Game Over  •  Act 1

Vahaadi sat cross-legged on the floor of Krissy’s bedroom, propped against the side of the bed. The vest that had found itself at the wrong end of a tyrannoterran proboscis lay across one of his legs, halfway through his repair. The other leg was pinned beneath his young mistress, who, for whatever reason, insisted on occupying as much of his personal space as she could acquire. Vahaadi’s thigh tingled under the pressure of Krissy’s sharp elbow, but he’d long since resigned himself to this bizarre fate of serving as her futon while she read comic books to him.

“‘Psssshzzzzooooewww!’ ‘Crack!’ ‘Krssssssh!’ ‘What?’ ‘It can’t be!’” Krissy said, performing every sound effect and individual character’s dialogue as she trailed her finger through the speech bubbles. She flipped to the next page, and hissed in a new voice, “‘Not today, Stunbeam. It’s time you’re finally eclipsed.’”

Vahaadi paused his needlework to squint at the character on the page. “Wait, I thought Ramshackle defeated her in the last one,” he said.

“No, that was Miss Tress. This is PurpleX! She’s actually a good guy. She’s just confused and upset because she’s got baggage with Stunbeam, and Dr. Discord’s made her think he betrayed her. I forgot, I should have explained that first. That’s way back before the Eternity arc, hang on.”

Krissy scrambled up to her bookshelf and retrieved another issue of Valor Patrol. Her departure granted Vahaadi just enough time to straighten his leg and resume his circulation before Krissy plopped down beside him again.

“See, PurpleX used to go by the name UltraViolet, back when she was still Stunbeam’s sidekick,” Krissy said, showing Vahaadi a yellow-clad superhero and a slender teen girl in a purple body suit. “But then the Eternal Legion came from the future and attacked Earth, and UltraViolet got trapped in the Negavoid, which created an alternate timeline where Arrowman never defeated Malevolence. When UltraViolet finally escaped, her powers had evolved and she’d grown up a lot. So, she changed her name to PurpleX because she didn’t want to be Stunbeam’s sidekick anymore.”

Vahaadi massaged his temple. He had hoped that listening to these comics would let him find a way to exploit Krissy’s obsession, but he struggled to keep the convoluted plot and cast straight. “Right, right, Stunbeam’s sidekick,” he said, feigning understanding. “And sidekicks are…servants?”

“No, not servants! They’re a team! The sidekick is just the less-powerful one of the two, or the younger one.”

At this, Vahaadi smiled wryly. “But, you say I’m your sidekick. Surely you’re not suggesting that I’m less powerful than you.”

“Well, you’re definitely not younger,” she pointed out. “Less powerful, though? Mmm…I don’t think so. I mean, you can grant wishes! And you’re immortal. Fritz! Maybe I should be the sidekick, and you should be the hero!”

Vahaadi laughed, both at her aghast expression and at the thought of taking the role of the herculean characters that adorned Krissy’s walls. “Oh, no, no, no. I’m not cut from that cloth, as it were. I’m no hero.”

“What! Sure you are! You do heroic stuff all the time!”

“That’s only because I…”

Because he what? Because he didn’t know how to do anything but serve? Certainly not because he cared for her. She was just another captor like his past masters, another reminder of his wretched slavery—but unlike the others, he stood to gain more from ending her than a brief rush of brutal satisfaction. The key Mr. Sabo had shown him changed everything.

And yet…

“Spark…there’s something you should know,” he said, forcing the words out through the blooming discomfort that knotted his insides.

A small furrow appeared in Krissy’s brow. But before she could ask him to go on, an ethereal humming trembled from her hand.

“Uh, hold that thoug—oh, we’re getting a loretreader call!” she said.

Vahaadi released the breath he’d been holding and bit at the skin on his knuckles while Krissy peered at the oculus, which was emitting a strange, watery sound.

“Elweyn? Is that you?”

{Sp—k—n—you—hear—me?}

“Uh, kind of. Are you getting…oculus static? What’s happening?”

{Som—ng—wrong—} warbled Elweyn’s telepathic voice. {Pl—come—}

The communication link extinguished, and Krissy and Vahaadi shared a mystified look.

Krissy’s nerves jangled as she splattered through slush piles on her jog to the Rosetta Public Library. Vahaadi kept pace with her, invisible in the aetherealm.

Something’s wrong, please come, Krissy repeated to herself, guessing at the gaps in Elweyn’s broken message. Perhaps the stilted syllables were just some kind of psychic butt-dial from Elweyn, but the call was cryptic enough to justify sneaking out her bedroom window to escape her “mega-grounding” and find out for herself.

