“Are you kidding me?” TJ said. “I was about to have that exact same idea.”
“Okay, here’s the plan,” said Kevin, adjusting the power level on his force-field gloves. “Huddle up.”
Warner and TJ armed themselves with trash-can lids for shields and tennis rackets for general swatting purposes. They fenced a little bit to get warm while Tara set up the machine and loaded it with the purple-fur-covered tennis balls. Klyk perched next to the controls on the tennis ball shooter.
Warner looked at Kevin, who was warming up with the force-field gloves. He then looked at his own makeshift weaponry. “Sure you don’t want to trade?”
“I’m sure,” Kevin said. “I’m just starting to get good with these things.”
“Okay, ready,” Tara said. “Let’s do this before that thing starts to cocoon us.”
The entire shed trembled as a loud thud shook the ground outside and Poobah’s immense arachnopod tentacles came smashing through the windows.
“What did I tell you?” Tara screamed as they all dove for cover from the bear-hugging tentacles crisscrossing overhead. In an instant, Poobah pulled upward and the entire shed ripped out of its foundation.
“Charge!” Klyk shouted.
Kevin popped up and ran forward to face the mighty beast. Poobah reared back on its spider legs and simultaneously jabbed two powerful tentacles at him. Kevin raised the force-field gloves to block the arachnopod’s opening attack. Its tentacles flew back in response. Armed with their tennis rackets and metal shields, Warner and TJ helped Tara position the ball machine.
“Fire!” Klyk shouted, and Tara aimed the shooter right at the arachnopod’s squawking maw.
PHLUMP-PHLUMP. The machine lobbed the first two tennis balls toward Poobah. The arachnopod’s kryptonite arced through the air, but Poobah closed his mouth and both the tennis balls bounced off his brow in a puff of purple fur.
The revolting alien beast sucked in a torrent of air and then let out a dreadful sneeze, sending extraterrestrial snot everywhere. TJ stood there covered in slimy alien mucus and started to hyperventilate.
“Watch out!” Kevin hollered. “It’s sneezing again.” He leaped to the side, hit the ground, and rolled clear of the splatter zone.
Warner and TJ lunged forward with their trash-can lids to shield themselves and Tara from the alien snot rockets flying through the air.
Poobah’s last sneeze shook it to its very core, and its belly contracted. Kevin saw Poobah’s stomach flash red as the supersizer shrink ray activated in its belly and sent out another laser beam.
ZAP! Poobah grew two times its already enormous stature. Now it stood halfway to the treetops, and its legs spanned the width of an entire professional soccer field.
“Aw, man,” said Kevin to no one in particular.
“Seriously. That’s a big arachnopod,” TJ said.
“And a bigger target,” said Klyk.
“You know the old saying,” said Tara, lining up the tennis ball shooter. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
THWAP-THWAP. Poobah shot two gobs of sticky spider silk through the air. Warner caught the first one with the trash-can lid, but the second gobbet nailed the shooting nozzle on the tennis ball machine.
“It’s jammed!” Tara yelled, trying to send off another round.
Thinking quickly, Warner grabbed three tennis balls, linty with Mim fur, and lobbed them one after the other with his racket. The trio of tennis balls sailed up into the air. The first two balls soared toward the beast’s face, one hitting the arachnopod right in the eyeball, the second careening off the monster’s slimy, foaming muzzle. But the third tennis ball was dead on and dropped straight into the arachnopod’s mouth.
Instantly, Poobah’s face bugged out, its panel of eyes bulging as it choked the tennis balls down into its digestive tract.
Tara and TJ both looked at Warner with amazement, and Kevin furrowed his brows at his pal.
“What?” asked Warner. “I thought you guys knew I played tennis.” He spun the racket on his finger and blew imaginary smoke off the handle.
Within moments, Poobah started to wobble and its massive spider legs began to crumple under its own monstrous weight.
“Kevin, watch out!” Tara shouted as the supersized octo-spider toppled in his direction.
Kevin raised the force-field gloves to deflect the falling creature, but as he thrust his hands up at the gigantic tentacle flopping down upon him, he felt the power from the gloves drain. Uh-oh, he thought. He may as well have been wearing the ugly green mittens his grandma had knitted him for his birthday.
