by Ross, R. J.
Double M frowns, clearly denied of his fun. “Fine,” he says, “as much as I dislike it. The money will be put into your account, Sunny, so you may put it towards your rain forest goals.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“But you will have to make a public announcement telling the world exactly what happened, and apologizing,” he says.
“But he’s the one that started it!” I complain.
“We realize that,” Dad says. “We all know exactly what happened, kid. He should apologize, as well, and we’ll see if we can get that, but you… you did break his arm, even if it was an accident. That deserves an official apology, at least.”
“Well, yeah. I did feel bad about it, anyway,” I admit. “I’ll send him a get-well bouquet, too. Maybe I could even put some of the money towards a sensitivity class for him, or something,” I decide, starting to grin.
“A wonderful suggestion,” Mastermental says, “I’ll have Max begin the negotiations. Now, tell us why our friendly police chief, here, needs to take your statement?”
“Oh…” I say, looking around. “Where’s Penski?”
“He’s inside,” the police chief says, “waiting for his lawyer. He refuses to speak to any of us until they’re here.”
“Is his lawyer coming?” I ask. “Wait! His sister! We need to warn her that she’s with a bad guy—”
Before I can finish a slightly familiar car pulls to a stop in front of the group of cops. Lydia Monk steps out of the car, looking panicked. “What have you done with my brother?” she demands, heading straight for me. I ignore her, because my eyes are glued to the driver side door of the car, which opens, and Walter Colleck steps out, straightening his tie.
“Yes, please tell us what you’ve done with my brother-in-law,” he says, a tiny little smirk playing over his face before it disappears. He walks over, placing a protective arm around Lydia’s waist. “Future brother-in-law, that is.”
“Wait, no, he’s—” I start out.
“You!” he says, smiling widely and walking over, “I have to thank you for reuniting me with my one true love!” He clasps my hand with both of his. “I can’t thank you enough.”
I feel the blood leave my face. It’s all my fault. He would have never found out about Davis, if we hadn’t gone down to try and find the Petleaves. He would never have gotten involved, right? I look over at Davis’s mom, who’s blushing slightly and leaning into his hug. I feel sick to my stomach.
“Since this is a rather difficult situation,” Mastermental says, “we have brought your brother-in-law here to discuss exactly what happened. Sunshine, perhaps you could tell us what is going on?”
“Oh… Dad? Clay is out, but Skye says he’s still in the Cape Cells,” I say. “I’m actually not sure WHAT is going on, but Richard Penski bought three Petleaves, which aren’t legal, right? Well, he bought them, and Clay was using them as a body. He tried to eat me.”
“Do you have proof of this ownership?” Colleck asks.
“He pretended to be you to buy them,” I say. “You should be just as irritated by that fact as we are.”
“Ah, yes, you told me that, but it turns out that he and I are going to be family. I can’t be angry at my future in-laws, especially when there is no proof. But I have to ask, where ARE these Pet… creatures?” he asks.
“Ah…” I say as everyone looks at me. “I sort of killed them?”
“And do you have proof that you didn’t just destroy a bush?” he says. “From what I’ve seen, there is little difference between those… things… and a bush, outside of the fact that they move. If it’s dead, well, it wouldn’t be moving, now would it?”
“That’s why you need to release my brother! He’s already gone through so much, being held captive here will just bring back bad memories! Do you understand how delicate he is?” Ms. Monk demands.
“Ma’am, your brother has been brought in for questioning, not arrested,” the police chief says.
“So he’s working with Clay?” Dad says, starting to type on the air. A hologram comes up over his wrist, showing what looks like an old-fashioned diving suit pacing. “Skye is right. He’s still in the Cape Cells.”
“Yeah, but is ALL of him?” I say. “He’s not a normal super, right?”
“No,” Dad says, grimly, “he’s not. But Double M, I need to take the kid.”
“For?” Mastermental asks.
“We have more than just that one that’s causing havoc. We need my son.”
