by Barry Lyga
Mike frowned for a moment, thinking. “Yes. Fingerprints. Of course. That makes more sense.”
“How’s that brain damage coming along?” Kyle asked.
“Kyle!” Mairi smacked his shoulder and he had to pretend to feel it. “I can’t believe you!”
“What? He’s got brain damage. Everyone knows it.”
“It’s rude to say it like that. He’s not brain damaged. He’s just …” She pursed her lips, trying to think of a better word. “He’s just not in his right mind. Oops.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “That’s worse!”
“It’s all right, Mairi,” Mike said gently. “My brain is, in fact, not totally up to velocity. It’s a cider feck of the meteor radiation. But I’m getting better every day.” He smiled at Kyle. “Thanks for asking.”
“I think you meant ‘side effect’ back there,” Kyle said, trying to sound helpful. The fact that Mike could take an insult and just blink and pretend it hadn’t happened was driving him nuts. He wanted to get under this kid’s skin, but Mike was so nice it was creepy. “So, your fingerprints are no good, but have they tried DNA?” He wondered what alien DNA looked like.
“Also not in the system,” Mike said. “Oh, look. That’s a cool Poddy.” He pointed to Erasmus, which Kyle had positioned on the table.
“It’s not a Poddy. It’s …” Kyle sighed. Mike’s brain damage/amnesia was exhausting. “My parents gave him, I mean it, to me,” Kyle said.
“Can I see it?”
Kyle’s brain raced. He had made some modifications to Erasmus last night. In fact, that was the only reason he had voluntarily plopped into a seat with an unobstructed view of Mighty Mike.
Because right now, Erasmus was sending out an invisible beam that was scanning Mighty Mike’s body.
If he let Mighty Mike actually hold Erasmus, Erasmus could glean even more information. But it was risky. What if Mike realized there was something abnormal about Erasmus?
“Sure,” Kyle said. “Go ahead.” He handed Erasmus over, thinking, You better behave, Erasmus!
Mairi couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Kyle shrugged at the expression on her face, then kept on smiling as Mike slipped Erasmus’s earbuds in and turned him on. Fortunately, Erasmus had the good sense to pretend to be nothing more than a music player.
But the whole time, Kyle knew, Mike’s brain was being analyzed….
Mike tossed his head back and forth in time to music that only he could hear. “I love the hoppity-hip music!”
“Hip-hop,” every single person at the table (even the quiet kids) said at the same time.
“Kyle!” Mairi said. “Why are you giggling?”
Oops. That was out loud? “Nothing. Just … thought of something funny.”
As he watched his hated enemy rock out with Erasmus, Kyle thought of a great many funny things.
All of them involved Mighty Mike … gone forever.
from the top secret journal of Kyle Camden (deciphered):
The risk was worth it! Oh, what a glorious day this has been!
Ever since the fiasco that was Mighty Mike Day, I’ve been spending most of my time in the basement, converting it to my own permanent laboratory. (It’s coming along quite well, BTW. The miniature nuclear reactor is almost online, and my biochemical forge plans look good.)
But as much progress as I’ve made down there … I haven’t come any closer to destroying Mike.
Until now.
Erasmus scanned every last inch of that brat’s alien physique. While Mike was listening to music and rocking out, Erasmus was recording samples of his alien brain waves.
Now, unfortunately, I don’t yet have a computer system that can decode all of this information. But I’m working on one. In the meantime, I at least have some information.
I also have some data on the radiation in Mike’s body, the same radiation in my body. The radiation from the plasma storm.
I’ve built a machine that just analyzes this radiation. Maybe, in time, I can learn how to remove Mike’s powers. Or increase mine. Or both.
You have to know your enemy to defeat your enemy, after all.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
By the weekend, Kyle was more aggravated than before. And considering how aggravated he was earlier, that was a whole new level of aggravation. (He still hadn’t invented a word to describe this new level of aggravation. It was on his to-do list, though. Right under “travel through time.”)
