. All you’re doing is giving us an extra couple of batteries. Why fight? Oh, right. It’s because you’re heroes, and that’s what you do… except for you, Laser Lass. You’re kind of a bitch. But seriously, why are you doing this? You mess up my processor and I start making faulty robots, and those faulty robots make other faulty robots. That’s the same as giving me cancer, you know. Is that really what you want to do? Give me robot cancer? Not that you’ll succeed or anything. Some friends you are!”

I could feel it in their fingertips, the hate and desperation. It was all that kept them going while I was spiked with fear – my friends, my family, everyone I ever knew, the survival of the world hinged on this moment, on me, a small city hero who just wanted to pull kittens out of trees. Still, who else was going to do it?

Suddenly…

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Next thing I knew I was face down, choking on the blood pouring from my nose and groaning from the pain searing everywhere else. My head was swimming, the only solid thought was on whether or not I could get up – I couldn’t. But somewhere in the back was something else – a panicked and terrified thought that I barely managed to spit out.

“Did we get it…?”

As the smoke cleared and my arm slid from view I could make out two human shapes, both garbed in gold and tainted with red. Jason at the very least was able to lift himself again, and reached down to pull my battered form from the street.

“You okay?” he asked.

“No…”

“Are you going to help me?” Laser Lass grunted.

“No,” we retorted in unison. Not that we didn’t appreciate the help or anything, but she was one of the gang who tried to blow up our planet. Kind of hard to forget something like that.

Then as if on cue we heard the voice. “I-I-I-I… I…” It was Sam. “C-ca-can’t belie- you di- t to me!” Looking back to the wreckage we couldn’t make out any emotes – only a black spire planted in the ground that had been slightly bent out of shape. Great, it had taken three of us everything we had and all we’d done was dent it.

“It’s over, Sam,” I told the program. “Stop playing Skynet now and we might leave you enough brain power to work as a cash register someplace.” Hero school 101 – always talk big, even when you’re wetting your pants in the face of doom.

Sam, however, was less than convinced. Even after being stupefied and beaten up he still had the will to send a gang of mangled machines to bear down on our bruised remains. Why oh why could not have some programmer have given his creation the intelligence to be intimidated?

They lumbered closer from every horizontal angle, limbs like knives reaching out clumsily to claim us. Just one more ounce of strength and I could have cleared a path, but nothing.

“Come on, you pair of pussies!” Laser Lass taunted from where she lay. “You going to just stand there and let them disembowel us?” Yeah, like she was one to talk.

“You got anything?” Starbolt pushed.

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, I’m spent too.”

I collapsed to my knees, the pain of standing up simply being too much. If there was one thing I could be thankful for it was that at least the hurting would stop after this… no, I couldn’t give up, right? Superheroes don’t quit – but what else could I do?

Just then I caught something in Jason’s eye. Fear, regret – he’d never intended for this to happen, but somehow it had all gone horribly wrong. And suddenly I recognized it, what agony he’d had to endure for years, the loneliness, the isolation, the hopelessness. Of all the times to be able to connect it happened then and I finally understood – he was just like me.

“Jason,” I said, snatching his attention as though I had some brilliant last second plan. No, just some final words. Hopefully they meant something. “I forgive you.”

What a time to laugh. Starbolt chuckled, probably realizing the futility of holding onto such hard feelings, even towards himself right at the bitter end. He looked to me with soft green eyes and smiled. “Thank you.”

Oh well. Even then I was able to do some good. That’s something, right?

Then, from out of the dense, black skyline a bolt of fire rained down, then another, and another. With exact precision they struck at the mangled bots and cut them down, as did the thousands of others that materialized on the other side of the clouds. In moments it became clear enough to see that we were not alone – TASK aerial assault vessels covered the scenery to finish the work we’d started.

Thank the gods, the cavalry had arrived.

* * * *

What followed was a blur. Somewhere in the middle of TASK’s heavy duty clean up the three of us were plucked away by a medical carrier – or at least that would be my best guess. I don’t exactly remember a lot of what happened at the end.

Jason lay to one side, bruised, battered, but despite it all immensely relieved. Can you even imagine what must have been going through his head? Here was a guy who’d been at the mercy of those machines for years, watched them murder a whole world, and now he was free. Yeah, he did try to screw me over by swapping me into his prison, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to blame him. If I were trapped as long as he was I can’t say I wouldn’t have done anything to get out either.

Meanwhile there was the matter of Laser Lass strapped to the bed on the other side of the makeshift infirmary. She’d helped us, but in the end she was just as bad as the Technocracy. What were we supposed to do, just let her go? Either way I was in no condition to go after her teammates, the ‘Young Scoundrels’ or whatever it was they were called. (Seriously, who gives their team a name like that?)

Whatever. I wasn’t going to stress about it. Honestly, I was more worried about Jason. After all, he was as close to a twin brother as I was ever going to have. Over and again I tried to snag his attention with a gentle smile – he reciprocated, but then he’d turn away. He was ashamed of crying, as if even the strongest individual wouldn’t be reduced to tears after all he’d been through.

Figuring it was better to leave him alone I reached for a crutch and limped outside. The skies were clear and it was fast approaching dusk – how long had I been out? Then it occurred to me, were my Mom and Dad okay? A part of me wanted to fly home and hoped to see them there at the table, but they’d probably evacuated just like everyone else. Gods, they would have been worried stupid. Then again… were they even my Mom and Dad anymore?

I looked down at my hands. They were always smaller than the ones I was expecting, but then they weren’t really my hands. Well, they were my hands now… Gods, it was all so complicated! Okay, I had the body of my dreams and it was just like any other girls, but the cost was still the same – I still had to give up so, so much just to be me, because my family, friends, school, just wouldn’t understand. Some people might have been more than glad to wipe that old life away for ultimate sense of self, but me? Not so much.

This is so much weirder than just being regular trans, I sighed.

Just then as I needed it a guardian angel appeared, though garbed in mortal flesh and with his mask pulled down around his neck. Jorge placed a comforting hand on my shoulder and smiled out to the sunset hoping to dull my discomfort, which he did ever so slightly. “I hear you’ve been having a hard couple of days,” he said.

“Couple of days for you guys. More like… six weeks on my end? I don’t know. Parallel realities are #%&$ed up.”

“Ouch. Want to talk about it?”

I laughed. “Where do I start? With the trans-boy version of me asking for a body swap, the prison world he trapped me on, the evil dominatrix twin wanting to defenestrate me, or the triple-team that had us giving a super-computer brain damage?”

Jorge looked me over, a hint of casual approval in his gaze. “Is it worth it, though? To have a girl-born-girl body, I mean.” He was careful as always to avoid terms like ‘real girl’ or ‘natural girl’, just like Tanya would, which I appreciated really, even though I’d decided not to take it personally if he did.

The answer should have been obvious. YES. It was what everyone like me really wanted, right? To have a ‘legitimate’ body that wouldn’t be questioned, that wasn’t a ‘lie’ – but I still felt like an alien. Ugh, I was so over the drama of it all.

As if right on cue the moment was interrupted by the sound of a crash from inside the tent. I steeled myself, but was still too exhausted to fight when Laser Lass tore through the tarp and looked down on me with bright, hate-filled eyes.

“If I’m going down you’re coming with me,” she spat, and pointed her finger with the ruthlessness of a practiced killer.

Inside of a split second Go! had moved me to safety, but even that was too late. Something burned inside my chest and I began to choke. It felt like drowning. Then the shock set in, and I noticed the crimson pool being absorbed into the costume. She got me – that evil jerk really got me.

Jorge was frantic, as were the other TASK personnel around. “Kaira? Kaira, stay with us. Come on, fight the shock. Kaira!”

But it was no use. I was tired of holding on. All I wanted was to sleep at last.

* * * *

TO BE CONTINUED…

Wow, it’s really been a whole eight months? That’s really, really slack of me. Funny how a couple of weeks of putting off your work turns into the better part of a year. So, for making you all wait I’m sorry, and for those of you who were worried about me I’m even sorrier.

One of the strange things for me is the outpouring of concern, not just from the people who were regular commenters, but the anonymous fans as well who stopped lurking just to see if everything was okay. That you all care after all this time is actually really touching.

So I’m breaking my silence as well to tell you all that I’m fine. In fact I’m better than fine. Life is great! I know that the last time I posted one of these notices I was in a rough place – I was dealing with social anxiety, agoraphobia, depression, self-harm – but it’s really been turned around in a significant way. With the aid of medication and a lot of counseling I’m a person who actually likes herself, and I even manage to get out a lot.

It seems a strange thing to come along and say to people who’ve been fearing the worst, but really I’ve been away because things couldn’t be better. (Well, they could be – someone could help me evict my jerk of a neighbour who blasts AC/DC and Queen at ungodly hours of the night, every night, but you get my point.)

Should anyone want to shoot a message my way you’re free as always to leave a comment, or you could join up to my author fan page on Facebook, or even shoot me an email at deliciousfloorcandy@gmail.com. Alternatively I’m also regularly found lurking on Tallygarunga – The Australian Potterverse or BitterSweet Sanctum, both of which I recommend if you’re into RP because they’re a lot of fun with a strong sense of community.

(Kami, Mousie, you’re welcome. Now you both owe me linkbacks. )

You’ve also probably noticed a new theme on the Shimmerverse page. It doesn’t drift too far from the previous design, but let’s face it, it needed a change. Or, rather, I needed a change so I can get back into it. I’ve missed this place, and missed you guys, and already have #24 in the editing stages. So look forward to the return of Shimmer very, very soon!

Lots of love and laughs,
Miranda Sparks

I know, I know. Long time, no hear, and it’s the same story as last time: that life thing gets in the way. (There is story coming though!)

In the meantime I just wanted to put a plug out there for a new site called The Fireplace, which while primarily being an RPG resource is looking to include and promote fiction blogs as well as well as other online material.

Even if it’s just to lurk come and join us! And you can find out where Randi actually is a lot of the time she SHOULD be writing Shimmer! Heh.

“It’s her.”

“I don’t know, man. Last time we crossed this bastard he stole her body. How do we know he hasn’t pulled the same trick again?”

“It’s her,” the second one said with finality. “I’m empathic, and I know what Laser Lass brand of pissed off feels like.”

Prying herself from the ground the costumed girl swatted away the hands offered to her. She didn’t need their pity to add to the shame of defeat. Satan, did her head hurt.

Vanquisher and King Claw stepped back with arms folded and let her stumble back to her feet: that was fine if that’s what she really wanted. “Look at you. Not even a scratch,” the senior of the pair scoffed. “I can’t believe he got the drop on you again.”

Laser Lass swatted at his bare shoulder where part of the Vanquisher’s costume had been burned away in combat. In contrast to her own near pristine state the other two looked pathetic.

“Something went wrong,” she muttered furiously. That much was obvious, but her memory was hazy. Where was she anyway? For a moment she wasn’t entirely certain, but then the sight of Sam with its frowny face emoticon smashed to a million little pieces had it all came flooding back.

