LI’L HERO’S HANDBOOK
PLACES
NEEDLEPOINT HILL
Of the many odd geologic formations found throughout Superopolis, none is odder than Needlepoint Hill. Once an active volcano, it has long been extinct. Perched on its peak is Pinprick Manor, one of the finest homes in all of Superopolis, and definitely the one with the best views. It can only be reached by climbing the thousand or so stairs that wrap their way around the hill up to its top. It is also the only home in Superopolis never to have been bothered by door-to-door salesmen.
The first couple hundred steps went fine, but they were so steep that it didn’t take long for me to get winded. I distracted myself by thinking how annoyed I was going to be if it turned out nobody was at home. A full two hours later, with a weary huff and a puff, I took the final step onto a very short sidewalk that led right to the front door. A sign at the entrance read PINPRICK MANOR. As I caught my breath, I nervously reached up to ring the doorbell. For a few minutes there was no response. Then, just as I was thinking I had made the climb for nothing, the door slowly creaked open. I let out a gasp at the well-dressed, elderly man in the doorway. After all, he had a sword stuck right through his middle.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Tea with Two
I have to admit that seeing someone with a sword run through his stomach was a bit disturbing. But as I looked closer I noticed that he also had a machete wedged into his shoulder . . . knitting needles protruding from his thigh . . . a butcher knife sticking out of his chest . . . and a fork neatly jabbed into the center of his forehead. In fact there were sharp objects of every shape and kind stuck into every part of his body. It wasn’t difficult to figure out who I was facing.
“Lord Pincushion?”
“Yes?” he replied with a piercing gaze, seeming not the least bit pleased at having a guest.
“My name is Ordinary Boy.”
He wrinkled his nose a bit but said nothing.
“I’ve come to see you regarding a very important matter.”
LI’L HERO’S HANDBOOK
PEOPLE
NAME: Lord Pincushion. POWER: Pierced throughout with an array of weaponry always at his disposal. LIMITATIONS: Doesn’t handle blunt objects very well. CAREER: Founder and leader of Superopolis’s first and greatest team, the League of Goodness. CLASSIFICATION: Incredibly sharp, but often prickly.
“Important to you, possibly,” he said sharply, “but I doubt very much that it is important to me. Good day.”
“I’m very sorry,” I apologized swiftly as the door began to close, “but I have a letter for you.”
The door paused just before it was about to click shut.
“It’s from Meteor Boy.”
The door instantly opened. Lord Pincushion reappeared, a look of astonishment on his face.
“Is this a joke?” he asked.
“No, sir,” I replied nervously. “It’s addressed to you. See?”
I fished the letter from my pocket and held it up. Some of the longer implements sticking out of him clanged and clattered against one another as he leaned forward to examine the envelope. Standing back up, he stared as if he were reappraising me. Almost instantly, his eyes widened in surprise.
“I think I do see!” Lord Pincushion replied as he looked me over silently, if a bit skeptically, for a moment. “Now the only question is how could it possibly be true?” Then the prickly expression on his face relaxed and slipped away.
“My apologies for my rudeness,” he continued as he swung the door wide open for me. “We seldom have visitors anymore, and I’m afraid my manners have gotten rusty. It would be my sincere pleasure to have you join us for afternoon tea.”
We? Us? I thought as I followed him into the foyer.But then all questions were silenced by my first sight of the interior of Lord Pincushion’s home.
“Welcome to Pinprick Manor,” he said with pointed pride.
It was spectacular. I was in a huge, grand hallway that stretched off at least fifty feet both to the right and left. In front of me were two enormous staircases on either side of the foyer, each sweeping up and around a central gallery. Everywhere I looked there were beautiful paintings, decorative vases, knickknacks of every kind, and rows upon rows of suits of armor that, appropriately enough, were stuck through with a number of swords.
“We Pincushions have had a long yet somewhat perforated history,” my host mentioned as he caught me studying the armor.