He spent all of his free time in the laboratory he’d built in the basement. The time machine sat half finished in the corner. (It didn’t look like a time machine; it looked like Dad’s old motorbike. That’s mainly because it was Dad’s old motorbike, with lots of special, hidden modifications.)
His MiMiRDAA (Mighty Mike Radiation Detector And Analyzer) sat on a corner of the workbench, quietly grinding away, thinking to itself. He’d built it into an ancient cell phone that was almost as big as the cordless upstairs. (How had people ever carried those things around? Where did they keep them? Did they have gigantic pockets back then?)
But even though he was making progress, he still felt no closer to destroying Mighty Mike. He needed something big. He needed …
He needed the World’s Most Perfect Prank.
That was it! That’s what would finally destroy Mighty Mike! Kyle had been spending so much time trying to think of ways to hurt Mike that he’d forgotten the easiest way. He had to go back to basics, back to the pranks that had made him so successful in the past. Mike loved the adoration he received from the world. But if Kyle could pull a prank that would get the public to see Mike for what he was … If he could push Mike to the edge and make Mike lose his cool …
If he could manage that, then Mighty Mike would self-destruct. He would show his true colors and the world would turn against him.
Only with the World’s Most Perfect Prank would he push Mike to the limit, tormenting him beyond his superhuman endurance. And so the world would learn that Mighty Mike was just as mundane and boring and unworthy of attention as everything else out there. He had to play to his strengths.
But Kyle couldn’t come up with anything. Nothing. No one could find Mike’s real family (and only Kyle knew they never would because his real family was from some other planet), but the people of Bouring had gotten used to having a real-life superhero in their midst. No one was looking very hard anymore.
Meanwhile, every day that Kyle didn’t develop the World’s Most Perfect Prank was a day when Mighty Mike made more and more friends at school. A day for Mighty Mike to patrol the skies of Bouring, saving kittens from trees, stopping car accidents, helping little old ladies cross the street.
“Kittens in trees …” Kyle mumbled. He was sitting in bed with Lefty on his lap, stroking the rabbit’s soft fur. It relaxed him. “Kittens in trees …” Erasmus was playing some soothing music. Tibetan chants. Or something like that.
“Wait a minute!” Kyle shouted, sitting upright, scaring Lefty, who hopped off of him and retreated to the other side of the bed. “Kittens in trees! That’s it!”
“What is it?” Erasmus interrupted the peaceful chanting.
“I’ve got the World’s Most Perfect Prank! It’s so simple! So obvious!” He rolled onto his stomach and pulled Lefty over so that they were nose-to-nose. “Listen, Lefty — it’s easy. Mike’s always out there saving people, right? And just the other day he rescued a lost dog out by the lighthouse. And last week he swooped out of nowhere to get a cat out of a tree.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“Shut up, Erasmus. I’m talking to Lefty. Look, this will be easy. The best plans are usually the simplest ones, right? So I’ll get a cat. Then I’ll clone the cat. And do some genetic modifications. Change its DNA, you know? I’ll make a cat that sticks to trees no matter what! No matter how much Mike pulls, that cat isn’t going anywhere. He can pull all day and all night. Eventually, he’ll just pull up the tree by the roots! He’ll look like an idiot!”
Kyle started laughing — it was loud and sustained. Lefty hopped off the bed and ran back into his cage. Mom opened his bedroom door and poked her head in. “What’s so funny?” she asked, her left eyelid twitching like crazy.
“Nothing!” Kyle said between gasps, rolling on the bed. “Nothing!”
Mom left, her eyelid still twitching, her shoulder occasionally jerking for no reason at all.
Kyle finally managed to catch his breath. “So. What do you think of that plan, Erasmus?”
“Honestly? I think you need some sort of therapy. Talking therapy, maybe. Or —”
“Shut up.”
“— maybe adjunct therapy. You know, learn an instrument. Paint a sunset.”
“Erasmus.”
“Or maybe just plain old electroconvulsive therapy. It’s amazing how relaxing eight hundred milliamps of electricity can be when applied properly —”
“I hate you.”
“You based me on yourself, Kyle. Which means that you hate yourself. Exactly the sort of thing a good therapist would —”
“Gah!” He reached for the off switch.
