The Great Powers Outage

by William Boniface

  The next day, the Carbunkle Mountains towered above us as my friends and I stood before the rocky opening that led to the shadowy Carlsbark Caverns. I had a feeling that if there was any way to see what lurked beneath Crater Hill, exploring these caverns would be our best chance.

  “Tell us again why we’ve come here?” Tadpole said with an annoyance that only partly hid his growing nervousness.

  “We’re here to test my hypothesis,” I stated once again.

  “Is that like a hippopotamus?” Hal asked.

  “It’s more like a theory,” I said, “just harder to pronounce.”

  LI’L HERO’S HANDBOOK

  PLACES

  CARLSBARK CAVERNS

  Named for the distinct echoes they produce, the Carlsbark Caverns can be accessed only through a single entrance found at the base of the Carbunkle Mountains just north of Telomere Park. The small sections explored thus far have revealed spectacular mineral formations that are dazzling to behold. Even greater wonders—including caverns as vast as three cubic acres—have yet to be discovered.

  “And your theory has to do with Crater Hill,” Stench said, fishing for the answer.

  “Exactly,” I responded. “Haven’t any of you ever wondered how a hill got a name that makes no sense?”

  “Wait a minute. A crater is the exact opposite of a hill,” Plasma Girl said as it dawned on her. “You’re right, O Boy. That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  “Unless it once was a crater,” I pointed out. “And the meteorite is still sitting in it causing the bulge that forms the hill.”

  “And you think the meteorite could be worth how much?” Stench asked.

  “Millions. Or even billions,” I said. “Or maybe nothing. But I do know it’s the only shot we have of buying out AI and shutting down his Pseudo-Chip operation.”

  “And you expect us to find it,” Tadpole said with a mildly annoyed look on his face.

  “Do heroes turn away from a mission?” I asked.

  “No,” Plasma Girl said with a sigh, “but couldn’t a mission sometimes be going to a movie or just baking cookies or something?”

  “People are losing their powers,” I said, “and this might be the only way to return them.”

  I stuck out my right fist, thumb extended. Hal wrapped his right hand around my thumb and Plasma Girl did likewise with his. Stench and Tadpole completed the circle. We were a team.

  “Let’s go, Junior Leaguers!”

  Before anyone could argue, I stepped into the Carlsbark Caverns. I got only about ten feet before the light from the outside began to fade. As the way before me dissolved into darkness, I hesitated.

  “Hal, we didn’t load you up on apple juice this morning for nothing,” I said.

  A moment later, Halogen Boy illuminated himself, flooding the caverns with light. What we saw took our breaths away. Stalactites and stalagmites flecked with mica glistened and glittered as shimmering light bounced across cracks and crevices. From somewhere deep within the crevices hidden crystals erupted in jewel-like colors.

  “Wow!” Stench and Tadpole said in unison. Plasma Girl and Halogen Boy were awed into silence.

  This was the portion of the caverns that most people were familiar with. Every kid in Superopolis had been brought here on a school outing by the time they were in third grade. But this one easily accessible chamber was all that had ever really been explored. There were rumors that the Carlsbark Caverns wound their way through the entire range of the Carbunkle Mountains, and today I decided it was time for someone to see if it was true.

  I plunged ahead and my teammates followed. Hal’s light made it easy to pick a path, but Stench still managed to trip over an outcropping of stone and tumble onto the hard floor. Hitting the ground, he produced an all too familiar noise.

  “Run for cover!” Tadpole yelled, as we scrambled to escape what we knew was coming. All that came, though, was another noise—a rougher, almost canine version of what Stench had produced. WOOOFFT! Followed by wooft, wooft, wooft. Finally fading out to a lessening series of wooft, RUFF, wooft, RUFF. We were witnessing the famous barking echoes of Carlsbark Caverns. But all we cared about at the moment was avoiding the one unfortunate side effect of Stench’s incredible strength.

  Tentatively, I sniffed the air around me. To my surprise it smelled fine. My friends followed suit.

