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Superworlds - Chapter 1 - Fame
🕑 Added 2023-06-11 00:22:31 +0000 UTCFame
“Ladies and gentlemen, tonight’s guests need no introduction.”
In homes and bars across America – in hospitals, on phones, in booths manned by security guards – fifty million screens sat tuned to the same image. Tonight’s episode had been advertised for weeks, on billboards, on bus-sides and online. Simulcast live, internationally, the ratings were predicted to eclipse the Superbowl. The cost of ad time was in the millions. NBC had spared no expense.
Before a light-studded backdrop of a shining city skyline, Jay Leno, host of the Tonight Show, stood with his grey hair and impeccable suit, beaming at the cameras and studio audience with his hands held in front of him, practically bouncing on his heels. His tie, usually an unremarkable shade of blue or burgundy, was – for tonight only – a glorious, shimmering gold.
“Sometimes on the Tonight Show,” he said, “We get to interview those on the frontlines of history. More rarely – though not never – we actually make history. Tonight, we get to do both.” His wry smile beamed. “He was an ordinary kid from the suburbs who – on paper at least – had an extraordinary power. She was an empath – unpopular, unknown, until a paparazzi snapped her in the Legion’s ranks. A year ago, nobody knew who they were. Today, well, they’re household names.”
He paused. “I won’t say any more. Because nothing more needs to be said.” The host’s chest swelled. “You know who they are!” Off camera and arrayed before him, the studio audience cheered. “You saw who they are!” The cheering intensified. “And tonight, we hear their story.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Tonight only, exclusive to NBC, exclusive to the Tonight Show, in an hour-long, never-before-seen special, for their first ever interview since they saved the world-” the audience’s cheering rose to a fever pitch, “-without further ado, please welcome, Matthew Callaghan and Jane Walker; Matt the Human and Lady Dawn!”
The studio erupted; the band played; the curtains parted; and Matt and Jane stepped forth.
Matthew Callaghan, nineteen, came first, looking as he always did; average height, light-skinned and brown-haired, his features still soft and unremarkable, yet now recognised across the globe. He wore a plain black suit, a reasonably decent fit which despite all backstage prepping still hung slightly askew, like it’d been worn once to prom and then maybe again to a first job interview. As he stepped out onto the stage, cameras gleaming in his face and lights shining his eyes, his mouth split into a nervous yet optimistic grin, and he gave the audience a sheepish wave – as they in turn erupted in thunderous applause, clamouring to their feet, the studio enveloped by clapping, whistling and cheers.
For a moment, Matt stood alone in the spotlight – and then from between the curtains came Jane, following three steps behind. Suddenly, there was no one else to focus on. Taller than Matt, her head held high, her features striking, she wore a shimmering gold dress descending into an ankle-length skirt of silver sequins – the top cut asymmetrical and patterned in intricate detail, the bottom flowing like ultra‑fine dragon scales with a split at the thigh. Tall and Amazonian, with piercing eyes, a gothic‑script ‘E’ tattooed black on her right cheek and hair a curtain of flowing bronze, Jane Walker shone with a radiance and presence that any Hollywood starlet would have killed to have – right up until her entrance finished and she flinched ever so slightly, recoiling instinctively from the light and noise.
Yet a second later Jane recovered, and the crowd grew, if possible, even louder. Her grin solidified and she straightened, then punched a fist up into the air. The studio turned deafening. And with a sweep of her hair Jane turned to where Matt was waiting, watching a few steps away with a wry smile and his hands behind his back, and reached out to take his hand. They raised their arms together. The crowd went ballistic. And the cameras continued to roll.
As all around the world images of them flew, the ordinary man and the superhuman woman, united as one.
*
“Welcome, welcome, come, sit-”
The host’s laughter poked through the speakers of the tiny TV screen, caught and clarified over the audience’s cheers. Set atop a peeling wooden table left half-forgotten in the corner of the warehouse, the sound of the portable television buzzed low and borderline-inaudible, its weak light suffusing only the nearest few feet with a dull and shifting glow. It was a clear and cloudless night, and the almost-full moon overhead streamed bright through barred windows high in a ceiling of corrugated iron. The concrete floor lay speckled and dusty, cluttered with thick wooden benches and steel shelving which threw out long webs of shadow beneath the moonlight. Over by the roller doors a single lightbulb flickered, making feeble orange resistance against the sweeping midnight blue.
