“I see.” Velveteen would have happily sworn in a court of law that Blacklight was smirking behind her mask. But all she said was, “Sounds good to me.”
As is so often the way of things, especially in a world including multiple superhumans whose power sets focus purely on the manipulation of probability, it was going for coffee that made everything go completely wrong. (Or, alternatively, it was going for coffee that made everything go completely right. That being the issue with coincidence: so often, it can be flipped around without changing the actual events.) Velveteen and Blacklight entered The Bean Scene approximately ten minutes after meeting up on the roof. It says something about the residents of Portland that no one so much as batted an eye when two superhumans in full costume—and recently accused of going villain—entered the cafe and took their places at the end of the line.
Inch by inch, they moved toward the register. They were still about four people from the front when a barista’s voice cut across the crowd like a laser cutting through a solid steel bank door: “Double red velvet mocha-latte for Brittany!” Velveteen’s head snapped up in a gesture that was disturbingly like a real rabbit’s, eyes gone wide behind her mask.
Blacklight looked at her with evident confusion. “What, do you have a problem with people who destroy good coffee by adding too much syrup or something?”
“No,” whispered Velveteen. “I know that voice. But that’s impossible. That’s…”
(“Unless Blacklight’s powers include access to a dimension of eternal shadow.” Wasn’t that what she’d said? Why was this such a surprise, anyway? Recurring villains were a fact of the superheroic life.)
“…that is so fucked up,” Velveteen groaned.
“What?” asked Blacklight, sounding increasingly bewildered. “You really hate mocha, don’t you?”
“No.” Velveteen glanced her way. “I know that voice.”
“So?”
“So the last time I heard it, the owner was trying to kill me.”
“Oh,” said Blacklight. “Well, hell. We’re about to have a really massive throw-down, aren’t we?”
“Oh, yeah,” said a perky, chirpy voice from behind them. “I mean, I was wondering how long it was going to take for you to catch on.”
Velveteen sighed as she turned around. “Hi, Cyndi.”
The former manager of Andy’s Coffee Palace had changed quite a lot since the last time Velveteen saw her. Oh, she was still outwardly perky, blonde, and too cheerful to live, although the black and blue tips on her fluffy, feathered hair were new. There was an odd bluish under cast to her skin, like her tan came, not from exposure to the sun, but from spending too much time in the light of a broken nuclear reactor. Her eyes were pools of infinite black, and filled with shadows like reflected screams.
“Friend of yours?” asked Blacklight.
“Former employer,” said Velveteen. “Last time I saw her, she was getting pulled into a dimension of eternal shadow. How did that work out for you, anyway? Did you have a nice time?” She did her best to remain outwardly calm as she reached out with her mind, “feeling” her surroundings for things she could call to her own defense. There weren’t many, beyond her own assortment of plastic horses and toy soldiers. Somehow, she had the feeling they really weren’t going to be sufficient.
“Oh, you know,” said Cyndi. “I suffered the eternal torments of the shadow dimensions before undergoing my metamorphosis and becoming more powerful than you could ever dream. It took about a thousand years. But see, the time differential is such that I didn’t even miss the announcement of the new team lineup.” She giggled. It was like fingernails being dragged across a chalkboard. “Only now I get to take them all down. Won’t that be fun?”
“I don’t suppose there’s any way I could convince you not to do that?” asked Velveteen.
Cyndi smiled, revealing lines of electric blue crackling across her teeth.
Velveteen sighed. “I thought not.”
“Call me Sin-Dee,” replied the former manager of Andy’s Coffee Palace, just before her human facade melted away, leaving what looked like a woman sculpted entirely from shadow standing in her place. Crackling lines of electric blue skittered across her skin and hair, outlining her still-human features. People sensibly started to scream and run for the doors as Sin-Dee raised her hands and sent a bolt of blue-black darkness shooting toward Velveteen and Blacklight.
“Look out!” shouted Blacklight, and slammed Velveteen unceremoniously to the side.
