The New Normal

by Katrina Kahler

  People shot up from their chairs. I rushed over to Jason. “Cover for me!” I said.

  “I have your back,” Jason told me.

  Dear Diary: Speaking in public may be even scarier than fighting giant robots. But I did it!

  Bot Battle…

  I rushed at super speed through the hallway to grab my outfit out of my book bag.

  I heard a mental broadcast from my dad, “Honey, this robot is nasty. It’s meant to bring down sky scrapers, so be careful!”

  Then I heard my mom in my head, “Since I know I can’t talk you out of this, your grandma and I are on the way to lend a hand!”

  “Thanks, Mom and Grandma!” I thought back.

  “If you need witch help, give me a shout!” Jessie thought to me.

  “Thanks all,” I thought back at them, as I opened my locker. I grabbed my bag and headed to the bathroom for a quick change.

  With everybody moving in the other direction, I had a clear path to the bathroom. Until I saw Vice Principle Macadoo standing in front of the door, that was. I stopped in my tracks. “Ah, sir, I really need to use the facilities,” I crossed my legs. “I’m way nervous…”

  VP Macadoo was a mountain of a man. He crossed his log sized arms and stood in front of the door. “Sorry, Lia but you have to use the one in the basement. It’s safer.”

  “No, I’m sorry!” I said. Okay, I needed to use my pheromone sweat power to convince VP Mac to let me pass. I just had to be careful. I wanted to influence him, not knock him. I knew my feet had to be really sweaty from both the talk and now the nerves of knowing I’d be facing a giant robot. I popped my heel gently out of my shoe, just enough until I got a slight whiff of my foot. Then I quickly popped my heel back into the shoe. VP Mac now had a silly smile on his face.

  “You will let me pass!” I said, softly but firmly.

  He smiled at me and stepped to the side. “Of course, master!” he answered.

  I shook my head. Okay, that was mega odd. “Go down and join the others, and please don’t call me master!”

  He bowed and headed off.

  I super speeded into the bathroom, changed and leaped off to fight a giant robot.

  In less than a minute, I had the robot in sight. Following the loud clangs of its feet smashing into the streets, made it easy to track. I landed on the ground maybe a quarter of a mile in front of the giant crazy machine.

  The police had the robot surrounded, but their shots, even from heavy weapons, bounced harmlessly off the bot. Mom and Grandma stood behind the police.

  “Captain Michaels, have your men stop firing, their shots aren’t doing any good against the robot, but they might harm Super Teen!” I heard Grandma command the captain.

  “Stop firing, men!” Captain Michaels ordered.

  The robot stopped in its tracks. “Ah, Super Teen. I am so filled with joy that you would show up. After all, you are the reason I am here! I want to prove to my makers that I am the most powerful machine or person or animal or vegetable on Earth!”

  I bent my knees then sprang forward at the big bad bot. I extended my fist and rammed the bot in the midsection.

  I made a little dent.

  The bot swatted me to the ground with an open claw hand the size of my body.

  I hit the street.

  “Oh, that’s going to leave a mark!” the bot laughed.

  “She can’t stop it! Fire men! Fire!!!” Captain Michaels ordered.

  The police started raining bullets at the giant bot. The bullets bounced off the bot’s hard metal surface not even scratching it.

  “Police, hold your fire! It’s useless!” I heard Grandma Betsy order.

  “Only Super Teen can stop this thing!” Mom scolded the police.

  The hail of bullets stopped.

  I rose to my feet. I saw the big “me” sized dent in the road.

  “Told you!” the bot said, thrusting a finger the size of my face in my face.

  I swung at the finger with my fist. The bot pulled away. I missed and fell again, face first into the pavement.

  “I’ve been watching you!” the giant white robot gloated. “I know all your moves before you do!” He pointed to his square robot head. “I have a lot of processing power!”

  I pushed myself up off the ground and rammed the robot between its legs. The force of my blow lifted it up off the ground. But it thrust itself back down without losing any balance.

  The bot reached down with a hand. “If I had been a human male, that attack would have made me at least talk funny,” it told me in a high pitched voice. “But I am not!” the bot continued in a trembling roar. Then, it began to squeeze.

  I felt pain for the first time since I’ve been super. A part of me didn’t like it at all. But another part of me realized that the pain made me angry. I could use that anger. I pushed out on the robot’s hand with my hands and slowly forced the big cold metal hand open.

  I shot up! I blasted the bot’s head with my heat ray vision. Two intense red beams of sheer power blazed from my eyes into the bot’s head. The head turned from white to pink, lost shape and then melted into the body! The bot stood there motionless. The crowd of onlookers cheered!

  The top of the bot started to rumble and churn. A new head popped up. “I’m built with the newest and coolest Nano technology. You break something, it repairs itself,” the robot laughed.

