It was the proof the two boys were looking for. They had now just linked Ace and Tommy to the break-in of Spring Road Toys.
Ace and Tommy started to move further away from the twins. Wedge noticed this and switched the microphone back on. A rustle later, their voices came in loud and clear in his ear.
“The show starts in ten minutes. Let’s get going,” Ace said. The two boys who had vandalized Spring Road Toys not more than a day ago walked calmly through the mall.
“Should I follow them?” Wedge asked his brother.
“No. We need to report back. We know where they are going to be for a few hours. Let’s clue in every one of our findings,” Rocket said as he looked up to see a saleswoman in the store approaching his brother. “You have company.”
Wedge quickly put his microphone back into his pocket, turned around, and looked at the rack of clothes in front of him. He barely got a glance at it when the lady spoke.
“Um, can I help you?” the saleslady said with a snotty attitude. High school girl—go figure.
“No. No. I’m OK. Just looking for something for me,” Wedge said and shot a big, fake smile toward the girl.
“I bet,” the lady replied. She let out a small smile as she walked away. Wedge turned back around with an inquisitive look on his face. He immediately understood why she had laughed. Wedge was looking at a rack full of dresses.
“Find anything you like?” a voice came over his earpiece. An embarrassed Wedge glared out of the store to see his brother standing there in front of him.
“Shut up, Rocket!” Wedge said under his breath in embarrassment.
“No, seriously. I think you’d look good in a pink dress,” Rocket said, busting out in laughter.
“Shut up, Rocket!” Wedge yelled a little louder and stormed out of the store.
“You’re right,” Rocket said, following his brother. “I’ll just get it for your birthday. But what size are you?”
“Shut up, Rocket!” yelled Wedge from the bottom of his gut. His younger brother, still enjoying the moment, almost busted his gut laughing so hard.
Back at The Playground, KC and Gears sat around a computer interface waiting for a report from the twins. Seconds later, over a secure line, the call came.
“Did you find out anything on the two boys?” KC asked right away without saying hello.
“Yes. Transmitting,” Rocket said from the food court. He didn’t have the heart to tell Kid about his plane. Rocket sat at the keyboard and sent the digital photos of the two boys back to The Playground. One by one the images appeared on Gears’s screen. The first ones showed the two boys talking to some girls, then the next showed them standing in the mall. More images showed the two boys on the phone, and the last image was of one of the boy’s back pockets. It showed KC’s blue slingshot plane.
“Hey! That’s my plane!” KC screamed out. It didn’t take him long to figure things out. “It was them. Samantha was right.”
“Yeah, definitely, KC. What’s our next move?” Wedge’s voice came over the speaker.
“Where are they now?” Kid asked.
“They are at the movies at the far end of the mall. They called there before we lost visual contact with them,” Rocket replied.
“Do we know anything else?” Gears asked.
“Yes. They have a meeting with the curator scheduled for sometime tomorrow,” Rocket answered.
“Meeting, eh? We might be able to use that,” Kid mused to himself.
“Kid, I have an idea,” Gears said, hacking away at his keyboard. “Get that cell phone. We might be able to use it.”
“You heard him, boys. Get that phone and report back when you have it. Out.”
“Roger that,” Rocket said as he closed his laptop computer and shut off his cell phone. He packed up the laptop and turned to his brother. “Let’s go get us a cell phone.”
Several minutes went by. The twins had to walk to the other side of the mall to reach the recently finished movie theater. The Jones Cineplex held twenty large screens, plus every amenity you could think of.
An arcade on the second floor had every type of video game imaginable. Down the hall, a very elaborate eighteen-hole miniature golf course existed as a whole separate wing. Visitors entered through a twenty-foot-high golf ball. A candy store, an ice cream store, and a café supplied a fix of whatever they craved.
The two boys walked up to the main ticket booth and looked over the movies that were showing. They also looked over the times.
“That one, Bleed Like Me. It’s the only one that has started within the last hour,” Rocket determined.
“Good thinking,” Wedge said as he approached the ticket counter. “Two for Bleed Like Me,” he said to the ticket lady. She collected the boys’ money and gave them their tickets. They entered the movie theater.
“Which theater are we heading to?” Rocket said to his brother. Wedge looked down at the tickets.
“Four. Theater Four. It’s this way,” he said, guiding them to the right entrance.
“We’re late, and the picture has already started. How are we going to find them?” Rocket said.
“We’ll have to hang in back and check things out first,” Wedge said as the two approached the door to Theater Four.
“Right,” Rocket said. “But, let’s try to be quiet.”
They swung the door open. Just as they had expected, the movie had already started. In front of them, the large screen flickered and splashed the crowd with light. The moviegoers were all engrossed by the film, and not a one saw the two boys entering in late. Wedge and Rocket quickly walked in, closed the door, and made their way across the empty back row of the theater.
People started to “eww” and “ah” at the scenes from the movie. Bleed Like Me was the latest horror movie to hit the big screen. There was a lot of commotion in the theater as the lead villain took form on the screen, but the biggest commotion was happening near the front of the theater.
