Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities

by Mike Jung

  “We can do that anywhere,” Max said. “As long as it’s private.”

  “Let’s go back to the lake,” Polly said.

  The room erupted in boos and hisses.

  “What? It’s private, isn’t it?” Polly said.

  “Yeah, but it smells like a dead dog’s butt,” Max said.

  “We can go there if there’s no other place, but do you really want to deal with the stink if we don’t have to?” I said.

  “Okay, you guys are the experts, you think of a place around here!” Polly said.

  “Why do we have to stay around here?” I said.

  “Where are you thinking, Vincent?” Max said. “Watertown? Africa? Mars?”

  “Why not?” I said. “We have Captain Stupendous right here! Is there a reason why we can’t practice anywhere we want?”

  “I guess not,” Max said.

  “Yeah, just call me Captain Taxicab,” Polly said.

  “You don’t actually want to go to Mars, do you, Vincent?” George said. “It’d be cool, but we’d need spacesuits….”

  “George … NO, I don’t actually want to go to Mars,” I said.

  “I’m not taking anyone to Mars,” Polly said. “I don’t care if you guys want to go or not.”

  “Okay, then, where?” Max said.

  “It’s so obvious,” I said. “We should go to Colossal Dome.”

  Getting to Colossal Dome turned out to be uncomfortable, of course.

  “I can’t believe we’re going to Colossal Dome,” George said as we jostled for position inside my mom’s old toolshed. “Do you think any of the Nexus of Infamy’s weapons are still there?”

  “No,” Max said, digging his elbow into my side.

  “Stupendous cleaned all that stuff out after the final battle,” I said.

  “Vincent, you’re invading my space,” Max said.

  “I’m invading your space? You’re kidding, right?”

  “You know what, it’s probably just me getting bossy. That’s me, Boss Max.”

  “Boss Max is a good villain name,” George said.

  “Shut up, it is not,” I said.

  We don’t spend a lot of time stuffing ourselves into dusty, old toolsheds, but we needed a way for Captain Stupendous to take us to Colossal Dome without being seen. We were a mile over Copperplate City, packed into an ancient plastic toolshed that Stupendous carried. It was one of those tall, skinny ones, about the size of a closet, so it was pretty cramped in there. Our backpacks and messenger bags were piled on top of our feet, so we were constantly losing our balance and falling into each other.

  Yeah, I know. A plastic tool closet being carried by a flying superhero? Not very secret. But at least nobody could see it was me, Max, and George inside.

  “Is this stealing?” Max said.

  “It’s not stealing if the thing is owned by my mom,” I said. “Can you not stand on my foot like that?”

  Colossal Dome is at the top of Mount Chancho, the highest peak in the Copperplate Mountains. Mountain climbers used to love the place—it was one of those legendary, superhard mountains that only a few people could climb all the way to the top. Then the Nexus of Infamy decided to build its headquarters there.

  I knew we’d arrived when the whole toolshed went WHUMF and tilted. We bounced, smacking our arms on the plastic walls. The door was yanked open, and George toppled to the ground at Stupendous’s feet. Max and I picked up the backpacks and tossed them over George’s body. Just for fun we stepped over him as he tried to crawl out of the way.

  “Stupendify!” Polly appeared in a flash of blue light.

  “If I was Captain Stupendous, I’d never change back,” George said.

  “Yeah, well, I like being myself,” Polly said.

  “This place is HUGE.” Max craned his neck and looked up at the ceiling.

  Colossal Dome is—well, colossal. The dome’s a quarter mile across at its base, and five hundred feet high at the top. The Nexus of Infamy website is actually still live, so even though I’d never been there I’d already seen pictures. On the website, the dome is filled with death machines, tanks of man-eating alien dolphins, and interdimensional portals and stuff, but in real life it wasn’t like that at all. There was a bunch of rusty metal piled up right next to the north end of the dome, but other than that it was mostly dirt, weeds, and a few scrubby trees.

  We’d landed right in the middle of the dome floor, which had some grass mixed in with the weeds. There was plenty of sunlight. It actually wasn’t that different from being inside a baseball stadium, except for being bigger.

