Kid Normal

by Greg James

  They landed at the exact spot Murph had pointed out to them, the corner where the electrical cables from a nearby power line snaked across to the concrete roof of the factory.

  “There should be a box or something up there, where all the power goes into the building,” Murph had told them. “When you get there, Nellie needs to try and get a lightning bolt to hit it. That should knock out the power. Then fly back down and we’ll all work out how to get inside while it’s dark.”

  Nellie stood at a safe distance from the box, closed her eyes, and concentrated, while Mary looked up and marveled as the cloud directly above them boiled and thickened. Nellie held out her hand, palm upward, gesturing toward the metal box where all the cables disappeared through the roof. She opened her eyes at the crack of thunder.

  Just as Knox was saying the word “infiltration” downstairs—which is a word that we’ve realized sounds weirder the more you say it—a bolt of lightning shot down and hit the box in a shower of sparks.

  “Well done, Nellie,” marveled Mary.

  There was another gigantic thunderclap.

  “You can stop it now,” Mary said.

  “I’m not sure if I can,” squeaked Nellie, suddenly looking frightened. “Watch out!”

  At that moment, another lightning bolt landed right beside them, and Nellie was blown backward. She lay motionless on the rooftop, oblivious to the raindrops falling on her face.

  Mary rushed over to her friend. “Nellie, wake up! Are you okay?”

  But as she knelt down beside her, Mary heard a crackle from behind and noticed a strong smell of burning. Horrified, she looked around and saw a tangled jumble of red-hot metal lying on the wet rooftop. A few seconds ago this metal skeleton with sparks flying from it had been a bright yellow umbrella.

  Murph, Billy, and Hilda peeked cautiously out from behind the food truck after the second lightning strike. The huge floodlights that had been illuminating the concrete plaza in front of the Ribbon Robotics factory had gone out, but there was no sign of Mary and Nellie floating back down to join them.

  Squinting into the gloom, Murph could just make out the trucks that had been used to attack The School, parked not far from the main factory doors.

  Billy’s ears inflated, a sure barometer of impending doom. “Murph,” he whined, “something’s wrong. Where are they?”

  “I don’t know, Billy,” whispered Murph, “but you need to stay calm. We lost Flora and Carl, but they can look after themselves. And the same goes for Mary and Nellie. We’ll find them. But whatever’s happened, we need to get in there.”

  Billy’s ears deflated slightly.

  “Come on, then. This is the part where we spring into action!” Hilda piped up with the enthusiasm of someone who had imagined being on a rescue mission on approximately a daily basis and couldn’t quite believe this was happening for real.

  The three of them broke cover and ran across the street to the locked gates. Murph noticed a control panel off to one side and realized they were electric.

  “The power’s out to these things too,” he whispered, pushing the left-hand gate and feeling it move slightly. “Help, quick,” he ordered Billy, who got his hand in the gap and began pushing as well.

  Over by the building they could see the five guards. Hilda gulped. It was Gangly Fuzz Face and his friends. In his fright, Billy lost control and his hand abruptly swelled to several times its normal size, catapulting the gate open with an ear-shattering clang.

  “Intruders,” intoned Gangly Fuzz Face. “Prepare to attack.”

  “Over there! Move!” Murph mouthed urgently, and all three of them sprinted the short distance to the first truck and disappeared behind it.

  Murph let out a small sigh of relief. Surely they were safe for a moment at least—only someone with X-ray vision would be able to see them there.

  “Intruders located behind the vehicle. Prepare to destroy,” droned Crazy Eyes Jemima, whose Capability, although nobody has thought to mention it until now, was X-ray vision.

  “Understood. Preparing to destroy,” answered Corned Beef Boy. They could hear his clumping footsteps as he moved ponderously across the plaza toward them.

  A moment later there was a creak and groan as he picked up the entire truck and tossed it to one side as easily as if it had been a small garden gnome.

  The Super Zeroes scampered behind another of the trucks with the kind of speed you’re only capable of when you’re being chased by a brainwashed kid with incredible strength who wants to crush your head like a ripe blueberry.