“Oomph!” Kevin’s body struck the ground, and he landed flat on his rear, the back of his head slamming into the grass. Beams of sunlight shone through the dust cloud, and Kevin coughed. He couldn’t move. His legs were trapped beneath the arachnopod’s gargantuan tentacle. “Help!” he called. “I’m stuck!”
Tara and TJ rushed over and grabbed him by the arms, trying to yank him out from under Poobah’s hefty weight.
“Kevin, are you okay?” Tara asked.
“Except for being trapped under a giant arachnopod, I think I’m fine.”
Tara and TJ tried to lift the tentacle, but straining with both hands, they could only lift it about an inch and a half.
“It’s slippery!” TJ moaned.
They lifted again with all their might as Warner came over and yanked both of Kevin’s arms by the wrist.
“Easy, man.” Kevin grimaced. “You’re gonna dislocate my shoulders!”
“Almost there, buddy!” Warner said, straining to pull Kevin free. “One, two, three!”
Kevin felt himself lurch upward as his legs dislodged from under the weight of Poobah’s octo-arm. Warner dragged Kevin a few feet away from the monstrous arachnopod and set his friend down.
“Just gimme a sec,” Kevin said, stretching his arms and legs. When he was ready, Kevin rose to his feet and brushed himself off next to his friends. The four of them stood gazing at the fallen arachnopod. Except for its slow, shallow breathing, Poobah was completely still.
“It’s not looking so good,” Kevin said.
“It must be really allergic to Mim,” said TJ.
With a jolt, Poobah began to hiccup. Quickly, the hiccup fit turned into an awful spell of dry heaving.
“You guys might want to stand back,” said Klyk.
PHFLU-ARGH! Out sprayed a wave of extraterrestrial bile as the amphibious mutant got sick, over and over. PHLU-ARGH!
The alien throw-up doused the front of Tara’s shirt. “Ick!” she squealed, and backed away as more upchuck spilled from the octo-spider’s mouth.
“Nasty!” Warner said with a little amusement in his voice.
The arachnopod gagged and coughed once more, and with a final gurgle, the supersizer ray shot out of Poobah’s mouth and landed at Kevin’s feet.
Kevin bent down and picked up the device, wiping it off on his shorts. When he opened the screen, the monitor lit up. “It’s still working,” he said.
“No duh,” said TJ, gesturing to the gigantic arachnopod lying before them.
“Thank goodness,” said Tara. “We’ve been wasting too much time on Poobah. We have to get Mim before he destroys the whole world! What are we gonna do?”
Kevin thought hard, but he was out of ideas.
“Wait, you guys,” Tara said. “Where’s the galactascope?”
“It’s in the gym in the field house,” Kevin said. “We left it there after the Invention Convention.”
“Okay, well, why don’t we go use that to call Klyk’s alien backup?”
“I can’t believe we didn’t think of that already!” Kevin shouted, and they all took off for the field house.
But when they reached the gymnasium, their proud invention was no longer where they’d left it. “Mim!” Kevin growled, tightening his fist into a ball. “He must have taken it to cut us off.”
“What are we going to do, you guys?” TJ asked a little meekly.
“I don’t want our planet to get eaten up by that little scuzzball.”
“Me neither,” Tara said, and they all fell quiet for a long moment.
Finally Klyk broke the silence. “If we can get within shooting distance of the little sucker, then we can zap him back to the intake facility on my planet’s prison system.”
“Okay, then let’s unshrink Klyk so he can track down Mim and wormhole the crud out of him,” Warner said.
“I wish it were that easy,” said Klyk.
“What are you saying?”
“Mim gets stronger and quicker from his feedings, which makes him harder to catch and contain. If the news we heard earlier is right, he might already be unstoppable.”
“But you’re a highly trained intergalactic crime fighter,” Warner blurted. “You’re our best shot. We’ve got to make you big again.”
“How much juice do we have left?” Kevin asked.
“Seven percent,” said TJ. “One shot.”
