I saw Jason walking towards me. He had a pair of glasses in his hands. Yep, Jason always comes through. “What was that all about?”
“Ah, Wendi was jealous that I was texting Brandon. She thought he might leave her for me.”
Jason laughed. “Yeah like that would happen!”
Okay, now I had to fight the temptation to burn Jason in the butt.
He straightened himself up. “Sorry, didn’t mean to laugh. I mean you are way nice, but Wendi is just…” he sighed.
I gave him a nudge. “Come on, let’s go see Grandma Greta!”
Dear Diary: I did see another side of Wendi. I guess even she has fears about not being good enough. Who would have thought that!. It still doesn’t give her permission to brag about herself over the rest of us. But at least, now I sort of see where she’s coming from.
Man, I still would have loved burning her in the butt with heat vision.
GGG…
We found Grandma Greta outside, pulling weeds from a garden in front of her home. The house even had a lovely white picket fence surrounding the yard. Jason and I unlatched the gate and walked up to Grandma Greta. She was focused so intently on her weeding; she didn’t even notice us.
I gave a polite cough.
Grandma Greta looked up at us. “Oh, hello kids, are you selling cookies?”
“No ma’am, I’m Lia Strong and this is Jason Michaels! We volunteer at the hospital.”
Greta smiled. “Oh right. Your mom is the doctor and your dad is the sheriff and your mom is a judge!”
“Actually my dad is police captain,” Jason said.
Greta grinned. “Yes, sorry my memory is not what it was. That’s why I went to see that nice Doctor Strange.”
“Actually it’s Doctor Dangerfield,” Jason corrected.
Greta popped herself in the forehead. “Like I said, my mind isn’t as sharp as it used to be…too bad Doctor Strange Dangerfield told me her treatment wasn’t ready yet.” She pointed to her brain and spun her finger around. “Oh well, at least I am happy. So why you kids here?”
I nudged Jason. He took the glasses out of his back pocket. “I believe you left your reading glasses at the hospital,” He showed the glasses to her.
Greta leaned forward and squinted. She stood up. She walked towards us. Shaking her head, she said, “Silly me I didn’t even remember I used reading glasses!” She took the glasses from Jason. She put them on her head. They fell off. “Silly me again!” she said.
I bent down and picked up the glasses. “You know, I bet silly Jason made a mistake and these weren’t your glasses after all!” I said.
I handed the glasses to Jason. “Yes, silly me!” Jason said.
Greta chuckled. “Well, it was nice of you sweet kids anyhow!” She scratched her head. “Hey, do you young ones know my grandson, Brandon?”
“Yes, ma’am, he and I play LAX together,” Jason said.
“I’m on the girl’s LAX team so I know him too!” I said quickly.
“Oh, I didn’t know Brandon played LAX I thought he only played Lacrosse, basketball, and football.”
“LAX is what we call lacrosse ma’am,” Jason said.
“You kids today with LAX and LOL and hashtag and inyourfacebook! I can’t keep up!” She paused. “My grandson, Brandon is quite the handsome young man. Isn’t he?” she beamed.
“I guess…” Jason shrugged.
“Oh, I hadn’t noticed,” I said shyly.
Her eyes popped open. “Oh really?”
“Yeah, oh really?” Jason said cynically.
Greta nodded. “Probably for the better, Brandon seems taken with that lovely Wendi girl!”
“Not to change the subject ma’am, but I was wondering if Doctor Stone talked to you after Doctor Dangerfield did?”
“You mean the lady with the pretty green eyes?” Greta asked.
“Yes ma’am….”
Greta’s eyes lit up. “Actually yes, she did. She said she would like to talk to me about another project she was working on. She thought I’d be perfect for it. She wants to meet with me tomorrow.”
“At the hospital?” Jason asked.
“Nope,” Greta said. “She told me by doing it outside of the hospital she can do it much cheaper. I will get the details tomorrow.”
“Ah, by any chance do have the address she wanted to meet you at?” I asked.