A glimpse of a familiar figure sitting alone in the city park made Krissy double back in surprise. Though the girl’s face was hidden, buried in her hands as she stifled sobs, Krissy recognized her at once. She would know that dye-striped hair anywhere.

“Quee—I mean—Beverly?” Krissy asked between pants. “Are you OK?”

Beverly jumped. She glowered up at Krissy, her tear-streaked face making her look even more feral than usual. “You are the last person I want to talk to right now,” Beverly said thickly, scrubbing at her cheek with her fist. “Go away.”

Krissy threw her hands up in surrender. “OK, I just wanted to—” she began, when her eyes caught on the phone in Beverley’s lap. Underneath the teardrops on the screen, Krissy saw a masked face grinning between the phone’s glossy icons.

“Is that Spark?” Krissy gasped. “The superhero?”

“Huh?” Beverly looked down at her phone and reddened. “Oh, uh. Yeah.”

She swiped her thumb across the screen to flick the icons out of the way, revealing the phone’s wallpaper. It was an anime-style fan art, not a photo, but it was definitely Spark. Delight at the adorable image and horror that said image belonged to Beverly clashed in equal measures in Krissy’s head.

“I. Uh. Wow,” was all Krissy could manage. “It’s cute.”

“Yeah,” said Beverly awkwardly. “Um. It’s kinda dorky, but…I love superheroes. Comics, movies, all that. Big fan.”

The dissonance in Krissy’s mind reached crisis level. In a spectacular display of verbal contortionism, Krissy sank her foot into her mouth ankle-deep.

“You can’t like superheroes! You’re a bully. You’re the bad guy!” she said.

The park lurched to DEFCON 1.

“I’M the bad guy?! You broke my nose! I had to get surgery to fix it, and it still hurts!” Beverly shrieked, and the agonized tears began afresh. Krissy’s stomach quailed in dismay as the other girl shoved her phone in Krissy’s face. “Our team had to drop out of the championship because I couldn’t cheer!”

Krissy went nearly cross-eyed to see the screen. The Spark wallpaper was hidden behind a text conversation with Claire about their disqualification from the tournament.

Krissy grappled, trying to make sense of the avalanche of shame and bafflement as her schoolyard nemesis dissolved with anguish before her eyes.

“But…but you were picking on Amelia Devereaux!” she sputtered, grasping onto a shred of righteous indignation. “You pushed her to the ground!”

“Shut up, OK?! You have no idea what was going on!” Beverly choked on the tears running down her throat. “Amelia is as much of a monster as you are! Now get out of my face before I break your nose!”

The threat didn’t scare Krissy, but Beverly’s pain did. “I—” she attempted.

“Go away!” Beverly screamed, and her voice broke into a devastated plea.

Krissy turned and bolted, as if she could outrun this bizarre alternate reality that cast Beverly as a hurting victim, and Krissy as a monster.

She didn’t slow until she arrived on the torn-up lot of the library. Vahaadi appeared before her in his signature rush of smoke, arms akimbo. Krissy started.

“What was that about?” Vahaadi asked.

“What did I say about djinni magicky stuff in public?” Krissy said, but her rebuke was half-hearted and distracted. She plowed past him, and he fell in step. “That was…I don’t know. Weird.”

“Did you really break her nose?” Krissy couldn’t tell if he was elated or scornful.

“Well, I didn’t mean to! I guess I was aiming for her face…But she pushed another girl down, and her cronies stole her phone!” She flailed her hands in frustration. “I was just trying to help, OK? That’s what heroes do.”

“Smash schoolgirls’ faces in?”

Krissy tugged the pulls on her hoodie. “OK, it might have been a tad overkill. But that Beverly’s trouble, all right? I knew she was bad as soon as I saw her. I can spot a bad guy from a mile away!”

“How very like you to leap to that kind of conclusion.”

Krissy bristled. “I’m very perceptive. I’m always right about people.”

Vahaadi made Krissy jump once more, this time due to his outburst of laughter.

“What? Stop laughing! I am!”

“Spark, you are the least perceptive person in this mortal coil,” Vahaadi managed, his voice still high in his amusement.

“That is not true!”

“No?” He stopped in his tracks, taking Krissy’s wrist to pull her short. “Tell me, then. What is it you perceive of me? Am I a ‘bad guy?’”