“No, wait!” Erasmus said. “Don’t turn me off again. Really. Let me help you. That’s why you made me.”
Kyle sighed. That was true. He closed Lefty’s cage and dropped in a yogurt treat. “Okay. So help.”
“You have to drop the cat thing. Really. Think about it. First of all, where would you get the cat? A pet store? Then you’re stuck with a pet cat that you don’t want. And Lefty doesn’t like cats.”
This, too, was true. Lefty had been known to attack cats. He was an unusually aggressive and brave rabbit.
“I don’t really need the whole cat. Just some DNA to clone it from. I could just go get some fur from —”
“Fine. Assume you get the cat DNA. What then? The biochemical forge isn’t ready yet — you still need some perchloroethylene and dihydrogen monoxide. At the very least. And you have to get the nuclear reactor running in order to power it.”
All true.
“I have an idea, though,” Erasmus said. “It’s very sneaky. You’ll like it.”
Kyle leaned closer to Lefty’s cage, watching the rabbit’s nose twitch as he chomped his way through the yogurt treat. As Erasmus explained his plan, Kyle smiled a slow, deliberate smile.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
Mairi called him a few moments later. “Aren’t you picking me up?” she asked.
“Picking you up?” Kyle asked.
“Did you forget?”
“Of course not,” Kyle lied, then covered the phone with one hand. “What did I forget?” he asked Erasmus.
“Astronomy Club,” Erasmus reminded him.
“Right.” He uncovered the phone. “I totally did not forget about Astronomy Club. I was just leaving now.”
“Okay.”
He hung up. He had forgotten about Astronomy Club. But this was actually a good opportunity for him. After all, Mighty Mike patrolled the skies every night at this time, often ranging far beyond Bouring to lend a hand in neighboring towns. This meant that Kyle would get some time alone with Mairi, time to see if he couldn’t coax her into seeing Mike for what he truly was.
“Don’t forget the costume,” Erasmus reminded him.
The costume. Right. That was part of the plan. Erasmus’s genius plan. (Which meant it was really Kyle’s genius plan, since Erasmus was Kyle, in a manner of speaking.)
The plan was utterly simple and completely flawless, like all good plans.
Basically, Kyle needed to become a hero.
It was simple. He would dress as the Azure Avenger and do some sort of good deed. People would begin to admire him. Then, it would be a simple matter to goad Mighty Mike into attacking him. After all, Mike had viciously attacked him on Mighty Mike Day, when Kyle was just trying to shut down the Pants Laser. It would be easy to make Mike attack him.
And when people saw Mike attack their beloved Azure Avenger, they would turn on him.
Simple.
So Kyle tossed his costume into his backpack, along with some snacks. At the last minute, he decided to take his MiMiRDAA with him, too. (It needed a shorter name, he decided. From now on, he would just call it MiMi.)
He slung the backpack over one shoulder and walked down the street to Mairi’s house. The night was cool and crisp — a perfect fall evening. The sky was cloudless. It would be a great night for stargazing.
Mairi’s house was only a couple of blocks away, on the way to school. Kyle knocked at the front door. As always, he was amused by the sign out front that read, VISIT THE HISTORIC BOURING LIGHTHOUSE! and had directions and information about visiting hours. Mairi’s mom just wouldn’t give up on that lighthouse.
Mairi opened the door. “I’m glad you didn’t forget,” she said as they walked toward school.
“How could I forget this?”
“Can you take your earbuds out? It’s rude to listen to music while we’re talking.”
Kyle took out Erasmus’s buds and tucked him away in his backpack. “Sorry.”
“You wear them all the time now. What’s so amazing that you’re listening to it so much?”
“Uh … It’s an audiobook about Cagliostro. He was this trickster in the —”
“You and your pranks.” She sighed, her breath a tiny plume on the night air. “When are you going to give up that stuff?”
Kyle bristled. Mairi understood how important his pranks were to him. “I don’t do them for me, you know. I do them to —”
“— to show the world how silly it is so that people will shape up. I know. I just wonder … Isn’t there another way to do that?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Lead by example, maybe?”
