Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities

by Mike Jung

  I turned back toward the plaza just in time to see him rise over the edge of the rooftop, carrying the robot head like a suitcase. He flew in nice and slow and dropped the head, which put a big ding in the roof when it landed. There was still enough reddish-orange light in the sky to reflect off the robot’s eyeballs. The sky was full of long, streaky clouds, as if a bunch of fighter planes had just zoomed off into the sunset.

  Stupendous ripped the robot’s face off. There was an “oooh” from the small rooftop crowd—not everyone had as much experience seeing Stupendous in action as I did. Stupendous tossed the robot face over his shoulder with a CLUNK, dragged Professor Mayhem out by the front of his lab coat, and dropped him on the cement in a pile of elbows and knees.

  “Okay, freak, they’re gonna lock you up now,” Stupendous said. “Maybe somebody can figure out why you’re so totally crazy.”

  Mayhem laughed, then snorted. Blood ran down his cheek, and he pressed one hand lightly against his temple.

  “Oh, and for your information, I know at least TWENTY girls who could knock your sorry butt into the next state!” Stupendous leaned down and pointed one huge finger right at Mayhem’s nose as he spoke. “YOU SUCK, AND GIRLS ARE AWESOME.”

  Mayhem blinked. “What are you on about, you thyroidal cretin?” he said.

  Bobby went right up to Professor Mayhem as a whole mess of cops came out of the stairwells and onto the roof. There must have been at least twenty of them.

  “Captain Stupendous, I think we can hang on to Professor Mayhem until Villain Containment Services arrives,” Bobby said. “We’ve already called them.”

  “Uh, okay, that sounds good,” Stupendous said. “Thanks.”

  Bobby nodded. He jerked his head at the other cops, and they swarmed over Mayhem, cuffing his hands behind his back.

  “GET HIM OUT OF HERE,” Bobby thundered.

  “VIOLET!” Mayhem shouted. “VIOLET, THIS IS NOT OVER! UNHAND ME, DOLTS!”

  Mayhem kicked hard and swung his body from side to side as the cops hauled him off. I knew from experience how strong he was, but twenty cops are twenty cops.

  Bobby spun on one foot and walked over to George, Max, and me. He looked pissed off—can you get arrested for blinding a cop and jumping out of a helicopter? I was a little scared, but then he gave me a crooked, little smile and a wink.

  “That’s some stunt you pulled, Vincent,” he said.

  Stupendous walked up next to Bobby.

  “Hey, Officer, can I talk to these … uh, these kids?” he said. “In private?”

  “Of course, Captain,” Bobby said.

  Bobby pulled out his walkie-talkie and hustled over to the cops who were manhandling Professor Mayhem down the stairs.

  So there we were, just the four of us—Captain Stupendous and the Captain Stupendous Fan Club, the center of attention, just like I’d always dreamed, except my knees had practically no skin on them and I had puke on my shoes.

  Stupendous smiled, and slowly stuck out his hand in my direction.

  I peeked at George and Max on either side, but neither of them had their hands out. So I stuck mine out instead, and Stupendous wrapped his big, old, gloved hand around my hand and shook it.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I couldn’t have done it without—”

  Stupendous snapped his mouth closed and looked up. He had these deep shadows under his eyes, nose, and chin, which was strange because the sunset was coming from the wrong direction for shadows like that. But something in the sky was giving off more and more light.

  Blue light, to be exact.

  I don’t know how a giant spaceship sneaks up on a whole city, but this one did—it must have come down through the atmosphere really fast. It was an old-school flying saucer. The flattened-out saucer section spun slowly, just like in the old monster movies on TV, while the middle section stayed still. The blue light came from a strip along the bottom of the saucer section. Mayhem’s robot made Captain Stupendous look like a doll, but the flying saucer made Mayhem’s robot look like a prize you’d get from a cereal box. Everyone craned their necks back.

  The spaceship stopped a few hundred feet above us, although it was hard to tell for sure because it was so unbelievably huge. It made no sound—I could hear people on the rooftop talking, and from way down below I thought I heard a CRASH, like somebody getting into a car accident.

