Nurse Shade

Herein we tell the heroic and super  tale of that most abhorrent, vile and deviant archfiend, the one and only right hand to the infamous Lord Shadow, the being known only as...

...Nurse Shade.

A woman born in darkness and raised in violent depravity-

“Wait, what? No, no...Idaho is rather sunny and pleasant, I find.  Not dark at all.  Here, let me write this.”

Nurse Shade (or Charlotte Dawson, as her parents call her) was born in a small and sunny (not particularly darkness inclined at all) town in Idaho (which we will not name in order to maintain some shred of mystique).

Her mother’s name was Nancy, and she taught Geology at the local high school.  Her father’s name was Dr. Benjamin Dawson and he was the best (and only) paediatrician in town. Neither one died in a particularly horrific or angst-causing way.  In fact, they are still very much alive and often send the Diabolical Nurse Shade fuzzy, hand-knitted sweaters and dessert recipes in the mail.

There were really only three interesting things about Nurse Shade that anyone remembers from her pre-super heroine/super villainess days.

These things were:

One: a big mass of naturally cotton candy pink hair. 

Two: she was the only student in her high school’s history to graduate at the age of 14.

Three: she often spent her time as a candy striper at the local clinic.

She got accepted to a very nice medical college and studied very hard, eventually coming to work as head nurse of a city hospital. It was then that she learned of her GRIM AND HORRIBLE POWERS!!!

“Seriously, quit that. All those extra exclamation points can’t possibly be necessary.”

She found that, while trying to stitch a rather nasty head wound (under the chin, you know.  It happens quite a lot.  Too deep for a butterfly bandage and, what, I’m getting off track?  Oh, dear) she managed to heal the wound with little more than a soft glow and the touch of her hand.

Shocked, she went around the hospital, testing this newfound power on increasingly injured patients.  As she hurried about, frantically mending broken bones and curing illnesses with flicks of her wrists, the staff of the hospital edged away from her, seeing not their somewhat ditzy fellow employee (who occasionally baked cookies for them), but a being of light, surrounded by an almost inhuman corona of power.

Finally, her unnatural path of healing led her to the ICU, where she could almost see the sickness hovering over the bedridden patients, nearly choking them.  With a primal cry, she thrust out her arms and bathed entire room with light and-

-passed out.

Later, the local newspapers would proclaim proudly that they had a true heroine in their midst.  In fact, one tabloid quoted her thus:  You know, like a Super Florence Nightingale, but with bigger ti-

“Eep!  I’m sure no one needs to hear that.”

Anyhow, it was not long after this strange event that the DARKLY FIENDISH NURSE SHADE-

“Just Charlotte, if you please.”

-otherwise known as Charlotte, was contacted by a local superhero group, who had heard of her powers and wanted a nice, round five members.  There isn’t much to say about this group.  They were second-string heroes, at best.  One had laser eyes, one could run really fast and the other female member was vivacious and sexy, with a spitfire personality, a mysterious past, multiple love interests and...Oh, her power?  Not sure, actually, the records don’t say. 

The group had a cheesy group title, which was virtually unheard of outside the small city they worked in.  They mostly took care of local villains and run of the mill criminals, only getting involved in bigger things when the better hero teams were overworked.  Each member had a cheesy superhero name, as well, and told Charlotte quite frankly that, no, she couldn’t just be called just Charlotte (and no, not even Charlie, for short) and yes, she did need an alter ego.

So, with no small amount of confusion, Charlotte Dawson dubbed herself...THE NURSE.

It goes without saying that her teammates were not exactly awed by her naming skills.

Nor were they particularly awed by her powers.  She couldn’t fly, she wasn’t super strong, she was a bit clumsy...all she could do was heal.  That was it.

And, to make matters worse, her superhero costume was just a nurse’s outfit.  Her underwear weren’t even on the outside!

Nevertheless, she made a valuable contribution to the team, if not a particularly exciting one, until that FATEFUL DAY...

“Caps, again?  I don’t get it.  Is it supposed to make things more dramatic?”

...the team had been sent out as a relief for another, much higher profile team called the Defenders.  A mysterious super villain known only as THE SHADOW had built a secret island lair nestled deep within a dormant volcano (you know, your standard evil villain lair) and from this formidable fortress, he planned to unleash a DEADLY RAY OF DEATH™ (your standard evil villain plan).