“Of course!” Greta said. “She wrote it down for me.”
“Can I have it?” I asked, probably with more excitement than I needed to.
“Ah, why is that?” Grandma Greta asked.
“We just need it for official purposes,” Jason said, using his most adult voice.
“I have her card inside on my stand by the door. I’ll be right back!” Grandma turned and headed towards her door.
“Nice save there!” I told Jason.
“Hey, I may not be as good looking as that Brandon guy you ‘never’ notice, but I still have my uses,” he grinned. “So what’s the plan once we have the address?” he asked curiously.
“We go check out the place after work and see what we can find,” I replied.
“I pretty much thought you were going to say that,” He laughed.
“You know me well.”
“Maybe too well,” Jason added.
We waited a few minutes. Then finally Grandma Greta came out of the door, smiling and holding a card. She walked over and handed it to me. I read the card: 1 LOLIPOP LANE.
“Why does that name sound so familiar?” I thought out loud.
“It’s the old animal hospital,” Jason told me. Man, Jason did know everything.
“I also called that nice Doctor Gem and told her how great it was for her to send some students over to check up on me,” Greta said with a smile.
I took a step back. “And what did she say?”
Greta shrugged. “I don’t know. I just got her machine. You know doctors always too busy to talk to actual people.”
All right, now this changed our schedule a bit. “Thanks, Grandma Greta,” I said. “We’d better get to the hospital now!”
Once we got down the street, Jason turned to me. “We’re not going to the hospital. Are we?”
“Nope…” I said. “I need to get to the bottom of this ASAP. Now that Doctor Stone has been warned, we have to act fast.”
“We could lose our jobs at the hospital,” Jason pointed out.
I increased my pace. “We’re volunteers; we make our own hours.”
“Good point!”
Dear Diary: I felt a little bad tricking Grandma Greta like that, but it had to be done to help get to the bottom of this. Plus, I did lie when I said I’ve never noticed Brandon. I notice him the minute he walks into a room. Sometimes I have to force myself to take my eyes off him. But I can’t help the way I feel. He’s so good looking!
Angry Birds…
“What are we going to do when we get to Lollipop Lane?” Jason asked me.
I hadn’t really considered that very carefully. I pretty much just wanted to see what we could find, to help prove that Doctor Stone or maybe even Doctor Dangerfield was behind these recent crazy cybernetic people (and animals). Once I got there I’d figure out a way to stop it.
“We’re going to see what we can see!” I said, making a fist.
“Oh, in other words, you don’t really have a plan…” He sighed.
I couldn’t argue with that statement.
We made it to Lollipop lane in record time. The lane was just a long road that led to one building, the old animal hospital. The place had to be 100 years old so they shut it down last year and opened a sparkling new facility on the other side of town. The new place has a lot of windows and green area, even Shep likes to go there. This old building, not so much. It was grey and dingy. It looked like the roof was made of tin foil.
“Okay, Jason be on the lookout for anything strange!”
Jason pointed up at a flock of birds coming towards us. “Like those pigeons…”
I looked up at them. “They look like normal birds.”
Jason shook his head. “Nope, they aren’t flying like normal pigeons!”
I have no idea how Jason knew this. But I knew enough to trust him. Using super-vision, I zoomed in on the birds carefully. They each had a small cybernetic disk on their heads. “Yep, you are right. This is strange.”
The birds flew past us. They pooped over us.
“Incoming poop!” I shouted.
Jason and I dodged the gross poop. It splattered on the ground and burned holes wherever it landed.
“Acid poop!” Jason gasped.
“Man, that is so wrong and so nasty!” I said.
I realized this was just too dangerous for Jason. I may be super and able to take a lot of damage, but Jason is just a regular guy. He’s smart and great and all that, but he’s not built to take on poop acid. Actually, I wasn’t sure I was either. But I didn’t have much choice.
I pointed in the opposite direction. “Jason, run! Get to the hospital and tell Mom what I’m doing and what’s going on!”
“You could text her…or dare I say it, call her….” Jason suggested.
