by Charlie Wood
A blonde-haired superhero appeared in the book; he was wearing a white costume plated with gold, like an ancient gladiator, and had feathered, grey-ish wings growing from his back. He was also wielding a shining broadsword.
“Then there was the Red Wolf, who had incredible eyesight, unmatched intelligence, and the ability to hit nearly any target with his bow and arrow.”
A young Orion appeared; he was wearing his same long, red coat, and also a red mask over his eyes. After aiming his bow, he let go of an arrow, which nailed the bull’s eye of a target on the next page of the book.
“And finally,” Scatterbolt said, “there was Strike. He was a fearless daredevil with amazing agility, and also the power to control lightning.”
Strike appeared in the book; he was dressed in a midnight blue costume, with a black cape on his back and a blue mask over the lower part of his face. As he twirled a wooden bo-staff around his head that sparked with blue electricity, he looked out at Tobin and winked.
Tobin watched the image. Even though he knew full-well who the person was behind the mask, he still tried to convince himself he was wrong.
Scatterbolt turned the page; the blue-and-yellow-and-green planet appeared again. This time, it was split into dozens of countries.
“There are fifty-seven countries in Capricious,” Scatterbolt explained, “and each one of these has its own leader, who is elected in much the same way as many of the leaders of your world. We used to have fifty-eight countries with fifty-eight different leaders, but the leader of the fifty-eighth country...well, he did something very bad.”
Tobin watched as the grey-haired man in black-and-green appeared in the book again.
“This is Vincent Harris, the former fifty-eighth leader of Capricious.”
The book’s image slowly changed; now Vincent was standing behind a podium and giving a speech in front of thousands of people. Many of the people had skin that was a light shade of green, and they were all cheering Vincent’s every word. Behind Vincent, there was a gigantic flag with a green insignia of a tiger-like beast adorned on it.
“Vincent was at one time a great leader, but he was also one with dangerous, misguided ideas. He firmly believed that Earth—your world—was inhabited by alien beings who were inferior, destructive, and a threat to the rest of the universe. When it became clear that your species was moving closer toward the technology for space travel, Vincent decided he had to act; in speeches and televised events, he began to convince his entire country that Earth was a world that needed to be forcefully controlled and monitored, for the safety of Capricious.
“He became obsessed with swaying the rest of the leaders of Capricious to agree with him, but they did not, and instead they grew concerned with his fear-filled messages. They demanded that he stop these actions immediately, but his warnings about Earth only became more fierce and frightening. He was out of control, causing widespread panic about a world that didn’t even know this one existed, so the other leaders were forced to strip him of his power and put him on trial.”
Tobin watched the pages of the book; now he saw Titan, the winged-superhero, walk into a dark office on the top floor of a skyscraper. The winged-man began to look through the files of a computer, and he was very concerned with what he was finding.
“Not long after Vincent’s trial began,” Scatterbolt said, “the leader of the Guardians discovered a horrible secret: all along, Vincent had been planning to invade Earth with a team of monsters and super-villains from Capricious. He knew that your world had no superheroes to defend it, and that it would be incredibly easy for him to take control of it and rule over it, as he saw fit.”
Now Tobin saw a high-security prison in the book; Titan was walking through its halls, holding a folder of papers under his arm. When he reached a jail cell, he stuck the folder of papers through the bars, angrily showing them to Vincent, who was sitting on a bed in the cell.
“Titan confronted Vincent and told him he had discovered his plan, but Vincent grew enraged. The evil man was too powerful for Titan to take on alone, and Titan was defeated.”
On the book’s pages, Vincent held his hands out between his jail cell bars, blasting Titan with black, searing fire from his palms. The flames threw Titan all the way across the spine of the book, and he crashed onto the next page, sending the words and letters there scattering.
“More powerful than he had ever been, Vincent escaped from Capricious and traveled to your world. As he hid there with his team of super-villains, he waited and planned his invasion.
“When Strike and the Red Wolf learned what had happened to Titan, and what Vincent was planning to do on the other world, they went against the wishes of the leaders of Capricious, and traveled to your world on their own.”
Tobin now saw Strike and the Red Wolf travel through a swirling, red portal and arrive on Earth.
“The two heroes lived on your world under secret identities for months, all the while searching for Vincent. Finally, after many battles and near-misses, they found him.”
Tobin watched as Strike and the Red Wolf fought Vincent and his team in a giant, wooden warehouse. It was a brutal battle between the two heroes and many super-villains.
“Thankfully, the Guardians were victorious; they were able to disrupt Vincent’s plans for invasion, and send him back to Capricious where he belonged.”
Strike and the Red Wolf now led a bruised, shackled Vincent through a mirrored, swirling portal. When they were on the other side, the gateway snapped with electricity and disappeared.
Then the pages of the book went blank.
“So,” Scatterbolt said, “that’s everything Orion wanted me to tell you, Tobin. What do you think of it all?”
Tobin stared at the blank pages of the book. “I think, that if any of you guys actually thought that was going to make me feel better, you’re all out of your minds.”