  “The air is clear,” Hal said with more than a little surprise.

  “It must have risen up instead of settling down,” Plasma Girl guessed.

  “I hope it doesn’t cause any of those stalactites to fall,” Tadpole commented.

  “Hey, it wasn’t that bad,” Stench protested.

  The words were barely out of his mouth when we heard a rumbling noise high above us. For a moment I thought the ceiling actually was falling.

  “Bats!!” Plasma Girl screamed before instantly reducing herself to a puddle of goo. As I dived for the ground I felt the first of the panic-stricken creatures brush against the back of my head. I noticed Plasma Girl in her goopy state slithering through a crack between some boulders. Then everything went dark.

  Hal had doused his light under the mistaken assumption that the bats couldn’t find him if it was dark. Ultimately it didn’t matter. They had only one thought in mind and that was to escape the horrendous gas that had risen to their home in the ceiling.

  Finally the shrieking, flapping noise ceased, and a few moments later Hal had regained enough nerve to brighten back up. Tadpole immediately turned and glared at Stench, who just shrugged in embarrassment.

  “Hey, you guys,” Plasma Girl whispered as she slithered back through the crack between the boulders and took her normal shape. “You won’t believe what’s behind here. Stench, can you move these rocks?”

  “Of course I can,” he said, eager to show the side of his power he was proud of. Effortlessly, he picked up one boulder after another and set them aside. But the more he moved the heavy stones the more difficult it appeared to be getting for him. Finally, with intense concentration on his face, he rolled the final boulder backward to reveal an entry into another dark chamber.

  “How were you able to see in there?” I asked Plasma Girl. “It’s completely dark.”

  “Light was coming from somewhere,” she said with a shrug.

  “Hal,” I said, “douse yourself.”

  The moment Halogen Boy’s light vanished, we were all able to see the same thing Plasma Girl had spotted. There was a faint glow coming through an opening set far across and lower down on the other side of this new chamber.

  “Now light back up,” I instructed Hal, as I kept my eyes glued to the spot. I could no longer see the fainter light once Hal was aglow, but I knew the direction we should go.

  Halogen Boy’s luminosity revealed a long narrow ledge that sloped downward, always hugging the side of the cavern wall. I led the way forward as we moved in single file along the rocky path. We followed it down and down. Finally, after traveling for over a half hour, and hundreds of feet down, we arrived at the site that Plasma Girl had spotted from across the enormous cavern. The glow she had seen was now noticeable to all of us, and Hal had apparently been reducing his own illumination as this light got stronger.

  “You can shut off altogether, Hal,” I told him. “The glow is bright enough by itself.”

  “Huh?” he said in surprise. “Uh, okay, O Boy.”

  I led us into a long, straight tunnel that went on for several hundred feet and kept getting brighter as I hurried through it. My teammates ran to catch up with me.

  Reaching the end of the tunnel I saw that it opened up into a chamber even more enormous than the one we had just come from—only this one was filled with a brilliant radiance. My mouth dropped open in astonishment at the source of the light. Wedged into the center of the vast, sprawling chamber was a gigantic—and glowing—meteorite. It didn’t look a day over sixty-five million years old.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Creepy Crawlies

 
The chamber in front of us stretched almost a mile across. From the floor of the cavern it was at least a two-hundred-foot rise to the stalactite-covered ceiling. But the immensity of the space itself seemed like nothing compared to the enormous glowing meteorite. The top of it was wedged into the ceiling far above and was no doubt what caused the large, rounded bulge of Crater Hill. I knew that it had to be directly below the water tower in the center of Telomere Park. The bottom portion of the meteorite was submerged in a wide stream that was gurgling its way through the middle of this vast chamber.

  What shocked me more than anything else, though, was the meteorite itself. I had been hoping that it might be gold or platinum or maybe even encrusted with diamonds, emeralds, and rubies. But it was something far more valuable than that. It was, without a doubt, that rarest of all substances—prodigium.