  “Now located behind second vehicle. The intruders appear to be cowering in fear,” intoned Jemima.

  “Rude,” whispered Hilda, although it was largely true.

  “Preparing to destroy,” replied Corned Beef Boy again, and he began to stomp toward them.

  “We’re gonna diiiiiiiiiiiie,” whimpered Billy, which was no help at all.

  22

  Drone War

  Nellie groggily opened her eyes and looked around. Smoke was still pouring out of the metal box at the corner of the roof.

  “Did we do it?” she asked Mary softly.

  Mary nodded, smiling back at her brightly. “There was a slight problem with my umbrella, though.” She pointed to the tangle of metal that was still smoking and fizzing beside them. “But never mind. Let’s have a look over the edge and see if we can see the others.”

  Nellie looked serious. “I might not get the chance to say this later, so I want to get it in now,” she told Mary. “Whatever happens to us, I just want you to know that I am loving this. Thanks for bringing me along.”

  “Bringing you along? Are you kidding?” replied Mary. “Clouds, thunderbolts . . . you’ve been the most important person on the whole rescue.”

  Nellie made a small squeaking noise, because words were not her Capability, and reached out her hand to squeeze Mary affectionately on the foot. But as she made contact there was a sharp spark of static.

  “OW!” Mary jerked her foot away. “You fizzed me!”

  Nellie was looking at her hand in confusion—the one she’d used to call down the lightning. Just visible across her skin were tiny, luminous blue lines of electricity running backward and forward. She’d never really allowed herself to use her power fully before—what was going on?

  “What on earth . . . ?” wondered Mary.

  But there was no time to stop and think. A huge, grinding crash came from below them—the sort of noise a truck makes when it’s picked up and thrown.

  “Come on,” Mary ordered, holding out her hand to help Nellie to her feet. “OW! No, the other hand,” she added a second later.

  Nicholas Knox bashed the keys of his computer in frustration. The power outage had knocked out his feed from the spy drones. He was shut in his secret office, completely blind. With a creeping sense of anxiety, Knox began to realize that this could all turn out very badly for him. Nektar had the central matrix for the mind-control helmets on his wrist—the human drones would all follow his orders. The building was under attack and he could only assume that—he shook his head in silent amazement—real superheroes had turned up to rescue the staff and students of The School. And here he was in a room full of evidence showing that he was one of the ringleaders of the whole thing.

  There was only one thing to do.

  “We’re all gonna diiiiiiiiie, all of us,” continued Billy, building on his theme slightly. They were still crouched by one of the enormous wheels of the second truck, peering out from underneath it as the heavy feet of Corned Beef Boy got closer and closer.

  As it often did when he was scared or excited, Billy’s Capability activated. But this time something was different. Normally it was a hand that ballooned—or his head. But suddenly the huge tire beside him inflated sharply, making the truck lean dangerously to one side. Corned Beef Boy stopped his march to stare at it.

  “How on earth did you do that?” asked Murph in a whisper.

  “I don’t knooooooooow,
” whimpered Billy.

  “Do it again!” Murph said.

  “I don’t know hooooooow,” Billy moaned. He was not one of life’s natural copers.

  “TRY!” ordered Murph. “Think about what you did. Concentrate on that other tire. Do it! Do it now!”

  Billy screwed his face up, thinking of the tire as hard as he could. One of his earlobes puffed up slightly.

  “The tire, Billy,” urged Murph.

  Suddenly, with a rasping and a creaking, the other tire on their side of the truck inflated to several times its normal size, forcing the truck to keel over onto Corned Beef Boy, who only just reached his hands up in time to stop it crushing him.

  His four fellow guards watched nervously, not daring to move from their positions in front of the main doors in case this was a diversion.

  “Pursue the intruders,” Fuzz Face ordered Corned Beef Boy. “Move the vehicle and pursue.”

