Mysteria:
"Born Entertainer"
by Jacob Milnestein

"weren't you the pilot
who fell from the sky
was it a big mistake
or just plain homicide
how does it feel on the other side
do you hang out with the saints
or the spies
are you still hellraising
are you still hellraising
hellraising
is this the kind of thing
we always fear
are you so bent on hell
you'd leave me up here
without you
God bless the miles
we travelled too fast
God help the suckers
dead in your path."
- Louise Post,
‘Hellraiser’
 

"Let me tell you a story."

He flicked the lighter and took a deep breath from the end of his cigarette.

"Once upon a time there was an invisible girl. She wasn't born invisible or anything she just became that way. As a kid she got everything she wanted, all the prettiest frocks and all the latest Barbie dolls. She went to a posh school and upon leaving ended up owning one of the city's largest television networks, by default of her dear old Da. The trouble with our little lassie is felt neglected. Despite all the attention poured down upon her she felt that she'd been ignored by her parents so she decided to become a Science Heroine and dress up in tights and right wrongs and all that."

He paused, a bitter smile crossing his face.

"Stupid bloody cow."

"…and in other news today, PCN's Not Tonight, Darling hosted by popular celebrity Regina Darling has knocked popular favourite, The Manly Side from the top ratings slot after a mammoth year of being the most popular show in Pacific City."

She turned the television off, sitting down on the edge of her bed and slowly untying the towel from her damp hair.

It had been several weeks since she had returned to Pacific City, several weeks in which she had promised herself a sabbatical that had yet to materialise.

Despite her status as a world famous fashion designer, Victoria Burke had been unable to focus entirely upon her work during the months since her father's death.

Shamefully it was not grief that prevented her from doing so but the fact that her father's company owned KGPC and since the turmoil of her father's death, temporary responsibility for the channel had been passed to her.

At first she had not considered to be an important matter.

The channel was coping fine without her input and the presence of Michael Manly's ratings winning talk show had helped guide the channel through what would have otherwise been a delicate and difficult time for the channel.

It was only now with the emergence of Regina Darling's show on rival channel Pacific City Network that the channel was experiencing its first ratings drop since the premiere of The Manly Side.

She had been forced by reports of Manly's increasingly failing mental abilities to arrange a meeting with the presenter in order to ascertain whether he had become a dead weight or not.

Due to this emergence of business related affairs, her life as Mysteria had all but disappeared. In some ways she felt guilt, in others it almost felt like a relief.

Her experience in London had unnerved her and the increasing fallibility of her mysteriously granted powers had become more of a liability than a gift.

If only she could remember that blasted magician's name!

She cursed herself for once more allowing Mysteria to surface in her thoughts.

That part of her life would have to be sacrificed if she were to maintain any coherency as an individual she knew that now. Her failure when confronted with the strange Erlend Romanov had raised too many questions.

Mysteria would have to perish so that Victoria Burke could live on.

Yet somehow she felt guilty at how quickly she had dispensed with her alter ego.

It was true that Millennium Man had also been somewhat absent from the public eye as of late also. Oh, there was that business with ShadowWraith and Bruce Todd's murder shortly after but aside from that the costumed avenger had been keeping a low profile.

She wondered why that was.

What could have changed so much in the life of the man behind the costume to cause such an absence?

Perhaps it was somehow related.

It was true that both the media and the public knew as little about Millennium Man's origins as she did her own and so it wasn't a huge leap of reason to assume that Pacific City's first costumed avenger but also be suffering a similar crisis to her own.

But if that were true than what of all the super-villains that had suddenly come out of the woodwork, attracted by the charismatic personalities of the two superheroes? Would they run amok now that the two were no longer around?

No, she knew for a fact that already a third Science Hero had emerged.

She had only seen him once or twice but the media – her own station, none the less – had already begun to refer to him as ‘the Silver Shadow’.

But aside from the name given to him Victoria Burke knew little about the new superhero or what his true motives were. Yet surely people must have thought the same about Millennium Man and Mysteria when they first appeared?

She shook her head, trying to discourage herself from thinking such thoughts.

There were more important matters at hand than playing heroes and heroines.

Solemnly she turned and looked at the picture of her father upon her bedside table.

"I miss you, Daddy." She whispered softly.

Albert Weisz sat alone in the shadows of his study, his fingers steepled in a pyramid and his eyes closed. During his long years of life he had learnt to value his time alone.

His study was his own personal sanctuary from the word around him, a place where his grandchildren, much as he loved them, were forbidden from entering.

It had always been this way, even when his own children had been young.

