Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities

by Mike Jung

  A quarter of the way around the lake we reached a spot with much taller trees—they were really gigantic, as tall as apartment buildings. Nobody was really talking anymore, we were all just grunting at each other. A trickle of sweat ran behind my ear and down into my shirt. Max and George wandered a little ways into the trees, and Polly and I stood there and looked at each other without saying anything. I cleared my throat and she scratched behind her ear. A bird went CAW as it flew overhead, making us both jump. Once I read this book where the characters kept falling into “comfortable silences,” which is completely bogus. Silences are always heinous and weird.

  “It’s just—” Polly blurted out, then stopped. What was she talking about?

  “It’s just what?” I said.

  “It’s just that it’s messed up, turning into a grown-up, you know?”

  Oh. Turning into Stupendous.

  “I guess. Is it kind of cool too, though?”

  “I don’t know, I guess so.”

  “As Captain Stupendous, you could tell people to do stuff for you and they’d probably just do it.”

  “Grown-ups don’t do anything I ask when I’m my regular self. All they do is tell me what to do.”

  “It sucks being a kid. It must be even worse being a girl.”

  SMACK! “OW!”

  Polly must have hit me in the arm with some kind of kung fu death blow—I didn’t even see it coming.

  “What’d you do that for?” I said.

  Polly glared at me with an expression that perfectly matched her death blow.

  “Because you’re a moron who doesn’t know anything about girls. And you sound like my parents. I bet your mom doesn’t always bug you to be more blond, right?”

  “Um, no. That would be … strange. And kind of evil.”

  “Yeah, well, meet my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Evil.”

  “I was just saying that being a girl must be harder because everybody knows girls don’t have as much, you know, not as … um …”

  I was about half a second from getting punched again.

  “I was gonna say ‘power,’” I said, and Polly raised a fist. “Wait, wait, wait, I’m not done!”

  “Now you sound like my dad,” she said in a growly voice.

  “Let me finish! It’s lame to say that, right? I’m a boy, but you could probably beat me up with one hand, right?” I tried to be like Max and smile in a really charming way, but it felt totally fake, like I was just opening my mouth and showing my teeth.

  Polly glared a second longer, then took a deep breath.

  “I totally could,” she said.

  “I don’t care that you’re a girl,” I said. Think, Vincent. Think fast. “I bet Mr. Zazueta didn’t either, huh?”

  “No,” Polly said. She smiled a little—changing the subject actually worked for once! “Well, it’s not like he didn’t care, but he didn’t think it was bad to be a girl. He always said girls are just as powerful as boys, and anyone who didn’t think so was full of it.”

  “Wow, that’s really cool!” I said. “Most of the teachers at Kirby suck. They’re all, ‘let’s get you a supply of books that tells the history of stuff nobody cares about, Vincent,’ and ‘hey, watch this incredibly boring documentary, Vincent.’ Like I’d ever watch a documentary that wasn’t about Stupendous.”

  “My dad says stuff like that too,” Polly said. “He’s all, ‘nobody but you can decide what your future will be!’”

  “My dad too!” I said. “‘Be the hero of your own life!’”

  “Yeah.” Polly suddenly looked bummed out. “My dad and my mom say stuff like that. Except what they really mean is ‘do everything the way I tell you to!’”

  “It totally sucks,” I said. “My mom’s boyfriend is the only grown-up I know who thinks the club’s not a total joke.”

  Which was something I’d never thought about until right that second. Huh.

  “I don’t think the club’s a joke.”

  Polly looked at me and smiled, and this time it lasted longer than a nanosecond. I smiled back, then dropped my eyes to the ground.

  “What I was gonna say about Mr. Zazueta, back at your house …” Polly said. “Sometimes I wished he was my dad, you know?”

  And suddenly I did know.

  “Yeah. My mom’s boyfriend is really cool. Not like my dad at all.”

  “It’s messed up to think about it, though. I feel like a traitor or something.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’ve never said all that stuff to anyone before,” Polly said in a low voice.