Krissy stared at him. All mirth had vanished from his face. Unsettled by his sudden steely manner, she forced a smile and twisted her wrist out of his hand, giving him a light-hearted slap on the shoulder. “Pft, knock it off, Vahaadi. We need to get to Elweyn.”

She turned away, but in a breath of vapor, he blocked her path again.

“I’m serious. Tell me.”

“Vahaadi, we don’t have time for this.”

Vahaadi glowered and did not move.

Krissy hesitated, then huffed and lifted her chin in defiance. “Fine. You know what I see? I see a guy who tries to be scary and to not care about anything.” She advanced on him, prodding him in the chest, and he retreated. “You sneer and you posture and you taunt, but it’s all this tough-guy act to hide that you’re a big softy that’s scared of vacuums and loves beautiful things and smiles like he’s just come out of the world’s best bubble bath.” She threw her hands up in an impatient gesture, and smiled—a strangely pained, adoring smile. “You’re my friend, Vahaadi, no matter how much that drives you crazy.”

Vahaadi searched her face. Then he let out a little scoff of laughter and steepled his fingers in an uncanny impression of the Dr. Discord poster hanging in Krissy’s room.

“Good to see that my ruse is working,” he smirked in an affected villain gloat. Then, in his true voice, he added flatly, “For the record, vacuums are surely the spawn of abomination.”

Krissy threw her head back and laughed, relieved by the deflated tension. “Worse than hair dryers?” she said, jabbing at Vahaadi’s ribs.

“So much worse than the hair dryer. The hair dryer can’t swallow and scream at the same time.”

Krissy guffawed. “C’mon, scaredy-cat, let’s get going.”

She beckoned him through the gap in the tarp that covered the library’s gouged face and took the stairs up to the Records and Manuscripts room two at a time, puffing the lyrics to the Valor Patrol theme as she went. But Vahaadi hardly heard her. Her obnoxious lines about Stunbeam and Ramshackle were lost under the words she’d spoken just a moment previous:

“You’re my friend.”

You’re wrong, Spark, Vahaadi thought. So, so wrong.

{There you are, finally,} Elweyn said, leaping down from a bookshelf as Krissy and Vahaadi materialized in the Metapolis library. The library looked a little more disheveled than usual, but Elweyn appeared to be fine, if a bit harried.

“Sorry about the wait,” Krissy said, still perplexed by the incident that had waylaid them. “We had a…thing. But that’s not important. What’s going on?”

{Something’s wrong with the oculi,} Elweyn said, and she began to pace across desktops and book piles. {I called Mr. Sabo to investigate a distortion in Gladglub, but just as I was explaining, I suddenly lost the connection. I’ve been trying to contact other loretreaders for hours, but you’re the only one who seemed to hear me.}

“Ooh. That can’t be good,” Krissy mused.

“And Mr. Sabo never turned up, I take it,” Vahaadi said.

{No. I can’t get a signature on his oculus at all.} The oculus on Elweyn’s chest glimmered, and tendrils of light unfurled from the giant crystal above, filling the room with a holographic cosmic atlas. A few tiny pinpricks of color scattered far and wide across the map. At the center glittered a fleck of orange and a fleck of purple, representing Elweyn’s and Spark’s oculi in the Metapolis library. {I can locate everyone else, but no one has responded. And as far as my oculus is concerned, Mr. Sabo has vanished.}

“Well, I’m really glad Flicker came through, then!” said Krissy. “What about this distortion thing? Do you want us to check it out? Please say yes.” She clasped her hands under her chin, flaring her eyes at Elweyn. “I’ve been grounded for days! I need to blow something up!”

{I don’t dare leave it unchecked any longer,} Elweyn said, seeming to frown. {But you two will have to be on your own for this venture.}

Elweyn may as well have told Krissy that the Valor Patrol would be personally delivering her Christmas presents this year. She drew a squealing gasp and her superpowers ignited with a crackle that sent out fizzing sparkles. “Our dynamic duo gets to be a real duo?!” Krissy, now Spark, asked in elation. “No chaperone?”

{Not this time. I have no one I could send with you, and besides…} Elweyn tilted her head, and her gaze warmed. {I’ve been pleased to hear that you’ve done very well, so far. Vesper even described your work as ‘abysmally lackluster, but adequate,’ which is about as close to a resounding accolade as one could hope, from her.}

“I’ll be sure to add that to my résumé,” Spark snorted. Her sarcasm shifted gears back into glee, and she threw an arm around Vahaadi and crunched him against her. “Can you believe it? We get to do this by ourselves! Oh, man, Elweyn, you won’t be sorry! Vahaadi and I are on the case! He’s the smoke and I’m the blaze! Side-by-side, we’ll save the day…z!” She threw her free arm out jubilantly. Vahaadi smiled at her, charmed by her antics, but his thoughts raced.