  Corned Beef Boy heaved with his shoulders and shoved the truck to one side, where it crashed against the one he’d thrown earlier. The two trashed vehicles were now blocking the main gates.

  Murph had led his friends in a crouching run to the other side of truck number three, where he was now doing some extremely quick thinking: “Billy, we know now that you can inflate other things, not just your own body. Right?”

  Billy nodded.

  “Okay,” Murph went on, “listen . . .”

  Crazy Eyes Jemima, in her brainwashed mind, was looking forward to telling her master that the three intruders had been destroyed. She watched closely as the silhouette of Corned Beef Boy stomped over to the third truck.

  Using her Cape she could discern the outlines of the three targets standing behind the truck, apparently talking urgently to one another. One of them was waving his hands as if explaining something.

  She saw her fellow human drone move around the side of the truck and bear down on them, excited that he was about to eliminate his master’s enemies. But then something unexpected happened. Corned Beef Boy’s head grew enormous. She saw the shape of his mind-control helmet fly into the air as it popped off his suddenly huge head, and then watched as he crumpled to the floor. She rubbed her eyes.

  “Our operative has been neutralized,” she told Gangly Fuzz Face in blank surprise.

  “I will eliminate the intruders,” decided Frankenstein’s Nephew. He ran toward the enemy at full speed, each of his hands expanding into a ball of flame. He began swinging his arms in a windmill motion in preparation for a devastating attack. But before he could even round the corner of the truck, his head suddenly ballooned, and then his entire body. Frankenstein’s Nephew became a large, partially lit ball. His mind-control helmet flew off and smashed against the factory wall as his momentum carried him onward. He kept on rolling for some distance before hitting the fence and deflating.

  Gangly Fuzz Face looked on in astonishment as yet another of his gang was taken out. “I shall inform Lord Nektar we need reinforcements,” he said to Crazy Eyes Jemima. “Remain here and prevent the intruders from escaping.” He turned on his heel and disappeared inside the building.

  Crazy Eyes Jemima turned to her one remaining companion, the boy Murph thought of as Pork Belly Pig Breath, although his name was actually Julian. “We will remain here and prevent the intruders from entering our master’s complex.”

  “No, actually you won’t,” shouted a voice from far above them.

  On the fourth floor, the elevator doors opened with a soft ting. Gangly Fuzz Face, mindless servant of the man-wasp Nektar, was on his way to tell his master that the most powerful member of his gang had been neutralized by intruders.

  But there was a problem. The guards, who were also mindless servants of the man-wasp Nektar, had been ordered not to let anyone leave the elevator. And what happened next is a good example of why mind-controlled armies will probably never really catch on.

  The large, white, potted-plant-lined room where the elevators were located was being guarded by three human drones—all older students at The School. On one side was the entrance to the corridor that led to the boardroom and Nektar’s tower. On the other, as you might remember, was the small, unobtrusive door behind which Nicholas Knox was contemplating the ruin of all his schemes.

  Gangly Fuzz Face attempted to step out of the elevator but suddenly found a beefy hand on his chest.

  “No one is permitted to leave the elevator,” ordered the drone—who before being mind-controlled had been a promising student called Fisher.

  “I have a message for Lord Nektar,” Gangly Fuzz Face said. “I must be allowed to pass.”

  “No one is permitted the leave the elevator,” explained the second drone, a tall girl who was a goalie for the school hockey team and looked like it.

  “I must be allowed to pass. I have a message for Lord Nektar,” intoned Gangly Fuzz Face. This is the real problem with brainwashed servants—there’s no middle ground.

  “Attack the intruder,” decided the third drone, which was a real mistake.

  “I am a servant of Nektar,” said Gangly Fuzz Face. “If you attack me, you are an enemy of Nektar. I will destroy enemies of Nektar.”

  Well, you can see where this is leading, can’t you?

  Gangly Fuzz Face attempted to move the third human drone blocking his way using his force-field Capability, slamming him back against one of the potted plants and knocking him unconscious.