Velveteen didn’t so much “hit” the floor of the coffee shop as “perform a full-frontal assault,” landing hard on her chest and actually sliding a few feet across the tile before she managed to stop herself. Flipping onto her back, she was treated to the horrifying sight of Blacklight, held easily five feet off the ground by a fist made of bluerimmed darkness. Sin-Dee was laughing. Somehow, that made it even worse. Maybe that was why villains laughed; because they knew it always, always made things worse.
Reaching into her one of her belt’s components, Velveteen withdrew a handful of green plastic army men as she scrambled to her feet. “Hey, BITCH!” she shouted, and when Sin-Dee turned, flung the tiny soldiers in the villain’s direction. Responding to her silent commands, the army men drew their plastic guns and began to fire. Sin- Dee shrieked, flinging one arm up to cover her face, and the blueblack fist holding Blacklight prisoner dissipated, leaving the other hero free to tumble to the ground.
“Oh, you’re going to pay for that,” snarled Sin-Dee, lashing out in Vel’s direction with a semi-solid wall of darkness. The army men flew into it and disappeared completely from Vel’s awareness. The shock of losing contact made her wobble where she stood, eyes going briefly unfocused. Wherever the toys had gone, it was…away. So far away that she couldn’t even begin to feel out where they’d gone. “Stupid good-for-nothing wannabe. You were never good enough for The Super Patriots. You should never have even had the chance.”
“They weren’t good enough for her,” Blacklight snarled. Sin-Dee’s attention snapped in that direction, just in time for a wave of steel-hard anti-light to punch her squarely in the face. She went flying backward, taking out the rack of cream and sugars before slamming into the window. Blacklight glanced in Velveteen’s direction. “Vel? You okay?”
“Ye-yeah,” said Velveteen, shaking off the disorientation and reaching out to call the rest of her toys to her defense. “You?”
“Yeah.” Blacklight’s tone was grim. “Sadly, I think she is, too.”
Sin-Dee’s form wavered and turned liquid, slithering across the floor before re-forming between the two heroes. The blue sparks cycled violently over her skin as she snapped out her hands and, before either Velveteen or Blacklight could react, wrapped them both in veils of shadow.
“See, I knew I was going to need to make you pay for what you did to me,” she said, almost conversationally, as her shadows slid around Velveteen’s throat and pulled tight. “It’s not like I resent having superpowers, finally, and I guess everybody needs an origin story, but you totally destroyed what we’d been trying to create, and that was, like, a total bummer, you know? So destroying you was, like, totally necessary.”
“You robbed the bank,” spat Velveteen. “You set us up.”
“And you banished me to a dimension of eternal shadow, so I guess we’re about equal, huh?” Sin-Dee flicked her fingers. A band of shadow slithered over Velveteen’s mouth. “Now hush. This is my first monologue, and I want to enjoy it.”
Velveteen’s eyes narrowed, her gaze flicking toward Blacklight. The photon-manipulator was glaring in mute fury, the shadows circling her almost invisible against the darkness of her costume. She’d referenced The Super Patriots. She wouldn’t say where she was trained. Maybe…
Stretching as much as she could against the bonds holding her, Velveteen flicked her pinky finger twice toward Blacklight. You able to fight?
After a moment’s hesitation, Blacklight flicked her pinky back, once. Yes.
>
Velveteen bit back a sigh of relief. Now she just had to hope that they hadn’t changed the signs between training groups and regions. Something about the way Blacklight fought—something she really didn’t want to think about too hard just at the moment—told her that they probably hadn’t. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she took a gamble, and tapped the first two fingers of her right hand together three times in a scissor-motion. The gesture had a different meaning for every power set. For an elemental, it meant “do your worst.” For an elastic hero, it meant “elongate your limbs and escape.” For a photon-manipulation, it meant “blind the room.”