“Your home is extraordinary,” I said, honestly impressed.
“Why thank you, my boy,” he replied, seeming genuinely touched. “If you would come with me, I will show you to the east garden where we prefer to take our afternoon tea.”
I turned to the right and politely followed Lord Pincushion at a safe distance, since his back was as covered with sharp objects as his front. He led me down one of the long hallways. A series of high, narrow windows on my right cast bright rectangles of daylight on the wall on my left. Every few feet there stood more suits of armor, some stuck through with weapons, others not. Finally, Lord Pincushion halted at the end of the hall before a large door.
“Welcome to the east garden,” he said proudly.
I’m sure I must have gasped. It was a garden, all right. But it was a garden inside the house. Well, kind of. The room was inside the house, with four enormous arched windows, two on the east wall and two on the south wall—except there was no glass in them. They were completely open to the outside. The room was also full of expensive-looking furniture, yet the floor of the room was a thick lawn. And then there was the full-grown oak tree in the center of the room. Even with a forty-foot ceiling, it looked like the top branches were scraping against it. Lord Pincushion saw the dumbfounded look on my face.
“Let me explain,” he said with a chuckle. “As you may have noticed, the house itself covers the entire summit of Needlepoint Hill. There was no land left on which to construct a garden. So instead, we created a garden inside the house.”
It made sense, I guess, in an odd sort of way. But then I realized he had once again said “we.” It was possible that he was referring to himself in the plural, but somehow I doubted it. Then I noticed another man of about the same age sitting at an oval table set for tea. He was wearing big round glasses with heavy black frames and had a railroad conductor’s hat perched on his head.
“Oh, goody, goody!” He clapped his hands as his face lit up with excitement. “Do we have a guest for tea?”
“We do,” Lord Pincushion responded formally. “Ordinary Boy, I would like to introduce you to another of the founding members of the League of Goodness—the Animator.”
“I’m honored,” I said as I shook the Animator’s hand.
“Oh, no,” he shushed me. “The honor is mine. Have a seat. Have a seat.”
Lord Pincushion moved to a stool at the opposite side of the table from the Animator. With an entire set of kitchen cutlery sticking out of him in every direction, he required a seat without arms or a back. I took a more traditional chair in between my two hosts. I almost shot back up, however, when the right arm of my chair suddenly moved, producing a cloth napkin. The left arm proceeded to assist the right by spreading it out on my lap.
“Sorry,” the Animator said sheepishly, “I should have warned you in advance.”
“What an incredible power,” I said, awestruck.
“Not everyone thinks so,” he said with a mischievous gleam in his eye as he made a candelabrum pull out a match and light its own candles.
“He means the Amazing Indestructo,” Lord Pincushion informed me. “From the moment AI joined us, he began trying to oust the Animator because his power so overshadowed AI’s own.”
I couldn’t help but ask the question that was gnawing at me.
“Why did you let AI into your group in the first place?”
LI’L HERO’S HANDBOOK
PEOPLE
NAME: Animator, The. POWER: The incredible ability to bring inanimate objects to life. L
IMITATIONS: No power over animate objects. CAREER: Despite taking his amazing power quite lightly, the Animator has nevertheless used it to dramatic effect numerous times throughout his career with the League of Goodness. CLASSIFICATION: A fully animated personality in every respect.
“Oh, my, my. That’s a very bittersweet story,” the Animator said as he picked up a small bell and gave it a gentle ring. “We really had no choice.”
“He’s correct, I’m afraid.” Lord Pincushion sighed. “The sad fact of the matter is that, at the time, the league was flat broke. Things were different then. There were no sponsorship deals or television plays or product placement or any of the things that make it financially feasible for a hero today to devote himself to fighting crime.”
“How did heroes support themselves, then?” I asked. The door from the hallway slowly creaked open.