One floor above, as Scatterbolt’s history lesson was wrapping up, Keplar and Orion were sitting at the table in Orion’s kitchen.
“The kid seems smart, O,” the dog said, handing Orion a cup of coffee. “He looks like he has a good head on his shoulders, but...he’s so damn young.”
“I know,” Orion sighed. “It’s horrible, isn’t it? I always swore it would never come to this. I don’t know how I ever let it get this far.”
Keplar shook his head. “It’s not your fault, O. You know that. This woulda happened to the kid no matter what we did to try and stop it. Now, we just gotta do what we gotta do, and make sure nothing else happens. But you had absolutely nothing to do with what happened to him.”
Orion drank from the coffee. “I know. I keep trying to convince myself of that.”
Outside, in the tops of the tall trees that reached all the way to Orion’s apartment, a creature was rustling in the green leaves: it was a robotic chameleon—a half-organic, half-mechanical creature, with a tarnished metal head and a twisted body made out of wood and springs. The being had found Orion’s apartment after using the coordinates gathered from the third blood bird, and was now moving on to the next step of its mission: scanning the building with its bionic eye.
After spotting Orion through the kitchen window, the robo-chameleon chirped loudly and then leapt onto the building with a springing of its legs; instantly, its body changed from the color of the green leaves to the color of the grey apartment walls. In little flits of movement, it then dashed down to the window, reached toward it, and stuck one of its suction cup-like feet onto the glass. It could now see and hear everything that was happening inside.
With its mission accomplished, the robo-chameleon finally raised its head toward the sky and blinked its eyes. As it began to emit a soft beeping sound, like a satellite giving off a signal, it beamed the images and sounds of the apartment to someone else—someone far, far away…
&nbs
p; In the security center of his skyscraper, Vincent Harris was studying one of his monitors. Onscreen, he could see Orion and Keplar, having their conversation in Orion’s kitchen.
“Where are we going after Scatterbolt’s done talking to the kid?” the dog asked.
“Well,” Orion replied, “there aren’t many places we can go where they won’t come looking for us, but Gallymoora is one of them. As soon as they’re finished in the library, that’s where we’re headed.”
Keplar grumbled. “Great. Gallymoora. My favorite place.” He finished his beer and tossed it into a recycling bin. “Well, you’re right about one thing, bro: they won’t ever look for us there.”
Vincent smiled, pushing a button on the intercom in front of him. “Rigel, send the Hoplites to Gallymoora immediately. Have them wait there until I give further word.”
“Yes, sir,” Rigel’s voice crackled through the speaker.
Pleased with himself, and with how the surveillance mission had succeeded, Vincent looked back to the screen with a smile. But then he watched Orion: the old man brought his coffee mug to his mouth, but his hand was trembling so much that he had trouble sipping from it without it spilling. He was younger than Vincent, but looked so much older.
Vincent watched the image in silence. The smile was now gone from his face.
CHAPTER NINE
After taking off from the roof of Orion’s apartment building, the Sky-Blade was in the clouds again, soaring to its next destination. In the cockpit, Keplar was using the time to catch up on his sleep, with his cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes and his feet propped up on the control panel, while Scatterbolt was standing on the pilot’s chair next to him, doing his best to steer the ship along its way. The robot’s metallic arms were just about long enough to reach the controls, and it was a bit of a struggle, but he didn’t mind, as flying was one of his favorite things to do in the world, right up there with playing poker and reading about frogs.
In the cabin of the ship, Tobin was sitting all the way in the back, as far away from the others as he could possibly be. Orion was also in the cabin, but he was sitting up near the front, sharpening his arrows with a square stone.
“You must be very frightened still,” Orion said, trying to get the boy to open up. He had barely spoken since they left Quantum City.
“No,” Tobin said, his arms across his stomach. “Nauseous. Dizzy. Kinda feel like I’m dying. But that’s about it.”
Orion chuckled. “That sounds like fright to me.”
“I guess. Either that or my body is collapsing in on itself. One of the two.”
Orion laughed again. “You haven’t asked me any questions about what Scatterbolt told you back at the library. I thought there’d be plenty of stuff you’d want to know more about.”
Tobin grabbed the sides of his chair as the vehicle banked and picked up speed, then looked across the cabin at Orion. The old man looked human, but that hadn’t been the case with almost everything else Tobin had seen so far, so he wasn’t taking any chances.
“No offense,” the boy said, “but I don’t really feel like talking. To anyone. I just…want this over with.”
Orion nodded. “I understand. But if you want to talk, I’m here.”
A silence passed. Orion looked out the window next to him. “All right, Scatterbolt. You can take us down now.”
“Here?” the robot asked. “But we’re not near the city yet.”
“I know.” Orion stood up and slung his quiver onto his back. “But we’re gonna walk the rest of the way. It’ll be safer.”
“Okey dokey,” Scatterbolt replied. Then, with an easy push of a lever, he brought the ship slowly downward.