A group of men stood inside the warehouse, armed and tense and silent. They moved only occasionally, to shift discreetly beneath the straps of their bulletproof vests or quietly reposition their assault rifles. A dozen large, experienced soldiers, loosely clustered in the abandoned space, their eyes moved over every corner of the room as the figure at their centre, a thin older man in a grey chequered suit, sat quietly on a metal fold-out chair, waiting patiently. The man’s skin was olive and wrinkled, his hair retreated to mere sideburns and wisps of combed-over grey. His hooked, prominent nose supported round spectacles though which he continued to read a newspaper, keeping an indifferent back to the television, making no move to turn it off.
“Sit down, get comfortable-”
*
The pair sat down on the talk-show couch, Matt taking the seat closest to the host’s desk, Jane sitting by his side. He crossed his feet – Jane kept her back straight. Both wore nervous, excited grins.
“So, gosh,” began Leno, “Just, so great to have you on the show. I- are you good there, is your dress okay, I know you’re probably more used to a cape-”
The crowd laughed and Jane said nothing, though her lips twitched in an anxious smile.
“-I had wondered, see, if you would wear the cape-”
“Didn’t want to sit on it,” replied Jane.
“-then yeah, exactly! Then I got to thinking, that probably can’t be comfortable, you know, you sit on it, maybe you flop it over your lap, it pulls on your shoulders… I think that’s why we never, you know, we never really see superheroes sitting...”
There was another laugh. The host paused, stealing a quick smirk at the audience before looking expectantly, almost paternally between his two guests.
“How are you? You good?”
Matt and Jane glanced at each other.
“We’re good, yeah, we’re good-”
“Nervous?” the host asked. Matt sucked in air between his teeth.
“A little,” he confessed, and again the audience laughed. Matt flashed a brief glance over at them, his mouth twitching into a reluctant grin, and he seemed to relax a little, appearing slightly reassured. Leno leaned over, his expression open and inviting.
“Don’t be nervous, don’t be nervous. This is your first big interview?”
“Yep.”
“Since everything went down?”
“Yep.”
“Six months.”
“Feels longer,” said Matt, making a face. The crowd laughed.
The host pursed his lips in faux fascination. “A lot’s been happening, hasn’t it? I hear- I understand you’ve had some legal issues.”
“Ah, yes,” Matt replied, half-chuckling. He reclined into the couch, “One or two.” The audience hollered their support. Matt flicked them a quick smile.
“That’s crazy,” Leno said, “That’s crazy to me. Who’d sue- you’re a national hero, who’d sue you?”
Matt shrugged, looking like a man trying his best to appear indifferent. “The government.”
*
“He’s here.”
A voice crackled over the radio. The soldier on whose vest the radio was attached, a tall, hard-faced man in his mid-forties, nodded and whirled his finger around in a circle to the others nearby. Weapons clattered and raised, and the guards spread out into loose positions throughout the warehouse. The old thin man raised his eyes, folded up his newspaper and tucked it neatly into the breast pocket of his coat.
*
“So… I’m human,” Matt admitted. The studio audience erupted with cheers and again Matt turned to look at them, grinning and nodding a few times. He waited for the crowd to fall silent, his expression a little bashful. “Which everybody knows now-”
“Which they didn’t before,” interrupted Jay.
“Which they didn’t before. But now they do.”
“Bit hard to walk that one back.”
“Bit hard,” agreed Matt. The audience laughed. “Having announced it on national TV.”
“Yeah, I think I know a few people who might’ve been watching,” the host replied. This triggered more laughter.
“Yeah, so obviously that’s out there now,” explained Matt, “And, you know, scientifically, I think, it’s a big deal, because we don’t know why I’m human-”
“You just are.”
“I just am. I didn’t choose it.”
“You didn’t wake up one day and go, ‘you know what’s lame? Superpowers’.” More laughter.
“No. And I’ve got no idea, right, I didn’t choose to be like this, it’s just… me.”
“Right.”
“So I’m sitting in the hospital, two days after, you know, the whole Black Death thing, and I get this call from one of my doctors and they’re like: ‘There’s someone downstairs from the Pentagon. They say you have to go with them. They want a blood sample’.”
Disgruntled murmurs rippled across the audience. Matt turned on the couch to face them.
“I know, right? I… I…”
“What did you say?” asked Leno, turning Matt’s attention back to him.
“No!” Matt replied, almost indignant. The room broke into cheering, and Matt’s face split into a relieved grin. “I mean, I said, this is my body, this is my… choice of what to do with it, and I… I don’t know what you want my blood for.”
There was more cheering. Beside him, Jane reached over and squeezed Matt’s hand. He glanced at her, then turned back to their host.
“So then,” he said, “Things get nasty. The hospital has their lawyers, and they’re going ‘This is patient’s rights,’ and suddenly they’ve got their own legal battle – but then, you know, I get better, right, and I get out, and I go home, and suddenly… there’s warrants. There’s people at my house.”