  As far as anyone was aware, there had only been one chunk of the element ever discovered. It had been on display in the Superopolis Museum until it was stolen on orders from Professor Brain-Drain. Because of the enormous amount of energy the substance contained, the professor had used it to power his Time Tipler. That original chunk of prodigium had been reduced to a small rock, which I then used to strand him one hundred and thirty million years in the past.

  What would he have done if he had known that the very meteor that he was hoping to see destroy Superopolis was in fact a gigantic chunk of prodigium and a storehouse of unlimited power? Thankfully, it was safe from his evil clutches.

  “Just look at that!” Tadpole said in amazement.

  “It looks just like it did when we last saw it sixty-five million years ago,” Stench added. “Or ten days ago, depending on how you look at it.”

  “It doesn’t appear to have lost any of its size,” I agreed.

  “How did it end up jammed into this huge cavern?” Plasma Girl asked.

  “The meteorite itself hasn’t budged,” I replied. “The space surrounding it, though, has formed over millions of years by water erosion. See that stream running around the base of the meteorite? Eventually it will wear away enough dirt to make it look like the meteorite is suspended above it.”

  “The water is the cause and this cavern is the effect,” Hal said proudly. I noticed that he wasn’t glowing at all despite his pride at mastering my lesson.

  “You’re right, Hal. And causes that go on for millions and millions of years can produce truly enormous effects like this.”

  Even as I was saying it my eyes were focusing on something I had just noticed at the base of the meteorite. There was a boat moored in the stream, and it appeared to have a passenger. It was a strange crablike creature and it appeared to be picking away at the part of the meteorite that dipped into the water. Then I noticed there was another one. As my eyes focused, I realized there were dozens of them . . . or was it hundreds?

  “What are those things?” Stench whispered from behind me, having just noticed them himself. “And look, there are a bunch of them on the shore, too.”

  “Eeekk!!” Plasma Girl shrieked as she noticed the strange creatures. “They’re disgusting!”

  “Not so loud!” I hissed at her. But it was too late. A dozen or so of the things on shore had stopped what they were doing. They paused, as if waiting for instructions, and then began scurrying in our direction.

  “Uh-oh,” said Stench. “This can’t be good.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said as I began heading back down the tunnel that had led us into the cavernous chamber. No one was going to argue the point, and they fell in line right behind me.

  As we ran, the illumination from the meteorite faded.

  “Hal, we need some light,” I insisted.

  “I’m trying,” he said, almost on the verge of tears.

  I followed his voice and could vaguely see him fading dimly in and out of view. He had drunk enough apple juice that he should still have plenty of light available. Something was definitely wrong.

  “We won’t get anywhere in the dark,” Plasma Girl wailed. “We’ll fall into a chasm and never be seen again.”

  “What do we do, O Boy?” Stench said, trying to sound calm even though I knew he was worried, too. “I can hear those creatures getting closer.”

  What were we going to do? We were trapped between a treacherous, unlit path ahead of us and some very scary crablike creatures behind us.

  “Everybody be quiet,” I insisted. “Maybe if they can’t hear us, they’ll give up and go away.”

  I knew it was a desperate ploy, but everyone followed my direction. The clicking and clacking of these creature’s claws as they scrambled over the rocky floor was now echoing throughout the cave. What were these creatures? Their noise got louder and louder until suddenly the sound stopped. For a moment, there was complete silence, except for a slight whimpering right next to me. I knew it was Plasma Girl. I remained silent for over a minute, just listening to her, not knowing what to do.

  “Use your power and escape,” I finally whispered to her.

  “I can’t,” she answered far too loudly. “It’s not working.”

  The moment she spoke, a cold, sharp claw latched onto my upper arm. I think I may have screamed, but there was no way to tell over the shrieks of my friends. Then another claw grabbed hold of my leg. Within seconds, each of my limbs was immobilized. From the shouts of my friends I could tell they were in the same position. I then felt myself hoisted into the air. A moment later we were moving back in the direction of the meteorite chamber.

