Solar Girl and Spotlight City, in..."Origin Story: The Reboot Edition"
by Pick-n-Mix Comix
So, reintroductions.
My name is Solar Girl. In this timeline, I've been Solar Girl for about two years now. Before, it was six. Before that, it was a few months. Before that, it was a year. And so on.
It gets hard to keep track when your whole world is constantly shifting.
In this timeline, I became Solar Girl after I met the Solarian during a fight with Dr Synergy. (Who, thankfully, did *not* cut off my hands in this world. At least, not this time. Yikes.) He tried to merge us together, but the Solarian's energy overloaded the fusion ray and it sent a wave of mutagenic energy through the city, and the Solarian vanished in the process.
They've been calling it the Synergy Wave. As for the Solarian, he left his solar belt behind. It's what gave him his powers; his connection to the Sunbearers, and to Flare, and to the transforming energy that lets him control fusion and gravity and all that fun stuff.
When I touched it, I guess it figured the connection was meant to be. The belt turned into a pair of cuffs, and they do the same thing for me that they did for him. They're a lot like the ones I had a few timelines ago, except I found them in a forest back then...and then in a crystal in a laboratory that my school had taken a field trip to...and then in a box in my mother's attic...
I think I like that last option the most.
But here we are. Flare's been helping me. He's like a mascot for these crystals, a spirit that lives inside them and is supposed to train each new Sunbearer in how to use these powers, and especially in knowledge of particle physics and quantum mechanics. That's all a bit complicated for me, though.
It's been mostly uneventful since I started out. I mean, supervillains every week, but I'm used to it by now. Last week, we had Mannequin. Next week, we'll have the Anger Manager. After that, it'll be a realtor with a cloning device.
The most difficult part has been dealing with the Synergy Wave. It ended up being one of those "mass empowering events" comic books used to use sometimes to give everyone, or a bunch of people, powers all at once. And well, that's exactly what it did.
About a third of the city's population has some ability or another now. They're called wavers, and they're mostly non-offensive. They meet in support groups and try and keep their powers down, and stuff like that.
But there's the ones who use their powers for good, and for crime too. Glitchboard was one of the ones who at least tries to use it for good, but he's more lawful neutral than anything. He got caught in the Wave while sleeping right next to his computer, and no one ever saw him again; at least, until his consciousness reached our computer system, and we ended up giving him his new robot body to live in.
There's been others. Stun Gun and Ruby Rumble, two separate electric-themed villains. Double Dare, who can get you to do anything he asks if he "double dares" you to do it.
It comes and goes. That's the life.
Like I said in the last post, Moonshine and I are on the rocks. We're troubled in every timeline. Back in 2012, the original 2012, her mom's death sent her down a really dark path. She started calling herself the Night Stalker, because she and her mom used to watch that show together and she loved it, and racked up a kill count of 9 supervillains just because she wanted to take it out on someone and chose the easy targets for it.
She's been better in more recent timelines. She was a tech genius back then. Now, she's more of a witch and she’s a lot more controlled, but she still gets online from time to time. It was her computer systems that brought Glitchboard into our lives, after all.
But we're different. We always are.
She's older than me in this timeline, and more traumatized from things she won't talk to me about. She's not the same Russian high schooler I remember. I hope I get to meet that version of her again someday.
But we're trying. She's tracking down a lead on Mannequin now, I think. Mannequin might have stolen something from our apartment and we've been trying to figure out what and why.
We'll have to wait and see how it plays out.
Let's see, what else is there?
Oh yeah. Spotlight City isn't on Earth anymore. No one's even heard of Earth anymore.
Well...some people remember it. But it was in danger for a long time in between a few of our timelines. Status Quo - the villain, not the concept - ended up putting it in a bubble of space-time while that universe collapsed in on us.
So, now it's pretty much just the city and nothing else, floating through endless nothing. So that's fun. We can still *technically* see the Earth outside the bubble, on the days when Stanley's systems are working properly, but it's the Earth as it was on the last day before everything collapsed, repeating the same frozen moments over and over, so it's not worth much.
And none of us can leave.
So we're all pretty much stuck here, in a city that keeps going mad every time you blink your eyes.
Like I said. It's been a pretty uneventful two years, at least for me.