The Technocracy wouldn’t just let her kill Jason. No, he was far too valuable them to allow her to just execute him, even at point blank range. They couldn’t just contain him with mechanical tentacles: they had to protect him with a force barrier as well making it so that she had to free him just to get the job done.

After that things went so quickly. It was strange what happened next, when Jason grabbed her finger and begged for mercy. He even tried to convince her that he wasn’t really who she thought he was, not that it mattered: but when the time came to blast him to kingdom come she just couldn’t do it, not because she didn’t want to but because… somehow… they were linked maybe? It was all a blur.

“How’s the jaw?” Vanquisher asked harshly.

Laser Lass didn’t answer. Yeah, the little punk had taken her by surprise this time, but that wasn’t going to stop her from getting revenge. Only then did she think to clasp her wrist and realized. “$#&%! Prick stole my transport key.”

Frustrating as it might have been for the others this new turn birthed a smile as wide as the blade of the one they knew as King Claw. “Does this mean we get to track him down and spill his blood together?” the red maned figure asked.

“We need that device back,” Vanquisher reasoned, “and where he goes the Technocracy is sure to follow.”

“Fine, you can come with,” Laser Lass hissed. “So long as you let me finish him.”

The three stopped to take note of the corridor they’d created. Something was humming at them and was drawing nearer. The Technocracy was regrouping: they didn’t have much time.

“You got it?” King Claw asked.

Laser Lass frowned at Vanquisher. “Got what?”

Vanquisher nodded. ‘It’ was a rather compact device: a small black cylinder that clasped to his belt until then concealed by the layer of imperial purple draped from his shoulders. “This,” he explained, “is a neutrino bomb.”

“I have a feeling that I should know what that is.”

“It comes from Gadgetron’s forbidden closet,” King Claw laughed. “It’ll disintegrate a solid chunk of the Earth: so much that the planet will be thrown off its axis leaving the rest to crumble. Definitely not the kind of thing we could ever use back home.”

“You sure we’re the only humans left on this world?” Vanquisher pressed.

“Far as I know,” Laser Lass told him. “And if we aren’t we’d still be doing them a favor.”

“If we do this and get the Inquisition breathing down our necks…”

The villain sighed and turned to her man, running her fingers down his chest then pressing him to the wall. She was in charge and he needed reminding. “I leave for an hour and suddenly you’re mouthy again,” she chastised him. “Relax. If it’s to keep the Technocracy out of our reality then anything we do is justified. It’s already killed one world: we’re not going to let it spread.”

Vanquisher tensed and fought the smile that wanted to crack the corners of his lips. She was right: he’d seen enough of this planet to know that it needed to be put out of its misery.

“Then let’s start the countdown and get the hell out of here,” King Claw snorted. “Killing robots is nowhere as fun as the real thing.”

Planting the cylinder horizontally Vanquisher released the cap and turned the mechanism inside. The neutrino bomb was activated. In thirty seconds it would erupt with a massive wave that would neutralize the electron charge of every atom across the continent and beyond. Everything it touched would become less than dust and the Technocracy’s homeworld would be neutralized.

In a flash the three vanished, leaving the industrial trash heap to a quiet death that was far overdue. There was such sweet satisfaction that came with causing the kind of unbridled destruction they were barely ever able to cause, but there were also more seriously matters to attend to. Somewhere out there Jason Cade was laughing his ass off like he was the king of the multiverse: it was time that the Young Scoundrels showed him a thing or two.

* * * *

It was 7:08 before the new Justin Cade managed to pry his eyes open, which was far too early considering he didn’t have school to worry about.

He stopped, caught his reflection in the mirror and took the time to admire it and all of its manly nuances. Pulling back his long hair he wondered how it would look cut short and what styles he might like. Throwing on some pants, a tee and layering it with an open shirt he sauntered down the steps and into his home. Gods, it was great to be home!

Such was the life he was starting to lead with no more daily disguises: except, of course, his life as Starbolt. Still, the life of Justin Cade didn’t feel like it belonged to him, not just yet. Oh well. It would in time.

Nobody would have ever guessed that only the day before a girl had owned his body. How could they? It had taken Kaira telling them flat out for them to finally know. All that had changed now. Nature was free to take its course, and for once that was fine. No more alienation, and a sense of self that matched the world’s expectation. Kaira was female, he was not, and this life belonged to Justin. It was only fair that he should have it.

Turning into the kitchen the young man was stunned to see what looked like his mother in very convincing drag, but no, he was his father in this universe, and for whatever reason he seemed just as stunned by his son’s arrival.

“Kaira?” he boggled. Yeah, this conversation was going to happen sooner than he expected it to.

“Um, about that,” Justin murmured. Gods, did he look like his Mom. The sight was almost overwhelming, but he had to act like everything was fine. Everything would go wrong if he didn’t. “I don’t think I want to be Kaira anymore,” he pressed.

The man… no, his father, Alan, tentatively nursed his coffee cup and blinked. For him this was all very sudden. “Is this because of what you overheard yesterday?” He gave that look, the one that said not to deny it, even though it was Kaira who’d heard those words.

Justin shook his head. “No, I…” He really didn’t want to have that conversation, at least not then: not when he was so overcome by visions of ghosts. What he wanted to talk about wasn’t important. The fact that he was home again, that everyone was alive, that was what mattered!

Alan started to say something, but he was cut off mid-sentence by the desperate embrace of a quivering teenager. What had gotten into him? He wouldn’t ever know, but whatever. All that mattered was that his one and only child was hurting and that was reason enough to hold him back.

“Hey, it’s alright, kiddo,” he said. “We’ll work this out, yeah? I know it’s hard going, but we’ll tough it out. We always do.”

“I love you,” he choked out to the man he wanted to be his Mom. Gods, he really was the spitting image of her.

“You too, Kaira,” he said, hitting again on that one word that completely undid the moment.

Justin stepped away, forced a smile and made up some crap excuse about having somewhere to go. That kitchen, that life, that family: they didn’t belong to him, at least not yet. It was going to take some time to adjust, but in the meantime he needed some air.

Okay, maybe living in this world, keeping his conscience dulled and adjusting to new people was going to be harder than he initially thought, but compared to the nightmare planet he’d come from it was a cake walk. He’d already taken the first massive leap, right? The rest only needed to be in baby steps.

Almost a block away from the house he was halted by what was supposed to be a familiar face. “Hey! Kaira!” Some Hispanic looking guy in a long sleeve t-shirt was very happy to see him: weird, Kaira hadn’t told him about this guy. The stranger looked puzzled. “What’s with the boy disguise, man?”

Justin smiled and shook his head. “I’m going to be Justin again I think,” he laughed wearily. “Girl thing just wasn’t working out. You know, just a phase and all that.”

The stranger nodded along. Gods, who was he supposed to be again?

“Does this mean you’ll be back at school soon? Ms. Berry’s English class has been crazy boring without you there to kick things up.”

“Maybe,” Justin smiled a little more confidently. For once the idea of school didn’t seem so bad.

The mysterious stranger frowned. This frown confused Justin. Did he say something wrong? It was only then that he thought to look down at the boy’s feet: he was wearing custom boots fitted especially for him, the kind usually worn by speedsters. Crap! The guy probably didn’t even go to his school: there probably wasn’t even a Ms. Berry.

Justin retreated a few steps and matched the serious gaze he was locked in. “So who are you really?”

“Go!,” the stranger informed him calmly. “Gee-oh-exclamation point.”

“Wow, I’ve never met a guy with punctuation in his name before.”

“I get that a lot,” Go! said. “I’m also one of the Young Sentinels.”

He was part of a team? Double crap. That probably meant he hadn’t come alone. “So you’re one of Glimmer Girl’s friends,” he determined. “Listen, I can explain everything!”

“You can try, but you won’t be doing it here.” The speedster raised his shirt ever so slightly to reveal the red and white costume underneath. In other words he was prepared if Justin tried to run. Triple crap.

And then it happened: a great crack tore across that stained the sky bruise purple. Justin reeled knowing exactly what was coming, and while Go! was otherwise oblivious to the exact danger he knew to be just as wary. Black flecks descended from the opening, from a distance appearing like a rain of ash falling on Milestone City.

Without second thought Starbolt darted for an obscure corner in which to change, which shouldn’t have been too hard with the handful of eyes on the suburb steet turned upward. Go!, however, seemed to have other ideas.

“Where do you think you’re going!?” he called keeping pace with the fleeing teen.

Justin gritted his teeth. Why did everything have to hit him at once? “Make up your mind, man! Me or the planet!”

As if it was that obvious. Actually, it was. Secret identity be damned, Justin threw off his civvies in the middle of the street and exploded into the sky. The Technocracy had come and something needed to be done: he wouldn’t let them do to this world what had been done to his. Go! could wait until later… if he survived that long.

* * * *

The radio crackled. “Gabby?”

“I’m here.”

“Mission compromised, big time.”

“You’re telling me! Ugh!”

Sprinting over cars the black-clad heroine raced against the human torrent as they fled from the shadowy swarm. Gathering as much kinetic force from the crowd as she could muster Touch launched herself from invader to invader, knocking the giant steel prawns loose as they planted themselves into the pavement: not that it seemed to be bother them much.

How many could she stop? Several dozen, maybe. Compared to what appeared to be thousands tumbling from a gaping wound in reality she may as well have been fighting a tidal wave with a teaspoon. Her actions might have been better served elsewhere given the number of people still trapped in their cars waiting for rescue.

“We’re going to need the full team on this one,” she roared into the headset and bounded to the bonnet of a red SUV. There were small children shivering inside. What kind of monster would just leave kids behind?

“Already sent out the alert,” Go! reported. “TASK are on their way. Our job is to evacuate the city. Any sign of GG’s body double?”

Touch braced as she put her fist through the windshield. It held shape as she pulled it away then reached inside for the abandoned human cargo fate had charged her with. Her forced smile did little to soothe them: the storm outside was greater than the calm in the middle of it.

“No sign,” she said while scooping the pair one by one from their booster seats. She wished she was surprised. “Maybe he’s not the hero type.”

“Maybe.”

Suddenly the skies were silent, leaving only the screams to drown out any rational thought. Touch looked back to the epicenter of the disaster where she could see the invading collective huddling together and piling between the skyscrapers like an alien ant hill. Slowly they began to climb, reaching far back into the crevice they fell from.

The little boy in her arms clutched to the neck of her costume. “What’s it doing?” he choked between sobs, but Touch didn’t have an answer.

“Go!, do you have an ETA on that TASK crew?”

“Fift…n min…es,” crackled his reply. That may not have been soon enough.

* * * *

Starbolt darted across the city in seconds, slowing only to guide himself to his destination. Time was not on his side, especially if the Technocracy were doing what he thought they were doing.

Milestone Energy Management was the closest station to the disaster and was already being evacuated. Only a skeleton crew remained behind to regulate the power surges being channeled into the heart of midtown, easily tripling the city’s annual electric bill. Little did they realize that by trying to keep the city running they were also killing it: someone had to make it stop.