  Oh, this was bad, so so bad. The bot extended a fist over its head. It pounded the fist down at me. I jumped to the side. The fist shattered the road. I leaped backward. The bot struck at me again and again with multiple arms. I retreated, dodging blow after blow. I didn’t really have time to think.

  “Dad, how could you crazy scientists make such a monster robot?” I asked in my thoughts.

  “It’s because you’ve been holding back, honey!” Dad said in my mind.

  “What?” I screamed in my head.

  “Yeah, what!?” Mom screamed too. It seemed that suddenly I had a conference call going on in my brain.

  “Lia, honey, you haven’t been really pushing your powers because you’ve either been afraid of hurting somebody or you haven’t been pushed. My team and I have been developing this robot to help you be the best you can be. Exceed the limits you put on yourself!”

  The big robot lumbered towards me slowly. He shook his new head. “Oh Super Teen, I had hoped you’d be more of a challenge.” Lumbering towards me, it lifted up two of its arms and sniffed. “I haven’t even worked up a sweat!” The arms dropped and the robot laughed. “Ha! Ha! Robot humor.”

  Well, I certainly didn’t love the fact that my dad had invented a giant robot just to help push me to be my best. A little part of me thought that was kind of sweet. A bigger part thought, my gosh this is crazy! But I couldn’t let this robot hurt my town or my friends. Nope! It was not going to happen! I had to stop this huge humongous thing. I just had no idea if I could. I needed a moment to think and collect my thoughts. Problem was, I didn’t have a moment. The bot moved towards me. It's fresh head taunting. “Takes more than you to stop me!”

  From behind the robot, I saw Tomas holding up Felipe with one arm. Tomas tossed Felipe like he was a football. Felipe flew towards the giant bot yelling, “Yahoo!”

  Felipe hit the robot in the back of the head. The giant robot spun his head around 360 degrees to see what had smacked him. Felipe dropped to the ground next to me.

  “Felipe, thanks for the help! But people will recognize you now!” I told him.

  Felipe smiled. “Nah, I have a vampire blur on, regular people just see a weird streak. They have no idea what it is. Silly regular people…”

  “Okay, thanks for the little break,” I told him.

  Felipe streaked back to Tomas.

  The robot shook its head and turned back to me. “Now that was hard to compute. What isn’t hard to compute is that I am going to clobber you.”

  “Hey, Lia, this is Jessie broadcasting to you in your brain now. I’m linking you to the thoughts of your
friends.”

  I heard a variety of remarks…

  Please, Super Teen do this.

  I know she won’t let us down.

  Give him a belting– (that was from Brandon…)

  Come on Lia, launch that big ugly bot! (That had to be from Jason!)

  I smiled. I had this. Not sure how though, but I’d figure that out as I went along.

  I leaped up at the big bot, then spun and hit him with a fart, right in the face. The bot stopped for a second. “How rude!” it told me. “My air sensors tell me that I am lucky I don’t need to breathe air…”

  Yes, I figured that fart wouldn’t stop it, but it gave me time to think. I thought of eating ice cream in an igloo. Inhaling, I blasted the top of the bot with super cold breath.

  The robot froze solid. I dropped to the ground.

  The robot started to glow red. “Nice try, but I will just turn my internal heat controls up to melt this ice.”

  Now I had my chance. I leaped behind the robot. I grabbed one of its arms then leaped into the air and started spinning. The higher I went, the faster I spun. After ten or more rotations, I had created quite a lot of force. And the bot and I were way off the ground.

  “Crashing from this height, won’t harm me that much at all!” the robot laughed.

  “I figured as much!”

  Keeping my head straight as we spun, I saw the ground then space, the ground then space, the ground then space. I needed to time this just right. After about ten more rotations facing ground then space, I had the timing sorted out. I faced the ground. I rotated towards the sky. I forced myself to stop. I released my hold on the big bot, flinging it forward with all my might and sending it flying even higher into the sky. I hovered there. (Not sure how…) I watched as the robot soared higher and higher. With super vision, I saw the robot heating up. It kept flying higher and higher. I heard a little boom when the robot broke the sound barrier. I saw it drift off into space. Yep, it’d be no problem now!

  I let myself glide back down to the ground.

  “Yahoo! You tossed the robot out of the Earth’s atmosphere! Yes, that cost my company millions of dollars, but money well spent!” I heard Dad say in my head.

  I landed softly on the ground. “That was amazing!” Oscar Oranga said, rushing up to me. He stuck a microphone in my face. “Super Teen, any words for our viewers!”

  I smiled and shrugged. “I just want to do my best!” I said.

  Mom rushed over to me, holding her doctor’s bag. “Super Teen, I’m a doctor, do you need any assistance?” she asked in her most official voice. She started looking me over from head to toe.

  “I’m fine, doctor,” I replied, in my most official voice.

  Mom looked at my midsection, stopping at a large bullet hole in my shirt. She knelt down and examined the hole and looked for a wound.

