by Barry Lyga
Now he just had to get home without the bus.
Not a problem.
Kyle soared over Bouring, the wind whipping his hair, the breeze invigorating and alive.
He loved to fly. Sometimes when he flew, he could almost stop thinking.
He hadn’t flown like this in days. He usually sneaked out to the mine for some power-testing time when his parents were asleep, but it wasn’t the same as being out in the open air during the day, with nothing above him and the world below him, where it belonged.
It was still early in the afternoon, so he flew high, worried that someone might identify him.
As he flew, people down below pointed and jumped up and down. They thought he was Mighty Mike.
Feh.
Kyle slipped his earbuds in and switched on Erasmus.
“Flying in broad daylight,” Erasmus said. “Smooth move. Are you asking to get caught and dissected in a government lab somewhere? ”
“Shut up and play some music,” Kyle told him.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
His parents wanted him to attend the Mighty Mike Day parade, but Kyle would have none of that. He spent some time in the basement, in what was quickly becoming his combination lab/workshop, and built a brain-wave manipulator. It distracted him from the Pants Laser for an hour or two, but it was necessary. Since he’d cobbled it together quickly out of an old VCR, a broken cell phone, and two bike chains, it would only work on his parents, but it should suffice.
The brain-wave manipulator was roughly the size of a shoe, so Kyle very cleverly put it in a shoe box, with a hole cut out of one side for the alpha waves to come out. He wasn’t sure if cardboard could block alpha waves, but why take a chance?
“This isn’t going to work,” said Erasmus.
“Why did I program you to doubt me all the time?”
“You didn’t. I doubt you all on my own.”
“Shut up.”
He ran upstairs just as Mom came home from working at the Bouring Town Hall. She was in charge of Important Stuff, she always said, but never got around to explaining what that stuff was.
“Don’t forget that tomorrow we’re going to the parade!” Mom chirped.
“Yeah, not so much,” Kyle said, aiming his brain-wave manipulator.
Mom put her fists on her hips. “What did you say, young man?”
Still wearing his earbuds, Kyle heard Erasmus chuckle. “You forgot to turn it on, genius.”
Right. Flustered, Kyle fiddled with the box.
“And why are you pointing that shoe box at — oh.” As the manipulator took hold, Mom blinked once and jerked like a zombie in a horror movie.
“We’re not going to the parade,” Kyle told her.
“Of course not,” Mom said, still jerking. “Why would we?”
“Better turn it off before her brains start leaking out of her ears,” Erasmus advised.
As soon as Kyle switched off the device, Mom blinked again and smiled a crooked smile. “I don’t care how much you want to go, young man — we are not going to the Mighty Mike parade tomorrow!”
Whoa.
An hour later, when Dad got home from work, Kyle zapped him, too. Dad, amusingly enough, belched when the alpha waves hit him, but he, too, agreed that the Camden family would be absent at the parade.
Step one of the plan: completed!
from the top secret journal of Kyle Camden (deciphered):
It’s five in the morning of “Mighty Mike Day.” I spent the night in the basement, slaving over the Pants Laser.
The Pants Laser! I still thrill at the mere thought of it. A truly amazing piece of technology designed to vaporize pants at a distance!
In one swift stroke of genius and in one long night of work, I have single-handedly revolutionized the very concept of pantsing.
No hands necessary. The Pants Laser does all the work. It observes the target, calculates what kind of pants it’s wearing, and then uses a broad-beam laser at just the right power to vaporize the pants, leaving the victim standing in his underwear, embarrassed but completely unharmed.
Truly, the question must be asked: How did the world survive so long without my genius? How were the pyramids built? How were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon hung? How was the Colossus of Rhodes made colossal?
In a few hours, Mighty Mike will be honored at the conclusion of his parade. According to BouringRecord.com, the parade begins at nine and ends at nine-thirty. (Bouring is a small town.) The alien dunce will be honored by the mayor on a dais at the end of the parade route, in the town square.
That is when I will swoop down with the Pants Laser and vaporize Mike’s pants, along with the pants of anyone else on the dais with him!