The study was the one place aside from the stage where he could stop being Albert Weisz and relive his exploits as Magenta the Magician once more.

During the 1940s Albert Weisz had lead a double life.

He had made a name for himself as a stage-magician after discovering an ancient Egyptian scarab that granted him the power of invisibility. Using the wealth he accumulated as an illusionist, Weisz had turned the pursuit of true magic, the scarab his only guide.

Once he had achieved enough wealth and wisdom, he had donned his top hat and cloak and made his first appearance upon the streets of New York as an immaculately dressed crime-fighting Science Hero.

It was a gentler time back then, a time when he had not been called upon to use his magic to injure or murder those he found on the wrong side of the law. His appearance alone would be sufficient enough to send even the most heartless of criminals running for cover and all who crossed his path were either dealt with the police or vowed never to return to their lives of crimes.

That had been the way it was.

As time progressed though, Weisz found himself increasingly out of touch with the criminal underworld and those that rose up to don their own costumes and fight crime.

The elements surrounding his chosen lifestyle became more dangerous and more unpredictable and even though a handful of those original costumed avengers had banded together to form the Heroic Society Against Villainy there were unable to compete with both the criminals and the harsher, nastier heroes that emerged.

Slowly they were forced from the scene they had founded, discarded by media, public and peers as being nothing but a quaint old joke.

The new heroes had forgotten the lesson that the first hero had once taught; they were oblivious to his shining example.

They never knew how much this one man sacrificed to inspire those such as Weisz to use their powers for good.

The new generation were unaware that at the end of the Second World War, in New York city, the first superhero had sacrificed everything he was in order to safeguard the future of all that would follow after him.

They never knew that that golden time once had its own Millennium Man also.

Silently Albert Weisz rose from his chair and flicked the light switch on, bringing into focus the shelves crammed full of dusty books around him.

It was late and way past the time he usually went to bed.

He cast his own town on the old cloak and top hat.

There was still one appointment he had to keep before retiring to bed.

Outside it was raining.

Dark clouds gathered on the horizon beyond indicating that there was a fair chance of a thunder storm.

Erlend Romanov lit a cigarette and sat down in Bruce Todd's favourite armchair, overlooking the city beyond.

"Mind if I sit down?" He asked, glancing at his companion sitting opposite.

Todd's putrefying corpse made no attempt to prevent him.

"Didn't think so." Romanov smiled. "You know that really is quite a spectacular view you've got there." He said, indicating the window and its view of Pacific City. "I must say I'm quite impressed."

Still Todd's corpse declined from answering.

Romanov shrugged.

"Strong silent type, eh?"

He had put a lot of effort into digging up Todd's corpse and retrieving his gutted mansion from the lawyers and other parasites that clambered over each other for a slice of the dead billionaire's estate. His sister had refused to appease them in the way he had originally planned but after a short time with Erlend and a bloody big knife they had all eventually come round to his point of view.

Except poor Teddy Norman of course…

He nodded to himself as he made a mental note to mail what remained of the former lawyer's body back to his loved ones.

He sighed. One day he would have to repair the damage the Bowler's transformation had inflicted upon the house.

Glancing over at the house's former owner, Romanov noticed that the silk smoking jacket he had dressed the corpse in had come undone.

Tutting under his breath, he stood up and tied it back up.

"You're going to catch a chill if you keep letting your jacket come undone." He chastised the charred corpse as if speaking to a child. "I don't know. This is the bleedin’ thanks I get, is it?"

He returned to his seat, looking out at the rain through the shattered glass.

The corpse remained staring blankly from its empty eye-sockets.

"Anyway, I wanted to come here to talk to you about stuff." Romanov continued. "You already met the Bowler, didn't you? ‘Course you did, he was the git that killed you but anyway, it appears that our trans-dimensional emissary was just as convinced of your heritage as Millennium Man as the rest of us where. And if you're not – sorry, weren't – Millennium Man then that puts us in a difficult position." He paused, taking another drag from his cigarette. "See, the thing is there's more than that storm on the horizon out there. There's something truly nasty waiting to cross over and if we're going to stand any chance of fighting it then we're going to need Millennium Man. Trouble is no one has a bleedin’ clue who he is or where he might have gone to.

"I've already tried talking to that Mysteria lass about this but I'm afraid she's as thick as two short planks. If we're going to stand a chance against what's waiting for us then we'll need Millennium Man and I was sort of hoping you might be able to tell me."

The corpse remained silent.