  The tunnel became brighter and brighter as we moved forward, and I could make out the creatures that had captured us. What I had first taken to be living creatures, I could now see were actually made of metal. These were machines! Where could they possibly have come from? And more important, what were they going to do with us?

  For a moment I had a ray of hope that Stench had been able to fight off the creatures and escape. But then I saw that the crabs bringing up the rear had him secured as well. He was struggling but unable to overcome them. My heart sank. If Stench couldn’t break free, what chance did any of us have?

  “Help! Help!” Tadpole screeched. “Let go of me, you metal misfits.”

  What really surprised me was how big the creatures actually were. From a distance, I had guessed they were maybe a foot long, a foot wide, and a foot high. In reality they must have been three times that size!

  As they carried us down the slope of the cavern and onto the chamber floor, I had a chance to stare ahead at the main mass of metal monsters. They were clustered alongside the stream. Only then did I notice a human figure standing amid them.

  “O Boy! What are we going to do?!” Plasma Girl cried out in fear. “I can’t get away from these things.”

  Whatever fear she was feeling couldn’t possibly compare to the chill that ran down my spine as I realized we were being delivered into the waiting clutches of Professor Brain-Drain himself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  A Fiendish Plot

  How Professor Brain-Drain had managed to return from one hundred and thirty million years in the past was a mystery that seemed of minor importance at the moment. He had us in his power—at precisely the same instant that my friends had lost the use of theirs.

  “Well, now, what have my Crush-staceans found?” he asked with a malevolent chuckle. “I believe I recognize this crop of junior do-gooders.” His eyes wandered from one of my friends to another before finally coming to rest on me. “And here’s the most meddlesome of all.”

  “How did you escape?” I demanded as I struggled in vain against the metallic crablike creature that held me captive. “You should still be stranded in the past.”

  “Yes, I should be.” He smiled enigmatically. “But that’s only if one assumes I was ever there to begin with.”

  “I know you were,” I asserted. “I sent you there.”

  “Indeed you almost did,” he said, glaring at me. “And you would have succeeded if it hadn’t been for the emergency escape hatch I ha
d installed in the interior of my Time Tipler.”

  “Escape hatch?” I replied dumbly, feeling somehow I had been cheated.

  “Yes,” he replied dryly. “No genius leaves himself without an exit plan. Nevertheless, I hesitated before using it, and only barely escaped before the Tipler did its thing.”

  “Why would you have hesitated?” I asked even as I realized the answer on my own.

  “Because, by leaving the Tipler, I, too, could have been destroyed by this approaching meteor.” His hand swung up to indicate the enormous mass of prodigium mounted above us. “It took me a moment to make a calculated decision. Surely you know what that was.”

  “Yes,” I grudgingly admitted. “You had to decide if you were in a worse position facing the meteor or being stranded one hundred and thirty million years in the past.”

  “Correct.” He beamed. “And do you know ultimately why I chose to stay with the endangered citizens of Superopolis?”

  “Because it would have been very boring for someone determined to destroy civilization to be stuck in a time before people even existed?” I hazarded a guess.

  “Well, no.” He shook his head. “Not that your point isn’t valid. But my main reason was I had faith in your ability to figure out a way to save Superopolis and return it—and me—to the present.”

  “What??!” I said, both appalled yet oddly pleased.

  “Oh, don’t pretend to be so modest,” he pooh-poohed. “You’re well aware that you don’t possess the same empty shell of a head as most of the residents of this city.”

  “But what are you doing down here?” I asked. “I mean, with this meteorite?”

  “Ah, yes.” He clucked. “You, of course, have also recognized it as prodigium, haven’t you?”

  “Only as we entered this chamber,” I admitted. “I never suspected before we came here.”

  “Really?” said the Professor, “then what possessed you to take this dangerous trek under the mountains? Something must have provoked your curiosity.”