And who knows? Maybe I won’t stop with the alien. Maybe I’ll teach this town a lesson in worshipping that extraterrestrial doofus. Maybe I’ll just vaporize every pair of pants in Bouring!
Well, maybe not. We’ll see how it goes.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Kyle yawned under his mask as he flew over Bouring, struggling to keep the Pants Laser balanced in his arms. Today was the day the town of Bouring would honor Mighty Mike. It was also the day Kyle was more annoyed than any human being had ever been annoyed in the history of being annoyed.
He had meant to sleep a couple of hours before setting out to upend heaping helpings of well-deserved havoc on Mighty Mike’s unearthly head, but just as his head hit the pillow, Erasmus had chimed in with:
“Hey, genius — how are you going to get close enough to shoot Mighty Mike without anyone seeing your face?”
Of course. To protect his identity, he would have to be disguised.
So he’d roused himself from bed and stumbled down to the lab, where he’d found an old blue blanket and an old set of Dad’s blue coveralls. They would have to suffice.
Sewing was, of course, beneath a genius such as Kyle, so he’d connected Erasmus to Mom’s old sewing machine and given explicit instructions on what to create. Erasmus complained, but Kyle threatened to erase his hard drive, and a moment later, the basement filled with the chatter of the automatic needle. He scrounged around and found a work belt with pouches that would make it easy to carry Erasmus and anything else he might need.
At the last minute, he added a cape to the costume. No one would ever suspect Kyle of wearing something as tacky as a cape.
Now he soared over Bouring in his costume, glad that the full face mask would hide the bags under his eyes. The outfit was a little tighter than he would have liked, but it would do. The cape fluttering behind him as he flew was even sort of dramatic, though Kyle would never, ever admit that.
“Sort of dramatic, isn’t it?” Erasmus asked. Kyle wore the earbuds under the mask. “The cape, I mean.”
“No,” Kyle said.
“I don’t believe you. You think it’s dramatic.”
“If you want dramatic, play some dramatic music for my debut.”
“Have you thought of a name for yourself? All of the best costumed superpowered muckety-mucks have special names.”
“Yes, Erasmus. I have. I shall be known as … the Azure Avenger!”
If Erasmus had chosen that moment to play something classical and thunderous, it would have been a great moment. Instead, Erasmus played the sound of crickets chirping. (Kyle wondered where that had come from — he didn’t have crickets in his music collection!)
“Yawn,” Erasmus said.
“It’s a great name.” Kyle pulled up, gaining altitude. The entire town of Bouring lay beneath him, the streets radiating out from the town square like crooked spokes on a crashed bicycle. From here, he could make out the parade as it oozed along Major Street toward the square, which was dominated by the thirteen-foot-tall statue of Micah Bouring, the town’s founder.
“It’s complicated,” Erasmus said.
“No, it’s not. I’m avenging my honor. And I’m wearing blue. Azure means —”
“I know what azure means. I
t’s just sort of long. You need something short and punchy, like ‘Mean Man’ or ‘Tough Stuff’ or ‘Bad Guy.’ ”
“I’m not the bad guy,” Kyle retorted.
“You’re not?” Erasmus sounded genuinely confused for the first time since Kyle had switched him on.
“No! Of course not! I’m trying to save the town from a space alien! How does that make me the bad guy? I’m the good guy!”
“If you say so …”
Kyle’s stomach flip-flopped. He told himself it was from being up so high. Kyle wasn’t afraid of heights, but floating in the sky like this would make anyone a little queasy.
Down below, the parade came to a rest near the statue, where the dais was situated. When he squinted, Kyle could just barely make out a cluster of figures on the dais — one of them would be Mighty Mike.
“Queue up ‘Ride of the Valkyries,’ Erasmus,” Kyle ordered. “We’re going in.”
As Wagner’s classic operatic theme swelled, Kyle shouldered the Pants Laser, put on a burst of speed, and blazed through the air to his target.
