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I can’t wait for the first time someone reads Allies & Enemies and is like “Ah hah!”

I get an inordinate amount of pleasure out of hiding Easter eggs in my stories. Sometimes it’s hard to fit them in (not in this case) but it’s always worth the absolute heel-kicking delight I get when someone finds one.

Someone out there is going to read Slipping Through the Cracks and Allies & Enemies, and I’m going to receive a message: “I see what you did there!” and it will be the greatest moment of my life (which is actually pretty sad. Yet true.)

***

Franz as a character is growing in my brain. He’s clamoring to be my star and he’s relentless in his pursuit of fame.

I’m just not sure which Franz I should focus on: Superhero Kid Nitro, or the confused Franz Caulder that is desperately adapting to his new world.

Which appeals to me the most: The demigod that brings about titanic changes, or the guy just trying to get along.

I’m really not sure. I like both of them for differing reasons.

Kid Nitro is somewhat arrogant about his metabilities. He has Nigel to be his backbone and his brain, so he somewhat coasts through life. Yet he’s got a big heart and a desperate need to fight crime and prove to himself that his parents would have loved him if they had just gotten to know him. The kid that grew up to be a superhero like them.

Franz Caulder is a guy that doesn’t realize he has any skills of his own. He constantly undervalues his worth in any given situation because he simply doesn’t see what he has to offer. He’s just a guy.

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Title: Slipping Through the Cracks
Author: Harper Kingsley
Character: Franz Caulder/Ryan Wilder, Dr. Pamela Werth, Nicole Carson
Genre: mm
Rating: mature
Summary: Kid Nitro went to sleep in his own bed, and woke up on another Earth in the body of an alternate Franz Caulder. It’s a world without metabilities, which is jarring enough, but it’s also a world where Other-Franz is a mental patient grappling with some serious problems.

***

Swinging an appointment with Dr. Werth took longer than he would have liked. She had a full schedule and another patient was in the middle of a crisis. Franz held himself together until she could fit him into her schedule.

So it was two days after the awkwardness of his mother’s visit that he settled himself on “his” chair in Dr. Werth’s office. It was the one he always used.

“And what has you in such a tizzy?” She sipped her coffee, looking at him through the steam.

“I have something to admit. For the last month and a half I’ve thought I was someone else and I still feel like I am. I guess I hallucinated that I was a superhero named Kid Nitro and I was raised by a British man named Nigel Caulder. And in that hallucination I wasn’t Franz Benoit. I was Franz Caulder. I was Kid Nitro.” His throat got too tight to speak. There were tears streaming down his face and he had no control over it.

“I see,” Dr. Werth said.

Her mug was empty, but she still held it close to her mouth. Her expression was blank, but he could see the frantic thought processes taking place behind her eyes. “I see,” she said again. Her mug thunked lightly when she set it down.

Franz felt like she was waiting for him to speak. He ignored the cue.

“I’m very proud that you’ve come forward,” she said. “That was very brave of you.”

“I need help.”

Her smile was pure compassion. “And you will get it.”

/ END

There’s more to Franz’s story, but this is the end to this section.

Part Two introduces Ryan and sets the tone for the rest. I guess I just appreciate the idea of characters in an established relationship having awesome adventures and like doing stuff. Life doesn’t have to end with the start of an official relationship.

[table “24” not found /]

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This story was part of my post for the Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia. It ended May 27th, but will be back again next year

I’ll be sending out the Slipping Through the Cracks PDFs in the next couple of days.

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Just for fun, here’s Kid Nitro’s cameo in Heroes & Villains. The League of Superheroes are discussing the Darksters and what they’re supposed to do about them:

“The problem we’re seeing is that they have branches all over the planet. There’s even word that there’s a small Darkster cell in Iraq that’s causing trouble for the new government.”

“How are they communicating with each other?” Lady Arcana asked, her faux-Russian accent thicker than usual, clearly disgusted by what the terrorist group had done.

“On the internet,” Masque said. “They have a whole underground message system going for planning their acts, but then they post what they’ve done on the Darkstar page of BioPic after they’ve already left the scene of the crime. It’s kind of a ‘Look what we did’ type of deal. It makes it hard to track where or when they’re going to hit next.”