"Okay, so we're going to have to do this difficult way." Romanov sighed; standing up and drawing out the same knife that had cut Teddy Norman into very small pieces. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

Forcefully he heaved the corpse out of the chair and slammed it down against the ruined floorboards, taking the huge knife and creating an incision that opened it up from throat to groin.

Clouds of noxious gas escaped the body causing Romanov to screw his nose up in distaste as he delved with his free hand into the corpse's stomach, plucking out organs and arranging them in curious configurations on the floor.

After a half-hour, Todd's corpse was entirely empty of insides, his congealed blood forming thick black stains on Romanov's clothing.

The necromancer looked down at the pattern the organs were laid and a smile cracked his blood-spattered face.

"Now there's a turn up for the books." He smirked. "Who would have thought old high and mighty would have chosen such a great ponce as Michael Manly."

The smirk remained as slowly the necromancer stood up, his knees clicking.

With a casual gesture he allowed the knife to slip from his hands. It spun slowly towards the floor and impaled Todd's removed heart on the splintered floor beneath.

"Well, Mister Manly," He beamed proudly. "Looks like me and you are going to be having a nice little chat."

A cold, sinister laugh emitted from his thin lips and slowly, Erlend Romanov turned and made his way out of the room, down the shattered remnants of the staircase and out into the pouring rain.

The storm was about to begin; he could feel it in the air.

Laid out upon the horizon were the vast spires of Pacific City, waiting to embrace him once more.

Victoria Burke looked out at the world's face from behind the comfort of her expensive sunglasses.

The sun was high in the sky, fingers of illumination brushing against the glass and metal of the huge towers and buildings the city boasted as major landmarks.

Out of the corner of her eye she still thought she caught glimpses of the lithe, costumed body of Mysteria. It took a great effort for her to remind herself that there was no Mysteria without her. She would never set eyes upon the Science Heroine aside from those moments when she caught her own reflections. And that was all those ghost-images of the heroine were; reflections from shop windows as she walked past.

Everyday she spent less and less time thinking of her alter ego and everyday it felt as if her powers faded just that little bit more.

The spasms of invisibility began to occur less and less frequently, no longer threatening her normal life. Oh, they still caught her off-guard sometimes and she could not deny that they hadn't gone away entirely but she no longer suffered from as many of them as she did in the months before the events in London.

If the price for a normal life was the loss of Mysteria then at this present time, Victoria Burke could honestly say that it was a price worth paying.

Nodding cautiously to the doorman, she stepped past the automatic glass doors and into the air-conditioned spaciousness of the KGPC building.

The receptionist rose from her seat and then promptly sat back down, a look of glum recognition etched upon her face.

The crowds that congregated within the reception lobby parted as she marched through, seemingly oblivious to the presence of them.

There were rules for situations like this. The first thing she had learnt from her father was that each and every situation in life could be dealt with successfully depending upon how she presented herself.

The vast empire the late Henry Burke III had constructed had been built on the ideal that image was everything. It was to that ideal that she, his only daughter, pledged her allegiance and lived every day of her life in the shadow of.

In a single motion she crossed the threshold of the open lift doors and regarded its operator with disdain.

"Third floor." She announced, her voice cold and uncaring.

"Y-Yes, Miss. Burke." He stuttered, nervously tapping the button with more force than was necessary.

The gleaming metal closed before them, sealing her pristine image off from the cluttered space of the reception area and slowly rose up.

In truth Victoria hated lifts and would have been entirely more comfortable taking the stairs but that would have meant compromising her image and revealing a possible weakness to those that had witnessed her determined entrance.

She could not allow anything to compromise that.

Image was power and power was everything.

The lift chimed its arrival and the doors slowly opened.

Victoria Burke stepped out onto the third floor without another word to the lift operator who remained quaking in her absence.

Refraining from looking back at him, she strode forwards towards Michael Manly's spacious office.

The room was so obviously his; everything she loathed about Pacific City's declining star was represented in the shape of the gold star adorning the door above his name plaque.

Shaking her head in disgust she reached out and twisted the door handle, forcing her way inside.

The room was shrouded in darkness; the door swinging shut behind her.

Cautiously she reached out for the light switch and discovered that it didn't work.

A hunched form occupied the space behind the desk.

"Mister Manly?" Victoria snapped, doing her best to sound unconcerned about the lack of light in the room and suppress the concern she felt rising in her throat. "Mister Manly I don't find this display of immature humour very productive or helpful."

"Manly isn't here." An elderly voice answered her, dry and revealing not the least bit of sympathy for her confusion. "He hasn't been seen for several days and, in all honesty, I wouldn't expect to hear from him again if I were you."