“Prepare to meet your destiny, Mighty Mike!” he yelled. “You’re about to suffer the wrath of the Azure Avenger! ”
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
The crowd screamed in shock and amazement as Kyle cruised in low over their heads. He saw Miss Moore and Miss Hall and his other teachers in the crowd, including the Great Nemesis. And there was Mairi, with her parents. Kyle almost waved to her, then reminded himself that that would sort of wreck the whole mask-and-costume idea.
Up on the dais there was the mayor, along with Sheriff Monroe, who had already moved a hand to his holster.
Is he actually planning on shooting me? Kyle wondered. He didn’t think a bullet could hurt him, but he resolved to let the Pants Laser have its way with the sheriff just on general principle.
And there was the target. Mighty Mike. Standing between the mayor and the sheriff, his head tilted, wearing the same befuddled, uncomprehending expression he’d worn on his face when looking at the pizza and the fish.
Kyle knew he had to move quickly — Mike wouldn’t stand there staring at him for long.
He pulled up, hovering a couple of feet over the crowd, and lined up his shot, aiming right at Mike.
Ba-KOW! went the Pants Laser as he pulled the trigger.
It was heavier than he’d intended — he hadn’t had time to miniaturize most of the parts, so carrying the Pants Laser was sort of like carrying a large, angry dog. And pulling the trigger was like flicking its ear. The Laser jumped in his arms and the shot went awry, blasting a chunk out of the pedestal under the statue of Micah Bouring.
The crowd went into a panic. Sheriff Monroe forgot all about his gun, gaping in shock as the statue teetered and threatened to fall over.
Oops. That wasn’t supposed to happen.
“I think you miscalibrated the power gain,” Erasmus said, interrupting “Ride of the Valkyries.”
“Shut up,” Kyle muttered, still floating there as the crowd went crazy below him. He fiddled with some of the knobs on the Pants Laser, trying to adjust the power.
“I’m going to take a wild guess,” Erasmus went on, “and speculate that spare parts and sleep deprivation don’t make for the safest pants-erasing laser in the world.”
The readout on the Pants Laser indicated that the power levels were approaching critical — Kyle needed to do something to relieve the building pressure in the guts of his gadget. He pointed the Laser up, pulled the trigger, and seconds later, a charred bird dropped out of the sky.
Meanwhile, the statue of Micah Bouring listed to one side, gave up, and fell over. The mayor screamed — Monroe knocked her out of the way, but it was unnecessary, for Mighty Mike had snapped out of his trance and easily plucked the falling statue out of the air.
“Stop this!” he yelled to Kyle. “You’re going to hurt someone!”
“I’m not hurting anyone!” Kyle yelled back. “I’m just trying to erase your pants!”
Just then, the Pants Laser’s warning beep sounded. Kyle had no choice — he had to pull the trigger again if he didn’t want the thing to blow up in his hands. He twisted around and fired away from the square — a car across the street exploded, sending pieces of flaming wreckage and a fireball toward the crowd. Well, better to vaporize a car than the mayor, right?
Mike dropped the statue safely away from anyone and sped to the car, intercepting the shrapnel and blowing out the fireball with one puff from his alien lungs. (This time the fire was small enough — the punk got lucky.)
Double oops. Couldn’t the clueless masses below him stop crying out and running around aimlessly like spooked cats? Kyle couldn’t concentrate.
Mighty Mike took to the air, closing in on Kyle. The Pants Laser still read critical, so he fired one more time, this time shattering the facade of the Bouring Bank and Trust. Glass and brick crumbled into the street.
Mike hovered a few yards away from Kyle, his hands held out in a calming gesture. “Drop the weapon, okay? We’ve been lucky so far, but we don’t want anyone to get hurt, do we?”
Kyle gritted his teeth under his mask. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to go ahead and drop the stupid Pants Laser, which had ruined his entire day by not working correctly. But the readouts on its screen told him that the worst thing in the world he could do right then was drop it. The power gain was still cycling out of control and without Kyle pulling the trigger occasionally, it would just —
Suddenly, Mighty Mike was on top of Kyle! He’d moved at superspeed, closing the distance between them in less time than it took to throw up, which is what Kyle felt like doing.
“Someone’s going to get hurt,” Mike said. “Or worse.”