The Defenders were almost utterly destroyed trying to thwart his sinister plan, but their leader managed to crawl over to a computer console and send a cry of help out to the Nurse’s team, who came to the rescue immediately.

After a not particularly epic battle, which the Nurse’s team managed to avoid entirely, the heroes placed a bomb inside the volcano, which would, in less than ten minutes, detonate, awakening the volcano’s deadly wrath.

Those heroes that could quickly flew away from the doomed island, while those that could not boarded an excitingly heroic ship (it had ‘go-faster’ stripes) and flew away.  All but one...


(TRANSCRIPT OF THE ‘DEFENDER’ BLACK BOX; 03/04/1999)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: “Do you get the feeling we’ve, I don’t know, left something behind?
UNIDENTIFED FEMALE: “Like what?”
U.MALE: “I don’t know, but I think it was something pretty important.”
-Sounds of searching-
U. MALE: “That’s it!  We forgot the blast cannon!”
U. FEMALE: “Oh, wow, that’s terrible!  How could we forget something so important?”

(TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT ENDS)

...The Nurse stood on the landing pad of the evil fortress, a small and forlorn blob of pink with a giant, sparking and spewing volcano looming behind her.  A large and very sinister black airship was surrounded by goons, hurriedly preparing to depart the ill-fated isle. THE SHADOW was sweeping across the landing pad towards it when he spotted this small, pink figure of a woman sniffling into her handkerchief as the Defender’s plane sped off into the distance. THE SHADOW stopped for a moment before walking over and LOOMING at her.

He spoke, and his voice was like a thousand tortured screams in the darkness.  “THEY LEFT YOU BEHIND?” He asked, sounding confused.

The Nurse nodded, sniffling.  She tilted her head up to look at him with large, quavering blue eyes that threatened to overspill with tears.  Disgustingly cute, I know.  No one knows why THE INFAMOUS AND DEADLY SHADOW chose to do what he did next, but his actions shall go down forever in history.

“LOOK, ARGH...NOT THE PUPPY EYES...JUST GET ON THE SHIP, OKAY?”

Even super villains have weaknesses.

So the Nurse was spared a horrible death by molten lava and, the next thing she knew, she was offered a job.

As a super villainess.

Feeling horribly betrayed by her former teammates, the Nurse accepted his offer (and the rather handsome salary that went with it) and was transformed into...

NURSE SHADE!!!          

“Oh, do you like it?  I thought it sounded properly villainous.”

She spent the next two years in the service of THE SHADOW committing horrible and unspeakable deeds of evil-

“What evil deeds?  I was the staff doctor. “

And with her as his nefarious ally, THE SHADOW rose to greater infamy and power.  His ranks of followers swelled due to his influence and brilliance (not to mention the absolutely amazing health and dental plan.  How many other jobs can actually guarantee you won’t die on the job?) and citizens the world over cowered at the very mention of his dreadful name.

THE SHADOW and his denizens clashed with the Alpha Force often, and epic duels between the HEROIC CHAMPION and the DASTRADLY SHADOW made headlines again and again.

Nurse Shade worked behind the scenes, never witnessing the brutal atrocities that her employer and mentor committed with his bare hands and unholy powers, refusing to believe the countless heroes who came now and again to either redeem her or subvert her into betraying her boss.

Sources speculate that, during these two years, Nurse Shade and THE SHADOW grew very close-

“Hey, that’s private!”

In 2001, the K’tharen invaded and THE SHADOW actually aided some of Earth’s heroes (albeit surreptitiously) in their struggle against them.

When the V’sori brought their aid, he was one of the few cynics, retreating from the battle for Earth. Together Nurse Shade and THE SHADOW watched, one horrified, the other merely resigned as the V’sori cheerfully turned Earth’s greatest hero into little more than irradiated goo.

THE SHADOW, we are infinitely sorrowed to say, died leading one of the first desperate battles against the V’sori, leaving nothing more than a tattered legacy behind.

Those who opposed V’sori rule went underground soon after his death, creating cells of resistance.  The Resistance had lost a great asset when THE SHADOW died, but Nurse Shade had lost something far, far more important.

She vowed to get revenge and rid the world of its alien oppressors by any means necessary.

And if that meant working with the most EVIL OF SUPERVILLAINS, then it would be, for her, a NECESSARY EVIL.