“Where’s the foreman!?” Starbolt roared over the turbines, the urgency in his voice snapping the orange helmeted worker from shock at the sight of his lightning entrance.

“You’re talking to him!” he called back.

“We need to kill the city grid! Probably even the whole county!”

The foreman didn’t seem to take to the idea at all, saying something about power being dead for weeks if he hit the kill switch. Starbolt, however, with a burst of power and an impatient glare threatened to put them out for months: an ultimatum even a mere civil servant could easily decide upon when confronted by a pissed off superhuman.

Before he could even start for the central console Starbolt had the man standing behind the panel ready to put a forty mile radius into sleep mode. The flick of a dozen toggles was all it took to put a city down: hopefully that was enough to impede the Technocacy’s progress until some real help arrived.

An explosion rocked the blackened station, driving home for the innocent foreman just how little control he had. “What the hell’s going on out there?” he gasped.

Starbolt gritted his teeth dreading the battle ahead. “Oh, you know, just the apocalypse. Nothing we don’t kick the crap out of every other week.” The fact that the Technocracy had already wiped out the human race once before was conveniently left out of his explanation, but only because he was sure he could stop it this time.

Never again: not here, or anywhere. The machines already had one world and that was enough.

Time was growing shorter and there was still much to do. Killing the power was only stage one: Milestone needed to be back in the stone age if the Technocracy was going to be contained, which also meant cutting all major forms of communication in minutes. Not an easy task, even for someone moving at the speed of light.

FWOOM-THWACK!

Somewhere over the West Village there’d been a collision: too big and hard to be a bird, and he would have seen a plane coming. It sent Starbolt’s his hard light body on a sharp detour into the river. Of all the times for some piece of super-trash to pick a fight…

He shot up, arguing over whether or not he could make the one who put him down a priority: assuming he had any choice, of course. The faces he caught on the way back up confirmed he didn’t.

“$#&%.”

Laser Lass’ expression lingered somewhere between confused, disgusted and disappointed. “This isn’t him,” she told her teammate.

“It’s him,” Vanquisher said, though Laser Lass only thought him stupid for it.

Flashbolt trembled with uncertainty. After all this time they’d found him, albeit in a new body, and they didn’t even know it. Doesn’t matter! You’ve got more important things to worry about, his head screamed.

“No, moron, look! He’s got the same costume, but check his build. The one we know is a lot shorter… and squeakier. I’d even go so far as to say there’s a real man under that mask.”

The hero interjected: “If you’ll just excuse me, I’ve got a planet I need to go-” but the Vanquisher wouldn’t allow it. Those cold blue eyes knew the truth, and they weren’t going to grant him any mercy.

“It’s him,” he said. “Same guy we fought together, different body.”

Laser Lass twitched as the pieces started coming together. “So then the one I tried to snuff in the power core…”

“Was probably another girl like you,” the vicious empath concluded, “and tricked with the same promise, I’ll bet. Am I right?” Not that Starbolt needed to answer: the Vanquisher could feel the shifting guilt inside the boy.

Tick, tick, tick, Starbolt could feel the end of the world cracking away at him. They could fight later. Containment was the first priority. He turned, but Laser Lass cut him off.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked as if it weren’t obvious.

Starbolt clenched his fists. Why now!? There were better things he could be doing than talking. “I know what I did to you was wrong,” he spat, “but it’s the over for this planet unless I stop the Technocracy from spreading!”

“Oh really now!”

“Look, I know you don’t care about this Earth, but you’ve got to see the bigger picture here,” he pleaded. “You’ve seen what they’ve done to my world, and until now they’ve been content with just that, but now they’re forming a whole empire! We can stop it before it reaches any other worlds, including yours!”

The villains gave pause, perhaps stirred by Starbolt’s words. As if.

Vanquisher laughed and wrapped his bicep around the hero’s throat: were Starbolt in need of oxygen he’d be choking. “You stupid little punk,” the villain grinned. “You have no idea, do you? Your world has been destroyed. It. Is. No. More.”

“What!?”

“Let me make it easier for you to understand,” Laser Lass continued saucily. “We blew up your planet. Yes, we can actually do that.” She inched closer into flirtatious proximity. “They’re not looking to build a new empire, sweetheart. They’re just moving house, and now that they’ve lost whatever substitute battery you gave them they decided to come look for you, their oldest friend. Don’t you feel special?”

Starbolt glared. They couldn’t be serious: it was exactly the sort of thing some evil-for-evil’s-sake douchebag like Laser Lass would say to tick him off, yet the story fit. The Technocracy had never been so ambitious before: maybe this was a move of desperation on their part. Maybe what they said was true and his homeworld, the Earth on which he’d been born, was gone.

“Thank the gods,” Starbolt whispered. In some ways it was a relief to finally put it all to rest, but there was still this world to save. No time for grieving. He fought against Vanquisher’s hold, slipping through with a light-speed dash, but was cut down again when Laser Lass sniped him with a fingertip beam.

“I thought we made it clear that you’re not going anywhere,” she told him.

The hero reeled in confusion. “Okay, you blew up my planet. Good. Now there’s only a few of them left. We have to stop them before-“

“It’s already taken care of.”

“What do you mean?”

Starbolt’s body flew across the river before smacking into the pavement. Idiot! He should have seen it coming, and telling by the hard-light harlot’s grin she agreed.

“It means this planet’s already done for,” she told him. “Vanquisher! How much time do we have!?”

“Gadgetron says we’re safe for twenty minutes,” he called back. “Plenty of time for you to take this sucker!”

Had you asked Jason Cade several days before if there was any threat greater than the Technocracy he would have said no. Oh, how wrong he was.

“We can still save them!” he pleaded. “Six billion people! You can’t just let them die!” Not like they had back on his world.

“They were done for the second you set foot on this Earth,” Laser Lass told him.

“So then… why are you here?”

The villain laughed, viciously and condescendingly. Had he really not gotten the picture yet? “The problem with planetary annihilation is that it’s so impersonal,” she said. “I’m here for you, puppy. It’s revenge, pure and simple.”

* * * *

Yesterday was supposed to be the worst day of her life. Watching her best friend being dragged off by robots to a doomed world while a doppelganger took her place was supposed to be the most harrowing experience she could ever hope to live through, but no, an even worse day had to roll around and top it by plunging the whole city into panic.

Tap, tap, tap, her fingers rolled impatiently on the wheel of her stationary beetle as she tried again for a phone signal. She had to know that her Mom was okay, and Angie and Grant and even Seth, the annoying bastard. She didn’t know what was going on: all she or anybody seemed to know was that the sky had cracked open and that everyone needed to run as fast as they could.

Traffic was gridlocked on the way out of the city, even all the way out in the suburbs. It figured that there would probably be an accident. With judgment day at their backs people started abandoning their cars, as if that improved their chances of escape any.

Sadly, their only hope right now rested in Jason’s hands. Whatever was happening he was bound to be in the middle of it, but never in a million years could Tanya believe that he would be the kind of hero Kaira had been: not after what he’d done. That actually made things worse. How could a lying, traitorous monster like him ever protect a city?

As people fled like rats Tanya sat frozen still gripping the wheel. What was the point of running? Was this what absolute despair felt like? What on earth could she possibly do? Nothing. Even if there were other heroes in the world they didn’t seem worth believing in anymore.

Suddenly a bolt from heaven shot down, sending people running for cover. Even Tanya who was momentarily petrified found herself struggling for her seatbelt, but by then it was too late.

By some miracle she was still alive, and so were the bystanders. Despite the bright heat that consumed them all nothing had been harmed: the only thing changed was that there was a girl suddenly crouched between the lines of cars.

Yep, that was me.

Tanya couldn’t fumble out of the beetle fast enough. She was probably just as happy to see me as I was to see her: well, maybe not. Something about being tossed between universes and having your quantum superstrings ripped and reattached to membrane after membrane leaves you appreciating home a whole lot more.

“KC!? Is that you!?”

Yep. Definitely home. “Nice secret identity I had once,” I told her, but pulled into a hug anyway. Screw alter-egos: this was needed.

“Where have you be-“

“Time for that later,” I said. “Just remember that you were the one who lead me home, okay?”

She pulled away, confused. “Wait, what?”

“The first time the door opened you, Jason and the beetle were bombarded with vortex radiation. It’s not hard to track when you’ve got the right equipment. You were like a beacon in the fog, saving my ass all over again.”

“For real?”

I laughed, probably the first time in… gods, how long had it been? “You think now of all times I’d be yanking your chain?”

The moment was short lived. A second bolt erupted from the heart of the crack in the sky and down into the city. It was long, slow, wide, and could be seen from nearly twenty miles away. There wasn’t much time left.

“Time to do the hero thing,” I said and burst into the sky. I didn’t hear what she said as I went but was glad she said it anyway. One precious life and billions just like her: what else was there worth fighting for?

* * * *

TO BE CONTINUED…

Tanya launched herself to the nearest cover she could find even though the beetle stood exactly zero chance of protecting her against those… those… things! Machines, like out of the Matrix or Transformers or something, with hissing pneumatic frames, nerves of ribbed steel cable and layers of heavy, stained black plate from head to toe. She trembled at the sight of them but couldn’t resist having another peak. She didn’t know whether a shape closer to human would be more or less intimidating.

And Kaira! What had they done with her!? The first robot had already disappeared back through the doorway with two sentries guarding its exit. Now would have been the time to do something or risk losing her forever to what was definitely not a perfect life on the other side: but that was Jason/Justin’s job to take care of, wasn’t it? I mean, he was Starbolt: a hero! He was supposed to eat mecha for breakfast!

Instead the boy lay crouched in the grass barely visible from the portals light while tinkering with another strange device. Tanya barked at him to do something only to be told “I am doing something!”

The sentries turned. Crap! The mounted laser death rays made their intentions known: leave no witnesses. It didn’t matter that they were only a couple of local kids nobody would believe had seen a girl who didn’t technically exist in their universe being abducted: machines were generally notorious for their imperviousness to reason.

Suddenly Justin shot up and held out what looked like an iPod touch. Pressing a single button saw a violent wind blow: one that touched nothing but the deadly automatons. But their struggle was in vain: reality itself had rejected them, throwing them back to their home and slamming the door shut behind them. The battle was over, but one was still missing.

Tanya bounded immediately to the side of the curiously calm boy, the terror of seeing her closest friend dragged off to regions unknown still quivering like jelly inside her. “What have they done to Kaira!?” she demanded.

The boy thought about it for a moment, and then he forced a smile. “I know it wasn’t the send off you were hoping for,” he said, “but she’s safe. Those things were the Gremlin’s goons. They don’t stand a chance, especially against someone whose powers fry circuitry.”

Something was wrong. What had he done? Tanya couldn’t believe it. The ways he was like Kaira were uncanny, including the world’s worst poker face.

“Where is she really?” she gasped. If only it weren’t as bad as she imagined.

“I told you. She’s fine.”

“And you’re lying,” the girl declared and marched right up to his face with boiling malice. “Where is she, Jason? I need to know. Now.”