  A circular spot on the bottom of the flying saucer turned bright blue, and at the same second, a wide cylinder of blue light appeared around the four of us. It was like a cone of silence was slapped down over us—all the noise from the people and the wind and everything was cut off. A breathy female voice started talking.

  “This is the Grakkian Interdimensional Envoy Vehicle for Dimension 22GWP, Planet XX45, self-identified as ‘Earth,’” the breathy voice said.

  “What did it say?” Max said. I elbowed him in the side.

  “You are Test Subject LLVU744192, self-identified as ‘Captain Stupendous’?”

  Stupendous looked at me, and I shrugged. He looked back up at the ship.

  “I guess,” he said.

  “According to our submolecular wave scans, your native biological matrix has changed.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” Stupendous said.

  “You are not Miguel Zazueta, the original recruit this artificial matrix was designed for.”

  George, Max, and I jumped and looked around—stupid aliens, coming right out and revealing his secret identity!

  “You are contained within a sonic modulation emission,” the alien voice said. “This interactive episode cannot be monitored by external life-forms.”

  “What?” Max said.

  “Nobody can hear us,” I said, pointing with my thumb at the other people on the roof. I caught a glimpse of Mom standing next to Bobby.

  “You are not Miguel Zazueta,” the alien voice said.

  Stupendous opened his mouth, then closed it.

  “No, I’m not,” Stupendous said. “Can you use a different voice? One that’s less annoying?”

  “This was the voice chosen for this liaison unit by Miguel Zazueta.”

  “Good choice,” Max said under his breath.

  “Who are you?” I said. I guess I said it kinda loud, because Stupendous, Max, and George all turned to look at me.

  “This is the Grakkian Interdimensional Envoy Vehicle for Dimension 22GWP, Planet XX45, self-identified as ‘Earth.’”

  “What’s a Grakkian?” I said.

  I guess the aliens were done with dumb, old non-superpowered Vincent, because they totally ignored me.

  “Recruit, the Grakkian High Command nearly decommissioned your artificial matrix due to performance irregularities,” the voice said. “Your subsequent performance has confirmed that decommissioning your matrix is unnecessary, but you must undergo a secondary course of orientation and redeployment processes.

  “Prepare for submolecular transport.”

  “What do you mean, transport? What’s going on?” Stupendous said.

  “Redeployment?” I said. “Is that like reassignment?”

  “Do you think I know, Vincent?” Stupendous said.

  “Can you guys use shorter words?” Max said, holding his head with both hands. “Seriously.”

  “Associate life-forms have been included in extended communications due to their role in the recently concluded engagement with the assailant life-form. Extended communications will now be terminated. Associate life-forms will remain on Dimension 22GWP, Planet XX45,” the voice said. “Initiate.”

  “WAIT!” I shouted, but the shaft of light surrounding us instantly shrank so it was just around Stupendous. The sounds, smells, and heat of the regular world washed over us all at once. Stupendous looked at me for a second, but snapped his eyes back up. Stupendous said something, but we only saw his lips moving. I tried to touch his arm—he was standing right next to me—but my hand wouldn’t go into the shaft of light.

  There we were, the Captain Stup
endous Fan Club. We were at the scene of an epic, victorious battle, bathed in spooky blue light from a Grakkian interdimensional cruiser, with our idol looking right at us. It was like our craziest, geekiest fan-boy dream come true. And it was messed up. It sucked. It felt terrible. After everything we’d done to help Stupendous—to help Polly—we were helpless.

  Stupendous looked at us. The blue light made his already glistening hair glisten even more. He said something else we couldn’t hear. I spread my hands apart, Max put one hand behind his ear, and George shook his head.

  Stupendous shut his mouth and did that making-his-hands-into-claws thing in front of his face. He held out one hand in our direction, palm facing down, took a deep breath, and tried again, exaggerating his mouth movements. It looked like he was saying “I’LL … BE …”

  But we didn’t find out what he’d be, because the tube of light around him flared and got sparkly. Then FLASH, the light got superbright, then supersparkly, then it spun round and round and went off like a firecracker. When the light went out there was an empty place where Captain Stupendous had been.