They pondered the dilemma in the morning silence.
There’s got to be another way, thought Kevin.
“So if we don’t do something now, he’ll just keep eating more and more?” Tara asked.
“That’s right,” said Klyk. “And then he’ll eat some more.”
A lightbulb flashed in Kevin’s brain. “S’more,” he said.
“That’s what he just said, man,” Warner said.
“No,” said Kevin. “Suh-mores,” he annunciated the word more precisely. “Mim’s new favorite food!” He turned to Klyk. “Sorry, man, we can’t unshrink you. Not yet, anyway.”
“Wait,” said Tara. “Why?”
“Because we’re gonna use our one shot to lure Mim back to us with the biggest s’more ever and then zap him out of this world!”
“It might work,” said Klyk. “But I’m warning you, if we do find him, this won’t be the Mim you know. Mim’s gastrointestinal anatomy is such that everything that enters his mouth will be converted into pure energy, which he uses to feed on more matter. Mim is like a micro black hole of mass consumption.”
“Then we’re going to have to execute this operation to perfection,” said Kevin. “Are you with me?”
“Yeah!” the four of them all shouted, and then sprang into action.
Kevin and Warner dashed back to the bunkhouse to gather up the last of Warner’s graham cracker, marshmallow, and chocolate bar supply.
When they returned, Tara and TJ had a bonfire all ready to concoct the biggest s’more of all time.
Once they had roasted all the marshmallows and used up the rest of the graham crackers and chocolate, they moved the s’more to the center of the field at the back of camp.
“Make it count, Kev,” said Warner. “This is our only shot.”
Kevin lined up the alien gadget and set the size-o-meter as high as it would go. He tapped the touch screen, sending a laser beam blasting out into the field.
With expert precision, the beam zapped the s’more, and the Extraordinary Terrestrials watched the delicious treat grow to the size of a basketball court. The surrounding area filled with the sweet-smelling aroma of melted chocolate and gooey marshmallow.
“Nice job,” Klyk declared behind them as the four kids all high-fived.
Kevin spun around and saw Klyk dragging something through the grass. It was Alexander’s miniaturized hovercraft from the gymnasium.
“I thought this could be of use in catching Mim. I made some modifications to this vehicle. The engine will run silently now,” Klyk said. “But I was unable to access the ignition. There seems to be some kind of secret pass code.”
“Hold on a sec,” Kevin said. “I’ll handle this.”
He rushed across campus and back to the mess hall, where the campers were still cocooned inside. “Alexander!” Kevin called through the layers of alien silk surrounding the building.
After a brief pause, Alexander’s voice could be heard coming from inside. “What is it?”
“What’s the password for your hovercraft?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” Alexander said.
“Come on, this is serious. Just tell me the code.”
“Not until you admit that you’re an alien.”
“I’m not an alien,” Kevin said.
“You are if you want the pass code,” Alexander said.
“Fine,” said Kevin. “I’m an alien. Happy now?”
“Say it like you mean it,” Alexander said.
“Give me the code, man!” Kevin shouted.
“Alexander!” Dimpus’s voice boomed from within. “Give Kevin the code already! Our lives depend on it.”
“Easy peasy one two threesy,” Alexander said.
“I’m waiting . . . ,” Kevin said.
“That’s the code, you nimrod,” Alexander said.
“Thanks!” Kevin darted back to the group, saying the code over and over to himself. “EZPZ123Z.”
“Klyk, I got it!” Kevin shouted to the little alien, who was sitting on Warner’s arm. He was setting the coordinates for the wormhole generator to send Mim to his specially designed prison cell made out of arachnopod silk—the only thing he couldn’t eat his way out of—halfway across the galaxy.
“Phew!” Tara said as a low rumble resounded in the distance. “I think Mim’s coming!”
Klyk punched in the code, and the hovercraft engine purred to life. The mini alien cyborg hopped in and flew over to the unconscious arachnopod and yanked out a long stretch of the alien beast’s silk from the gland on one of its tentacles. He tied it securely to the back of the hovercraft, then rode behind a bush and disappeared from view.