“She’s fine. Reall-“

The sharp slap across his face was less than convinced. Tanya continued to tremble, this time not in fear for her own life but that of her dearest friend. Did he know this was going to happen? Why did they ever trust him?

“Listen, you human sack of $#&%,” she seethed, “you’re going to tell me exactly what just happened or there’ll be hell to pay. You got that?” Justin leaned in to speak again but she cut him off: “And don’t you dare think about lying to me, because you’re just as transparent as she is and I’ll know.”

Justin stopped. There was no point in fighting it anymore, he supposed. “Tanya…”

“Tell me.”

“You need to understand-“

“Tell me!”

His fists clenched at his sides and rattled with uncertainty. The words clung to the back of his throat desperate to not find the open air, but then… a pang of guilt perhaps? Something. Jason Cade had been lying long enough.

“I would have done anything to get out of that place,” he told her. “An-y-thing. And I did. And now I have to live with that, and so do you.”

Tanya threw herself at him, gripped him by his sleeves and shook him like a ragdoll. “Where did you send her!?”

He didn’t fight back. “You don’t want to know.”

Definitely not the words she wanted to hear. As if her imagination weren’t dark enough, to know that somewhere Kaira had been thrust into something even worse defied any comprehension. What kind of a monster would do such a thing?

She looked to the device in Justin’s hands. He’d used that to send the robots away, right? “We can get her back,” she declared, “and you’re going to help me.”

Tanya made a grab for the device, but Justin reacted too quickly and held it just out of reach. A part of her couldn’t believe that the person Kaira had entrusted her body to would really do such a twisted thing. She thought that with a little guilt he might be convinced, but alas, he’d thought his plan through to the end.

A flash of light had her stumbling back as he charged his powers, but only for a moment. He stood with the smoking plastic in his hand: the only tool that could have liberated Kaira from whatever hell her replacement had sent her to had been destroyed.

“Not even if we wanted to,” he told her.

Stunned, horrified, Tanya gaped at the new Justin. How could he have done that? Without even thinking her hand flew back up to his face: all of her hate balled up into her knuckles and colliding with his cheek. It felt good, but he didn’t resist. Maybe he would when she hit him a third time, then again, then again, then again!

Justin accepted his punishment, like he agreed that he deserved it or something: not that it did Tanya any good. There was no satisfaction to be had from a moron like this. It wasn’t going to console her, even in the slightest.

A dozen blows must have landed before she finally gave up and turned back for the car. She couldn’t stand to be around him anymore. %#$&, she didn’t even completely know what he’d done! Just that it wasn’t good and that Kaira was as good as dead.

Down the road a safe distance Tanya pulled over and collapsed against the steering wheel. The tears weren’t going to stop for a long, long time.

* * * *

“Crap $#&% gods-damn father-#$%&ing son of a bastard!”

Can you tell that I was angry, or scared, or all of the above? Then again you would be too if you were dragged off to some desolate reality by robots never to see your home again. I was so stupid. How could I have been so dumb as to fall for this? Really, you’d almost think I hadn’t been screwed over by a body double before.

Hours had passed and they were still chasing me: machines waaaay bigger than the trio who dragged my disoriented self to this hellhole in the first place, and they were literally everywhere. Canada, Puerto Rico, Argentina, they were there. Hawaii, Indonesia, Australia, it seemed like the whole damn planet was teeming with these things!

I didn’t let myself panic. I mean, I’d been in worse scrapes, right? Stranded on the other side of the country? At least I could walk home, or on the other side of the world even, at least I could fly. Even the few times I’d been stuck on the other side of the cosmos I’d always found a way to hitch a ride home, but this was new.

Okay. This may have officially been the tightest spot I’d ever been in, but I couldn’t dwell on that while I had hovering robo-crabs and boomerang shaped jets constantly on my six!

Skipping from time zone to time zone it was soon became abundantly clear that there was something wrong with the world. Somewhere it should have been daytime but instead there were only ashen skies and empty streets. The avenues of Hyderabad were uncharacteristically desolate, as was Vladivostok, then Amsterdam, then Islington and home. Where were all the people?

“Okay, maaaybe starting to freak out a little…”

Back in Milestone there was something I had to see. There would only be a few minutes before the machines caught up, but I had to know…

The front lawn had grown wild just like all the others: it was even spreading to the road and cracking the pavement. Weird to see my own home in such a state, and even weirder to kick the door in and absorb the taste of stale air while watching cockroaches flee into dark corners. The place must have been abandoned for years! Definitely not the perfect life that Jason had promised.

“Mom?” I called out. “Dad? It’s… me, Kai… Caroline.”

It’d have been even spookier if they were there. So far as I could tell nobody was anywhere. Underground, maybe? Only then did the dreaded thought enter my mind: maybe they were all gone. Mom, Dad, Tommy… no, I couldn’t think like that. Not before I’d seen any bodies at least. Regardless the room felt like death: in or out of hard light form it was sucking the life out of me.

Oh gods, Jason! What have you done!?

Suddenly, a voice: “Jason?” From the front yard. It sounded human. “Jason, we need to talk,” it continued. Evidently this person wasn’t in on the switch plan. “Come on, buddy. You should know how this works by now.”

How what works? Did I really want to find out?

Curiosity won out in the end, along with the aching need to see another human face. A pity there wasn’t one to be found. Instead there was an emoticon standing on my front porch. Even stranger was how pissed it looked with the symbols: > : (

“We’ve been over this, Jason,” it said patiently. “This isn’t your home anymore. You need to come back to the factory.”

Pressing one foot outside I could see the machines again. It was clear whose side they were on, and who was staying their hand. The fight or flight instinct was itching at the back of my heels, but what good would it do without answers?

“I’m not Jason,” I told them. Would they really care?

The emoticon blinked into a question mark. “Fact: your physiology matches that of subject Cade, Jason. Fact: Your powers are identical to that of subject Cade, Jason. Fact: Subject Cade, Jason successfully evaded the network for seventy-eight hours.”

“I… guess so?”

The emote continued. “Fact: Subject Cade, Jason is not inclined to wearing culturally assigned female attire. Query: Who are you? Query: What is your connection to subject Cade, Jason?”

None of this was right. That itch to fly was crawling up my leg again. The second it hit my gut it’d be like a chain reaction and I’d be running again. Where I didn’t know, but there had to be somewhere safe if Jason was able to hide for as long as he did, right?

“Would telling you make any difference at all?” I asked the emote.

It switched from question mark to semicolon space close parentheses. “Not a lick,” it said.

No, I thought not.

* * * *

It was a long drive back to the suburbs, somewhere just shy of several hours, or at least it seemed that way. For Tanya Truman nothing seemed real anymore: her soul was numb and brain muted of all thought lest knowledge of the night’s events continue to play on her.

Kaira was in another universe, one that she could only imagine was some kind of Hell. How was she supposed to process that? It would have been less painful if her friend had simply ceased to exist, but to know there was a place so bad that someone had to escape an entire dimension to be free just made it so much worse.

Her arriving home came as a surprise. When had she gotten there? All that time she was on auto-pilot with her hands absently going through the motions, only then to snap to reality at the end and find herself the last place she wanted to be.

Tanya was still gripping the wheel as though she were clinging to life itself. There must have been something that she could have done to change things, like grab one of those devices that evil Justin had. Not that it was any good fretting about it now: any chance she had of crossing the borders of reality were fried with that hand gadget he had.

It was no use. She wasn’t hero grade material, just a mere mortal who couldn’t find any help outside of what she could Google: in other words absolutely useless.

She kicked the bottom of the dashboard and swore, then swore again and again and again. Screaming at her own impotence she found herself wanting to punch the horn, needing it to scream with her, and let the whole world know that gods damn it, she was in pain! Even if she couldn’t tell them what was wrong it still needed to come out somehow and with force that would shatter every window for miles.

Reason, or what seemed to pass for it, prevailed. The furious silence wasn’t any better or worse than an ever-tempting bout of insanity. Regardless she still didn’t want to be at home, or anywhere.

A muffled melody pulled Tanya from her funk. No way. That was Kaira’s phone! She must have dropped it on the ride over. Pressing her fingers between the worn out cushions of the passenger seat she searched out what had been explained to her was the Glimmer Girl hotline. This had to be a sign or something.

Unlocking the phone was easy: Kaira’s alter-ego stupidly used her same general password. The message read:

BIG GUY LOOSE ON SOUTHLAND DRV. NEVER SEEN HIM B4. BE CAREFUL.
From: Brandon, Today, 11:24pm

Brandon! Of course! The guy who helped Glimmer Girl out after that assassin hit her! He had to know something, didn’t he? Maybe he had other contacts or something, like to the Young Sentinels, or even someone with a working portal thingamajigger. It was worth a short, wasn’t it?

She dialed the number, but nobody answered. Weird. Didn’t he take important calls from superheroes? Trying again she got the same result: ringing out with no voicemail. The same thing happened a third time, and a fourth.

By then it was really starting to grate on her. He had to answer the phone eventually! After all, he was their only hope of getting Kaira back.

* * * *

Starbolt shivered through the luminescent numbness that encapsulated his form. Tanya was never going to forgive him, he knew that, but if only she understood…

A thought went out to his fallen sister, for without her he wouldn’t have this new life. He’d done a terrible thing, but her sacrifice would not be in vain. And it wasn’t as though he felt no remorse: hell, he was going to regret this night for the rest of his life, but it was just as he’d said before, compared to the alternative it was something he could learn to live with.

His regret was counterbalanced by the sight of Milestone City. It was just like he’d remembered from when he was a kid: Midtown with the Infinitech building planted dead in the heart of it, Centenary Park right by the edge of the river, and all the old turn of the century buildings scattered around the edge, just like it was before. He drank in the sight of this place untouched by horror: it was an even greater gift than his newly claimed manhood.

Then, just as the hero was taking in the lights reflected off the water something caught his eye. It may have been strange to see many cars out, even at this time of night, but Starbolt was pretty certain that they weren’t supposed to be feeding a bonfire in the middle of a main road.

Mere feet away there was something else: something vaguely resembling a chewed up wad of bubblegum with legs and shiny blades protruding from what he guessed was gooey flesh. As Starbolt few closer he could see a man inside the thing, if you could call it that, stumbling with a bottle of liquor in his hand.

Starbolt landed in the creature’s path. It didn’t matter if the thing was half his size or nine feet tall (which he was): whatever was going on stopped there. “Going somewhere, Big League Chew?”

The monster took another long swig and squinted at the gold clad youngster with the pony tail. He was probably expecting Glimmer Girl: well not anymore. “I was hopin’ for someone a lil’… bigger,” he slurred. “You ain’t Mr. Marvel.”

Mr. Marvel? Jason smiled: he must have been this universe’s version of Madam Marvel. “Well, you got me,” the kid grinned. “You see, Mr. Marvel fights A-listers. I’ve got no idea who the hell you’re supposed to be.”

The big guy lumbered, mumbling something about a smart-ass punk while pumping up his intoxicated biceps. “You know who I am!?” he demanded.