  George and Max were running toward the wall—they were probably racing—so Polly and I looked around.

  “You guys were right, there’s plenty of room,” Polly said. “Are you sure nobody comes here?”

  “Positive,” I said. “You saw the sides of the mountain, right?”

  “Yeah, it’s like somebody just chopped off the sides and turned the mountain into a rectangle,” Polly said. “What about other bad guys?”

  “Nope,” I said. “The whole world knows about it now that the Nexus is out of business. Bad guys like secret hideouts. Hey, that looks like a decent spot to set up.”

  I pointed at George and Max, who apparently weren’t just racing each other like idiots. They stood on a big cement platform halfway between the center of the dome and the pile of rusty metal. They waved their arms over their heads, and George jumped up and down a few times.

  The platform was two or three city blocks away, so it took a couple of minutes to march over there. Polly and I threw all the bags at George’s and Max’s feet. George jumped straight up and Max hopped sideways to avoid them.

  “Thanks for helping with the bags, guys,” I said. “Jerks.”

  “I’m just trying not to be bossy, dude,” Max said.

  “This must have been the Nexus launchpad,” George said, totally ignoring me. “Cyclotron actually took off right from this spot!”

  This was our first time doing a remote superhero fighting technique practice session in a former supervillain hideout, so we brought a ton of stuff, including my laptop and video camera.

  We dove right into teaching Polly how to fight like Captain Stupendous. We watched a lot of clips and talked about a lot of battles, which was fun because we ALWAYS watch clips and talk about battles. After each clip Polly changed into Stupendous and tried out the fighting move from the clip, while we filmed her with my video camera and picked apart her technique.

  “You can’t keep changing back into your regular form,” George said as we watched a clip of the Yo-yo Maneuver. Polly didn’t even bother looking at him when he said it.

  She was really good at copying the moves. I kept looking at her out of the corner of my eye—not to be all secretive; I just didn’t want to embarrass her. While we watched Stupendous doing the Mole Attack against Galactica Minor, I looked at her sideways, and realized she was looking at me sideways. I instantly looked at the ground, but I’m pretty sure she smiled when we made eye contact. It was fast—BLINK, smile, and BLINK, gone.

  After a couple of hours we took a lunch break. When the sandwiches and doughnuts were gone, Max and George actually did race each other from one side of the dome to the other. Polly and I sat cross-legged on the edge of the launchpad.

  “Did you see the police helicopter on the way here?” I said.

  “No, for once,” Polly said. “Why?”

  “It’s just a surprise that they’re out there,” I said. “There was this bad guy called Blitzkrieg who blew up three police choppers ten years ago, and ever since then they’ve been really cautious about going up during Stupendous battles.”

  “Somebody must have changed their mind about it,” Polly said.

  Bobby, I thought. “There are a bunch of new cops in town,” I said. “From Gigawatt City. They helped catch Jane Don’t.”

  We watched Max and George, who’d already raced from one side of the dome to the other and were running back the
other way. George was in the lead and pulling away—Max is stronger, but George is superskinny and lightweight. He’s like a human greyhound.

  “This is messed up,” Polly said. “Me being a superhero, you guys showing me how to be a superhero—it’s a joke.”

  “Kind of,” I said. “What else can we do, though? And don’t tell Max, but you’re definitely a better superhero than any of us would be.”

  I was looking right at her when I said it, so I know for a fact that Polly smiled for another nanosecond. Then BLINK, gone. She was, like, the fastest smile in the west, but it was kind of nice to know she wasn’t pissed off ALL the time, even if the smiling part made me nervous in a totally different way.

  “So … um …” You know how you try to think of something to talk about and your mind turns into Jell-O?

  “I guess you guys have been friends forever, huh?” Polly watched as George reached the wall, way off in the distance, then passed Max coming back the other way.

  “I’ve known Max since preschool,” I said. “We didn’t become really tight until first grade, though—that’s when George and his mom moved here. They lived in Watertown until his parents got divorced.”