“I saw this,” Leno remarked. He gestured around to the crowd, to the murmurs of agreement. “I think we all saw this. Incredible really- Larry, play the video, play the video.”
The screen behind the interview desk switched from a vague city skyline to footage of a suburban street and a crowd of people divided down two distinct lines. On the left stood trucks and cop cars, police and army officers, black-clad SWAT teams, fanned out in a loose assembly behind one harried‑looking captain holding a ream of documents in his right hand. A bald, stocky white man in combat fatigues, he wore no helmet and a pained expression as he looked over at the second, much larger group arrayed against him – a tightly-packed rabble of civilians, standing mutinously between the authorities and the Callaghans’ house. They were of no specific age or uniform, although many carried flags or placards, and as the groups squared off their ranks raced with rebellious mutterings and the flicker of powers. At the forefront, recoiling slightly back into the first layer of the crowd, stood Matt, in jeans and a blue sweater. And in front of him stood Jane, in the white-gold uniform of Dawn.
The wind whipped around the assembled. Helicopters, both police and media, circled overhead. The papers the officer was holding fluttered against his hand as he struggled to make himself heard.
“I am ordering you to disperse!” he shouted, “You are disrupting authorised police proceedings!” He held the papers higher. “This is a warrant for the arrest of Mister Matthew Callaghan! This is a Federal court order! You are obstructing the provision of justice!”
Angry muttering bristled throughout the crowd. The officer’s expression was strained. Only Jane remained impassive, her arms folded across her chest, her face blank.
“If you do not comply with our instructions!” he shouted, battling to be heard beneath the blades of the helicopters, “We are authorised to use force!”
Standing alone at the head of the assembled civilian crowd, Jane raised an eyebrow. She turned and glanced at the mutinous mob amassed behind her, across whom a myriad powers arced and fluttered, and who outnumbered the assembled law enforcement agents five to one. Then she turned back, unfolded her arms, and looked the captain dead in the eye.
“Okay,” she said, “Use it.”
And then her eyes and the ‘E’ tattooed on her cheek blazed with gold and a blast of wind erupted out around her, buffeting the police and protestors with pulsing, billowing light. Jane stood there, fists curled and eyes ablaze, and did not so much as move as behind her a thousand powers sprang to life.
The pale-faced police officer took a step back.
*
Back in the studio, the audience roared.
“Wow,” laughed the Tonight Show host, the sound of his voice intermingling with that of the crowd, “Wow-wow-wow. And I think my wife’s scary when I leave the toilet seat up. Wow.”
Sitting next to Matt, Jane raised her chin as laughter ran the studio, looking very self‑satisfied. The host turned to her.
“And did they keep trying to arrest him after that?”
“They did not,” she replied, smug. The crowd cheered.
Leno gestured to Matt. “What were they trying to arrest you for?”
“For breaking empath laws, ironically,” Matt answered, “For submitting fraudulent information to the DPR. For faking clairvoyancy.”
“What, like lying on your driver’s license?”
“Yeah.”
“And they sent a SWAT team.”
“Well,” Matt said with a slight grimace, “To be fair though, I don’t know if the SWAT team wanted to be there. I don’t think the cops were very keen.”
“No, I can imagine.”
“Anyway we appealed the warrant the next day. I mean we- the ACLU.”
“That’s the American Civil Liberties Union, right?”
“Yeah. They’ve been really supportive. Everyone’s been really supportive. And from there it was in court.”
“Right. And what happened last Tuesday?”
“Last Tuesday?” echoed Matt. He leaned back in his seat. “Last Tuesday we got the Supreme Court decision.”
“And?”
“We won.”
The cheer that went up throughout the studio was electric. The host slapped the table, beaming, adding in his “yeah, yeah, yeah!”. Matt grinned out at the assembled audience as they once more rose in standing ovation, then raised his hand beside his head and gave a two-fingered ‘peace’.
Comments
Yeah fair
Well based on the first one I have trust issues in developing an attachment to any of your characters 😂
I always want to type things in response to comments being like "actually he/she/they are going to feel/do/think this!" and engage all excited, then I have to remind myself that that's giving away bits of the story and to just shush my mouth and reveal in time...
Right on the money :)
I like that Jane has people cheering for her. I hope we get a bit on how that feels for her ❤️❤️❤️
Armo
Oooooo, there was finally a legal battle over Empath laws! I suppose standing up to the Black Death, not to mention the Police made Jane a lot more relatable… Matt’s still afraid of having his blood studied I see, probably because it might allow the gov’t to take away people’s powers. Nice start!