“It was a simpler time, my dear boy,” Lord Pincushion pointed out. “Independent heroes had always been able to make a modest living. The people they saved usually showed their gratitude with either a few dollars or a chicken or something.”
Despite my fascination, my attention was distracted by the suit of armor that had just entered the garden, carrying a large tray.
“Of course, in my situation,” he continued, “there was a family fortune to back up my crime-fighting ambitions.”
“His family was loaded,” the Animator said with a wink as the suit of armor clankily made its way to the table.
When it reached us, I could see that the suit was empty. It bent slightly and set the tray on the table. In addition to a tea service, the tray held a deep pan on a rack with an open flame under it. There was also a bowl filled with chunks of bread.
With only a nod from the Animator, the service pieces began moving from the tray to the tabletop all of their own accord. One teacup came over right in front of me, rolling its saucer in front of it. When the saucer came to a rest flat on the table, the cup jumped into it. The teapot came next and began filling my cup.
“Anyway,” Lord Pincushion continued, “I had just inherited the family title and fortune, and it gave me a unique opportunity to fight crime without having to worry about supporting myself. So I did something no one else had ever done before. I created a superhero team—the League of Goodness. At the time, there was a villain named the Red Menace. I’m sure you don’t remember him. But he had Superopolis in his grip and no one could overcome him. So I assembled a group of talented heroes whose powers would complement each other, and together we took him on.”
“And you provided the first real opportunity for a female hero,” I added. “My friend Plasma Girl idolizes the Bee Lady.”
“Indeed!” Lord Pincushion smiled appreciatively. “The Bee Lady was a real spitfire in her youth. There were even more barriers to equality then than there are now, and I was determined to bring down at least one of them.”
The sugar bowl and creamer went from cup to cup, offering themselves to each of us as Lord Pincushion continued with his story.
“And we were successful. The Red Menace was defeated, and the League of Goodness reigned at the top of the superhero game for the next twenty years. Unfortunately, I paid so little attention to anything other than our missions that I hadn’t realized how we were rushing headlong toward financial collapse. I had always assumed there would be plenty of money to finance the team, but I hadn’t taken into account how expensive crime fighting could be. Fondue?”
“Huh?” I said.
“Would you like some fondue? It’s really quite delicious,” Lord Pincushion said, extending his left arm to me. In between a gardening shear, a straight razor, and a series of skewers, I saw three long slender forks. Both Pincushion and the Animator helped themselves to one, so I took the third for myself. It had two very sharp prongs.
“But when people found out, surely they helped you,” I said. I watched my hosts use their forks to each spear a hunk of the bread.
“I assumed they would, too,” Pincushion agreed as he dipped the bread into the pot sitting atop the flame. When he retrieved it, it was coated with melted cheese. “My fortune was gone with the exception of this house. In order to keep functioning I either had to sell it or find money somewhere else.”
“What did you do?” I asked, reaching out with my fork to spear my own chunk of bread.
“Why, we decided to hold a telethon, of course,” the Animator replied as if it were the most sensible idea in the world.
“Yes,” Lord Pincushion said. “We naively assumed that the good citizens of Superopolis would come forward to help us.”
“Did they?” I asked, as I retrieved my fork from the bubbling cheese mixture and moved it toward my mouth.
“No.” My host shook his head sadly. “They barely contributed enough to pay for the rental of the TV studio. The old custom of people giving a little something back for the help they were given was long gone. I was just about ready to close down the league when I met Meteor Boy. He saved us from financial collapse.”
I know it looked to my hosts as if I had burned my mouth on the hot cheese I had just stuffed in my face, but it wasn’t the fondue that had startled me.
“Meteor Boy saved the League of Goodness?!” I blurted out.
“Why of course, kiddo!” The Animator nodded.
“He was an incredibly talented young man,” Lord Pincushion agreed as he set down his fork and extended his hand to me.
I knew what he wanted. I fished out the letter I had come to deliver. He accepted it with a sad sort of smile on his face.