If Blacklight’s powers were really limited to black forms of light, they were screwed. But if, as Velveteen suspected, they weren’t…
There was a long pause, long enough for Velveteen to start thinking she’d guessed wrong. Then the room lit up with a brilliant white light, so pure that it was blinding even through her closed eyelids. Sin- Dee screamed. The bonds holding Velveteen off the floor dissolved and she hit the ground, slamming her head into the tile floor hard enough that a different sort of darkness came flowing in. She had time to wonder if Blacklight was all right, and whether any civilians had been injured. After that, unconsciousness claimed her, and she didn’t have time to wonder anything more.
* * *
When Velveteen came to twenty minutes later, she was lying on a stretcher in the street outside, being examined by a crew of city EMTs who knew enough about treating superheroes to have left her mask in place. What she could see of the coffee shop from her current position was a disaster zone; broken glass and shattered coffee mugs were strewn everywhere. “Hope the owner had his superhero insurance paid up,” she mumbled, and tried to push herself up onto her elbows.
“Stop that,” said the nearest EMT. “You need to hold still.”
“Blacklight. Is she—?”
“Your friend had to go. She stayed long enough to fill out the incident paperwork. Once we’ve finished looking you over, you’ll be free to go and find her.”
“The security cameras captured everything,” added a man Velveteen recognized from the governor’s office as he wandered over to the little cluster of medical personnel and battered superheroine. “The papers will be running a retraction tomorrow. You did a good job tonight.”
“Tell that to my skull,” Velveteen muttered, and subsided. Despite the pain, she couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened. Not the fight, specifically—fights were part of the superhero status quo, irritating and painful as they were—but the way it ended. The way Blacklight knew the finger-code, and the way the room had filled with light that wasn’t black at all. Settling on the stretcher, she closed her eyes and tried to relax. The EMTs would take it from here, and she really didn’t feel like moving. She just wanted to sleep, and think about the light, and what the light might mean.
Nobody noticed when Velveteen drifted off into shallow dreams. Not even Velveteen.
In the wreckage of the coffee shop, the shadows gathered together, slowly, moving with uncertain jerks. For a moment, it looked almost like they lifted off the floor, forming an uneven bulge that might, from the right direction, look like the body of a woman. A few faint blue sparks gathered, dancing over the surface of the darkness. Then the bulge sank down into the floor, the blue sparks fading away as the deepest of the shadows subsided, and the shadows that remained went still.
For the moment, anyway.
VELVETEEN
vs.
The Holiday Special
Twelve years ago…
IT TURNS OUT THAT THERE are good things and bad things that come with being a junior superhero. The good things were a little nebulous; if pressed, Velveteen would probably have had to settle for “I don’t have to live with my parents anymore” and “Yelena and I get to share a room,” but they were still there. The bad things, on the other hand, were numerous, and easy to spot. More classes, as The Super Patriots, Inc. legally had to educate their underage “wards” to the standards of the state, while also teaching them how to control their powers and not level too many buildings. (Not a huge danger for Velveteen, unless the building was made out of Lego. Still, the theory was sound.) Sessions with Marketing, and with the company therapists who were supposed to keep them all well-adjusted and happy. As if. Still, for the most part, she was reasonably sure that she was happy. Usually. Mostly.
At the moment, “happy” wasn’t even in her vocabulary. In fact, at the moment, her desired vocabulary consisted pretty much entirely of words Marketing didn’t even know she knew.
They were only fifteen minutes into the filming of the eighth annual Junior Super Patriots United Christmas Extravaganza, and Velveteen already felt like screaming. Possibly with a side-order of “raining down fiery destruction from above,” if she could convince somebody to lend a girl a little bit of a helping hand. Cosmo-not, maybe; he seemed to be having almost as little fun as she was, what with Marketing continually demanding he summon up another cosmic light show. Or Dotty Gale, who was probably wishing she’d tornadoed herself back to Fairyland the second the summons to TV Town arrived.
Not that the TV Town heroes seemed all that thrilled with the situation. Deus Ex Machina kept complaining about the writing, which was something of a statement on its quality right there, Leading Lady had thrown her makeup mirror at Sparkle Bright for daring to suggest that maybe she could get away with wearing a little less foundation, and as for Master Chef, well…
Velveteen really just hoped that the Claw could stay out of his way, or at least avoid winding up in a room with him, a pot of boiling water, and access to melted butter.