“Ya used ta be somebody?” Starbolt mocked, even adding a comical “hic” for effect.

“The name’s Krysus,” the chewed up gumball declared. “You know what I can do? I can stab you, punk! A hundred times! An’ once I’m inside you I can make your blood explode! Huh? How you like them apples!?”

And yet the young hero was less than impressed. “Yeah, 1992 called. They want their grim and dark motif back. You… are nobody.”

Krysus threw the bottle down. That little punk! Who did he think he was? Here was a monster who’d filled entire graveyards and that snot-nosed little $#&% thought he could get away with talking smack? He charged with a drunken roar from a mouth so wide you could practically see to his entrails.

Starbolt didn’t miss a beat. He eased back, put his arm forward, pointed a single digit and cocked his thumb. “Bang.” That was all it took: a thin sliver of a hard light bolt slamming with expert precision at the back of the monsters throat causing for him to choke and double over. He almost felt bad for the guy when he collapsed onto his face and knocked himself out, but a guy like that probably deserved it: especially if he was serious about that exploding blood thing.

Hearing the approaching sirens Starbolt smiled with melancholy. He’d done a terrible thing that night: maybe a lifetime of putting away jerks like this would make up for it.

* * * *

I could tell by the taste the way they’d caught me. Little known fact about tranquilizers: the exact dosage required to put someone out varies from person to person. Too little can paralyze but not knock you out, too much can kill. The machines knew exactly how much it took to take down this body, probably from past experience, so when I finally woke I had no idea exactly how much time had elapsed.

Crap! The roughly-less-than-twenty-four-hours frame to get home had turned into a terrifying question mark. Maybe I’d already missed the window of opportunity. Who could tell? Only the smiling emoticon knew for sure.

“Hello,” it said cheerily. “I am Sam. What is your name?”

I tried to crawl away, but that wasn’t going to happen. Every movement was like swimming through soup while rubber bands held me in place. Actually they were some sort of ridged metal, and the soup was the density of whatever barrier was holding me in place: I didn’t know what it was.

Enthusiastically the emoticon, Sam, shifted its expression to ‘: D’ and chuckled pleasantly. “Ha ha! Sorry. I know you’re used to freedom, but there’s no reason why we can’t have fun together, right?”

“Who,” was all I managed to get out. Even the air in the invisible cage was heavy while my body seemed to be swimming between the ever-snaking bands. Outside was only the surprisingly chipper prison guard in an ominous world of darkness.

“I told you. I’m Sam,” he explained with a semicolon wink. “I was Jason’s friend before he sent you here as his replacement. I play all sorts of games. Everything from chess, backgammon, free cell, all the way to the latest system games and beyond! Whatever you want to do, I’m here to make your term as comfortable as possible.”

“What,” I forced, “if I want… to get out of here?”

Sam laughed again. “You’re funny. Look, I know this has got to be hard, but just think of me as your prison concierge. Confinement doesn’t have to completely blow. All you need is the right attitude.”

Great, Hell came with an induction ceremony. The cheery tone made it even worse: ‘sure, the new world you’ve landed on is a desolate wasteland and you may be locked up for some unknown reason, but that doesn’t mean it’s all bad. Look, it’s Wii tennis!’ Yeah, totally good news.

Suddenly it occurred to me, “how do you know I’m not…?” Gods, I was winded just trying to ask a simple question. Note to self: choose words carefully.

“Easy peasy,” Sam chirped with its vertical mouth blinked into a closed bracket. “You and Jason have different brainwave patterns. They’re similar, but they’re also completely the opposite. Get my meaning?”

I wasn’t sure I did.

“Besides,” it retorted, “do you really think you were the first person he’s tried the body swap scam on? There have been several attempts since his internment. Personally, I’m glad he succeeded. You seem like much better company.”

Yeah, I was over the moon. Wait, did he really say that Jason had made other escape attempts with other Glimmer Girls? Gods, as if one of me was trouble enough, but… how long had he been here, trying to escape this place? Despite being pissed beyond belief I was starting to understand why he would pull a trick like this.

“Anymore questions before we plug you in?” Sam queried.

“Plugged… in?”

“Correctomundo,” the emoticon bounced with another wink. “I don’t know if anyone told you this, but the only reason you’re still alive is so you can power the Technocracy. That’s who we are, by the way. Don’t try and talk to the other machines. I’m the only social one. They made me so you could have someone to talk to, so you wouldn’t go crazy or try to escape or anything. Heh. Whoops.”

“I’m… a battery?”

“Yup yup yup!”

From below I could hear the sounds of turbines or whatever they were starting to power up. The horrible things they’d been doing to Jason for years was just about to happen to me and there were probably only a few seconds left to squeeze whatever I could.

I fought against my bounds impotently, but it was no use: they’d been specifically designed to hold this body in place. “Where are the other heroes?” I blurted out. Maybe if there was a secret underground I could do something to alert them.

Sam paused uncomfortably and turned to a colon space slash. “Sorry to break it to you, dude, but there are no other heroes, not even you.”

“What do you mean… ugh! ‘Not even me’!?”

“I mean that you can’t be a hero when there’s nobody left to save,” it explained. “All that’s left is you, me and the Technocracy. We’re the entire population of the world. I’ll give that a minute to sink in.”

Yeah, right. In a minute I’d be feeding the machine through its tendrils. Not exactly the best time to be processing big thoughts.

“Not to sound flippant, but you can’t ignore the irony,” Sam pointed out in an all too jovial tone. “Jason had to become a villain to escape. It was the only way. I hope you don’t hate him too much for that. Who knows? Maybe in a few years you’ll try the same.”

The swaying noise below began to quicken its pace before releasing a high pitched whine. Neither of those sounds could mean anything good.

“So, you have the skinny on me. What’s your name?” Sam asked.

I looked over both hating and fearing its punctuated face. “Kaira,” I coughed. Gods, I couldn’t even enunciate my contempt in this thing.

“A pleasure to meet you, Kaira,” it said then blinking into a capital X and D. “I promise this will only hurt for a minute.”

“No, ple-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!”

One minute, it said. My screams filled the cavern. The worst agony I’d ever felt began to boar right into my chest and pulled at me like it was drilling my soul! Two seconds in and I already wanted it to stop: not that the Technocracy cared.

Sam stood idly by pleasantly with a closed bracket smile. It did nothing to keep me sane.

* * * *

Tanya stirred slightly at the sound of the blip. It was sharp and harsh laying somewhere around her pillow, invisible to her lazy hand. Ah, whatever: she’d be asleep again before she could find it anyway, so why even bother looking? Driving her face deeper into the pillow she flirted with the precipice of sleep, because who needed to get up when there was so many problems to take care of?

Suddenly she remembered that something was wrong. What she couldn’t exactly remember, but just knowing was enough to have her spring up into a waking haze. That was Kaira’s phone pounding at her eardrums! Kaira was in another universe! She was supposed to be calling for help: time was running out!

Still above her sheets and fully clothed Tanya searched for the portable device she soon discovered had fallen between her bed and the wall. The screen was dim but still she could read ‘1 NEW MESSAGE’ on the main panel. Her fingers fumbled at the keys with as much skill as they could summon at six thirty in the morning as she opened the text.

HELP IS COMING.
From: [ID blocked], 2:11am

Jeez, it had taken all that time for a message to go through? More likely the Glimmer Girl hotline had been screaming for attention but she was just too exhausted to notice before now. Still, that was over four hours ago. Where was help?

“I really hope you’re alright, KC,” she whispered to the empty room. Somehow, even with the anonymous three word promise that didn’t seem likely.

* * * *

“Kaira?”

I couldn’t stop trembling.

“Kaira, can you hear me?”

They’d carved my heart out but still I could feel it beating across the room, or at least that’s what it felt like.

“Earth to Kai-ra,” Sam said in a sing-song tone. “Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!” Semicolon space capital D. The relentless cheer was really starting to grate.

Was it over? The only way to tell was to feel the sting of tears as they rolled down my cheeks. Gods, I’d never felt anything like that before: not at such intensity. I had to escape or else I was going to break.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Sam mused, “but there’s no getting out of here. Besides, even if you did somehow manage it where would you go? You don’t belong anywhere. Your life belongs to Jason now. If you took it back you’d both be freaks again, am I right? I don’t know much, but I know his insecurities, and I know the kind he must have exploited to get you here.”

“Not a freak,” I coughed.

“If you really believed that then you wouldn’t have been so quick to give your life away. You belong here now, Kaira. I know it hurts, but your contribution is valuable, and the Technocracy appreciates you. Never before have we had such an efficient and abundant source of power.”

I wanted to fight but I was just too drained. It was like they’d amputated the parts of me that were Glimmer Girl and leaving me, the pathetic, weak human part behind. Even though I could feel embers of her lingering in the corner of my psyche it just wasn’t enough for a charge. It would take time for her to recover, but before then the Technocracy would drill again, and keep doing it over and over and over…

“You might not believe me now,” Sam continued, its emote shifting to ‘<3’, “but we love you, Kaira. We need you and cherish you for who and what you are, and it breaks our heart that you would want to leave us.”

“Liar.”

The emoticon paused. “It’s true. We will tell you so every day. In time you will come to believe us. It is the only truth that remains in this world.”

Yeah, right. Only a crazy person would ever believe that a torturer using you for power was capable of love. But I didn’t need empty words: I needed a way out before round two began. I couldn’t stand another bout with the soul drill.

The earth trembled with the sound of nearby thunder: that or the machine was preparing itself. No, it couldn’t have been… Sam was completely baffled, emoting colon space open bracket sad face. What was going on?

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

An explosion tore through the wall behind me with flames illuminating the cramped little space I’d once thought was an ominous cavern. Whatever had caused it had Sam stumbling back in faux terror.

“Please don’t-“

“Shut up,” a familiar voice groaned before unleashing hard light destruction on the mechanoid. No, it couldn’t have been… Jason?

I struggled against the bonds to see his face but couldn’t quite reach. No matter. I was going to be out of there in no time. “You came back for me,” I cried. Thank the gods!

Jason, however, sounded less than enthused. “Of course I came back for you,” he seethed. There was something strange about his tone: it was higher, practiced, the way I used to do it. “After what you tried to do to me I would have been happy to leave you rot, but when the Technocracy began to invade my universe, well, I simply had to come back to finish you off.”

Then it became all too clear that the figure slinking into view was not Jason, though whoever she was appeared to have my body all the same. I blinked in awe at her costume: it was just like Glimmer Girl’s but so… not! The black lace fishnets, amber boots as high as her hemline was short, the long gloves and the velvet mask pointed to a character far more sinister than I was expecting.

“Who the hell are you!?”

“Playing dumb,” the witch scoffed, “or did I really not make that strong an impression the last time around?”

Sam had told me that Jason had pulled the body-swap scam before. Oh hell. And there I was taking his comeuppance.

Her finger pointed like a loaded pistol and was primed with force that would leave me with an instant lobotomy. “The name’s Laser Lass,” she said, “and it’s the last name you’re ever going to forget!”