“Do they have Darkstar’s backing?” Bonecrusher asked. Most people took one look at his over-muscled physique and labeled him stupid, but that was far from the truth. Though he was rather quiet, which didn’t really help with his reputation.

“He hasn’t made any public announcements one way or another,” Masque said. “Though there was a recent post on the Darkstar BioPic page that called for the Darksters to stop what they’re doing or else. The poster went by ‘Darkstar3499’ and identified himself as the ‘real’ Darkstar. Most people have labeled him a wannabe and some individuals that have been identified as Darkster members have basically just told him to shut up and mind his own business or he’ll be their next victim. He only made the one post, but common opinion is that he’s just some guy and Darkstar doesn’t really care what the Darksters do as long as they don’t make him look bad.”

“They’re trying to curry Darkstar’s favor by committing ever more heinous acts,” Lightspeed said, pushing up his glasses. He snapped his fingers at his sidekick, Kid Nitro, who blurred a second before holding out a cup of fresh, steaming tea. The British superhero sipped his tea delicately, gracing the boy with an approving smile before turning back to the rest of the group. “Until he acknowledges them, whether with approval or censure, they are just going to continue killing and causing trouble. And his popularity with the masses means that their group numbers will continue to grow. So we need to do something about them before the situation gets too out of hand.”

“How much more ‘out of hand’ can it get?” the Flame Burst demanded, slapping his hand down on the table. “They’re killing people! I mean, once you’re murdering in the name of, what else can you do that’s worse?”

“Their body count can only get larger,” Lightspeed said. “They went from four victims, to fifteen, and the treatment of their victims has become ever more violent and sadistic. And with the way they’re spread out across the globe, there’s no way that the normal authorities will be able to track them all down. My suggestion is that we talk to the super groups of the other countries and come to an agreement that these Darkster fools be handled.”

“That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it?” Witch Fire sneered. “No matter who it is, you always think they need to be ‘handled.’ You probably have a bigger body count than the worst supervillain out there.”

“Now is not the time for your personal disputes,” Captain Victorious interrupted before Lightspeed could respond. The two of them had been at each other’s throats from the minute they first met. If there had ever been an instance of hate at first sight, Witch Fire and Lightspeed were the embodiment of the sentiment.

This cover makes me unspeakably happy. Why? Because this story has absolutely nothing to do with sushi.

I was making the cover for this special PDF version and was brainstorming ideas. My brain immediately went: “Sushi!” This cover makes me think of Yummy Sushi Pajamas 🙂

I don’t know what the official cover will look like but I’m working on a list. Should I use another sushi theme or would that be too weird? It looks misleadingly cheerful.

***

This is the story of a weakened superhero, a mental patient, and a guy finding himself in a hard situation. Franz was raised by Nigel Caulder to be the kind of guy that survived any situation, so there’s no way he would ever let being in a mental hospital get him down. He adapts to the situation; adapts and prepares.

There’s a romance, but that comes later. This is mostly Franz dealing with what’s been done to him.

---

Title: Slipping Through the Cracks
Author: Harper Kingsley
Character: Franz Caulder/Ryan Wilder, Dr. Pamela Werth, Nicole Carson
Genre: mm
Rating: mature
Summary: Kid Nitro went to sleep in his own bed, and woke up on another Earth in the body of an alternate Franz Caulder. It’s a world without metabilities, which is jarring enough, but it’s also a world where Other-Franz is a mental patient grappling with some serious problems.

[table “24” not found /]

***

Caulder was Nigel’s last name. Franz had taken it after his godfather had officially adopted him. Nigel had been the most important person in his life, the only parent he had ever known. They had a great relationship of crime fighting and old movies and there was never a time when Franz could imagine Nigel not being there for him.

None of that had happened here.

In this world there was no Nigel in Franz’s life. There had only ever been his mother, the memory of a wonderful father, and the memory of an abuser. There was no stuffy British guy that knew everything and never made mistakes but treated Franz as if he were important.

He was imagining something very Invasion of the Body Snatchers having happened to him, but he figured everything had a simple explanation. Either he was crazy and had just recently gone some level of more crazy, or he was Buffy Summers.

His situation was all normal again, and he wanted to scream but he was sure he would never be able to stop.

“I… I can’t handle this right now,” he said. He abruptly stood up, the motion hard enough that his chair made a loud sound on the floor. “Will you come again soon?”