“No, I don’t want to give her a chance to tell me not to do this,” I said.
“Yes, of course. Why bring common sense into this when we are facing ACID POOPING PIGEONS!!” He pointed up at the birds. “They’re turning around and getting ready for another run at us…”
“So get out of here!” I yelled at him. “Go! I’ll rush the building. They’ll have to follow me!”
Jason stood there, his eyes locked eyes with mine.
“Please do what I ask….” I said.
Jason frowned, clearly worried about the situation, and for a moment he didn’t budge.
Then he nodded and took off. “I’m bringing back help!”
Acid poop started raining down on me. Most of it missed, leaving sizzling holes in the ground. “Who thinks of this stuff!” I said. “MACS activate my uniform!” I shouted.
“No need to shout, Ms. Lia,” MACS told me. “Do you wish me to alert your father to this situation? I am sure he would want to help.”
“No…not yet…” I answered.
“Very well, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ma’am!”
“Yes, Lia, ma’am!”
I leaped up into the air towards the ugly old animal hospital. As I jumped, a couple pieces of acid poop (man I never thought I’d say that) hit my shoulder. It sizzled my suit and then burned through to my skin. It hurt, but not nearly as much as I thought acid on me should hurt. Still, it bothered me enough to upset my leap.
I landed on my face, about halfway to the building.
“I am repairing your suit now!” MACS told me. ‘The acid is extremely powerful, but I believe I can counteract it. After all, acid and pigeons are old school, and I am very new school!”
I pushed myself up off the ground. I turned and looked up to see another barrage of white poop acid falling towards me. Out of pure reflex, I inhaled quickly, then exhaled -- hard. My breath shot the acid back up at the pigeons who were pooping on me. Half of them began to caw and flap their wings wildly after being splattered by their own acid. A few dropped to the ground. I felt bad doing that to the birds, but I had no choice. The remaining birds regrouped. They dive-bombed towards me.
“Okay, I’ve made the angry birds even angrier…”
“Lia, this may be a good time to tell you that your dad designed your suit with a secret airtight pocket.”
I looked at the birds closing in on me. “Thanks, MACS! Nice to know I have a pocket and all, but it’s not that helpful just now!”
“Actually, your dad put a piece of condensed garlic in that pocket,” MACS continued.
“Now that’s something worth knowing about!” I told MACS. A pocket on my suit popped open. I reached in and grabbed a small piece of something that felt like a nut. I tossed it into my mouth. It tasted like garlic. Luckily for me, I like garlic. I looked up at the birds. I opened my mouth. The flock of birds dropped from the sky.
“My, that packs a punch!” I said. “If I talk to anybody I’ll drop them in their tracks!”
“Your father calculated the garlic dose so it would wear off in three minutes,” MACS told me.
“Well let’s hope that if I need extra super bad breath, it will be in the next three minutes!” I leaped towards the building.
Dear Diary: Jason really is a good friend. He always has the best ideas and my best interests at heart. That’s why I couldn’t risk him getting hurt in this fight. It was my battle. And as great as Jason is, he is just a normal guy. A super smart and loyal normal guy, but still just a guy. As for my dad, I love the way his strange brain works!
Not Monkeying Around…
I peered into one of the windows of the old animal hospital. I saw a bunch of big and small cages along the wall. A couple of large freezers sat in each corner. The middle of the room had a long lab table with all sorts of specialized looking instruments and needles on it. Looking closer, I saw the cages had bunnies and mice in them.
I raced around to the front. There, stood a big metal door with a red light above it. I figured the door must have had an alarm system. I fought back the urge to kick it down. Instead, I moved to the side of the door. I took a few steps back. I took a deep breath. I rushed at the wall smashing a ‘me’ sized hole in the wall. I turned and looked at the hole. It reminded me of something you’d see in a cartoon.
Three monkeys in lab coats came rushing in from a back room. They looked adorable. They pointed long rods at me. Okay, not so adorable. They squeezed the handles on the rods. Beams of electricity shot into me. I crackled and surged. I shook it off. I believe my behind started smoking a bit.