  “We moved here when I was in third grade,” Polly said. “My mom got a job with Morrison Realty. That’s why my dad’s gone so much—HIS job is still in Watertown.”

  “Really? Watertown’s pretty far from here.”

  Polly smiled, a no-teeth, no-happiness kind of smile. She tapped my temple with her finger, and I managed to stop myself from flinching more than a tiny bit.

  “Brains. He lives there during the week, so he’s only home on Saturdays and Sundays. And he plays golf all day on Saturday.”

  The sound of thudding feet got gradually louder as George and Max ran up. George jumped, landed on the launchpad with one outstretched foot, and shot past Polly. She twisted away from him and leaned into me, almost knocking me over.

  Max hit the launchpad two steps after George and pulled up, bending over with his hands on his knees.

  “YEAH!” George stuck his arms straight up in the air and did a spastic little dance. “I win! GEORGE WINS!”

  “Hey, I’m generous.” Max stood up, still breathing hard. “I’ll let you have this one victory, little dude.”

  “Oh, don’t even get into the little-dude stuff, I totally beat you!”

  “Hey, guys, I think we should call it a day,” I said.

  “Why?” Max said. “There’s a lot more stuff to look at.”

  “Dude, the clock’s ticking. What if—”

  I was interrupted by a creaking, grinding noise over by the wall that Max and George had just raced to and from. It sounded like somebody dragging a big rock across a cement floor, if the rock was the size of a car. It was too far away to see for sure, but it looked like the ground was moving.

  “Aw, that can’t be good,” I said.

  Polly and I stood up. Polly clenched her fists.

  “You guys, did you see anything over there?” I said. “Like maybe an old supervillain booby trap?”

  “Nope,” George said. “Just this big crack in the ground.”

  “It was actually a really big crack,” Max said.

  “What happened to this place being totally cleaned out?” Polly said.

  “Um … we were wrong?” George said.

  “What kind of stuff did the Nexus of Infamy have stored underground in here?” Max asked.

  “Nothing I know about,” I said.

  “WHAT DID YOU GUYS DO OVER THERE?” Polly yelled.

  “We didn’t do anything!” George said. “We just jumped over this crack in the ground, that’s it!”

  The grinding noise stopped, but was replaced by a series of deep, clanging sounds, with a metallic screech every so often.

  “It must be some secret alarm system that Stupendous missed,” Max said. “Probably nothing to worry about.”

  “Nothing to worry about, ha,” I said. “Do you even know where we are? THIS IS COLOSSAL DOME! The headquarters for the Nexus of Infamy! Who knows what’s down there?”

  “WELL, IT WAS A PRETTY STUPID IDEA TO COME HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE, WASN’T IT?” Max said.

  “I DIDN’T HEAR YOU COME UP WITH ANY BETTER IDEAS!” I said.

  “OH, DO YOU ACTUALLY WANT ME TO? OR WOULD THAT BE TOO BOSSY?”

  That’s when the giant laser cannon came up out of the ground.

  BAMF! I didn’t even hear Polly speak, but I saw the flash of blue light and suddenly Captain Stupendous was there. Polly’s arm hadn’t been anywhere near me, but when she changed into Stupendous, his elbow almost took off my head.

  “What is it?” Stupendous said. It was weird to hear that deep man voice right after hearing Polly’s high girl voice.

  “Do you recognize that thing, Vincent?” Max said in a quiet voice. There were two wavy furrows across his forehead.

  “Nope,” I said. “What do you guys think?”

  “Death ray of some kind, right?” George said.

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “What kind of death ray is the question.”

  “When did Stupendous get so sloppy?” Max said. “How do you completely miss an automated death ray buried in the ground?”

  “Death rays, you mean,” Stupendous said. He turned in a slow circle, pointing, and we all heard the grinding sounds as three other death rays came up out of the ground. The death rays were right at the base of the walls, evenly spaced around the dome’s perimeter.

  “This must be the backup defense system or something,” I said.

  “They look rusty,” George said.