  The ship floated there for a few seconds, then the saucer section spun faster and faster until it was a glowing blur. The ship accelerated straight up, BAMF. The air swirled and whooshed around us as the ship became the size of a basketball, then a Ping-Pong ball, then a speck, then nothing at all.

  Captain Stupendous was gone.

  Polly was gone.

  I stood there, blinking, with a stupid lump in my throat. George crossed his arms and bit his thumbnail, and Max laced both hands behind his head. Our mouths were all sealed up tight, and I saw Max’s throat clench as he swallowed.

  “Is he coming back?” George said.

  “I don’t know,” I said, and with a manly effort I kept my voice from cracking.

  Nobody moved for a long time. Eventually I heard a few people come our way, but I kept looking at the sky, so I didn’t know one of them was Mom until she appeared in front of me and wrapped me up in a big hug without saying anything. She smelled a little bit flowery, and she pressed one hand against the back of my neck.

  She let go, and Dad came out of nowhere and hugged me too. He came at me sideways, so my left arm got pinned between us. I felt his glasses dig briefly into my scalp, but he shifted and pressed his cheek against the top of my head. He hugged me even longer than Mom had. I felt a puff of his breath against my forehead, and for a second I almost cried. I didn’t, but it was close.

  Mom put her hands on my shoulders.

  “Don’t you ever do anything like that again,” she said. “Flying right into the middle of a Captain Stupendous battle? You could have been killed!”

  “Mom, I helped catch Professor Mayhem!” I said. I looked at Max and George for a little moral support. They’d both taken one big step away from me during the hugging part, but they came crowding back in next to me. George gave me a thumbs-up, and Max actually bumped into Mom.

  “Boys, please,” Mom said.

  “Vincent’s the man, Ms. Keller,” Max said in a serious voice—not his partly fake, partly real deep voice, but a serious serious voice. “He’s a hero.”

  “Yeah, he’s El Presidente!” George said. He stood up really straight, almost as straight as Bobby, and his jaw was clenched.

  “Your mother’s right,” Dad said, ignoring the guys. “Captain Stupendous is superhuman, but you’re just a boy.”

  “Just a boy.” One of the most evil three-word phrases in the English language. I could feel my head getting ready to burst into flames when Bobby walked up.

  “And you!” Mom said, glaring at Bobby. She and Dad both straightened up and put their hands on their hips, like they were doing a really lame dance. “Putting Vincent in harm’s way like that, what were you thinking?”

  “He didn’t give me much choice, Violet,” Bobby said.

  “You’re a police officer, Bobby,” Mom said.

  Bobby sighed and looked at me.

  “They’re right, you know,” Bobby said. “You took an enormous risk.”

  “I had to tell him about the plan,” I said.

  “You told me he already knew.”

  “I lied.”

  I don’t usually just admit to lying like that, and I halfway expected Bobby to answer me with his own version of Mom’s I-will-destroy-you voice. But he just started chuckling.

  “Bobby?” Mom said, and she did use her I-will-destroy-you voice.

  “Is there something funny going on here?” Dad said, straightening his dirty glasses.

  “I’m sorry,” Bobby said. He kept chuckling, though. “Your son reminds me of myself at his age, but he’s much more brave and resourceful than I was.”

  Say what?

  “Vincent, you just helped Captain Stupendous catch a genuine, no-doubt-about-it supervillain,” Bobby said. “I dreamed about doing the exact same thing when I was in the Official Captain Stupendous Fan Club years ago.”

  Bobby used to be an Official? Holy cow, who else was secretly a Captain Stupendous fan? The mayor? Mom? My cat?

  Bobby stuck out his hand. “Thanks. We couldn’t have done it without you.”

  I looked him right in the eye, then I slowly reached out and shook his hand.

  “We’ll talk about this later, Bobby,” Mom said, and I could tell from her voice that it wasn’t gonna be a fun talk.

  “Vincent,” Dad said. “I—”

  He took his glasses off and rubbed his face.