Ace and Tommy were seated in the third row. As they watched the horror movie, they caused a very loud annoyance throughout the theater. Having no respect for anyone around them, they hooted and hollered at the screen and threw popcorn up at it. As the slasher in the movie made its next big kill, the two boys leaped out of their seats and screamed “Yeah! Get ’em!” They also gave each other high fives and hip-checks.
Rocket was the first to notice the two boys. He gently nudged his brother with his elbow and did a head gesture to tell his brother where the two boys were. Wedge responded with a small nod. After a few more seconds, Wedge turned back to his little brother.
“Well, go get the phone,” he said quietly. Rocket turned to his brother with a questioning look.
“Me? Why me?” Rocket asked.
“Ah, because I said so,” Wedge replied snottily. “Besides, you don’t like horror movies. I’ve wanted to see this.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Rocket replied, his voice getting a bit louder. “You mean to tell me you want me to go get the phone, while you just sit here?”
“That’s right,” Wedge said, dropping into his seat a little more.
“Now you listen here—” Rocket started, but he was interrupted. The man in front of him swiveled around in his chair.
“Shh!” The man said in disgust. He glared at the two boys for a brief second before turning back around in his chair.
“Sorry,” Rocket said to the man.
The next few minutes turned into a game of not so friendly charades between the set of twins. In a vain attempt not to bother the people there to watch the movie and not draw any more attention, the boys reduced themselves to a very crude set of hand gestures to get their points across. Rocket started with pointing at Wedge and then pointing down to the boys, all with a very determined look on his face.
Wedge, not impressed, folded his arms across his body and just shook his head from side to side as he raised his nose in the air. He extended one finger, shook it back and forth, and pointed at
Rocket, then the boys.
Rocket just shook his head in disgust. He then pointed to himself and mouthed the word “me” in a questioning fashion. He recanted the fact that he was the one to find the boys by pointing at himself again, then mimicked a pair of binoculars in front of his eyes.
Wedge rolled his eyes as if to say, “Yeah, that was real hard.” He then pointed at himself, then at the two boys, and then out the door, as if to say he was the one who had found them outside.
Rocket made the OK sign back with his hands and rolled his eyes. The boys seemed to be at a stalemate.
Just then, Rocket got an idea. He swiveled in his chair and looked at his brother. He pointed at himself, pointed at the crowd, and pointed again to Wedge. Rocket then stood up, did a motion of a girl putting on a dress, and sat back down. He called his brother out and said he would tell everyone back at The Playground that he had been looking at dresses in the mall.
Wedge glared at his brother with a look that almost pierced right through him. Rocket just sat back and smiled. Wedge shook his head back and forth in defiance. He muttered some parting words, shook his fist in anger, and started out of the row. Rocket sat back and waved to his brother.
Rocket had won.
Wedge made his way to the edge of the row and sneaked his way down the aisle. The two boys were about twenty rows in front of him and were still causing quite a scene. Wedge crept down the aisle row by row, bent at the waist. He finally made it to the row behind the two boys and sat about four seats into the row, almost directly behind the two boys.
Another scene in the movie saw the villain once again hacking at a body. The two boys jumped up and down in excitement and yelled at the screen. As they shot back down into their seats, Wedge moved up closely to the seat in back of Ace and slid his hand between the two seats. Cautiously, he reached his hand up toward the belt holster that held Ace’s phone. Wedge then paused and waited for the right second.
As the killer made his next contact, the two boys leaped up again. Quickly, as the boys started into the air, Wedge made a grab for Ace’s cell phone. He easily removed the small, thin phone from its holster. Ace never felt a thing.
As the two boys flopped back down into their seats, Wedge seated himself backwards against the backrest of Ace’s chair. There, he waited patiently for the next kill to make his exit.
“Come on. Come on,” Wedge said impatiently as he waited for another victim to fall prey to the slasher. He waited. And waited.
This must be the worst horror movie ever made. No one’s dying! Wedge thought to himself in disgust. Finally, his moment came.
Another loud scream came from the screen, followed by some screams in the audience. Ace and Tommy jumped up once again and high-fived each other. Wedge used this time to duck back out into the aisle. He practically crawled his way up to Rocket, who was waiting at the door. The two boys sneaked out of the theater and into the lobby.
“I wonder what KC has planned,” Wedge said as they walked through the lobby, looking at the cell phone.
“Not sure, but let’s get back to The Playground and find out,” Rocket said to his brother as they walked out of the theater. “Unless, of course, you want to go shopping some more?”
“Shut up, Rocket!”
Chapter Eight:
Revelations
6:00 pm
While Rocket and Wedge were out doing reconnaissance work, the other members of the SOCKs contingent were spread about town. Samantha was at her home. She was back in her garage, which she had deserted many weeks ago. She sat there, desperately trying to figure out how to get the tunnels extended from RD1 in The Playground to the base of Pepper Creek. She struggled back and forth in her mind, and it seemed a daunting task to tunnel hundreds of feet, underground, with just a bunch of kids as labor.
Roller was guiding his way toward downtown to pick up some supplies. He had left The Playground a few minutes ago, and he needed to pick up some essentials.