He tugged at the Pants Laser. Kyle held tight.
“Stop it!” he told Mike. “If you break it —”
“— you won’t be able to shoot anyone else!”
“No, you idiot, it’ll —”
Mike pulled harder. The Pants Laser readout was flashing red now. If the trigger wasn’t pulled, the whole thing would blow up in an explosion that Kyle didn’t want to imagine. But stupid Mike was blocking the trigger with his stupid hand, wrestling the Laser from Kyle’s grasp.
He let it go. He had no choice. If the Laser’s casing was ruptured by their tug-of-war, it would be even more disastrous.
“Now you can’t hurt anyone,” Mike said smugly, holding the Pants Laser like a rescued kitten.
“You idiot! The power supply is going critical! The whole thing —”
Mike took off so fast that even Kyle couldn’t follow him — the blast of displaced air knocked Kyle several feet back and almost made him collide with the teeming throngs below.
“Look at him go!” someone yelled, and then everyone applauded as Mike blurred the air, soaring straight up …
And up …
And up …
“This won’t be good,” Erasmus commented.
Kyle’s retort was swallowed by the massive KARAKABOOM! of an explosion far above. The sky lit up a brilliant gold color for an instant, rivaling even the sun for brightness.
The crowd — the world — went utterly silent. Even Erasmus had nothing to say.
Kyle hovered in midair, scanning the sky as it dimmed back to its normal blue. He couldn’t believe it. Did he … Did he actually kill …?
He looked down. Mairi stood ten feet below him and off to his left, huddled between her parents. She was crying. She wasn’t the only one.
Don’t cry for him! Kyle thought savagely. His heart pounded with a fierce guilt, though. He hadn’t meant …
And then a gold-and-green speck grew larger, closing fast.
As Mike blazed down from beyond the clouds, no worse for wear, a cheer went up: the masses applauding their muscle-bound oaf of a hero.
Kyle didn’t know which was worse — Mike dying in the explosion or Mike surviving the explosion.
While he tried to figure it out, Mike flew
up to Kyle and — before Kyle could react — punched him in the jaw. Another, louder, cheer went up from the crowd.
“He hit me!” Kyle couldn’t believe it. The punch had thrown him halfway across the square — if he hadn’t braked in time, he would have crashed into the Bouring Record building. “That doofus actually hit me!”
“You truly are a genius,” Erasmus said drily. “Duck.”
Kyle dodged just in time as Mike — on him super-fast — launched another powerful punch. The fist missed and Kyle swooped up in a loop to get some distance.
“I can’t let you hurt anyone else, you friend!” Mighty Mike bellowed, and the crowd roared its approval.
“Did he just call me his friend? For real?”
“I think he meant ‘fiend.’ ”
“Oh, that makes much more — Whoa!”
Kyle sidestepped two more punches. Mike was faster than Kyle, though, and Kyle knew he couldn’t dodge forever.
So, this was how it was going to be? Kyle was willing to make this a battle of wits, but clearly Mighty Mike had no wits. He had to resort to swiping the Pants Laser and then throwing punches. Yeah, that was mature. What a baby.
While Kyle avoided Mike’s superstrong hands, he tried to figure out how to escape. He couldn’t just fly home — Mike would follow him.
He needed to distract Mike. And he knew just how to do it.
He darted to the dais, where Sheriff Monroe and the mayor were calling for order. The crowd had finally shaken off the paralysis that came with panic; chaos ensued. Before anyone could stop him, Kyle grabbed the fallen statue of Micah Bouring and lifted it over his head.
“No!” Mighty Mike cried. “Don’t throw it!”
Kyle didn’t really want to throw it. Still. He needed a diversion.
After only the slightest hesitation, Kyle heaved the statue at the nearest building, which happened to be the Town Hall. Honestly, the architecture was sort of lackluster and dull, so even if Mighty Mike missed it, it’s not like the property damage would be a huge crime. Still, he didn’t stick around to watch Mighty Mike catch it — he just boosted his flight speed to the max and flew away as fast as he could, breaking the sound barrier. The sonic boom echoed out from the square, shattering every window in a two-block radius.