Idyllville Mysteries #4
"The Fading Lights Of Emerald Flash"
When Emerald Flash set up shop in Cape Crown, no one thought they would get a refurbished theater out of it.
The Apple-Top Theater on Stanhope Drive had been out of commission practically since she had joined the Idols back in Idyllville, and it didn't show signs of being particularly valued by the community these days.
Emerald Flash wanted to change that.
She first visited the graffiti-encrusted theater during a pursuit of Commando Diamond, one of the Sons of Dawn from K-Town, who had kidnapped the partner of a local banker.
At the theater, she discovered how tattered and torn it was, and the fight against the Commando didn't help. Bullets shot against the wall and superstrength-laden punching and kicking only added more damage to the already-ruined building.
But there was nothing Matilda Linden loved more than a historical project in need of attention, especially if it was in her area of expertise — theatrics and the world of the stage. So, after the fight wrapped up and the day was saved, she went back as her civilian disguise and explored a little more (after the Peace Force had wrapped up their investigation, of course).
It only took her a few more weeks to raise the funds to buy it. Partially, it was her grant money from the Royal Protectorate — she had claimed she would be turning it into the facade for her private sanctum and future headquarters, which she didn't intend to do — and partially, it was her own savings and some funds raised by the few in the community who did want to see the theater restored to life, but weren't able to do anything about it themselves.
After that, she was off to the races, and Matilda Linden spent the early years of the 70s restoring that tattered old theater to life.
By 1975, the project was mostly done. By 1976, it was finished.
Matilda herself worked there for quite a while, partially doing lighting maintenance as she had once done for the Idyllville Circus, and mostly managing the design and aesthetics of the place and working with the community to bolster its attendance and show shows there.
She chose to install an aetheric projector on-stage so all the modern and capable pictures filmed using the technology could be showed off there, as well as custom lighting and seating to suit the best possible viewing options.
It wouldn't live up to the immersive capabilities of the realm lounges constructed throughout Inglenook in the late 70s, especially after the popularity of the Mageland franchise, but it would be enough.
More importantly, it would suit the population of Cape Crown, where she had come to know as her home, and that was enough.
In late 1976, after one particular showing of an old play about the adventurer Aldridge Haggard, Matilda was met by his daughter, Aurelia, who had decided to come by the theater specifically for that play.
"That was a great show," Aurelia told her, "but do you know his real story?"
This gave her a pause. "I know the plays, and the histories."
"Well," Aurelia continued, "keep an eye on the broadcast networks. We might just enlighten you soon."
Emerald Flash decided she'd have to keep that in mind, and moved on with her life.
It was a battle with the villain Dr. Tealeaf that brought her to a head.
Almost literally, as he had nearly knocked her head off during the battle.
But they came to a pause, and the villain — whose psychic prowess gave him divinatory abilities, according to him — picked up on a particularly-strong signal from Emerald Flash, as her lights and abilities began to lose their charge.
It was this signal that made him lose his own "charge", as it were, and decide to leave her where she laid. After all, when it's revealed to you that someone is pregnant, you learn to take something like that seriously, even if they are your mortal enemy.
"You need to stop fighting," Tealeaf said.
"Why?" said Emerald Flash. "So you can make off with the bucks, and get away with it?"
"No," he replied. "So you can let your kid get away with it instead."
Emerald Flash's child was a son. She named him Oliver, after the tree, and raised him in Cape Crown where she lived.
By that time, Fleetfoot had long-since retired. The Strongman had disappeared. There were new heroes, new masks, new legends to take up their calls to action.
The best Emerald Flash hoped for at that point was that her theater did well, and that her son would do well too, if he ever decided to pick up where she left off — or, in fact, in whatever aspect of his life he decided to pursue as he grew up in the tumultuous 80s and 90s of Inglenook.
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