Gears and Kid Combat were the only two members back at The Playground. Gears was in the main computer room, as usual. While Roller put all the hardware together for the PCAVs, Gears was busy trying to get their computer systems up and going. He was having just as much luck as Roller was with the hardware always breaking. Constant glitches in his software were causing massive delays.
As Gears contemplated many questions over his computer, he barely noticed that not more than five minutes ago, Kid Combat had ducked away from The Playground, off on a secret mission of his own.
Kid Combat walked out of Maple Forest and almost took a route heading toward Lincoln Elementary. It took him several minutes to arrive at his destination. When he finally did, he walked right up to the house on Berkeley Street.
The house was very well maintained. The bright green grass was cut very short, and not a blade was out of place. It was surrounded by a white picket fence that almost glowed—that’s how white it was. The Cape Cod house was also painted white and had blue trim around all the windows. The brick walkway that led Kid up to the house was a ruby red with black trim around every brick.
Kid walked up the two steps and knocked on the door. As he waited for the homeowner to answer, he nervously looked around to his right and to his left. Kid had been here many times over the past few years, but every time he came here he felt that he felt that he was in danger. Not for his safety, but for some reason in the back of his mind, he felt that his secret identity was at risk with every stop he made here.
A few seconds went by and the door opened. There stood Mr. Thompson, the owner of Spring Road Toys.
“Oh, hello there, KC,” rang out Mr. Thompson. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Come on in.”
“Thank you,” Kid responded and entered into the house. Mr. Thompson patted the young boy on his back as he passed by him.
“Let’s go down to my lab. We have much to talk about.”
Mr. Charlie Thompson was more than a simple toy store owner. He and Kyle were great friends. He was the one responsible for making Kyle into what he was today— Kid Combat. And it all started because of the hatred of one man they shared in common: Phillip Arthur Jones.
Mr. Thompson was the mayor of Elmcrest before Jones had come into power. It was Jones who had made sure Mr. Thompson was out of office so he could start his corrupt empire.
During his time in office, Mr. Thompson ran a clean ship. He looked over Elmcrest like it was one of his very own children. He nurtured it, helped it grow, and let the townspeople know what was really important—family. He stressed that the children were the cornerstone of the town. He always said the children were the future of Elmcrest, and that Elmcrest kids were very special people. They had the potential to make the town into something great, something beautiful. The world was their oyster, and nothing was going to stop them. The town flourished in this time, and Elmcrest had Charlie Thompson to thank for it, but all that was in the past now, for all that was before Jones.
During Mr. Thompson’s second term in office, Jones was an up-and-coming real estate investor. He bought property after property and started to build his legacy. Every contract that came up for negotiation, Jones seemed to win it without breaking a sweat. That caught Mr. Thompson’s eye.
He started to investigate Jones and Jones Industries and how the business was managed. He interviewed witnesses and land owners from around town. They all pointed to one thing—Jones was corrupt.
Jones used different tactics to cover his tracks. His favorite one was pure intimidation. Like a bully at school, Jones would walk in and threaten the businesses with all sorts of legal actions if they didn’t do what he said. Most, knowing Jones’s reputation around town, were scared into selling to him.
The ones he couldn’t threaten, he would open a competing business right next door and offer the same goods and services at a fraction of the price until his competition went bankrupt. Jones would then buy the land and jack up the prices with no competition left to worry about. He called it his two-for-one
deal.
Mr. Thompson was outraged, and he went to the police. Eventually, Jones Industries wound up in court to defend its practices and address the allegations. Witness after witness took the stand with nothing but praise for Jones.
“It was a fair deal,” one witness told the court under oath.
“Mr. Thompson must have misunderstood me,” another one stated. “There was no wrongdoing.”
One after another took the stand in court and told lie after lie. Jones sat back in his chair and smiled. Only Jones knew what wonderful things he had promised each person in turn for their testimony.
Whatever it cost Jones to sway those witnesses’ opinions, it was worth it. The trial was over in a few days, and Mr. Thompson was the laughing stock of the town. He was asked politely to leave office. Within weeks after the trial, Elmcrest voted in their new mayor by a landslide—Phillip Arthur Jones.
All those years ago, nobody could have predicted the horror that Jones would bring to the town. Looking back, it seemed like a distant memory to most. Others simply didn’t care. From Jones they became rich beyond their wildest dreams, and they didn’t care how they got there.
The election that brought Jones into power and kicked Charlie out was the turning point for Elmcrest. Shortly thereafter, Jones started building his empire even stronger, and the townspeople started to change. They forgot all about what Charlie taught them and followed Jones blindly. Soon, family values meant nothing to most of the town. The only thing they cared about was money.
That broke Charlie’s heart, but he knew he couldn’t give up, especially on the children. That’s why he went into business and bought Spring Road Toys. From there he could keep a protective eye over the children, teach them the old ways of living in Elmcrest, and help them decide for themselves that what their parents were doing was wrong.
That’s when Charlie got his idea. He needed a kid—not just a kid, but the most selfless kid in town—to help him fight Jones and win back Elmcrest. It had to be a kid; no parent would become his ally—and he had tried.
The Adventures of Kid Combat Volume Two: The Heist of Spring Road Toys Page 6
