The bear then yelped and retracted its claws.
“Yeah, it takes more than that to hurt me!” I told the bear. The bear stopped struggling, apparently figuring out there was nothing it could do to hurt me.
I zoomed forward, grabbing another big bear. I squeezed this one a little harder. The force of my grip knocked the bear out. I flew the two bears out to the forest, far away from people.
I repeated the process over and over until I had transported all the bears back to their neck of the woods. Now the trick would be to convince the bears to stay where I’d put them.
I landed next to the park rangers, hoping they would have some idea.
“You people have any idea why this happened?”
They all shook their heads. One of the rangers, an older man stepped forward. “I’ve been here thirty years and have never seen anything like this.”
“Any idea how we can prevent this from happening again?” I asked.
“Nope,” they all said.
“I can help,” I heard.
I turned to see a small reddish-haired girl with pigtails standing behind me. She put her hands on her hips and smiled. “Hi Super Teen,” she said to me without opening her mouth.
“Ah, who are you?” I asked. “And how are you talking without moving your lips?” I added.
The cute little girl smiled. “My name is Piper Terry,” she said, once again in my head without moving her lips. “I’m new in town! I just moved here with Aunt Alicia and Uncle Arty. They’re professors at the University.”
“Okay, but that still doesn’t answer my question,” I said.
“Oh right, sorry. I’m nervous about finally meeting you. You’re my idol!” the little girl gushed.
I might have blushed a little. “Thanks but…”
“Right! Sorry, I get distracted sometimes. Ah, I can talk to animals,” Piper said.
“Can you come with me to talk to the bears?” I asked.
Piper smiled. “Of course!” she said out loud.
An older looking man and woman came running up to us.
“Piper, honey, please leave Super Teen alone,” the woman said. She looked at me. “I’m sorry, Super Teen, our little Piper can be quite the handful.”
“Actually, I think she can help me,” I smiled.
The man alongside her said, “Piper, you told her about your abilities?”
Piper nodded. “I figured if anybody would understand, it would have to be Super Teen.”
“Good point,” the man conceded.
“I take it you are Piper’s aunt and uncle?” I asked.
“Yes, we are both zoologists at the university. My name is Alicia and this is my husband, Arty.” Alicia said.
“Piper has truly amazing powers,” Arty explained.
“Do you mind if I take her to the bears? I believe she can help.”
Alicia and Arty both look at Piper. Piper nodded excitedly. “Please, I do want to help.”
“Go for it!” Alicia said.
I whisked Piper up into the air.
“This is so cool!” she laughed.
“It is,” I agreed.
“Any ideas why these bears have gone berserk?” I asked.
“I just picked up thoughts of confusion!” Piper told me. She looked at the bears and waved. “Hi guys!” she said.
The bears growled at her.
“They say hi,” Piper told me. She turned and concentrated on the bears. “They say they have no idea why they did what they did. They actually feel very sorry about it but they promise it won’t happen again. They don’t want to hurt people,” Piper explained to me. “Although they really do like people food,” she added. “They say it’s very tasty, especially after eating forest berries all the time.”
I smiled. “That’s good to hear, but how do I know I can trust them?” I asked.
Piper turned back to the bears. She then turned to me. “The bears said they have no idea why they went bear-serk, I think they were trying to make a joke. But they say that brown bears are nice and you should trust them.”
I pondered her words for a moment. I really had no choice. I did have to trust the bears. I did feel though that the bears weren’t lying, they really did have no idea why they’d behaved so strangely.
I pointed at them and said, “Remember, if you act up I will be back!”
The bears looked confused. Piper looked at me. “They don’t speak English,” she said.
“Please translate,” I replied.
Piper turned back to the bears. The bears appeared to smile and nod.
“They totally understand,” Piper said. “They don’t want to mess with you. They also say they will do their best to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
“Good!” I told the bears.
I heard a growl behind me. Turning, I saw two bobcats leaping through the air at me, fangs and claws both out. I caught them both in midair.
“Down, kittens!” I ordered.
Piper turned towards the bobcats. “They have no idea why they are doing this either!” she said.
I held the big cats up in the air.
“Can you calm them down?” I asked Piper.
Piper closed her eyes and leaned towards the bobcats. “I’ve never tried this before.”
“It’s good to push your powers!” I coached, as the bobcat swung at my arms.
Piper locked her green eyes on the big cats. They stopped their squirming and started to purr.
“They say they are sorry,” Piper said. “They know humans can be silly at times but they have learned to put up with them. They have no idea why they wanted to attack you. They sense you are really powerful and that attacking you was cray-cray…”
“Did they really say cray-cray?” I asked.
“They did,” Piper said.
I lowered the two cats to the ground. They continued their purring. They rubbed up against my legs.
“They say they are sorry,” Piper said.
“Tell them…apology accepted,” I smiled.
Piper looked at the big cats. They appeared to smile before turning and running off into the trees.
“Let’s get you back to your aunt and uncle,” I told Piper.
“Sure,” she said, “but this has been fun. I love being a junior superhero.”