  I scraped up all the tiny specks of courage I had and looked at her. She was still looking at me, and KAPOW—it was like an electric shock to make eye contact with her. This time we both looked at the ground.

  “Anyway,” I said.

  “Anyway.”

  “Pssst, Vincent! Polly!” Max’s voice came from back in the trees. “Check this out!”

  Polly and I turned away from each other fast—I was relieved by the interruption, but a little bummed out too. We picked our way through the trees, following the random beams of light from Max’s and George’s flashlights. We found them at the edge of a clearing, maybe a hundred feet back from the edge of the water. It looked like they were drawing a rectangle on the ground with their flashlights.

  “Uh, what are you guys doing?” Polly said.

  “It’s a footprint,” Max said, holding his flashlight steady at one point. “See? There’s the edge.”

  “And there’s a dead goose.” George pointed his flashlight at a spot ten feet in from the edge of the giant footprint.

  “Aw, gross.” Polly put a hand over her mouth, which made her voice sound kind of muffled. “The poor goose.”

  I was about to say, definitely where Mayhem’s headquarters is, but I didn’t need to—it became pretty obvious when the clearing was suddenly filled with light, two of the tall trees behind us moved, and we looked up to see the robot, which had been standing there in the dark all along. A big, glowy circle of light blazed from the palms of its hands, which basically blinded us all.

  “Stupendify!” Polly changed into Stupendous and launched into the air while Max, George, and I took off running in all directions. I crashed into someone (probably Max) at full speed and we knocked heads, which made a supernova of pain go off inside my skull. To make things even better, I tripped over the edge of the giant robot footprint and went down with a thud, landing halfway in and out of the footprint. I heard a CLANG from overhead, and Stupendous slammed into the ground right next to me. I rolled away from him purely by instinct, which was good because a second later the robot stomped on him, driving Stupendous even farther into the ground.

  Next thing I knew, there was a blast of air and a huge whooshing noise, then the whole world seemed to explode in dirt, darkness, and metallic CLANK sounds. I bounced off the ground, got a big spray of dirt and grass right in the face, and WHAMMO, hit the back of my head against something really, really hard. I wondered if Professor Mayhem had decided to kill us all by having his robot jump on top of us like a professional wrestler, but I didn’t wonder for very long because I made like a good little robot assault victim and blacked out.

  Waking up hurt. First, I was lying on my back, almost completely buried in dirt and torn-up grass. Second, it felt like all the bones and brains in my head had turned into rotten watermelon. When I touched the back of my skull I was hit by a giant bolt of pain, and I felt something sticky. Bleeding head, oh super. I slowly raised my head, trying not to throw up, and looked down at myself. It looked like a big scoop of the lakeshore had been dumped on the floor, with me mostly under it. My head stuck out of the edge of the pile, and my feet were in the middle of the deepest part. I’d come pretty close to being buried alive. Freaky.

  I looked around, trying not to jiggle my bloody skull too much. I was in an enormous room, probably bigger than Corwin Stadium. There was a huge rectangle on the wall to my right, probably a giant-robot-size door.
r />   Stupendous was locked up in some kind of rack—he dangled from his hands, which were encased in big, cylinder-shaped cuffs of metal. It looked like he was out cold, with his chin on his chest and his eyes closed.

  Captain Stupendous has only been knocked unconscious three times—once each by Payload, Harbold the Mighty, and the Cosmonaut. I was not happy to be there for “Unconscious Episode Number Four.”

  The Stupendous containment gizmo was directly across from me, and the rest of the gigantic room went off to my left. The whole place smelled like a moldy toilet full of wet grass.

  The robot stood in front of the giant door. Its eyes flared and went out, and there was a WHISSSFFFT sound. The robot’s face went KACHUNK and swung open, and a thick, flat piece slid out from the robot’s head, like a big tongue.

  There were rails on either side of the tongue, and Professor Mayhem slid his hands along them as he stepped out. He waved a hand in front of his face and looked up at the ceiling, which had one round skylight. It wasn’t much of a skylight—whatever was out there looked dark and green. There were vents all around it.