* * * *

TO BE CONTINUED…

Her name was Super Sonic Woman and her taste for nostalgia was just as obvious in her costume: v-striped silver one piece, large collar, winged boots and so much glitter even I had to turn away from the glare. She was also covering a lot of ground and the next thing I knew we were three counties away leaving local sheriffs with impossible numbers on their radars.

Something else you also find in the d-grade villain pile: a lot of them are in it for the chase. Victory? Dominion? That’s for the big baddies. Super Sonic Woman, she just liked to stir the pot. Hell, she wasn’t even close to winning and couldn’t keep from bragging.

“Hey hey! Can’t stop me! Can’t stop m-!”

THWACK!

What was I saying? Oh, right. D-grade villains: sometimes they like to get so drunk on their own sense of excitement that they don’t see when holographic heroines shift light spectrums and block the road with invisible fists. At that velocity you better believe it put her out cold. Also, thank the gods for her ability to redirect kinetic energy or else we’d have made street pizza.

Okay, that was the first thing out of the way. All I had to do was fly her back to Milestone then take care of her partner: a fierce mustachioed pyrokinetic laid out in a smoldering crater that was once the corner of 3rd and Crown.

“That was a close one,” Starbolt bounced. “You should have seen it! Burning through the sky then right through the asphalt!”

I shrugged before unloading my heavier-than-she-looked human cargo. “That’s why they call him Mr. Fahrenheit.”

You could tell from his grin that Starbolt was getting off on it. Gods, it was like his bones wanted to leap out of his skin and dance, like he’d never taken out a pair of low-level super-powered thrill-seekers before. Then again who was I to get in the way of his victory?

“So,” he asked, “do we wait for the cops to show up?”

Not that we needed to wait long. I could already hear the sirens. “We should be good to go,” I told him.

He lingered a moment, shuffled from one foot to the other. “Listen… I know this is going weird, but there was this coffee shop I used to go to…”

“The Lovin’ Spoonful?”

His eyes lit up. “Yes! You have one too!? That is so friggin’ awesome! Unless… you know, you have school or whatever.”

“Suspended indefinitely,” I told him, “or at least until I decide to ditch the skirts and man the #&$% up.”

Even though he was trailing behind I could hear Starbolt smile. “I feel your pain, lady,” he said. “And that’s why you should follow my plan: so neither of us ever have to deal with that again.”

* * * *

Out of costume Starbolt, or that is to say Jason looked a lot younger than he was. That I’d heard was the trans man curse, and one which I knew to be a real sore point, but his child-like exuberance wasn’t helping his cause at all. Not that I could blame him: I’d probably be endlessly fascinated with a new universe as well.

It was eerie to look at him. At first I couldn’t see, but the more hours we spent together the more similarities between us were eventually uncovered until I really did believe: ‘this guy is me from another universe!’ Words cannot even begin to describe how bizarre and awkward that is.

My mind kept floating back to the night before. It was only minutes after we’d met that he was describing where he’d come from.

“I know this is going to sound weird,” a disclaimer he would use many times over again, “but I come from a universe almost exactly the opposite to yours. Not like as in good is evil or up is down or anything, we still seem to have a lot of the same laws and history and whatever, but men and women have been swapped around.”

“So women are the dominant class,” I mused, “and you’ve got matriarchy instead of patriarchy?”

Starbolt shook his head. “I’m not explaining it right. The guys still think they’re in charge, but it’s a different set of guys. It’s like… from what I can gather, anyone who was born a man on my world was born a woman on yours, and anyone who was born a woman on yours is a man on mine. Get it?”

“Uh.” I wanted to say yes, but it was just so stupid. What was this: a bad sci-fi novel?

He leaned closer. “Who are your mom and dad?”

It was a personal question, especially from another mask, but what the hell? He seemed to know a lot about me already. “Alan and Liz,” I told him.

“My parents are Ethan and Alana. Close enough?”

“Still not buying it.”

“Okay,” he pressed. “Best friend?”

“Tanya.”

“Tanya Truman?”

“Yep.”

“There we go,” he grinned as though that were all the proof he needed. “My best friend is Tommy Truman. Real tough artsy type whose step-mom teaches karate? Has an awesome little brother you babysit all the time? Doesn’t sound remotely familiar?”

“It does and it doesn’t,” I told him. “Okay, if everyone here has the opposite sex on your world then why are you still a Cade? My mom, who I guess would now be your dad, should be a Sinclair. So unless you have different rules on how a traditional marriage works…”

Starbolt was dumbfounded. I had a point. Clearly he hated that I had a point. “$#&%!”

“Got anything else for me, chief?”

The boy sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. I was really putting him through the ringer. Then again in a world filled with clones, doppelgangers, shapeshifters and all sorts of other nastiness it was impossible to know who to trust: but he wanted me to believe him so very badly. It was almost sad to watch.

Pacing in front of me he searched for the right words. Finally he asked, “what happened to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I was thirteen when Regina and Adrianna Dempsey gathered up a group of jock boys,” he started shakily. Oh gods, I knew this story. “I used to do track and field back then. One day I rolled my ankle, and as I was limping home they chased me, called me a dyke, threw sharp rocks and sticks… and all because I had short hair and wore pants.”

It was the same. Gods help me…

“Next thing I know I’m running for my life. Only place I could think to run was into the reservoir… ha, and right before a storm. I fell, and got lost underground and…” He sat next to me, his eyes wide with mirrored horror, “and I nearly died. If that… I still don’t know what to call it: alien? If it didn’t come to make me a hero then I would be dead. Their hate would have killed me, and it would have killed you too. And that’s why we’re the same, Kaira.”

I had to admit I still had suspicions and wasn’t totally convinced until he took my hand. Liquid gold ran over his skin and his costume, soon spreading to our joined fingertips and then swallowing my entire body. It was that familiar sense of warm and numb that I’d been become all too used to, except it didn’t belong to me: it was his.

Gazing into my soul he asked “now do you believe me?” He knew my answer, even before I broke the connection and snapped back to human state.

“What do you want?”

Starbolt smiled. Ah, there was the rub. “You’ve run into your fair share of mad scientists, right?” he asked. “Well, there was one I ran into recently: Dr. Janus. He had this weird gun thing, see, and he was going to use it to switch bodies with one of the Vigil, except they found him out and locked him up before he had the chance.”

“Okay, so where are you-“

“I have the tech,” he explained. “I went and found it right after I found out about this world. We can make use of this, Kaira.”

Suddenly I found I couldn’t move, not because of anything he’d done but because I was too perplexed to process anything. It was a frightening plan, but even more frightening was the practical rationality behind it.

“So what you’re saying,” I said, “is that you want my body.”

“I don’t just want your body,” Starbolt explained. “I want it all. I want to be a regular guy: a cis guy with working organs who doesn’t have to argue with idiots just so he can use the right bathroom. And in exchange you get the life I don’t want which is suited perfectly for you. The real question is why would you say no?”

What an absolute mind bend. What’s a person supposed to say to that? Somehow it seemed like he was asking me for a lot: more than I could stand to part with even.

There was a coherent thought in there. “I just don’t know if I could give up…” Too bad it didn’t have an ending.

“Giving up what, Kaira?” he asked gently. “If you’re anything like me then you’ve only got one real friend. The rest of the people who say they care about you really want a guy like me around while my family… they want you, Kaira. They want the good daughter. You can do that, and you’d be loved and accepted and cherished. There is no downside to this.”

That was the part where he lost me. “I need to think about it.”

Starbolt blinked. It was the same kind of look I’d get when telling people that I didn’t eat chocolate. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“All I’m saying is that there’s maybe a few things worth considering that have been missed in your proposal. So give me some head room, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” he conceded, “but there’s only thirty nine hours until our realities drift apart and the bridge between them collapses.”

I shot him a deadly look. Funny, but that seemed like an important detail to leave out.

Since then I couldn’t get his offer out of my head. All night and all day I dwelled on the implications of it, about whether it was moral, whether it was kind to my family and friends, and about whether it was kind to myself. So many thoughts went spinning around, but I couldn’t grab hold of a single one. This was going to be a hard decision to make.

Jason turned to me before pressing open the doors of the Lovin’ Spoonful. “So who do you have instead of Glen and John?” he asked.

“Who are Glen and John?”

“The cute gay couple who run this place,” he explained.

“Oh. Uh, we have Gloria and Jean. Gloria is the Norse goddess of the bean.”

He nodded along as if he were not unfamiliar with the concept. “Are they gay too?”

“You know I’ve gotten vibes but never thought to ask.” Desperate for my usual chai latte I pushed him inside. The need for caffeine > the need to know the sexuality of whoever was serving.

Jason stood amazed, at what I didn’t exactly know. There didn’t seem to be anything special about chalk signs, sofas, coffee tables, pot plants and bookshelves, or maybe that was just me.

“Everything okay?”

The boy shook himself back to reality. “Yeah. Yeah, fine. Just different to what I’m used to is all.”

Oh well. I could leave him to his wide eyed wonderment for the moment. In the meantime Gloria was waiting for me at the counter, but she too seemed just as fascinated by the young man as he was his surroundings.

“He’s a wild boy from the Yukon,” I told her. “Never seen a coffee house in his life.”

“You dragged in a second chai latte, extra sweet,” she mused. “This is very, very unusual.”

I had to laugh. Lady, you’ve got no idea.

“KC!” That was all the warning I got before the creature pounced and damn near took me off my feet. Not that I could blame her or anything: she was probably worried sick. “Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, woman! Where the hell have you been!?”

Without even thinking about it my head collapsed onto her chest. Once upon a time when boobs were supposed to be alien and the wrath of women terrifying I might have thought twice, but given the circumstances I was as happy to accept the refuge as she was to offer.

“Tanya, the last few days, just… I don’t even know where to begin.”

She wrapped her arms around me gingerly, ‘like any big sister would’ apparently. “Here, let me pay for your drink and… why are there two?”

Oh, right. Funny thing, I was so preoccupied with finally letting myself be exhausted that I forgot all about Jason. My head turned, my arm pointed at the idle confused boy, and Tanya was no more enlightened for the experience.

She boggled at him. “And he is…?”

A silent conversation communicated entirely through eyebrow signals took place between Jason and I revealing that yes, I had buried a good portion of my face into the shirted cleavage of who he suspected it might be. “You’re Tanya,” he said: a simple statement that again did nothing to help the poor girl out of her pit of sad ignorance.

“KC, who is this guy and why does he know my name?”

I smiled, probably out of delirium, and told her “you’re going to love this.”

* * * *

Minutes later saw me being thrust into a bathroom with the door being locked behind me and a near hysterical Tanya standing between. It quickly turned into one of those times I wish I hadn’t told her my secret identity because everything that went with it caused her mind to blow a gasket.

Her back to the door she slid down onto the tiles, staring seemingly into nothingness. She’d gone from disbelief to shock in a very short time. Sometimes it was hard to remember that some people weren’t as used to the impossible as I was. Crap, it was really beginning to feel like I’d screwed up.