“I see,” Mastermental says. “Then I will take care of this.” I look over at Ms. Monk and Walter Colleck, desperate to say something. “Sunshine,” he says, distracting me, “there are things that we cannot do at this time.”
I nod, gritting my teeth. “Thanks,” I say to him, and then repeat it with a glance at Century.
“But there’s still the matter of trespassing,” the police chief says.
“Check out the hole I made,” I say. “Clay kidnapped me and dragged me under, through the secret tunnel. He’s got an entire mad scientist base down there.”
“We call that a bunker,” the police chief says. “He has the permits and everything.”
“Well, it’s bigger than you think, I think,” I say as Dad jumps into the air. I bend my knees and shove off the ground as hard as I can. This time I barely even wobble! Cool exit, get!
“Wait, where’s Skystep?” I hear Century ask.
“She’s… ah, touring the facilities,” a cop says. “Do you think you could get her to leave, sir? She keeps trying to feed our K9 unit donuts.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Century says.
***
“Soooo,” Skye says. Her little “tour” of the police station has stopped in the break room, and she’s spinning around in one of the computer chairs, “there’s another of those moving bush thingies there, right?” she says, pointing in the general direction of the TV. Another rampaging Petleaf is being reported on. She stops, hopping to her feet, only to sway for a second, even though she’s not really dizzy. “Wooooo… As much as I want to look around some more, I really should call some people! Oooh, it’s time for the party line setting!”
“Ms. Skystep, this is the police’s jurisdiction,” the officer starts out, only to be ignored.
“Hey, Doris! We’re going plant hunting!” she says excitedly to the screen of her phone.
“I don’t do yard work,” a woman says.
“It eats trees, and if it gets close to our secret base, we’d be all sorts of exposed and it might drink our swimming lake,” Skye says. “Ariel, you’ll do it, right?”
“I’ll do it! I don’t want it eating my trees!” another female says. “Where will we hang the hammocks if it eats our trees? I’m on my way!”
Skye waves the phone around. “Say hi to our new police buddy,” she instructs the girl on the screen. The dispatcher blinks at the sight of THE Raindance looking at him.
“Hi, Mr. Officer!” Ariel says, waving.
“And this is the crazy monster bush,” Skye says, pointing the phone at the screen. “Meet me at… it looks like Stowett street, doesn’t it? That’s the donut shop we were planning on robbing, soon! Meet me there in ten minutes! We need to put on our shiny uniforms for this one.”
“Got it!” Ariel says. “I’ll make Doris come, too.”
“Skye, sugar,” a deep voice says from the doorway. The officer turns, shocked to see that Century had just called her that. “You need to stop bothering the nice police people.”
“I was VISITING! The doggies like me a LOT!” Skye declares. “But I’m leaving now, anyway, so you don’t get to yell at me anymore!”
“You didn’t go speak to Penski?” Century asks, more quietly.
Skye goes still, a strange look on her face. “Mastermental had my back. And—and I didn’t touch him, I just gave him a warning!” she says, defensively. “If he comes near me again, I’m telling my family on him!”
“Smart girl,” Century says as s
he runs through the ceiling.
“Family?” the officer repeats, confused. “Skystep has a family?”
“You do understand that a super’s personal life is private, don’t you?” Century says. “If you would keep this to yourself, I would be very appreciative.”
“Understood,” the officer says before standing and heading out. This tour guide job had been more stressful than work usually is. But, he thinks with a little smile, his wife is going to be SO jealous when she hears he spent time with Skystep, and got to talk with Raindance. She’s their biggest fan. He should have asked for an autograph, he realizes with a groan.
***
“So what should we do?” Pan asks Voltdrain and Adanna. They’ve been watching the news back at Pan’s plane, at least two of them are. Voltdrain is examining the plane, itself, much like a child with a new toy.
“This is a beautiful piece!” he says from where he’s got a panel open and is examining the wiring under the floor. “I would like to have one, myself.”
“You can fly, though,” Adanna points out.
