Webisode 57 – Consequences

“According to our projections he’ll be in orbit for seventy-eight hours after which a containment team will be on hand to place him in custody and repair the damage caused by his re-entry. For the moment, however, he is absolutely benign. Experts say that he will survive the impact but will be in no condition to resist.”

“Keep a close eye on him,” Striker ordered the man in the monitor she was quietly ignoring. While the Omni-Skree had proven to be a thorn in T.A.S.K.’s side before they had not yet been given the chance to bring him in before now. “I’ll read the rest in the written report. Go for debriefing.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

The screen flickered out and the director was left alone with her thoughts. A military project to adapt recovered Skree star-drive technology for the purpose of planetary defense was interrupted when an exiled alien super-soldier decided that he’d had more than enough of life on Earth. Taking over a hundred hostages he sought a means to steal their testing rocket and return to the galactic community.

While T.A.S.K. had claimed they had the situation in control the crisis would not have come to an end were it not for the impetuousness of a heroine named Glimmer Girl: a heroine Striker had personally ordered to retire. It was true that if not for her heroic actions the hostages could have been slaughtered, but on the same note they might have just as easily been killed by that same impulsiveness.

Sighing heavily Striker reached for the heroine’s file and thumbed through it casually. As much as she hated to do it she had to bring the hammer down on her. “I warned you, kid. You can’t take that away from me. I warned you.”

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Webisode 56 – Overdrive

CCCCCCCCCRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKK-THOOOOOOOMMMMM!

A billion points of light shattered and blew into the wind like dust. Each tiny piece contained all the knowledge of the whole, but drifted aimlessly for a moment before finding the will to pull themselves back into one. That was my body, and behind me was a seemingly endless bloodbath of innocents that I’d failed to protect.

The T.A.S.K. agent was right. I wasn’t supposed to be there. Striker had tried to warn me but I wouldn’t listen. It wasn’t my life that she was worried about: it was the lives that I might endanger with my self-destructive behavior. Now I had all of those deaths on my conscience. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t have stuck my nose in where it didn’t belong.

As my body reconstituted its shape the form of the Omni-Skree appeared vaguely in my eyes. He’d killed the only leverage he had, probably because he thought he didn’t need them anymore. That monster… There was no need to hold back anymore. I was going to take him down, even if it meant tearing the entire base apart.

I caught his dissatisfied sneer and felt my fists trembled with rage. I wasn’t dead. He’d killed his leverage for nothing. I seethed furiously, “I don’t care how many times I have to hit you… I’m going to end you for this!”

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Webisode 55 – One man army

It would be a while before T.A.S.K. stopped chasing their tails. They had bigger fish to try. Still it provided me with more than enough time to move beyond the main gates and into the building.

The entire facility was littered with checkpoints layered by bulletproof glass. I was almost reluctant to turn into pure light and refract my way through them: I had no idea where this invisibility came from or how long it was going to last.

I had to stop and repeat it to myself. I was invisible: freaking invisible! How was this possible? I couldn’t be the one doing it… could I? Yeah, I could manipulate light, but I couldn’t do those freaky physics things that Justin was always talking about.

He’d once told me that bending light around an object so that it wouldn’t reflect would cause for an object to turn invisible. Perception of an object was only because light would bounce off of it and convey it’s shape, colour and texture to the eye. However, if a person was turned invisible using this means they would be effectively rendered blind, but I could still see somehow.

Yeah, science. It’s complicated.

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Webisode 54 – The return of Glimmer Girl

One thought consumed my mind as my body bounced at the speed of light towards Merritt Island, Florida: Suzanne Striker was going to kill me. Perhaps not in the literal sense, but she was enough of a hardass to make anyone regret disobeying her orders, regardless of what power she did or did not possess.

Though I couldn’t just sit where I was, not while there were lives at stake. If any of the Vigil were bold enough to take over they were more than welcome, but if CNN knew what they were talking about (and they did nearly half the time, I’m sure) then the rest of us were out here on our own.

As I raced towards the scene something felt different, like I was more in control. The sensation was strange and overwhelming, but oddly enough it was also addictive. Everything was fresh like I’d just been born, like I was tasting air for the first time. Feeling the energy course through my hard light veins I got the feeling that Glimmer Girl wouldn’t be letting me down again.

I hit the ground outside the center and assessed the structure. My arrival attracted attention in the form of T.A.S.K. personnel, and they weren’t happy to see me.

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Webisode 53 – One step down, a thousand miles to go.

Benjamin Franklin, Ulysses S. Grant, Andrew Jackson and Alexander Hamilton writhed uncomfortably between my fingers as I clutched the tightly packed money clip in my right pocket. It was everything that Justin had been saving, his reserve fund for buying either a car or a Playstation 3: he hadn’t decided which. Now I was blowing it all… but I was sure he wouldn’t mind.

Standing outside the storefront my eyes pored over the content sitting in the windows. I stared for ages at clothes: female clothes, female clothes that I was going to need if I were going to convince anyone with this half-baked plan of mine. It was like the saying goes: clothes make the man… or whatever the hell it is I was supposed to be now.