  The first drone, Fisher, responded to this by attacking Gangly Fuzz Face with his own Capability. This was optimistic, as his Capability was making tiny purple flowers appear out of thin air. Gangly Fuzz Face was blasted in the face by a jet of blossoms, but hit back with another force field that knocked Fisher out as well.

  The final guard, the hockey goalie, ran at him and used her own Capability, her rock-hard hands, to smash him backward into the elevator. Unfortunately, she smashed him into the control panel, which meant the doors closed on her, clamping her mind-control helmet between them. She pulled backward instinctively, wrenching the helmet from her head. She too fell to the floor, unconscious.

  At that moment the side door opened, and Nicholas Knox cautiously poked his head out. He surveyed the three unconscious students in the room before gingerly peeking into the elevator. Gangly Fuzz Face lay on the floor, snoring loudly underneath the sparking elevator control panel.

  Suddenly Knox realized he had no hope of fighting whatever forces were now ranged against him. Who on earth had managed to disable such powerful servants? It was time to abandon his Nektar plan and regroup. His brain was teeming with new ideas, none of which would involve a crazy wasp. He couldn’t wait to get started.

  He who fights and runs away, thought Knox, lives to fight another day. He ducked back through the door to his private office and grabbed a few things, before murmuring to himself: “He who stays and takes a chance, ends up in an ambulance.”

  Outside the main front doors to Ribbon Robotics, Murph, Billy, and Hilda high-fived each other delightedly.

  “Billy, you did it!” enthused Murph.

  “I know,” replied Billy, grinning so widely it looked like he’d inflated his own mouth. “Did you see me, Hilda? It was amazing! I blew Corned Beef Boy’s head up like a, like a . . . like a massive blow-up head. Epic!”

  He shouted up to the two silhouetted heads that were peering down from the roof. “Did you see it, Mary? Nice!”

  Mary had indeed seen. She and Nellie had rushed to the edge of the roof and looked down, watching with their hearts in their mouths as Corned Beef Boy had stomped around the truck toward their friends. Nellie had just been about to try and summon more lightning when they’d seen Billy flick out his right hand as if throwing a Frisbee and their enemy’s head expand with a breathy trumpeting noise. They’d watched as the helmet had been catapulted into the air, landing some distance away on the wet concrete and smashing. Corned Beef Boy had slumped to the ground, unconscious. And then came Billy’s even more impressive dispatch of Frankenstein’s Nephew, wh
ich had actually made Nellie clap her hands with pride.

  Before the remaining two guards had time to react, Mary had swung into action. She had picked up the still-fizzing umbrella skeleton, carefully using her yellow scarf to prevent it from electrocuting her, held it over the edge of the roof, and dropped it. She used the yellow lights of the mind-control helmets to aim precisely at the two figures four floors below.

  The effect had been quite dramatic. Their helmets had been short-circuited by the electrified metal, and the two remaining guards were now lying crumpled on the ground, out cold.

  Now, mid-celebration, the true implications of this hit Murph. “Mary, was that . . . your umbrella?” he called, suddenly horrified.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. That’s why we couldn’t fly down from the roof. It sort of got lightning-ed.” She laughed a slightly hollow laugh. “No more flying for me—looks like you’ve got another kid without a Cape on the team.”

  Murph felt sure Mary must be devastated at the loss of her umbrella. He experienced an odd mixture of pity and pride that she was hiding it so well. “Wait there,” he instructed, “we’re on our way up.” He turned to Billy and Hilda: “Come on, we’ve got to keep going. We’ve got them on the run.”

  They left the darkening plaza and moved into the reception area, which seemed empty and eerie in the yellow emergency lighting. “This way, I think,” said Murph, leading them toward the revolving doors.

  “Wait a minute. Where do you think you’re going?” said a mean voice from away to the right. It was Patsy the receptionist.

  “We’re, you know, going to the elevators?” said Murph, figuring that sometimes honesty is the best policy.

  “What, without signing in?” demanded Patsy angrily. She gestured at a large book on the desk in front of her: “Nobody goes through without signing in.”