Once the Sky-Blade’s engines turned off and it came to a stop, Tobin walked out its side door and down a long metal ramp that jutted into the ground. Scatterbolt had landed the gleaming sky-ship in a forest, but it was the swampiest forest Tobin could ever imagine: the ground was nothing but brown sludge, with large, random patches of moss resting on top of the sticky sludge like bizarre islands. There were also thick, winding trees crawling out of the moss islands, which seemed to be scratching at the drifting clouds with their brittle, leafless branches. Heavy thickets of fog were floating through the area above the ground, like curious residents inspecting the new arrivals in the sky-ship, and strange animal calls and insect clicks were bleating out from all around the deep darkness.
“Well,” Tobin said, stepping onto the mucky ground, “this is the creepiest place I’ve ever seen.”
Behind him, Scatterbolt walked off the ship, and his big, round feet sunk into the mud, all the way up to his ankles.
“And the grossest,” he added with a sneer.
Next, Keplar walked off the ramp, waving his hand at the football-sized horsefly buzzing around his nose.
“And buggier than hell, too,” he grumbled.
Finally, Orion walked off the ship, picking up a long skinny tree branch and using it as a walking stick. He moved ahead of the others and toward the dark forest, as if it was a completely normal thing to do.
“Which is exactly why it’s safe for us to hide here,” he said. “Follow me, everybody. A friend of mine is waiting for us up ahead.”
Following the old man, Tobin stuck close by Keplar, as he was growing more nervous with each new sound coming from the trees.
“You guys actually know somebody that lives in this place?” he asked the dog.
“Yeah. Her name’s Aykrada. She used to be a superhero in this place not too long ago, but now...well, there’s not much of a place left.”
To his right, Tobin noticed a couple of small, shanty-like houses on the edge of the forest, but they were rundown and abandoned, as if nobody had lived in them for months.
Tobin was just about to ask Keplar another question when the football-sized horsefly returned and landed on the boy’s shoulder. He turned and saw its kaleidoscope eyes staring back at him.
“Aaaaahh!” Tobin screamed. “Get it off, get it off!”
Jumping up and down, Tobin waved his arms and stomped his feet, until finally the bug flew away, letting out an insulted little buzz as it zoomed into the forest.
Keplar laughed loudly, throwing an arm around Tobin’s shoulder. “Ain’t hanging out with superheroes fun?” he asked with a grin.
Behind Tobin and Keplar, Scatterbolt was doing his best to keep up with the group, but his feet kept getting stuck in the mud, and he had to pull them out with loud, sticky SHLURPS!
“Hey!” the robot called, shaking the mud from his foot. “Hey, guys, wait up! C’mon, wait for me!”
Stepping forward, the robot avoided another deep puddle of sludge, but then the horsefly returned again and landed in front of him. This time, as it blocked the robot’s path, it licked its lips and drooled.
“Oh, no,” Scatterbolt said, holding his hands out. “Stay back, boy. Don’t you get any funny ideas.”
But, the horsefly was too curious to regard the robot’s warning, and it stepped closer.
“All right,” Scatterbolt said with a shrug. “You asked for it.”
Suddenly, the robot’s arm quickly drew back into his body. Then, after a few whirs and clanks, a new arm popped out—this one had a spray can on the end of it where its hand should be. A label on the can read: BUG-BE-GONE!
“Open wide,” Scatterbolt said with a smile.
The nozzle on the can descended, and instantly a toxic spray shot out from it and enveloped the horsefly. The bug flew away, coughing and hacking, finally taught its lesson to keep its distance.
Relieved, Scatterbolt ran forward through the mud and caught up with his friends.
“Hey, guys! I almost just became something’s dinner! Hey, guys, c’mon! Wait for me!”
After a short (but skin-crawlingly cr
eepy) trek through the dark forest, Orion, Tobin, Keplar, and Scatterbolt came upon a faded billboard: WELCOME TO GALLYMOORA! it said, and underneath the words there was a picture of a lively, tree-lined city, awash in sunlight and home to a magnificent marble fountain. The city looked nothing like the area Tobin had seen so far.
Then, looking down from the billboard, Tobin realized somebody was waiting for them underneath it: it was a beautiful woman, wearing a long, brown dress. She was about forty years old, with friendly green eyes and wavy, brown hair. When she saw the group approaching her, she walked toward them with a smile.
“That’s not a cane, is it?” she asked. “I know you said we were getting old, Orion, but, geez, it can’t be that old, can it?”
Orion laughed and embraced her in a hug. “No, not for you, but definitely for me.” He looked her in the eyes. “Thank you for helping us, Aykrada. It really means a lot to us, more than you could ever know.”
She waved him off. “Don’t be silly, Orion. You know as well as I do that we need your help much more than you need ours. We’re thrilled to have you here.”
The old man led Aykrada toward the others.
“I’m sure you remember Scatterbolt,” he said, motioning toward the robot.
“Of course. How are you, Scatterbolt?”
“Fine, thank you! Nice to see you again!”
Orion smirked. “And then there’s Keplar.”
Aykrada gave the dog a once-over, narrowing her eyes. Tobin noticed that Keplar was very nervous.
“Hi, muh-ma’am,” the husky said, offering his paw for a handshake. “It’s very nice to see you again, ma’am. I hope we can help you out while we’re here. Ma’am.”