"Who are you?" Victoria demanded, just about maintaining her calm. "And what are you doing here."

The voice's owner laughed quietly to himself.

A sudden fear rose from the pit of her stomach as the events in London flashed through her mind.

He stepped forwards, a small ball of light flickering from the palm of his upturned right hand and illuminating the room to a degree.

She removed her sunglasses and looked upon him.

He was an old man, easily in his mid-70s bedecked in a crumpled old tuxedo, cape and top hat. A perfectly white and neatly trimmed moustache and beard marked the wrinkled skin of his face and at once Victoria began to feel her fear subside.

And then the realisation that she knew this elderly man dawned upon.

Her image slipped away and once more she was the same frightened girl that had once cried for her father in the dead of night due to the horrible nightmares that had plagued her childhood.

"Its you," She whispered, her voice filled with horror. "The hypnotist at the charity event, the one no one else could remember!"

He bowed his head sadly.

"Guilty as charged." He admitted.

"You're the one that changed me." She accused, the anger rising in her voice. "You're the one that made me Mysteria."

Again he bowed his head but this time said nothing.

"Do you have any idea what you did to me? I thought I was losing my mind!" Tears began to form in the corner of her eyes.

If her fear had not already destroyed her image then the sorrow and anger truly signalled its end.

The old man reached slowly into his pockets, drawing from them a shining, metal insect of sorts.

"Yes." He whispered. "I made you Mysteria, as you called yourself. I must say I was most impressed by your ingenuity. You did me proud."

"You stupid, heartless old man!" She screamed, her voice cracking in anger. "You made my life a living hell."

"And for that I am truly sorry, dear lady. Believe me, if there was another way…" His voice trailed off as he finally looked up at her. "But there wasn't. I'm too old to protect this city from the horror that speeds its way here even as we speak and the one who calls himself Millennium Man, well, he's hardly a patch on the original."

"W-Wait, there was another Millennium Man?" She questioned, sudden confusing filling her voice.

A wry smile crossed his face.

"Didn't you ever question how your father managed to retain so much of his youthful charm, how curiously he aged and how suddenly he was struck down by the illness that killed him?"

A frown crossed Victoria's perfect face.

"What are you saying?" She whispered.

"You're father was older than he let on, older than even me and I'm old enough to be your grandfather." The old man turned his back, the ball of light remaining in the air where he had first conjured it into existence. "The illness that killed him was designed to kill him. It was not random chance that led him to contract such a rare and exotic disease. No, all this was cleverly organised by someone to kill him because they knew the threat he posed, because they knew that he was the original Millennium Man."

"I can't believe what you're saying." Victoria whispered, clenching her fists in anger. "Who would do such a thing?"

The old man was silent for a moment.

"The Faustian Four." He answered, his voice filled with sorrow and regret.

"Who are they?" She questioned, her fists tightening as she awaited his answer.

He sighed and turned back to face her.

"They were superheroes...once. Now they are the personification of evil."

"How do I find them?" She demanded before shaking her head and looking away. "How do I even know your telling the truth?"

"Because I was a friend of your father's." He answered grimly. "Go home and find his secret files and you'll find all the evidence you need but for now the Faustian Four should be the least of your worries. There is a greater horror approaching, one that I believe only you will be able to combat."

"But I'm not Mysteria anymore. Those powers you gave me, they backfired, they stopped working." It was her turn to look away. "And besides, I'm not even sure I wanted them in the first place. You never gave me a choice."

"There was no other way." The old man protested once more. "The reasons you powers have dwindled are because it has been so long since you came into contact with this." He held out the metal insect once more. "This is the item that first gave me the powers of invisibility along with many other gifts. With this I became Magenta the Magician." His voice rose slightly, becoming almost hysterical. "When I granted you the gift of invisibility it was only the merest fraction of the scarab's true powers. If you take this with you then you will be transformed into everything that I once was and more. It is the only way you can face the horror that awaits you in the future."

She reached out for the scarab and then suddenly pulled back.

"I can't do this. I'm not a heroine, I'm just Victoria Burke." She whispered.

"Your sister expressed similar sentiments." Magenta reflected sadly.

"My sister?" She exclaimed.

That same smile crossed his face once more.

"Yes." He beamed. "Or half-sister none the less. You didn't think that in all his life, your father sired only one child, did you?"

"W-Who is she?" Victoria whispered.

Slowly, she could feel her life crumpled about her.

Everything she had once known about herself, everything she had known about her father had been turned inside out. Once again she receded behind the shadow of her alter ego.