“Let me get this straight,” she began. “That guy sitting out there: he’s you, as in a boy you, as in a trans boy you from another universe.”

I joined her on the floor and nodded along. “Yep.”

“And he’s come along because he wants to trade bodies with you.”

“Yep.”

“So he can be a cis guy on this Earth and you can be a cis girl on his Earth.”

“Well it becomes my Earth,” I laughed weakly, “but yeah, that pretty much covers it.”

Her glare was painted with desperation. She didn’t understand how I could laugh at a time like this. “KC, you need to jump on this,” she gasped, then crawled over and began yanking my arm. “Seriously, you need to do this or you will regret it for the rest of your life!”

“Are you saying that because you mean it or are you saying it because you think asking me to stay is selfish?”

Even after I leaned forward to hold her steady her eyes were still trembling. “Maybe,” she croaked, then injected her tone with some rage flavored courage. “And stop reading my mind!”

“Hey! You started it,” I teased, which then bought me a punch in the arm. I don’t know why, but it seemed deserved.

She was quiet for a while, maybe because angry bravado wouldn’t cover what she had to say next. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she admitted shamefully. For so long she’d been so sure of herself as my protector that something this big with no certain answers blew her completely out of the water.

I drew close and let her rest on my shoulder in the vain hope that it would help keep her together. It did, kinda. That and the comfortable silence: nothing else would get broken while there were no more dangerous ideas being thrown around.

Only then did it occur to me it was only 1:15. “Hey, why aren’t you at school?”

Tanya grunted and propped herself up. She was looking a lot more stable, what with rage being the superglue that turns a stunned girl into a tank. “Assistant Principal Ferguson is why,” she hissed. “You know they called a special assembly?”

“No. Why?”

“To give us a special reminder about the dress code, specifically how boys are expected to dress, and how girls are expected to dress, that every day is not Halloween and that gender roles are there for a reason, blah blah blah.”

“You’re kidding,” I gaped. “He said all of that?”

“Yuh-huh.”

“So what’d you do?”

Tanya furrowed her brow for a moment in thought. “Well, first I stood up. Then I told him to go and have sexual intercourse with himself. Then I extended my middle finger.”

“What? Seriously?”

“Even if you’re not around, KC, I’m not going to let people pour that kind of bull$#&% on you.” Gods, was I lucky to have a best friend like her or what?

“So then what happened?”

“Then,” she explained, “there was a lot of yelling, some cheering, and I walked to my car and left. Then they called my mom.”

“Damn. What’d she say?”

Tanya smiled infectiously. “She also told them to go and have sexual intercourse with themselves and hung up. Then she called me to say how proud she was, and to go see if you were okay.”

My grin stretched until it hurt. I must have done something right in a past life. “Gods, I love your mom,” I told her.

“I know, right? She’s a pretty kick-ass lady.”

“You’re pretty kick-ass too.”

“Shut up, baby. I know it.” We laughed at the stupid reference probably a little too hard. Maybe it was because deep down neither of us wanted to get up and unlock the door.

It was then with cold clarity that I realized that this was how we’d survived all of these years. Maybe Tanya did too. We’d been best friends through grade school and walked hand in hand through Hell: even if Jason could offer me everything I ever wanted it still meant sacrificing the few good things I had.

Her head propped back against my shoulder. “Any idea what you’re going to do?” she muttered. A sigh was all she got back. “Well you’ve only got a day and whatever to decide.”

“Yeah, I know.”

We lingered a while longer. Getting up really was the last thing we wanted to do, but there was little choice when someone came knocking on the door.

“$#&%.”

“There’s probably a line,” I told her while dragging my sorry carcass upright.

Tanya stood but she didn’t move. Even when I tried to prod her she remained firmly planted with a look of contemplation on her face. Something was wrong. Before I could even ask what it was she had her arms around me with her face buried in my collarbone.

“Just do me this one thing quickly while we’re alone, okay, Kaire-Bear?” she sighed.

I held her back uncertainly. “Dude, I’m not going anywhere yet.”

“But just in case, yeah?” She squeezed tight and looked up at me as if I was an idiot, or a liar, or both. You could see it like a rock on the bottom of a clear pond her knowing that my mind was already made up. Still she played along, and even though I thought I was just humoring her I didn’t want to let go either.

Gods, what was I going to do?

* * * *

When we finally returned to Jason there was a new addition. Andy turned his head, grinned and pulled down his glasses. “I was wondering what was taking you two so long,” he grinned.

Tanya didn’t miss a beat in informing him that “we were having wild lesbian sex of such ferocity and fervor that nuns for miles around were crying and didn’t know why.”

I flopped down beside Jason who was sporting far too enthusiastic a grin. “She didn’t mean that,” I told him. The idea that he would be putting the moves on Tanya the second I left the dimension wasn’t helping to sell me on his plan.

Shifting her gaze between the men Tanya pursed her lips suspiciously. “So, you two are getting to know each other?”

Andy nodded. “Yeah, we were just talking about-“

“College,” Jason interjected. “Since, you know, I’ll be graduating and… you know, stuff. I still don’t know what I want to do yet.”

The older guy smiled with puzzlement. Something was going on. “You don’t have to be embarrassed because the girls are here,” he said. “We’re all friends. We all wonder about this kind of thing, especially trans people.”

My gaze was focused directly was on my other self like a heat lamp in a windowless interrogation room. “What kind of thing?”

Jason shuffled and glared back so that I knew he wasn’t going to be intimidated, not that I cared. “If you really must know,” he replied sharply, “I asked him what he’d do if he could just switch bodies with a cis guy.”

Gods, I just had to ask. Was I really reading too much into it? Because those kinds of questions felt like a personal assault. As if I wasn’t stressed enough about the situation already.

Tanya broke the silence out of discomfort or even boredom and asked Andy what he’d said. The eldest of our group kicked his foot onto the coffee table and took a contemplative sip at his drink. “Honestly? I think I’d feel too bad for the guy. As much as I’d love to swing some pipe around I’ve also had a lifetime of getting used to being trans. It’d kinda suck having to throw some poor schmuck in the deep end like that.”

“What if it was some douchebag who really had it coming?” Jason laughed.

“What, like Charlie Sheen?”

“How about Seth?” Tanya murmured.

Andy nearly spit all over the table. “Okay, you want me to switch bodies with my ex. That is totally not the creepiest thing I have ever heard in my life!”

“At least you’d have an intimate working knowledge,” she jabbed. Of all the times for them to have a moment.

“What about a trans woman’s body?” I leaned in and asked. They could tell I was being serious: more than I should have been.

“I don’t want a trans woman’s body,” Andy said plainly, “and honestly she probably wouldn’t want mine either. I mean I’ve got bad skin, I’m hairy, have an epic goatee… which isn’t so bad for me, but it’s probably the worst thing in the world for a good portion of women.”

“What if neither of you had transitioned yet? No hormones, nothing.”

Suddenly he stopped, and as he leaned back into the sofa all jokes vanished because Andy had something to say: something he appeared to be very conflicted about.

“Honestly?” he started. “I would in a heartbeat. No question. In that ideal situation I would make the switch.”

Nobody dared speak, but I had to know: “why?”

Andy just shrugged. “You know I’m only saying this because it’s you guys, and Jason, I’m sure you’ll know what I’m trying to get at too, but… Jesus. We’re not normal people. I mean, being trans is normal for us, but somehow we were forgotten by the status quo, so we have to run, and yell, and fight to say ‘hey, I exist, damn it, and I am a man.’ And they make us jump through hoops and run their tests so they can justify to themselves that we are who we say we are. Meanwhile, every other man on the planet doesn’t get question one about whether they’re in the right bathroom or if sleeping with someone makes them bi-curious.

“And I’m not saying that to be cruel,” he continued, “and I’m not saying it because I think that trans people are inherently brave or broken or deserving of pity or pride. I say that because I’m selfish and because in a world as cracked as ours it’s the only way to escape. I just want to be a guy, no questions asked. If trading off would get me that then yeah, I totally would.”

A part of me wanted to argue, but nothing came. For a moment I wasn’t sure if I was uncomfortable because his words hurt or if it was because I didn’t want to believe him. Jason on the other hand gave me a knowing glance and a sympathetic smile: his point had been made.

* * * *

Later I flew home as Glimmer Girl. Usually it was a solitary trip, one which would let me gather my thoughts, but since Starbolt didn’t seem to have anywhere else to go I let him follow me. At least he was quiet save the tentative attempts at “I’m sorry” I pretended not to hear over the wind.

Silently I found myself hating him. His proposition had me questioning everything I had in the world. It made me want to cling tighter to the precious things while at the same time shoving in my face that I was one of the have nots. Just by virtue of being born, growing and wanting the things I wanted I was less than the rest of the world, and I couldn’t stand it. Gods help me, I might have been just as selfish as Andy thought he was.

We landed, looked away as we changed into our civvies, and walked the last block to my door. “You really sure this is okay?” he asked.

I shrugged. Where else was he going to go?

“I could always crash in an empty hotel room,” he offered. “Raid the mini-bar, steal the little soaps. The only thing I won’t have is cable.”

“Dude, you’re not breaking into a hotel. It’s wrong,” I told him sharply. “Besides, they’re keeping my mom in hospital another night for observation. My dad’s going to be stuck by her side. We have the place to ourselves.”

At least that was the plan. The car sitting in the driveway told a completely different story. Crap.

Jason laughed facetiously. “So, empty hotel room?”

“You stay here,” I told him. “I’ll get you some snackage, some towels, my GameBox if you’re desperate for entertainment… and stuff for the shower because you are not going to steal mini-soaps you didn’t pay for.”

Could you tell I was in a bad mood? It didn’t help to know that time was running out. The night before he’d given me thirty-nine hours, suddenly it was less than twenty-four. I was pretty sure it wasn’t healthy to make life altering decisions this big in under a day.

I’d just made it to the front stair when I heard voices. It was my parents and they were loud: not quite bloody murder loud, but they were definitely in a heated debate, and with mom being fresh out of hospital. Wow, it must have been serious.

After slipping off my clunky shoes and turning the knob gently I crept inside with all the stealth naturally afforded me. The argument was coming from the kitchen so they definitely hadn’t seen me come in. Finding a spot behind the bookshelf I listened to their back and forth.

“No way will a new school accept him this late in the year,” Mom argued. “We’ve got to make do.”

Dad was trying to be Zen about it, but you could hear him struggling. “After everything the current school has done to us? Come on, Liz. You of all people aren’t interesting in bending over backward for them.”

“Maybe not, but we’ve got to be practical here! Justin needs an education, so we ask him to wait until graduation to do whatever it is he wants to do. That way he at least has the basics to function in an adult world.”

“We could always just put him in another school,” he pleaded. “One that accepts him for-“

“Alan, you put him in another school and he’ll have to repeat junior year!”

“So what? He repeats! You say that like it’s such a bad thing! At least this time around he’ll be better prepared!”