  “Oh my,” she said in my head, which was even weirder with her being next to me. “You must have been hit by a ricocheting bullet….but there’s not even a burn mark on your skin…”

  I shrugged. “Didn’t feel it….”

  “Wow,” Mom said out loud. “You are fine!”

  I leaped up in the air and headed back towards my home. Yeah, I know my book bag and stuff were at school but after a day that featured an oral exam and a giant robot that I had to throw off Earth to defeat, I needed to get home.

  That night after a long shower, I had a celebration pizza dinner with Mom, Grandma, Great Grandma, Jason, and strangely enough, Jessie and Tomas and Felipe. It turns out that Felipe being half-vampire really did know I was Super Teen all along. Man, that kid is sharp. So we had pretty much everybody who knew I was Super Teen at our house, except for my dad. Mom wouldn’t let him in the door. I guess I couldn’t blame her.

  “To Lia!” Grandma Betsy said, raising a glass of milk to me!

  “To Lia!” everybody else at the table joined in.

  “Thanks, everyone! I couldn’t have done it without you!” I grinned happily back at them.

  We talked and ate into the night.

  Dear Diary: OMG! What can I say or write? Unbelievable! I can hover in the air now to the point that it’s like I’m flying. I am so strong I can throw a huge robot into outer space, at least when I’m angry. I feel I’m actually getting good at using my powers. I am developing some control. Plus, best of all, I gave an oral report and didn’t do anything to embarrass myself. In fact, the report went really well. That actually felt as good as being super.

  On the weird side (with me there’s always a weird side), it’s nice to have my father back in my life. Of course, it would be nicer if he didn’t work for the company that created robots just to test me.

  But, oh well, I guess no parent is perfect. 

  Epilogue…

  I laid awake in bed, checking my social media. Sure enough, some people complained about the damage Super Teen caused. I figured out that no matter what, you’re never going to make everybody happy. On the bright side, many more people were happy that I saved the day and were impressed by what I did. Even Chief Michaels and Wendi commented on how that robot would have done major damage to the town if it weren’t for Super Teen. Of course, Wendy did bring up the point that maybe BM Science would leave us alone if Super Teen wasn’t around. More people blamed BM Science. BM Science joined the conversation, saying they were building the city a new park and recreation center.

  My head hit the pillow knowing I had done well.

  “Honey, are you awake?” I heard Dad in my mind.

  I replied, “Yes, Dad, I am!”

  “Sorry we had to do that to you, honey….”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of strange knowing my father helped design a gigantic robot to test my limits!” I mentally sighed.

  “Believe me, honey, it’s for the world’s good!” Dad said in my head. (Yeah I’m still not used to that.)

  “Ah, why?”

  “Honey, aliens are coming! Earth will need you to be as strong as possible!”

  The end for now…

  ***

  Find out what happens next in

  Diary of a Super Girl- Book 3

  The Power of Teamwork!

  AVAILABLE NOW!!

  Thank you for reading Diary of a Super Girl: Book 2.

  If you could leave a review that would greatly help us to continue to write more books.

  Thank you so much!!!!!

  Katrina and John 

  To leave a review on Amazon.com, please click here:

  http://amzn.to/2nEJtFn

  To leave a review on amazon.co.uk, please click here:

  http://amzn.to/2nY6FyQ

  Some more great books that you may like:

  Diary of a Ghost Buster – Book 1

  Zara the Ghost Zapper

  This is another fun and exciting story of a girl with special powers. Her powers are very different to Lia Strong’s but you’ll be amazed at what she discovers she is capable of! Find out what Zara gets up to in this fabulous new series…

  If you love books about fantasy and magic crossed with modern-day middle school drama, then you are sure to love this brand new series…

  Girl Power – A Modern Day Fairy Tale

  I Shrunk My Best Friend…Ooops!

  Diary of an Almost Cool Girl Book 1:

  Meet Maddi Oops

  Julia Jones’ Diary Book 1

  My Worst Day Ever

  Body Swap - Catastrophe

  WITCH SCHOOL

  Mind Reader – Book 1: My New Life

  The Secret – Mind Magic

  Don’t forget to subscribe to our website

  Best Selling Books for Kids

  You can select any single ebook of your choice for FREE! We will also keep you updated on all our new releases, special deals and send you further free books from time to time, just to say thank you for being a valued subscriber.

  Click Here to Get Started

  About the Authors

  John Zakour is a Humor/SF/Fantasy writer with a Ma
ster’s Degree in Human Behavior. He has written thousands of gags for syndicated comics, comedians and TV Shows (including the Simpsons, Rugrats and Joan River’s old TV show). John also writes a daily comic called Working Daze.

  Katrina Kahler is the Best Selling Author of several series of books, including Julia Jones’ Diary, Mind Reader, The Secret, Diary of a Horse Mad Girl, Twins, Angel, Slave to a Vampire and numerous Learn to Read Books for young children.

  Katrina lives in beautiful Noosa on the Australian coastline.