The tears ran freely down her cheeks, staining them in deep, translucent trails.

"Take the scarab and it will lead you to her." Magenta replied quietly.

A dark silence awoke between them, filling the room about them.

She became aware of everything in that moment, the hushed voice of those that walked past the room in which they conversed, the sound of telephone and fax machines and fingers tapping upon computer keyboards.

Every sound was arranged in a subtle symphony of motion and movement.

"What will become of me if I take the scarab?" She asked, her lips quivering.

Magenta smiled bitterly.

"Its what will become of me that should worry you." He replied, turning the insect round in his liver-spotted hands. "But for you, it will do nothing…until you call upon it."

"How do I call upon it?" She asked.

"Close your eyes and focus upon it. The scarab is a physical object linked to that place that remains outside of our universe, the place of the haunting gods. You will no longer need to change into your Mysteria costume; the act of will and the link you will form with the deity on the receiving end of the object will transform you in whatever image it sees fit. It may be beautiful, but then it may be horrifying. Expect no consistency from it for, like any creator, it will change its mind often."

Her head began to swim, all this information…

"What do you mean deities?"

He smiled again.

"Gods, Victoria, dear. Science Hero is an inappropriate term for it is not science that is our heritage but rather the first gods that inhabited our universe, the same gods that cast out chaos in favour of order, the gods that birthed us from the universal lotus of all life."

She didn't understand the words he spoke yet somehow the conviction in his voice spoke to something deep within her soul.

Her fingers wrapped around the insect and she gently lifted it from his palm.

He gasped; staggering back at the sudden separation from the device that had been a part of his life for so very long.

"Don't change until it is necessary." He warned. "Uncertainty during your transformation could shatter the balance completely."

"How will I know?" She questioned.

"You'll know." He smiled warmly. "Trust me, you'll know."

"And what about you? What will happen to you?"

"I'll die." He shrugged. "The scarab is the only thing that has been keeping me alive all this time. As soon as you effect your first transformation I'll pass on."

"T-Then...Then I'll be responsible for your death!" She wailed.

"Don't think of it like that. Think of it as helping an old man finally go to his place of rest."

The silence filled the room again.

"Go now, Victoria Burke. Go forth and meet your destiny."

She tightened her hands around the metal beetle and looked down upon it.

Her future had meaning once more.

The dark shape of the helicar's underbelly cast shadows over the rolling waves beneath.

During their time as superheroes during the late 1940s and early 1950s it had ferried them from crisis to crisis. Whether it was international or interplanetary made no difference to the helicar's great chaos theory engines.

Years before the official ‘discovery’ of chaos theory, its inventor had created an abstract engine capable of powering the machine by possibility, chance and cause and effect alone. The engine itself was quite small and completely hollow yet within it contains an infinite amount of space/time possibility that the machine was quite likely to outlive its maker...or maybe not seeing as its maker hadn't aged a single day since 1955.

There was no explanation for the inventor's immunity to the passing of time and it was true that his colleagues also suffered from the strange disease. In 1978 he had been forced to see a psychiatrist on a regular basis due to the government's fear that his mind may have been arrested at a similar point to his physical ageing and a superhero who couldn't ‘change with the times’ was unfortunately no superhero at all.

But the man in question had proved himself far more than capable of ‘changing with the times’, as had three of his colleagues (the fourth one simply dribbled).

They had made the ultimate leap from superhero to supervillain.

Of course they would deny that but in the eyes of the media and public this was the popular belief.

During those days of spandex and capes they had been known as the Fightin' Fist Four. Nowadays they preferred to be called the Faustian Four.

Shirley Winters followed her arms, watching the oceans beneath roll out below the helicar, her expression one of boredom and disinterest.

"Won't be long now." Her husband noted, lighting a fresh cigarette from the tip of his last.

She turned and looked at him, the silver in his dark hair glinting in the moving hands of light that filtered through the windows.

Smiling, he wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her thin body close to his.

"How long will it take?" She demanded impatiently.

"Eager to meet our man of the hour, are we?" He sneered sarcastically.

"If it saves us from getting killed, I am." She answered, as cold and detached as usual.

"Stop bloody fretting, woman." Charlie Winters scowled, voice proud and a little over-confident. "You know we'll make it. We always do."

He smiled, disengaging from the embrace and turning to look out of the window.

Clouds were gathering in the skies above them and the future..the future was finally in sight.

A cruel smile spread across his face and he emitted a low, cautious laugh.

Ahead of them lay a glorious confrontation and the meaning of everything they had spent so long planning.

Ahead lay the end of everything…