Dear Diary: I find it disturbing that something somewhere is making normally calm wild animals go berserk. The good news is that this problem is nothing I can’t handle, especially with Piper’s help. Of course, I wonder…does Piper have anything to do with this? After all, none of this happened until she showed up. I choose to believe she certainly didn’t do this on purpose. Could this be a side effect of her powers? Or could somebody else be up to mischief? I guess I’ll figure it out soon enough.
A New Rival
While flying back to the pool, I heard somebody calling out to me, which was weird, especially since I was about a thousand feet above the ground. But I kept hearing, “Super Teen! Lia! Slow down! Slow down!”
I turned to see Zeke flying towards me with his jetpack on his back. He flapped his arms furiously. I’m not sure if he thought that would make him fly faster. Knowing Zeke, he might have been doing it just for fun.
I hovered in my place.
Zeke crashed into me, sending us both flying backward a little. Zeke took the worst of our collision. His eyes glazed over. He looked even more confused than usual. I held him in my arms just to keep him from flying away uncontrolled.
Zeke shook his head. “Wow, do you see all those stars too?” he asked.
“Nope,” I said.
“You’re pretty solid,” Zeke told me, shaking away the last of the stars. He noticed I was hugging him. “I thought you were Adam’s girlfriend?”
“Adam and I are close, but I think girlfriend may be too strong a word,” I said. “Why do you bring that up?”
Zeke laughed. “Ha, you just said up and we are up in the air!”
“Zeke, get to the point,” I dema
nded. Zeke could be an acquired taste.
“Cause you are hugging me!” Zeke smiled. “I guess my new cologne really works!”
“Zeke, I am hugging you because you crashed into me! I didn’t want you to fall!” I insisted.
“Oh, I hear that a lot,” Zeke said. “Either I am very handsome, or I run into people a lot.”
“Let’s put it this way, I’m a thousand feet in the air and you crashed into me,” I said.
“Oh, so what you are saying is, it could go either way!” Zeke said.
“Zeke, why did you chase me down?” I asked.
He scratched his head. He scratched his butt. He farted. He smiled. “Oh, now I remember.” He hovered there smiling.
“Please tell me,” I asked.
“Right. Do you remember Paula from my school?” he asked.
“Tall girl, kind of pretty, has unusual taste in clothes and hair color, and is really smart,” I said.
Zeke nodded. “You could have just said, ‘yes I remember her’.”
“Yes, I remember her,” I sighed.
“Well, do you recall that she also wants to be a super villain?’ Zeke asked.
“Yep,” I said. “Hard to forget that.”
“Well, she texted me,” Zeke said proudly. “Not even sure how she got my number.”
“And?” I prompted.
“Maybe she googled me” Zeke guessed.
“Zeke, why did Paula text you?” I asked.
“Oh right. Well, she wants to destroy you!”
“Excuse me?” I frowned.
“Did you burp or fart?” Zeke asked me.
“I meant, please repeat what you said.”
“She…wants…to…destroy…you,” Zeke said slowly.
“Why me?” I asked.
“She’s decided that because Adam is in her class, it would be weird and uncomfortable if they were arch enemies. I mean, come on, what if Ms. Nancy paired them together on a team project? Can you imagine that? It would be so awk-ward!”
“Why does she have to be arch enemies with anybody?” I asked.
“I don’t think you can be a super villain without having an arch enemy. It’s kind of a thing!” Zeke said. “Like Superman has the bald scientist guy. Bats has Robin.”
“I don’t think Batman and Robin are arch enemies,” I said.
“Then why does Batman make Robin dress like that. Huh?” Zeke asked, shaking his head. “But you’re missing the main point here. The main point is…Paula is coming after you.”
“Why me?” I asked.
“Because ah, you’re not in her class, but you are a superhero. And you’ve saved the world and stuff. If she takes you down, it will be quite a feather in her teeth, as they say.”
“Nobody says that, Zeke.”
“I just said it!”
“I mean, it’s not a proper saying. The proper saying is… feather in your cap.”
Zeke put his hands on his hips. “Why would you put a feather in your cap? That’s just silly.”
“Why would you put it in your teeth?” I countered.
“They make amazing toothpicks!” Zeke said. “Though they do tickle your nose and make you sneeze. But they can also help clear your teeth. Of course, then you usually need to apologize to people in front of you.”
“Gross,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s what they usually say,” Zeke said.
This conversation seemed to be heading nowhere fast. I appreciated what Zeke was trying to do. But I really needed to get back to my normal kid job.
“Okay, thanks for the warning, Zeke. I’ll stay alert for anything unusual,” I said. “I doubt Paula is silly enough to challenge me out in the open.”
Zeke nodded. “Yeah, a whiff of your feet could probably put her out for a week!”
“I usually try to defeat my enemies in other ways,” I replied.
“Right, I get it, super foot odor can be embarrassing,” Zeke said. He pointed over my shoulder. “Oh, that’s not good.”
I turned and saw two mini green missiles streaking towards me.
I puffed out my chest, figuring that missiles that size couldn’t hurt me at all. The two missiles rocketed into me and exploded on contact. The blast sent me spinning away out of control. Taking a deep breath, I concentrated on pushing forward against the momentum. I stopped. I had to be a good half mile from the spot where the missiles hit me.