Sophia looked as though she were fighting to swallow down the emotion she felt. Finally she managed to give him a shaky smile. “Of course. I’ll bring you something good to eat. All your favorites. We’ll make a picnic of it.”

“Thank you.” He wanted to hug her, but the thought of being touched was bugs crawling under his skin. “I love you.”

He walked away before she could say anything. He went to his room and closed the door firmly behind him. He needed time to think.

 

Franz curled up on the bed and seriously wondered if this was where he was going to spend the rest of his life. Staring at these walls, not sure about what was real and what was fake. His memories were scrambled to the point that he felt as if his head were about to blow off his shoulders from all the eleventh hour revelations.

He’d been so sure that he was Kid Nitro. He had been slipped into the body of his alternate reality self and all he had to do was survive until Nigel got him home. Except Nigel wasn’t trying to get him home. Nigel didn’t have a clue that he existed because he wasn’t real. He was just a series of memories that never happened to *Franz*.

He hugged his knees tight against his chest and clamped his hands around his ankles. The bed was horrible, but it was where he needed to be. He had to think and consider. He needed to get his head screwed on straight.

His memories of his life felt tangled and confused, but he was remembering who he was.

Franz Benoit, age: twenty-two. He’d had a history of mental illness, including a suicide attempt when he was sixteen. That was the first time he was ever institutionalized, and it wasn’t for very long, just a few weeks. He’d straightened up after that and had gotten away without having to be medicated.

It was still kind of blurry, but he remembered the way the world had spun around his head as he stood on top of the water tower. Everything had felt so hard, just completely impossible; jumping had seemed like a good whole life plan. He was just lucky that he’d had a couple of friends with him and Mindy–tiny, pink-haired Mindy with the high-pitched little girl voice–had tackled him and screamed in his face until he froze and stayed where he was. It took him a long time to understand what was going on, and that was only partly the alcohol.

He’d asked Mindy to drive him to the hospital and he’d checked himself in for a voluntary 48-hour hold. He’d told her goodbye while inside her apple green VW bug, then walked into the hospital alone. It was something that he’d needed to do.

He wasn’t coping with shit. He needed help.

Dr. Werth had talked to him and she’d really talked up the appeal of the mental hospital until it had seemed like the perfect place to be. He’d agreed to enter long-term care until he could get a handle on some of his issues.

What happened instead? He had a massive hallucination that he was someone else and could barely remember the person that he was supposed to be. Not that he’d ever wanted to be Franz Benoit in the first place.

For as long as he could remember, he’d always felt out of place. It had just seemed as though he’d been plucked up from some place else and forcibly inserted into his life. He’d always felt that if he had just been born someone else he would have been much happier. Things wouldn’t get to him as much and he wouldn’t feel so alien in his own skin.

He wasn’t Franz Caulder. But he wanted to be.

Franz Caulder was confident, pragmatic, and had the kind of personality that didn’t know how to quit. He was Kid Nitro, one of the fastest speedsters on the planet. His mentor and adoptive father was Nigel Caulder, the superhero Lightspeed. They were one of the greatest duos on the planet.

Franz stuck his fingers in his mouth and bit down. That bit of pain centered him. It separated him from his thoughts for a moment and let him just *be*.

Franz Caulder and Kid Nitro were part of some massive hallucination he’d had. Yet even now that life felt so *real.* That was his life. That was him.

He squeezed his eyes tight shut and let the idea settle in his mind.

His real life and his hallucinatory life were tangled together. Things that he knew were true, that had *definitely* happened to Franz Benoit, felt disjointed and strange, as though they belonged to someone else. The life of Franz Caulder was so much more vivid than his own.

He wanted to hold onto that life. He wanted that life to be his.

Franz pulled his fingers out of his mouth and straightened his legs. He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. A smile was twitching the corners of his lips.

Why did he have to be Franz Benoit?

He had all of the memories of Franz Caulder. Amazing experiences that made him feel empowered just to think of them. And wasn’t that all a person was at base? A bundle of memories.

Franz closed his eyes with a peaceful smile. It felt powerful. It felt right.

“I am Franz Caulder,” he whispered.

TBC…

[table “24” not found /]

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This story was part of my post for the Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia. It ended May 27th, but will be back again next year 🙂