No chaperone. No witnesses.

Gladglub proved to be a colorful little city that might have been right out of the Silly Symphonies. Everything appeared to have a cherubic face, from the curvy trees, the squat, swooping buildings, and the gumdrop-shaped mountains in the far distance to the clouds above. It was at once whimsical, and deeply unsettling.

The street was a flurry of activity from a swarm of toon-like, anthropomorphic amphibians with glossy dappled skin and large wet eyes. Dollops of gelatinous ooze on their heads resembled jaunty hairstyles. They might have been goofily charming, if they hadn’t looked so frightened.  They scuttled around and past Spark and Vahaadi, croaking cries of alarm and worry to each other.

One of the blobby frog-people careened into Vahaadi. He reached out and caught the creature’s rubbery arm to both steady and waylay it.

“You, what’s happening?” he demanded.

The frog-person pulled away with a stammer and continued to run, leaving Vahaadi with a hand slick with slime. He grimaced and shook it off, just before Spark grabbed his jaw and angled his face up the street.

“Vahaadi, look!”

She pointed at a hillside clustered with more curvy, smiley-faced buildings. Among them stood one that was dark, colorless, and bore an adorably pitiful expression of despair. A localized storm churned just over it, and the entire building flickered and shuddered.

“If there were ever an emoji for distortion, it would be that,” Spark said. “Let’s move!”

She rocketed from the street and Vahaadi conjured his rug and followed, racing against the flow of fleeing frog-people toward the distorted building.

Spark would have liked to blast in the door in heroic fashion, but the sight of the building’s suffering expression stayed her hand. She sucked air through her teeth and eased the glassy door open. The telltale ache of distortion bloomed between her eyes as she squinted around the dark interior.

“What is this place?” Vahaadi said.

The spacious room responded with a demonic cackle, and pixelated lights illuminated rounded machinery that blared with synthesized music. Spark and Vahaadi recoiled.

“It’s an arcade!” Spark said. “A Gladglub arcade! Vahaadi, the apocrypha must be a video game!”

“And you’re just in time to be player 2,” said a voice over the techno music. Serenadē’s unmistakable silhouette moved against the far wall, cast in shadow by the flashing arcade games.

Spark was nobody’s player 2.

“Over my dead body!” she hurled back.

“Ohoho, that can be arranged.”

Serenadē’s shadow disappeared as all the machines blazed to cursed life. Pixel gliars tore from the screens and pulsed toward Spark and Vahaadi.

“Vahaadi, cover me!” Spark said over her shoulder. Vahaadi nodded and drew his weapons.  Spark ignited her hands and launched into the fray, hoping to cut straight through toward Serenadē. Gliars lunged to engage her, but Vahaadi slashed them down. Together, they fought their way toward the back wall, but there was no sign of the Distortioness.

“Serenadē! Get your bustled butt out here so I can dropkick it into next week!” Spark said.

A flash of movement caught her eye, and she glanced over in time to see Serenadē dart into a back room off the main floor. Spark pursued. Vahaadi followed a few paces behind to avoid getting dragged, but remained engrossed in combat as vicious gliars swarmed all around him.

The back-room door slammed shut behind Spark. The orange glow of her flaming hands glinted back at her, reflected in the screens and buttons of another jumble of arcade games, though these looked dusty and the worse for wear. Flicker hummed.

Serenadē leaned against one of the machines, twirling her violin bow. Spark snarled and dove at her. The violin bow morphed into a club in Serenadē’s hand, and without taking her eyes off Spark, she smashed the club into the machine beside her. Spark stopped just in time to throw her hands up to protect her face from the spray of shattered machinery.

“Whoops! Game over!” Serenadē said.

Spark clenched her fiery fists, feeling the thrum of her oculus die. “You little—!”

Serenadē smiled at something past Spark. “Hope you’ve got an extra life,” she smirked, then vanished, just as a whirling dark mass clamped around the superheroine.

Spark screamed in genuine terror at the sensation of a cold, clawed hand burbling up through her stomach, clenching around her heart, and ripping it from its place. She thrashed against the shadowy tomb that constricted her as a horrible, glitching laughter rang out.