“That was nasty!” MAC said.
“Ha, I’ve been hit harder!” I said.
“True, but that doesn’t alter the important fact…those missiles really slammed into you!” MAC said.
I started to wonder if MAC thought of me the way I thought of Zeke. I decided not to wonder too much about that.
I noticed Paula streaking towards me. She wore green body armor with yellow mechanical wings on her back. The suit also had four long metallic arms to go along with her two normal arms.
“Paula, we don’t have to do this!” I told her.
She stopped maybe thirty yards from me. “Look, let’s keep this professional. I’ll call you Super Teen and you please refer to me by my super villain name…Snowquake.”
“Gotta say that’s a neat name. But why Snowquake?” I asked.
“Because snowflakes have six sides and I have six arms! But flakes are wimpy and I am not!” Snowquake shouted.
I had to admit that she had nailed the name.
“You know, we don’t have to do this,” I told her.
Making six fists she said. “Of course we don’t have to do this, I want to do this. I will post my victory on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. I have a camera built into my eye lens. I am so darn amazing.”
“And modest,” I said.
“Silly girl, I have no need to be modest! I am so smart.”
Her four metallic arms stretched across the sky and grabbed my arms. There were two mechanical tentacles on each arm. The claw hands squeezed tightly. My arms started to burn and freeze at the same time.
Paula, I mean Snowquake, laughed. “My tentacles and claws are made from super strong nano-steel and have freezers and heaters in them. Pretty devious. Right?”
I hated to agree with her but she had a point. These things really did sting. I pulled my arms up but the grips became tighter.
“Oh, the more you pull, the harder they dig in,” Snowquake laughed. “You may be tough, but even your limbs need blood to function.” She laughed harder. “Due to the amazing tech I built into those, the harder you pull, the tighter they become. They are nearly impossible to break out of.”
“In that case, I’d better break the connection!” I said.
Firing up my heat vision, I burnt the first claws off my left arm. Following that, I turned and burned the claws off my right as well.
Paula screamed. “No! No! No!! Those things are expensive. My parents will be so angry! I wasted my allowance!”
Free from Paula’s grasp, I flew at her. “Time to clip your wings!” I said.
Paula’s wings started flapping furiously as she tried to back away. I moved too fast though and grabbed her by the stub of one of her tentacles. Lifting her over my head and curling my fingers into a fist, I said, “Nighty night, Paula! I’d wish you sweet dreams, but I don't like to lie!”
Paula threw her hands up in front of her face. “Wait, you’re the good guy here. You can’t hit me in the face,” she said.
“Sure I can!” I insisted.
Paula seemed calm and collected which made me sweat a little. “Well, yes you can but then you might not be able to stop Zeke from crashing into the park below us,” she laughed.
“Wait, what?” I asked.
“When I texted Zeke and he texted me back, I put a tap on his phone so I could find him; because I knew he would come and warn you, being all good and dumb and all,” Paula said.
“Okay,” I said slowly.
“That tap also now allows me to control Zeke’s jetpack with my mind. This means I’m sending him plummeting into the pa
rk below. He, being mostly dead, will probably survive but he could land on people and do a lot of damage.”
Using my super-vision, I saw Zeke plummeting towards the ground. He kept flapping his arms in the hope of slowing himself down, but it didn’t appear to be helping at all.
“Let me go and I will allow him to control his jetpack again,” Paula told me.
“But…” I said.
“Look, kid, so far I haven’t hurt anybody. In fact, I’ve taken a beating here by having you ruin my arms. Quite frankly, I am the big loser. You really should let me go…” Paula said calmly. “If not, Zeke and others will lose too.”
“I really should, at the very least, hit you with super bad breath!” I said.
“You do that and I might be too dizzy to save Zeke and the others,” she retorted.
I released my grip on her. “Go!” I ordered. “But I won’t be so nice next time we clash!” I said.
“I’m not worried about that,” Paula said. Her wings started flapping as she pulled away from me.
Looking down, I noticed Zeke still dropping towards the ground.
“Zeke is still falling!” I said.
“Yeah, I can’t override gravity!” Paula laughed. “I think you’d better catch him.”
As I zoomed down towards Zeke, I realized Paula had to have done that on purpose to assure her get away. Flying downwards and stretching outwards, I quickly closed the gap between myself and Zeke.
Zeke screamed, “I am nooooot haaaaaaaving fuuuuunnnnn!”
Lunging, I grabbed Zeke and pulled him up a split second before he splattered on the ground.
“Man, that was close,” Zeke said. “I doubt that would have killed me more but it certainly would have left a mark.” Shaking his head, he added, “I wonder what happened?”
Pulling Zeke back up into the air, I explained, “Paula took control of your jetpack and tried to crash you into the ground.”
“Man, that was NOT cool,” Zeke said. “I think she might actually like me and be playing hard to get.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s it,” I laughed.
“Yep, must be my cologne,” Zeke said.
“If you don’t mind, Zeke, I’d better get back to my normal job!”
More Trouble! Page 3