  The front of the tongue slid inward and a thin, metal ladder slid out and went all the way down to the floor. Mayhem tugged on his gloves, turned around, and started climbing down.

  Professor Mayhem looked like a shrimpy little guy on TV, but by the time he reached the floor he looked really tall. Also, he must have been in good shape, because that was a long ladder—it took him forever to climb all the way down. I wondered why he didn’t put in an elevator or something.

  His red lab coat hung open and swished around him like a cape as he pushed the big red goggles up on his old-man forehead and walked over to Stupendous. I played dead, but he didn’t even look in my direction. He went right over and jabbed his bony face at Stupendous like it was a face-shaped finger.

  Sometime when I wasn’t looking Stupendous had woken up. He glared back at Mayhem. Stupendous jerked his shoulders around a few times but mostly he just gave Mayhem a dirty look.

  They stared at each other like that for a while. My leg was pinned in an awkward position and it was getting hard not to twitch when finally Mayhem started talking.

  “You’re finally awake! Who knew the vaunted Captain Stupendous was even capable of being unconscious for the lion’s share of the day? Why, it makes you seem positively human!”

  We’d been out of it for a whole day? Yikes.

  Stupendous just stared back at Mayhem with a blank expression. His mouth was a totally straight line—it looked like somebody drew it on his face with a magic marker and a ruler.

  “I really thought this would be more fun, Stupendous! Do you mind very much if I call you Stupendous?”

  “Fun?” Stupendous said. “This is supposed to be fun?”

  “Perhaps ‘fun’ is the wrong word. I’ll be more blunt—I thought it would be more impressive.”

  “To who, crazy man?”

  “Haven’t you ever tried to impress a young woman, Stupendous?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Oh, that’s right—you’re one of those blasted, muscular, lunkhead types who’ve never HAD to try.”

  The change in Mayhem’s voice and posture was scary—suddenly he sounded like a psycho killer, all snarly and hunched up.

  “Uh, hello? No, that’s really not it,” Stupendous said, but Mayhem was on a roll.

  “Your ticket in the genetic lottery came through, didn’t it? Never mind that you were probably incapable of any feats of mental dexterity; having oversize biceps was enough, wasn’t it? WASN’T IT?”

  Mayhem got right up in Stupendous’s face and SCREAMED that last part, and Stupendous jerked his head back and to the side.

  “You’re spitting on me!” he said. “Quit it, loser!”

  I took advantage of all the yelling to shift my leg, which was asleep all the way up to my butt. I looked up, and Stupendous was staring at me with a look of surprise, all glowing blue eyes and raised eyebrows. I froze again as Mayhem stepped back from Stupendous. This time he clasped his hands together behind his back and stood with his feet shoulder-width apart.

  “‘Loser’? I detest that term, Stupendous. How cruel. How very, very cruel.”

  “I’m cruel?”

  “Great leaping horned toads, Stupendous, stop repeating every word I say, you sound like a child! Pull yourself together, man!”

  “I’m not—”

  “Pish, I suppose your actual performance in battle matters less than your overblown reputation. Violet is a perceptive lass—she’ll understand the magnitude of my accomplishment.”

  Mom! Where was she? And was he really trying to impress her?

  Mayhem gave a piggy snort.

  “Why, she has every right to swoon over that full-body shackle that holds you, or my robotic man Friday.”

  I closed my eyes for just a second and prayed that Stupendous would let Mayhem talk. Sooner or later every supervillain in the universe just has to start bragging about his brilliant plan. I think it’s some kind of requirement.

  “Isn’t your curiosity piqued, old boy?” Mayhem said. “Don’t you wish to know how I’ve so handily defeated you?”

  Yes, I thought. Yes, yes, yes! What’s your plan? Where’s my mom?

  “No,” Stupendous said, and I felt a strong urge to slap myself on the forehead.

  “NO?” Mayhem screeched. “NO? The greatest scientific triumph of our time? My crowning achievement? You don’t wish to know anything about my masterpiece?”