“Yes, and so?” he says, looking up with a little smile. “Flint is not the only one who enjoys having toys.” He finally glances over at the screen on the wall, frowning. “They are very troublesome shrubbery.”
“It looks like the house of Benton Manteas,” Pan says.
“Do you know him, Papa?” Adanna asks.
“He is one of the biggest names in drug dealers,” he says. “I believe that you will find that the owners of these Petleaves are usually the children of very rich people, who believe that they are above the norm law. I often pay them a visit when I am in need of extra funding.”
“Because they can’t call the cops when you steal certain possessions, right?” Adanna says.
Pan gives her a smile. “Of course,” he says. “I will give you a list of addresses when we return home.”
“I do not think you should tell her that when I am still here, Señor Panther,” Voltdrain says, but he sounds amused.
“Would you like their addresses, as well?” Pan offers.
“I think we will need them sooner than you planned,” Voltdrain says, hopping out of the hatch and closing the panel. “Unless Sunny can stop them?”
Adanna frowns as another screen, and another, pop up, showing more of the plant eaters going out of control. The U.S. is starting to panic. It’s only a short amount of time before the rest of the world follows. “It might be too much for just him,” she says.
Another screen opens and Trent appears. “We’re heading out. The problem is that the best way to kill them is stun them and light them on fire. Also…” he frowns, looking over his shoulder, “they’re growing a lot faster than they did on the other planet. It might be because of the abundance of food. If that’s the case, these aren’t the ones we really need to worry about.”
“What?” Adanna says. “What do you mean?”
“The ones that go underground are the dangerous ones,” he says. “They go into a hibernation state for a while and just get bigger and bigger. They’re the ones we need to make sure to catch. According to the lady that let us stay with her, they sap the ground of all nutrients. It’s as good as killing the land, itself.”
“Are all the purchased ones accounted for?” Pan asks.
“When the chips died, we lost track of them all,” Trent says, running a hand through his short cut hair. “But from the grid we have from before, they seem to be. We just need to catch them before they manage to get large enough to hibernate.”
“Got it,” Adanna says. “Send us the coordinates closest to us?”
“It’s in your commlink. If you burn them, try not to burn anything down,” he says before hanging up.
“We’re going to need your fake hero uniform, Papa,” Adanna says. “We can’t have you saving the world, it would ruin your reputation.”
Voltdrain looks over at Pan, who has a very visible twitch under his right eye at that statement. “I have always wanted to meet al… famoso Black Cat.”
“I would prefer anything else,” Pan says as she heads to the back of the plane and pushes a button. To his regret, a wall turns and the uniform in question is revealed. “When, might I ask, did you put that there?”
“Mama did it! She’s having Kim make a copy for Robo’s birthday present,” Adanna says before pulling out a simple white uniform and heading for the restroom.
***
“Pack up everything!” Thelma shouts as she runs through the makeshift office. “Leave no trace behind. We’re going to be over the border before this blows up in our faces.”
“Thelma?” Grahmm says.
“What are you just standing there for?” she demands. “You should already be packed and in the car!”
“Thelma, we have a problem,” he says.
“YES, we have a problem! Skystep knows where we are. I might love her, but she didn’t seem very happy with me, remember? She could tell the authorities just to get revenge!” Which makes her feel sick to her stomach, and yet a little thrilled, all at the same time, but she doesn’t have time to dwell on those feelings. She wants to be in Mexico before the hour is finished. She’s already drooling over the idea of authentic Mexican cuisine.
“That’s not it,” he says. “The Little Monster… he’s gone.”
She goes still, her heart skipping a beat before she races over to the glass walls. Just as he’d said, there is only a gigantic hole in the concrete floor of Little Monster’s room. Her mind races for a few seconds before she smiles at him. “That’s just one less thing we have to worry about getting rid of. Now stop dawdling, Floyd, we’ve got a border to hop!”
He takes one last look at the hole, his palms sweaty. A cold, clammy chill runs down his spine. A part of him is shouting that he has to go after it. This is all his fault. No, he corrects himself, this is all Mr. Cage’s fault.