Kyle stiffened. “Like Mighty Mike, you mean?”
Mairi shrugged. “Why are you so jealous of him?”
“I’m not.”
“I can totally hear it in your voice.”
“Can not.”
“Can so.”
They walked in silence for a few moments.
“Maybe a tiny bit jealous,” Kyle admitted, for reasons he didn’t quite understand.
“You don’t have to be, Kyle. No one expects you to be Mighty Mike. You’re you. That’s what matters.”
It was the sort of thing a parent or a teacher would say, but for some reason, when Mairi said it, Kyle didn’t want to throw up.
At the school, they went around back to the football field, which was bordered on one side by a massive cornfield that stretched as far as the eye could see. A chill ran through Kyle. He hadn’t been here since the night of the plasma storm. And now here he was with ten other kids and two teachers, gazing up at the stars….
Which one did Mighty Mike hail from? Kyle wondered. Of the millions of stars in the universe, around which one spun the planet Mike called home? What were the people like there? Why had they sent Mighty Mike here? What was his real mission? What was he up to on Earth?
He shivered and tossed his backpack on the ground next to Mairi, who was already lying on her back, looking up into the sky. Kyle sat cross-legged next to her and craned his neck. He tuned out Miss Schwartz, who was pointing out Ursa Major and Mars and Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper. Kyle knew the stars very well already.
“Where’s Pegasus?” Mairi whispered.
Kyle pointed. “There.”
“I don’t see it.”
Kyle lay back and took her hand. “Here. I’ll show you.” He pointed her finger. “That’s called Markab. It’s the alpha star in Pegasus. They call it Alpha Peg. Then you trace down to this one here — Scheat. It’s the Beta Peg. And you go this way and you see the wings, see?”
Mairi smiled. “I see it now. Thanks.”
He let go of her hand.
“I love the story of Pegasus,” she said. “I like that even though Bellerophon did something wrong and was punished, Zeus didn’t punish his horse. And Pegasus got a job as Zeus’s horse, w
hich is cool.”
Kyle snorted. “Bellerophon was just trying to put Zeus in his place. Zeus overreacted.”
“You would think that.”
Kyle sat up. Miss Schwartz was blathering about Mars, getting most of her information wrong. Kyle wished he had brought some glowing putty. He’d whipped up a batch the other night. It would have been fun to spread the stuff around and have Miss Schwartz try to explain what it was.
“Are we going to get hit by meteors?” asked a little kid. Some Astronomy Club members had brought younger brothers and sisters.
“No, that’s over with,” Miss Schwartz said.
And they weren’t meteors anyway, Kyle thought. Plasma curtain, people! Plasma! Yeah, the glowing putty would have been perfect….
“Did you bring anything to eat?” Mairi asked. “You said you would.”
“Yep,” Kyle said absently, still imagining what he could do with the glowing putty. “In my backpack.”
Mairi rolled over and grabbed Kyle’s backpack, dragging it over to her. She unzipped the big pouch.
Kyle spun around at superspeed, not even aware he was doing it. If anyone had been watching him in that moment, they would have seen only a vaguely Kyle-shaped and Kyle-colored blur in the air.
“No!” he shouted to Mairi. “Don’t!”
He was so loud that everyone turned to look. “Kyle, please keep it down for those students who do want to hear what I have to say!” said Miss Schwartz.
Kyle didn’t care about Miss Schwartz and her lecture or the other students. He didn’t care about anything right now except for the fact that Mairi was about to look inside his backpack.
Where he’d stuffed his Azure Avenger costume.
“Don’t go in my backpack,” Kyle told her.
Mairi was frozen, the backpack open in her lap, one hand poised to peel back the flap. “What is with you, Kyle?”
Kyle’s brain could calculate the movement of atoms, the density of alloys, the speed of lava running downhill, and the number of kittens born in a three-mile radius in the past ten minutes (ninety-seven — go figure), but at that moment, his superpowerful brain couldn’t come up with a reason for Mairi not to look in his backpack. Other than the truth, of course. Which totally was not an option.