  Mayhem threw his arms in the air.

  “In the name of all that’s unholy, Stupendous, you’re not curious about the substance that portends your defeat? You’re not curious about indestructium?”

  For once in my life I really, really wished I had something to take notes with.

  “My magnum opus, O Captain! my Captain! An impenetrable alloy that can withstand the heat of a star, the pressure of the deepest ocean crevasse, or the cold of interplanetary space! Not even the legendary Captain Stupendous can damage it! Twenty-five years it took me to create it! It’s the greatest feat of metallurgy in history!”

  Without turning his head, Mayhem pointed at the robot. He really leaned into it, like he was pointing with the whole top half of his body.

  “I mastered the intricacies of robotics long ago, of course, but the alloy—creating the alloy plagued me for eons. I knew the metals in that meteorite I discovered in high school were out of the ordinary, but it took all of my intellectual skill to fully understand the molecular structure.”

  !!!

  “Ray-Ray Wu had it easy in comparison. Creating filaments out of a series of single-molecule chains? Ha! Child’s play! Creating the most advanced work of robotics out of an entirely new, indestructible alloy, on the other hand—that’s real science for you.”

  He sighed, a big, heavy, fake-sounding sigh.

  “That containment device is made of indestructium as well,” Mayhem said quietly. “The only way you’ll escape it is if you can reduce your body mass by 80 percent. I don’t believe that’s one of your vaunted abilities.”

  He tapped his foot a few times.

  “I may as well look in on ma chérie while I ponder your ultimate fate. I shall return.”

  Mayhem pivoted and walked off at high speed. I took the risk of lifting my head. Dirt sifted out of my hair as I watched Mayhem stomp off to my left. Our end of the giant room was mostly empty—just the robot door, the actual robot, the Stupendous trap, and my sorry little pile of dirt. There were about twenty rows of big tables starting a couple of hundred feet to my left, and Mayhem muttered and swore as he walked between them. He disappeared from sight, but I heard his footsteps keep going. After a while they faded out too, and a few seconds after that I heard a distant WHIZZT sound.

  “He’s gone,” Stupendous said, staring at the far end of the room. “There are a couple of doors down there, that must be where your mom is. You’re really dirty, Vincent.”

  “Nice. Thanks a l
ot.”

  “No, I mean I didn’t even see you there—your face is the only part of you that’s even showing, and it’s got dried mud all over it. It’s like you’re camouflaged.”

  “That explains why only one of us is locked up.”

  “Ha-ha,” Stupendous said. “Get up and help me break out of this thing.”

  “Uh, hello? Professor Mayhem’s coming back any second, remember?”

  “We have to get out of here!”

  “I know, you big dummy! It’s MY MOM in there, you know.”

  “I know that, just—”

  There was another distant WHIZZT sound, followed by some loud talking from Mayhem. For a second I thought I heard somebody talking back, although I couldn’t tell what they were saying.

  The talking stopped, and I heard footsteps coming our way. Stupendous darted his eyes away from me and I let my head fall back onto the pile of dirt, thinking it’d be more noticeable if my head was up. I instantly regretted it, of course, and gnashed my teeth together as the pain went through my skull. I managed to keep my eyes open anyway.

  Professor Mayhem clip-clopped back across the giant room, his footsteps gradually getting louder and louder. When he walked out from the rows of tables he was holding some kind of long, nasty ray gun in one hand. It was really old-school, like the giant robot—it was made of corroded-looking metal, with a big, round trigger guard. He swung it over his head and back down parallel to the floor. The gun barrel was wrapped with a series of looping rings, and it pointed right at Stupendous’s nose.

  Stupendous, who’d been trying to squirm around inside the manhole-cover shackle, went totally still and stared at the ray gun. It was close enough to his face to make him go cross-eyed.

  “Wha-wha-what is that thing?” he said.

  “This?” Mayhem wiggled the tip of the gun. “This is an antimatter pulse rifle, Stupendous.”