Oh gods, they were fighting over me. Another waking nightmare to come home to. Suddenly I felt like I was twelve again standing by helplessly the first time they separated, and now they were at it again, why? Was it so hard to accept me as I was?

I could hear Andy again in my head. Just to exist we had to challenge the status quo: just to have integrity we had to hurt the ones we loved. It wasn’t fair, but at the same time…

“It’s all my fault.”

The fighting stopped. The two adults dashed into the living room but found nothing. Just this once I’d violated my own rule of ‘no powers in the house.’ I couldn’t stand for them to see me so ashamed, especially when it was my life that was causing them so much friction. Gods, what was wrong with me?

Seconds later I was back on the street. Jason was there waiting patiently. I think he’d heard some of what was going on: or he was seeing me cry again… damn it! Why couldn’t I keep it together?

“You okay?” was all he managed, as if it weren’t obvious.

I forced a smile. That it was just as transparent as my poker face didn’t matter. “Let me ask you something. How long have you been out as a guy?”

“About a year. Why?”

My hands were trembling so hard that I could only safely hold them under my arms. “How did Ethan and Alana take it?”

His jaw dropped. He didn’t answer and kicked the pavement instead.

“Jason…”

“Kaira, it…” Say it. Don’t say it. Even before he opened his mouth again I knew what was coming. “It destroyed their marriage,” he reported bitterly. “Apparently having a son was so bad that… you know what? Screw it. My parents aren’t your parents, or else they would have fallen apart years ago, right?”

If only he knew.

Then at that moment I decided. There was plan and purpose. Suddenly there was a right thing to do. My nerves steeled I turned to my doppelganger. “Jason,” I told him. “I want to go through with your plan.”

He nodded with complete understanding then turned to lead the way. Nobody could fail to argue that what we were doing was selfish, but what mattered more than anything else was having a right reason to do it.

* * * *

8:45 and we were on the road. I decided to drive, not fly: that is to say that Tanya was driving me. If it was going to be my last day on (this) Earth then there was no question that she was going to be there. The journey was silent: no music, no jokes, just the two of us dreading the inevitable.

My baggy jeans and X-Men tee were almost like a ceremonial garb. They didn’t belong to me: just the entity that would be inhabiting this body and taking my place in the world. That was the real Justin Cade, this guy who called himself Jason: and I was going to be Caroline, just like my mom had always wanted. The irony was not lost on me.

“Stop that,” she said.

I knew what she was talking about. It had been cycling between us all evening. “Stop what?”

“You know.”

“No,” I replied flatly.

“You’re… being all noble,” she explained, “like this isn’t the saddest thing in the world for me right now. I can’t, I just…”

I could almost hear the arguments screaming out of her head: ‘you don’t have to do this. Parents break up all the time. Some people just aren’t meant to be together. I mean, what if it doesn’t work out anyway?’ She thought it, but she would never ever say it. Besides, my answer would have still been the same: inevitable or not I couldn’t let it be my fault, not if there was a chance I could save them.

Tanya shook her head and tried to laugh it off. “Sorry,” she said. “I keep forgetting that this is also an amazing opportunity for you. A chance at a normal life… you are going to shine, missy.”

She called me ‘missy’, I thought. It never failed to make me smile, not just because it was my best friend recognizing me for who it was but because it was so familiar, like the way an older sibling would talk to her little sister. She’d protected me since grade school and seen me grow up into someone who protected the world: it only made sense that we’d get attached.

The glare of the headlights against her glasses made it hard to tell if she was crying. Probably not: Tanya was a sympathetic crier and her dam wasn’t going to break until mine did. Not that there was any chance of that happening soon: my nerves had to be steeled for what was coming next.

“You know I’ll never forget you, right?”

The hi-beams glinted off her toothy smile. “Yeah, you will,” she said. “Hundred to one odds say that this Tommy guy will be an even better best friend.”

“You think so?”

“Well, yeah,” she laughed. “He’s me with a schlong. It’s like everything you ever wanted in a soul mate!”

Gods help me, she won a smile. In any other company such a thing might have been impossible, but for her it was like a gods-damn super-power. Maybe next time the Carbon Man popped up I could call her and make him laugh himself into custody.

Nah. Those guys were Starbolt’s enemies now. There was probably a Carbon Woman waiting for me in my new home.

The car stopped on a grassy hill overlooking the city. We had arrived. Jason stood in the path of the headlights looking extremely uncomfortable in a skirt, denim jacket and pink sneakers. Combined with the short trim hair he looked like G. I. Jane after a night with Barbie. It suited him even less than me with a ponytail and Justin’s usual geek un-chic.

“Note to self,” I called stepping out of the beetle. “The second I get to my new home I’m buying a whole new wardrobe.”

“I haven’t worn girl’s clothes in three years,” he explained. “This was all I had. I thought you’d appreciate the effort.”

It’s a weird thing being a jerk to yourself, but for some reason I was utterly compelled. There was just something about Jason that rubbed me the wrong way, maybe because the universe didn’t like being invaded, or maybe it was just because he was a little too much like me. Still, that didn’t stop me from trusting him. I mean, if you can’t trust yourself then who can you trust, right?

He held in his right hand a small blue plastic laser pistol so ridiculous that it could have easily been mistaken for a child’s toy. For a moment I even though about calling him on it, but miraculously held my tongue.

“So that’s Dr. Janus’…”

“Yep,” said Jason as he cradled it uncertainly. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but it’ll make me you and you me. After that we send you back to my world.”

Tanya sprung up from where she was perched on the hood of her car. “You mean right away? We don’t get to hang out or anything before the clock runs out?”

“Every passing second makes the return journey even more dangerous,” he continued. Not that he couldn’t have told us before or anything. Tanya fumed, but I signaled her to cool down. It was business time between myself and I.

I looked again at Dr. Janus’ gun remembering the advice I’d been given once before: never look a toy gun in the mouth. “So what do we do?” I asked.

Jason grinned. “Easy. You stare right into the barrel here, I pull the trigger and insto-presto, we switch bodies.”

Somehow I imagined a more pleasant experience than that. “Why do you have to shoot me? Why can’t I shoot you?”

The boy in drag huffed and offered me the weapon by the handle. “Do you want to do it?”

I thought about it for a moment, but decided I didn’t trust myself enough. Sure, I’d held a gun before, but I’d never shot one. What if I missed and switched brains with a squirrel or a stray cat or something? “No, I think I’ll let you handle this one.”

Staring down the sights and locking me in his gaze Jason took steady aim. “This might sting a bit,” he told me before counting down. “5… 4… 3… 2…”

“I can’t watch,” was the last think I heard Tanya whimper. And then…

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFVVVVVVVVVVVVVVZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZAPPP!

* * * *

Things were a little hazy after that. What… what was happening? The ray must have had a side effect I wasn’t warned about. It was hard to think coherently: whatever that device had done seemed to have messed with my short term memory.

Gods, I was probably going to be having this conversation with myself again in five minutes, wasn’t I? I could only laugh. This, I imagined, must have been what getting drunk felt like: light-headed, nauseous, blurry and slow like watching a film with too few frames to keep it smoothly animated. The hangover was probably going to be even worse.

“KC,” I heard Tanya call, then realized she was holding me by the shoulders. “Can you hear me, KC? Come on. Don’t make me worry.”

“Is CC now,” I giggled. “Remember? Myyyy naaaame is Caaaaroline… not Kaira. Nope nope!”

Tanya turned suddenly to another figure still standing in the grass. He seemed in a lot better condition than I was, but even more surprising was that he was… me. Wasn’t he? I mean he had my face. He looked like me in dreary boy mode, but there was something different about him. Hard as I tried to think at him he wouldn’t move the way I wanted him to.

“The shock hits some people worse than others, especially the first time,” the me person said. Woah, that’s what I sounded like? It’s bad enough hearing yourself on tape, but when you’re having an out of body experience? Gods damn.

That’s when I realized that it wasn’t my body anymore. It was Jason in there! Well, Justin now. All these names sound the same but they’re different and… yeah, he had my old body which meant that I was someone else!

My first instinct was to look straight down, and lo I was amazed. In my drunken state I couldn’t keep my hands away and tweaked and prodded for sensation. “My gods,” I laughed, “they’re actually real!” Playtime went on like that for a while until the new Justin rolled his eyes and pulled it away.

“Come on, Kaira. Leave them alone,” he urged me. “They’re boobs. Not Nintendo.”

I shook my head. “Nope nope nope! I’m Caaaaaar-o-liiiiiiiiiiine.” Weird that I clung to it so tight. I didn’t even like the name.

Tanya remained close by. “You didn’t give her brain damage or anything, did you?” she asked. Her face was contorted with worry.

“It might take a few minutes before she’s fully cognizant, but yeah, she’s fine.”

He stepped away, probably to do whatever it was that… I don’t know. All I know is that he left me alone with Tanya and she was fretting and I couldn’t stop smiling, rolling my eyes and putting my hands everywhere. All of these new sensations: it was a lot to get used to.

With a heavy sigh and a forfeited smile she asked, “so how does it compare?”

I told her honestly, “I can’t feel my toes.” Luckily she thought it was as funny as I did and this time even showed off some teeth.

“My advice?” she said. “Stock up on aspirin.”

“Why?”

“When the time comes you’ll know.”

What did she mean by…? Ooh! Stupid me for not getting the hint, but then I could hardly be held to blame, could I? I’d just had my brain sucked out and placed into a new body while my otherworldly doppelganger wandered around with my unwanted boy parts. It had been an exhausting week and an even stranger day: I was starting to think nothing could surprise me anymore.

KRAK-THOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

Deafening thunder and blinding lightning made the earth itself tremble as a bright thing appeared before us. It was a wall, probably the size of a small aircraft. Bolts arced from it, singing the grass from the heart of the swirling doorway born from reality torn asunder.

Before I could even ask what the hell it was a giant machine stepped out. It seemed entirely unconcerned by Tanya when she attempted to drag me from its three prong grasp. “SUBJECT RE-ACQUIRED,” it droned flatly.

In my condition I was helpless as she was and could only watch as she screamed. Justin on the other hand could do something, but instead he remained completely frozen. Why wasn’t he changing into Starbolt? He could still do that, right?

Tanya beat his arm trying her damndest to prompt him into action. Instead the otherworldly boy just said both to her and to me “I’m so sorry.”

Sorry. Sorry for what!? He knew this was coming!? I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him! Right from the start this whole deal had seemed seedy.

The machine turned and thrust me into the doorway. I watched my native world disappear before my very eyes. I truly had left my old life behind, but at what cost? What had Jason signed me up for? What special hell was awaiting me on the other side?

* * * *

TO BE CONTINUED…

Just received something today that is very much worth sharing: namely a piece of fan art featuring Glimmer Girl from a guy named Richard Fawke. See below:

It’s a recoloring of another piece, but I’m impressed particularly with how he incorporated the Glimmer Girl logo into his design. What say the rest of you?

Thank you, Rick. It was just the random ego boost I needed.

[EDIT: The piece is also now part of the fan gallery on The Shimmerverse Facebook Page, bringing our grand total of works to one!]