  “I still think you were reckless. But your solution to the robot problem … was an intelligent one.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said. “You know what, Professor Mayhem bragged a lot about how much smarter he is than you, but your invention beat his invention.”

  Dad smiled. I could tell he was trying not to, because he only smiled with one side of his mouth, but the other side twitched a couple of times.

  “I suppose so,” he said in a soft voice. “I feel a little sorry for him, though. Dennis was … is a brilliant mind. He could have done great things. Such a waste.”

  “I guess.” Mayhem spewed a lot of crazy talk while we were in his underwater lair, but I felt a little sorry for him too. Not TOO much—he was a psycho, after all—but a little.

  Mom put a hand gently on my cheek, and suddenly I was tired. My head hurt, Polly was gone, and I just wanted to go to bed.

  “Can we go home?” I said.

  “Sure,” Mom said. Dad pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and started polishing his glasses, looking down at them while he did it. Dad always looks a little lost to me without his glasses, like he’s trying to see where he’s going but can’t really.

  Mom looked at the guys. “Max? George? We’ll take you home too.”

  The guys and I looked at each other, and we had another one of those rare moments when we have nothing to say. So we just looked up at the sky one more time.

  For a second I thought I saw the Grakkian ship way off in the distance, but it could have been a shooting star, or a superhero flying home from some other galaxy. Then the last bits of sunlight went away and all I saw was a dark sky, with a few stars scattered around, and nothing that flew, not even a bird.

  Helping the most super superhero in the world take down the baddest bad guy in the world was pretty much the most exciting time of my life. The next forty-eight hours were probably the most … I guess “boring” isn’t the right word, just because of the teddy bear thing. Teddy bears started disappearing from people’s houses and showing up in random places all over town. A whole bunch of them were found piled up in front of city hall. The news made it sound like somebody was just playing a really complicated practical joke, but it made me wonder if a new villain was already scoping out Copperplate City.

  So I couldn’t get very bored because I was too busy being stressed out by the idea of a new bad guy showing up while Stupendous was gone. In the meantime, Bobby took statements from me, the guys, Mom, and Dad. I went to see the doctor, and I was there so long get
ting x-rayed and poked and mangled that it felt more like going to jail. Reporters hovered around the house like wingless vultures; Mom even had a yelling match with one of them, which was fun to listen to, even if I had to stay in the back of the house so no one would take my picture.

  Mom also took some vacation time! Oh, the horror! It was cool when she was ambushing reporters, but after all that stuff died down she insisted on spending quality time together to help us both get over all our near-death experiences. We talked about how mad she was at Bobby. We talked about Dad. We talked about how I shouldn’t jump out of helicopters anymore, even if it worked out okay this time. We talked and talked and talked, and after twenty-four hours of non-stop Mom time, I was ready to hit myself in the face with a hammer. So the next morning she read magazines while I watched TV. That afternoon she went shopping while I rode my bike slowly up and down the block. That night we got fried chicken for dinner and went to a movie. The day after that she went back to work, and I went back to the fan club.

  When we started talking about the teddy bear situation, it sank in that Captain Stupendous was somewhere in a galaxy far, far away. There was plenty of stuff in the news about Stupendous, Mayhem, and the spaceship, but it was all from the fight at Corwin Towers. We spent a lot of time in the garage reading science fiction, eating junk food, and monitoring the TV for Stupendous news and stuffed-animal sightings. Every once in a while we’d talk about a book, or some TV show, or about how unfair it was that school was open the day after Professor Mayhem was caught instead of staying closed for another week. And every once in a LONG while we’d toss around theories about where Polly was, and what it meant that she said “I’ll be—” just before disappearing, but it never lasted long. We kept our eyes on the news for any mention of Polly’s disappearance, but there was nothing at all.

  Five days after the final battle I was hanging out in the driveway, not really wanting to be in club headquarters by myself, when Max and George coasted in on their bikes. Max dropped his bike loudly on the pavement.

  “Dude, you know you can’t just leave that thing in the middle of our driveway,” I said.