Warner, Tara, TJ, and Kevin all darted away from the gigantic s’more and into the forest to await their alien friend turned foe. Less than twenty seconds later, nearby trees began to disappear off the horizon and before long, a huge path the width of a highway started to clear seemingly on its own. Entire trees were being chewed up like they were branches in a wood chipper.
At the center of the mass consumption, Mim levitated off the ground, his mouth a chaotic vortex of churning dark energy.
Mim stopped before the megasized s’more. He had a frenzied look in each of his four eyes.
“Mim,” said Tara, stepping out nervously with Kevin and TJ by her side. “We offer you . . . an offering!”
“Yeah,” TJ chimed in. “I reversed the shrink ray to make gigantic things for you to eat. Wasn’t that nice of me?”
“That was very thoughtful, TJ,” said Mim.
“Mim,” said Kevin. “We’ve done nothing but try to help you since you arrived here. We want you to feel at home, so we made this gigantic s’more specially for you.”
“How do I know it’s not poisoned?” Mim asked. “You eat it first.”
“Okay,” Kevin said, and walked over to take a handful of the melted chocolate and marshmallow. “Yum,” he said, eating a big gob out of his bare hand.
Tara and TJ took handfuls of the s’more, too, and started eating them. “Mmm,” Tara said. “It’s sooooo good.”
“That’s enough,” Mim said, his stomach grumbling audibly. “The rest is mine!”
Strands of alien drool windmilled off its black hole of a mouth as Mim began to suck down the rest of the megasized s’more.
With Mim distracted, Klyk came zooming out from his hiding spot in the woods, riding the souped-up mini hovercraft, and began to lasso lengths of superstrong arachnopod silk between Mim’s legs.
“What’s this?” Mim roared, and swatted the hovercraft to the ground. Klyk flew out of the control seat and bounced hard twice in the dirt before rolling to a stop.
“Wait. Can it really be?” Mim asked, standing over the fallen alien soldier. “Klyk . . . but you are so tiny!” The psychotic purple fluffball let out a deep, bellowing laugh that seemed to echo off itself. One of Mim’s arms stretched elastically down and plucked Klyk off the ground. Klyk dangled limply in his grip before Mim dropped his miniaturized foe t
o the grass and turned to the kids.
“You filthy little sneaks!” Mim howled. “You think you can trick Mim? Mim is the trickster!”
“Uh-oh, guys,” said Tara. “He’s talking about himself in the third person. That can’t be good.”
“Just you wait!” yelled Kevin. “Warner, now!”
Warner jumped out of hiding and clicked the button on the generator, but nothing happened.
“Warner!” they all yelled.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “I was trying to save power. I forgot to turn it back on!”
Two of Mim’s eyes rotated and landed their gaze on Warner aiming the wormhole generator.
“Come on, come on, hurry!” TJ yelled.
But before Warner could hit the button, Mim leaped away from the kids and shot up high in the air.
As the furious fur ball levitated to the treetops, the arachnopod silk tightened in a knot around one of his ankles. “Growrghk—” Mim yowled. Tethered by the thread of arachnopod silk, the purple planet eater wriggled above their heads like an airborne kite tugging at the end of its line.
Mim pulled the de-atomizer ray from his fur. He flicked it on, preparing to cut himself loose.
Ping! The wormhole generator reloaded and Warner took aim, firing the one and only shot they had to save mankind.
ZWHOOSH! The wormhole blast shot out just as Mim triggered the de-atomizer ray and zapped the arachnopod silk free from his legs. The line snapped and Mim floated twenty feet in the air. Yet before he could escape, a portal of green shimmering plasma opened up and sucked the all-consuming alien fiend into its vacuum. Mim fought against the wormhole’s suction, but his powerful vortex of matter-craving energy was not enough to escape the pull. In the blink of an eye, the wormhole closed and sent a shock wave that knocked them all backward.
“Whoa,” said TJ as he stood up and then helped Kevin and Tara off the ground.
“I did it!” Warner leaped for joy, thrusting the wormhole generator into the air. “I mean, we did it.”
Galaxy's Most Wanted Page 9