“He was destined to be quite a hero,” he continued. He retrieved a letter opener from the general vicinity of his pancreas and used it to slit open the envelope.
Both the Animator and I watched Lord Pincushion remove the letter and scan it briefly. His eyes went wide with amazement.
“After all, his abilities must have been exceptional,” he added after a brief pause. “How else could he have known that you would be delivering this letter to me on this very date?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A Message from Meteor Boy
I sat at the table utterly speechless as both Lord Pincushion and the Animator regarded me with odd expressions. Finally, I found my voice.
“He mentions me?” I blurted out in disbelief. “By name?”
“Indeed he does,” Lord Pincushion confirmed. “And today’s date.”
“But that’s impossible!” I sputtered. “It would mean . . .”
I couldn’t even say it. What it meant was any number of things, none of which made any sense.
“May I see the letter?” I asked.
Lord Pincushion returned his gaze to the letter in his hand and then looked back up at me.
“Sadly, I’m afraid not,” he said as he folded the letter, slipped it into a pocket in his jacket, and then stabbed the letter opener through not only it but his chest as well. “He specifically tells me not to let you see it. He said you would understand.”
“What?!” I nearly shouted in exasperation. “That doesn’t make any sense! I don’t understand anything!”
I really thought I might start crying I was so frustrated, but I was determined not to do that in front of these legendary heroes. They could tell I was upset, though.
“Please don’t think harshly of me,” Lord Pincushion said. “Twenty-five years ago, Meteor Boy came along and assisted me in a way that I can never repay. Despite his own doubts about the advice he provided, I can only confirm that he did me a tremendous service. At the time, however, I don’t think I was adequately appreciative, and I never did get a chance to thank him properly. So, if for no other reason, I feel I owe it to him to honor his wishes by not revealing the contents of his letter.”
“I understand,” I said. And in fact I did. I got up from my chair, sensing it was time for me to leave. But there was still a question I felt I had to ask.
“Can you at least tell me how Meteor Boy saved the league?”
“That, my dear b
oy, is a story I feel I must tell you,” he responded graciously as he rose from his seat, the sharp objects sticking out of him pointing me toward the garden’s exit. “We met Meteor Boy shortly after our disastrous telethon. In fact it was he who introduced us to the Amazing Indestructo.”
“Was he already Superopolis’s ‘greatest’ hero?” I said, barely hiding my sarcasm as I preceded my two hosts through the door and into the grand hallway.
“He was calling himself that,” Lord Pincushion said dismissively as he followed me through, “but he had only just gotten started. Still, there was much to be impressed by.”
“He was quite young and very handsome in those days,” the Animator added.
“Did he offer to help?” I asked.
“In a way,” Lord Pincushion replied. “What he offered was to take over the league in exchange for a lump sum of cash and ongoing royalty payments. My only other choice was bankruptcy, so I accepted his offer. The contract I signed, however, took away any control I had of the group.”
“He’s big on having people sign contracts,” I agreed.
“Indeed.” Lord Pincushion nodded as the three of us made our way back to the main entrance. “He began making changes immediately. He went out and made huge endorsement deals capitalizing on the league’s good name, bringing in enormous sums of cash. Soon after, he pushed us to the background.”
“Is that when he added ‘ultimate’ to your name?” I asked.
“Exactly,” Lord Pincushion affirmed sadly. “Never has there been a man so cravenly devoted to adjectives.”
“That’s when he began to replace us with heroes who couldn’t possibly show him up,” added the Animator.
“A trend that hasn’t changed in twenty-five years,” I confirmed as we finally reached the front door.
“Quite. The sad fact was that the public actually preferred the new incompetent League of ‘Ultimate’ Goodness.” Lord Pincushion sighed. “I guess because it made them feel that anyone, no matter how average, could be a successful superhero.”
The Return of Meteor Boy? Page 10