The three monkeys looked amazed that their shocks didn’t stop me. Two of the monkeys started jumping up and down in fits. The third stayed calm. He or she turned to the other two. “The boss said she was strong…”
One of the other monkeys pointed at me. “But not this strong!”
The third nodded. “Yeah, man, we hit her with everything and all it seemed to do was tickle her!”
“It did kind of tickle a little,” I told them.
The two monkeys tossed down their weapons. They threw off their lab coats. “Man, I don’t need this kind of stress!” one of the monkeys said.
“Me neither,” the other monkey said, rubbing his stomach. “I think I have an ulcer now.”
“But we have a job to do!” the lead monkey protested.
The other two shook their heads. “She literally pays us in peanuts and bananas.”
“But she does pay us!”
The other two each rolled their eyes. I found it to be both adorable and strange.
“But we’re cute monkeys, people would feed us anyhow!” one monkey objected.
“Yeah and without all this stress. Plus, I don’t like injecting bunnies and thinking so much. I miss the days of just eating, sleeping, swinging and throwing poop at people!” the other monkey lamented.
“We can still do all those things!” the lead monkey said. He pointed to his brain. “Only with more intelligence. Maybe we can make our poop splatter off walls and hit more people?”
The other two looked at each other. “You make a compelling point!” one said. “But you still can’t beat the fact that ignorance truly is bliss!”
“Yeah, plus then we wouldn’t have to deal with over-powered teens who run through walls and clobber malls with foot odor.”
I cleared my throat. “Guys, you know I can hear you, right?”
“Yeah, but you can’t remove your own cyber implants!” the lead monkey said, arms crossed.
The two other monkeys looked at each other. They smiled. They each reached up and pulled the other monkey’s implant off. They each howled for a moment. They stopped. They contently hopped away.
The lead monkey shook his head. “So hard to get good help these days…” He turned to me. “G
irl, can you believe those two?”
I walked towards him and pounded my fist into my hand. The sound forced him to stagger back. “Looks like it’s just you versus me now. I like those odds….”
The monkey looked at me. “Yes, I understand that you would.” He rolled up his lab coat sleeve, exposing a watch. “So let me improve those odds!” He pushed a button on this watch. A cage in the middle of the room popped up. Out jumped two kangaroos.
“These guys aren’t as smart as my fellow monkeys. Which means they will follow orders better!” He pointed at me. “Get her Skippy and Dundee!”
The two kangaroos who were charming BTW leap at me. They each kicked me in the head. Okay, that wasn’t very charming. I didn’t fall. But the two kangaroos landed on their feet and started pummeling me with rapid punches. Their punches didn’t really hurt. But this had to stop as I couldn’t concentrate on the lead lab monkey.
“Guys, I don’t want to hurt you!” I told the kangaroos.
They continued to mindlessly pound me with punches and kicks. Since I didn’t want to hit back, I just let them punch and kick me. I figured these animals may have been pumped up. But they were still flesh and blood and would punch themselves out.
After around two minutes, the punch speed slowed down. After about three minutes the punches were pretty much just weak attempts. By the fourth minute, the two kangaroos just stood there panting for air. I knocked them each over with a little puff of my breath. “Enjoy your sleep!” I told them as I walked by.
I concentrated on the lab monkey. “You ready to give up now?” I asked.
He nodded and held up his hands. “Yeah, I’m smart enough to know when I can’t win!”
I walked forward. “Great! Glad to see you are a smart monkey.”
He waited for me to come towards him. There was something about his grin I didn’t like. Just as I got right in front of him, he pushed another button on his watch. A trap door underneath me opened up. I started to plummet downwards. I landed on my feet in a small metal room. I’ve been in bigger closets. Yeah, this monkey was really making me mad. The room went dark with a clank. I assumed that meant the trap door had closed over me. I bent down and leaped upward extending my arm. I crashed through the trap door.
The Power of Teamwork! Page 7