  They also looked huge. The death rays were so big we could see them pivot in our direction, and they were so rusty we could hear them squealing as they pivoted. They looked a little bit like the cannons in old war movies, except they were a hundred times bigger and had glowing red cables wrapped all around them.

  “Yeah, it’s more like the backup system for the backup system,” Max said.

  The air was split by a SIZZLE and a ZOINK, and the four death rays each fired a laser beam. Max, George, and I screamed and hit the deck—I left a nice little patch of elbow skin on the cement when I landed—and the lasers hit Stupendous dead center.

  They didn’t do a thing, of course. Captain Stupendous is totally immune to lasers, which came in handy that time Laser Man attacked the city. Stupendous just stood there with four big spots of red on his upper body and one thin beam reflecting off his chest logo.

  “Huh,” he said. “This doesn’t even hurt.” He bent down and let one of the lasers hit him right in the eye. “I don’t feel a thing. This is kind of cool.”

  “Great!” I said, squinting at the guys with one eye. Max had his hands clasped across his head, and George was curled up in a ball. “It’s gonna hurt if we get hit, though, so can you deal with those things?”

  “Oh right, sorry,” Stupendous said. “I guess this is a perfect chance to try out some flight maneuvers.”

  “WHATEVER!” Max yelled. “JUST TURN OFF THE DEATH BEAMS BEFORE THEY HIT US INSTEAD OF YOU!”

  WHOOSH! I felt a breeze as Stupendous launched. I twisted my head sideways and cracked open one eye just in time to see him do a perfect corkscrew around one of the laser beams and hit the big laser cannon, smashing it into pieces.

  “YEAH!” he shouted, and it was so loud I thought I saw the remaining laser beams vibrate in the air. “METEOR STRIKE!”

  Stupendous went straight up, flying through the dome so fast it looked like a Stupendous-size hole just appeared there by magic. At almost the exact same moment a second hole appeared on the opposite side of the dome, and another one of the laser beams over our heads blinked out.

  “WHOOOOOOO!”

  There’s nothing like the sound of a superhero screaming “whooooo” at the top of his lungs—I thought my ears were gonna explode as Stupendous zipped over and took out another laser cannon with a CRUNCH. The last cannon tried to track him, but the laser beam couldn’t kee
p up. It wasn’t even close.

  Stupendous zigzagged across the dome like a human lightning bolt and destroyed the last cannon with a SKRUNCH. We looked up as he thumped to a landing on the platform.

  “That was awesome!” he said. “Did you see it?”

  Stupendous’s grin was HUGE. It was different from how he used to grin, though, pre-Polly. It was just as toothy, but there was more of an angry-eyebrow thing going on.

  He looked a little scary, to be honest.

  “Uh, no,” George said. “I was distracted by being afraid of dying and all that.”

  “Do you guys play music?” Stupendous said.

  “Yeah, I play bass drum and Vincent plays clarinet,” George said.

  “I don’t think marching band is what he’s talking about, George.”

  “There’s this amazing rush you get when everybody hits the same groove at the same time, it was kinda like that.” Stupendous played a couple of seconds of air guitar, and somehow made it look cool—I look like a giant dork when I play air guitar.

  “Those stupid lasers didn’t hurt at all.” Stupendous spread his arms open, as if the lasers were still hitting him.

  “Duh,” Max said. “You’re immune to lasers, everybody knows that.”

  “Which is really weird, when you think about it,” I said. “Lasers should hurt a lot more than robot punches.”

  “Yeah, what’s up with that?” Stupendous said.

  “Lasers are made of light,” George said. “Robot punches are made of, you know, robot fists.”

  “Yeah, but taking out those death rays didn’t hurt at all,” Stupendous said. He waved his hands in the direction of the demolished laser guns. “They’re made of metal too, right?”

  “Old, rusty metal,” George said.

  “They weren’t 100 percent rust,” Stupendous said. “They were still mostly metal, and punching them felt totally different from punching the robot. The robot felt way harder.”

  “‘Harder’ like ‘not easier’?” George said.

  “No, ‘harder’ as in ‘not softer.’ Punching the robot hurt more than punching the laser guns.”