“Floyd, what is taking so long?” she yells.
He looks in her direction, and then he grabs the handle of the door to Little Monster’s cage, swinging it open and heading to the hole. “I can’t let this happen, Thelma,” he says. He swallows nervously before jumping into the hole.
“Floyd, you moron!” she yells after him. He doesn’t have time to respond, since he’s falling straight down the hole, which is a LOT deeper than he’d thought it would be.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“What are we doing, Pop?” I ask as he just keeps leading me higher and higher into the sky. “Shouldn’t we be going to where the Petleaves are?”
“Sunny,” he says, “you keep forgetting who you are, kid. You underestimate yourself, constantly, and it keeps you from living up to your potential. I don’t much care about the fist fighting aspect, because you’re not going into that world, but this…” he pulls to a stop and I take a deep breath of the rather thin air, forcing myself to go higher. Once I reach his side, he goes on, “you keep comparing yourself to your sister, right?”
“Wh—I don’t do that!” I lie.
“She flew before you did, she’s trying her best to take over the school system from me, and she’s only sixteen,” he lists. “She’s the perfect technopath. She might even surpass me when she’s older, which is saying a lot, but… you’re not a technopath, kid. You’re an elementalist. You’re your mother’s son.”
“Well… yeah,” I say, looking down.
“But don’t ever forget that you’re my son, too,” Dad says, moving in front of me. “Pop’s got a theory about the Superior line, and from all those tests that I’ve done on you, I’m pretty sure he’s right. Zoe might surpass me, someday, but Sunny, in some ways, you’ve already surpassed your mother. You are a Superior elementalist.” I look up, a protest already on my lips. It dies when I see the serious look on his face. “Right now you have the biggest fight you’ve ever faced, right down there. Are you going to back down from it?”
I look down. I can see the whole of the United States right now, from sea to shining sea. “It’s
beautiful,” I say, touched. “It’s also pretty hard to breathe up here,” I complain, a second later.
“You’re a Superior, kid, suck it up,” he says. “Can you find them?”
I hold out my hands, letting my mind clear. Just like I’d searched the SITEC building, I start searching the ground below me. “There,” I whisper, one Petleaf appearing in my mind. A second one appears, and a third, and so on, until I could point out each one of them on a map. “I know where they are,” I say, almost light-headed with excitement. “I can tell people where they are, and they can kill them!”
“Sure, you could,” he says, “or you could save their clothes and time and just finish them off, yourself.”
I stare at him. “There are almost a hundred of them,” I point out, when he just smirks back at me. “I almost got eaten by ONE.”
“Remember that feeling and take it out on them,” he says. “Think of all the trees, flowers, and everything else that they could be eating right now. Think of all the little kids who are watching their so-called pets eat their planet. What will happen if they grow bigger, Sunny? Do you really want to find out?”
“Can’t you do it?” I ask, desperately.
“I’m not an elementalist,” he says. “Not even Pop could do this, Sunny, only you can. You’re the hero, today, kiddo. You’re the one that can save the world.”
“You’re putting too much pressure on him, Dad!” Zoe says from my commlink. “We’re already sending teams out to try and deal with them—” Her voice is cut off with a wave of Dad’s hand.
“Sunny,” he says. “If I didn’t think you could do this, I wouldn’t ask you to. I KNOW you can do it. Do you?”
“Sometimes… sometimes I wonder if maybe I’m the dud of the family, Pop,” I admit, not daring to look at him. “I couldn’t fly until just the other day! I fall asleep all the time! I’m the slacker of the SCHOOL, much less the family! All I can do is grow pretty flowers, Pop! Compared to everyone else—”
“Stop comparing yourself to other people, Sunny!” he says, poking my forehead. “I just told you that you can do something that other Superiors can’t do, because you are you. Every minute that you mess around, going ‘woe is me’ is another tree that’s being eaten. That beautiful green world beneath you is going to be ugly and barren, and as much as I hate to admit it, I can’t stop it nearly as fast as you could. So are you going to do it or not?”