For some reason I was reluctant to step inside. Why? It was difficult to say with certainty. Maybe it was the nagging thought of appearing male and being judged by customers and clerks as some kind of pervert. Yeah, I could have just said I was shopping for a friend, but shopping for a friend doesn’t involve the change rooms.

That’s why I’d come all the way to the other side of town where nobody would recognize me. Two and a half hours and three buses had led me as far from home as I was going to get if I wanted to meet Tanya on time. I could have just dashed here at the speed of light but Striker, the hardass that she was, would probably use that as an excuse to come down on me. (Bitch.)

Yet somehow being taken down by a national security division seemed to be the least of my troubles.

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Webisode 52 – The awakening

TWO MONTHS BEFORE

Suddenly my senses were alive like they never had been before. I was aware of everything, from the sound of birds chirping in the trees to distant traffic, the feel of the wind and the heat of the sun on my face. Over a single night I’d died and come back changed, my soul recharged. I was ready to start living my life again: the only question was how.

At breakfast with Mom and Dad I’d thought of how I was going to reveal myself to them. It was going to come as a crushing blow and create even more confusion. They wouldn’t know what to do. Even worse was that I didn’t know what to do either.

Hey Mom! Hey Dad! Just so you know, I’m not really Justin, I’m Kaira. Justin and I switched bodies a while ago fighting a supervillain named the Living Vortex. What’s that? Oh yeah, we’re superheroes as well. He was Flashbolt and I’m still Glimmer Girl, even though I have his body. No, we didn’t swap on purpose. It was an accident. By the way, that car accident, you know, the one that killed him? That was a lie. He was really killed fighting a multidimensional tyrant. I didn’t tell you because I love you. Okay, bye!

…Yeah, it was going to be as easy as that.

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Webisode 51 – A new beginning

TWO MONTHS LATER

Walking by the storefront I caught the reflection of an awkward teenage girl. It was still hard to believe that was my face, still so much like Justin’s only different. She looked… okay, even if she was a little panicked. I picked apart her appearance, probably a lot more harshly than I should have. Jeans, sneakers, tank top, hoodie, it was nothing too flashy: nothing that would make her stand out… I hoped.

My heart was racing a mile a minute: as right as it felt a part of me was still stuck in a state of disbelief. It was one thing being my brother, it was another being my brother and parading around in drag. Well, okay, maybe not parading so much as darting through the crowd and looking over my shoulder wondering how many people were pointing and laughing.

For the briefest moment it was like I was outside of my body watching myself walk on by. What was I even doing there? Malls never really held much appeal to me, especially one so far away from home. I could have been doing something productive like research for another novel idea, saving the world from some other kind of big bad or, best of all, studying people from an invisible corner. I hadn’t had the chance to do that for a while, especially seeing as I was suddenly so self-conscious all the time.

Coming up to the second story office I wondered what kind of self-respecting psychiatrist would set themselves up in a shopping complex. Somehow it seemed to make the idea of treating mental health commercial and homogenized with the possibility of a ‘20% off’ coupon or a free slushie at the end.

I peeked my head inside. “Hello?”

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Announcement

Hey everybody,

It’s my sad duty to inform you all that Shimmer will have to be put on hold another week, maybe two. Real life has gotten in the way of me being able to actually sit down and write, as well as another commitment to this project I’ll be telling you about soon.

Sorry. If it’s any consolation I’m feeling guilty as hell at the moment. >.<

Randi Sparks

Series in Review: Episode #50

Hey there people This is Stormy, pulling herself away from Mirrorfall to write this very special Week in Review.

Firstly, a letter from the author:

Hello my beautiful readers!

Can you believe it? Fifty webisodes! (That’s ten more than forty, which is as many as four tens: and that’s terrible.) We’re half way to 100, so I thought I’d mark this milestone with an extra long installment.

I hope it brought you some kind of closure, and for those of you who’ve been wanting to see something good happen in Glimmer Girl’s life you’ll be thinking it’s about time. But the story’s far from over, and after the events of webisode 50 Kaira’s life will begin to turn around, though it won’t be without it’s challenges.

For everyone who’s reviewed, thank you for reviewing. For those that haven’t, stop being lazy! (I don’t mean to blackmail you, but a positive review makes for more enthusiastic writers and better stories.) And to anyone who can be bothered, a review on Pages Unbound wouldn’t go astray either. Tee-hee.

Unfortunately that’s all of the Shimmer that I’ll be able to put out for the next two weeks, as right now I’m all the way in Hyderabad, India and don’t have access to a computer. (That’s right. I’m speaking to you all the way from the past! Ooooh!)

So until I get back, thanks for reading.

Much love,

~Randi Sparks

And back to me: Shimmer has hit Episode #50.

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Webisode 50 – Catharsis

What just happened?

Justin?

No. No!

Justin…

You’re not really here! You’re NOT REALLY HERE!

Justin, stop it!

You’re not really here. You’re a ghost…

Justin!

You’re a ghost, you’re just in my imagination. You, me, this whole world, it’s just my imagination…

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