She could hear the heels of the woman from Marketing clacking along the edge of the stage as she conducted her furious search, followed by her shrill, focus-group-approved voice demanding, “Has anyone seen Velveteen? She’s due back on the Santa’s Workshop set in fifteen minutes, and Makeup needs to approve her hair before she goes on camera.”
Because I look SO GOOD in ringlets, Velveteen thought, and shrank further down into the shadows. She’d been able to tolerate the green and white version of her regular costume (still trimmed with her standard Velveteen Rabbit brown, mustn’t confuse the kiddies when they’re demanding their limited-edition Santa’s Helper Velveteen action figures, oh no!). She’d been able to put up with them adding holly clips to her ears, and painting her nails in bright pine green. But everybody had to draw the line somewhere, and she drew the line at looking like the brunette Shirley Temple.
“It’s okay,” whispered a voice beside her. “She’s gone.”
Almost a year of part-time superhero training and full-time media spotlight had taught Velveteen that unexpected voices almost never meant anything good, and frequently meant serious pain was about to enter the scene. She whipped around, only wincing a little as her shoulders slammed into the steel girders supporting the stage. Then she blinked.
The girl perched next to her was glowing faintly, in the off-hand sort of way that Velveteen typically associated with Sparkle Bright or Firefly, except that this glow was blue-white, instead of being rainbowed or gently gold. The color of the glow made sense, considering the girl’s pastel blue skin and long white hair, assuming that someone being pastel blue could ever be said to make very much sense. The blue skin and natural nightlight look didn’t exactly go with her mall rat attire or hot pink jewelry, but clearly Marketing hadn’t been able to get their hands on her wardrobe coordinators yet. They would. They always did.
Say something cool, Velveteen thought, before opening her mouth and asking inanely, “Are you a supervillain?”
“I’ve thought about it, just to make my parents mad, but it seems like too much work,” replied the glowing girl, with an equally glowing grin. She offered a hand, displaying a clearly home-done hot pink manicure. “I’m Jackie Frost. My parents are doing some of the special effects.”
Parents. Parents parents parents…Velveteen quickly reviewed the list of specialis
ts that had been brought in for the production, and guessed, “Jack Frost and the Snow Queen?”
“Uh-huh.” Jackie shrugged. “They said to not get underfoot. They’re trying to keep Marketing from noticing me.”
Velveteen winced. “That’s a good idea. I wish Marketing would stop noticing me.”
“We could get out of here.”
“How?” The idea was appealing. It was just that it also happened to be completely impossible.
“I can use Mom’s magic mirror to teleport home. She totally lets me.”
Velveteen hesitated, thinking of her friends trapped in holidayspecial hell. Sparkle Bright kept getting forced to play fireworks display, the Claw was being stalked by the world’s best argument against seafood restaurants, and Action Dude…she didn’t even like to think about what Marketing was doing to him.
“Can we bring my friends?” she asked hopefully.
Jackie grinned.
Convincing the rest of The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division to take a trip through a complete stranger’s mother’s magic mirror was easier than Velveteen expected it to be. It helped that—in addition to the Claw’s problems with Master Chef—Firefly had been teasing Sparkle Bright again, to the point that the younger photon-manipulator was obviously fighting back tears, and Action Dude had been the target of all the other Majesty-type heroes-in-training since the filming of the special began. The West Coast Division was currently the youngest team in The Junior Super Patriots franchise, and the “upperclassmen” were more than happy to remind its members of their place in the pecking order. Any chance at an escape was worth the risk.
“Besides, what’s she going to do?” muttered the Claw. “Kidnap us to the Smurf dimension?”
Sparkle Bright, whose media education began and ended with what her handlers taught her, wiped her eyes and asked him, blankly, “What’s a Smurf?”
The Claw rolled his eyes. “You smeared your mascara,” he said, and went stomping off to observe Jackie as she tried to activate her mother’s magic mirror.