“Can't. Cassie is bringing some kids to the club this afternoon.”
She bapped my nose with her onion. “And you didn't tell us why? No solo adventures, Penelope. Solo adventures bad! We're a team.”
“It is hard to get into battling kids online when you've faced down adults in person,” Ray commented, licking the last gooey bits of rice in orange sauce off his plate. I wasn't sure if he was being silly, or his super powered metabolism made him that hungry.
Claire folded her hands on the table, eyes distant and wistful. “Yeah. Why build fake zombie rag dolls when I have the real thing waiting to unleash?”
Sitting up ramrod straight, Ray popped a fist into his flat palm. “Yes. You need toys. Toys will make everything better.”
Claire echoed him, straightening up but with a much more serious expression. “He's right. No wonder you're uninspired. All your toys are broken or in orbit around Jupiter-”
“-Pluto,” Ray corrected.
“-right now. What's a mad scientist without toys?”
“I've still got these,” I argued, fishing my jingling knot of chains and handcuffs out of my backpack. When Ray and Claire looked exactly as unconvinced as I felt, I added, “Besides, Cassie expects me to brag to her friends or something.”
Claire patted me on the back. “I'll brag for you. I love bragging. Go down to the lab and let your super power do its thing. You'll feel so much better.” Then she took a bite out of her fried onion.
So, first thing after the school bell, I wandered down to the club house. By propping my shoulder against it and shoving, I managed to get the front door decently open so I could get in.
What was I going to make? A front door would be nice. A little security, in case, oh, my parents decided to drop by. Maybe something cool, with interlocking gears.
My super power did not rise to the bait, but I rose about six inches into the air when a loud bang made me jump.
Ray had jumped down the elevator shaft instead of calling it back up. He swaggered over to me wearing the gloating joy of someone who could do that kind of thing and have foot bones instead of piles of mush on the end of his legs.
He turned his grin up from nine to ten for me, flourishing one hand. “And what insidious- I'm sorry, you're a super heroine now. What righteous instruments of justice seethe within your mighty noggin today, eager to burst forth like a technological Athena?”
I gave him a flat stare, trying desperately to keep my lips straight and a giggle from breaking into my voice. “A door. I'm making a door, Ray. Except I'm not making a door, because my super power hates making anything ordinary and useful.”
“Then make it extraordinary and excessive. Design a series of ever-more-ridiculous airlocks, like you see on prehistoric spy shows.”
I stopped for a second, listening to the silence in the back of my head. “Nothing. No… wait-” I winced. There was an image, all right. I shook my head to get rid of it. “No, sorry. I'm not building a clubhouse for school kids with spikes and meat grinders if you get the pass code wrong. Ugh.”
Ray started to snort with laughter, but cut off when the elevator went humming and rattling upwards. It came back down with the heaviest load I'd yet seen, five people! There was Claire, preening in front of new guests, Cassie with her hands in her pockets, Will fidgeting awkwardly, a boy so small he had to be a sixth grader, and the goth girl from Geometry class.
Okay, granted, no surprise she had super powers. I still wasn't expecting to see her.
Claire glided up to stand next to me, her hand on my lower back as she waved up and down my body like a model showing off a really super expensive refrigerator. “And this is the head of the club, the mad genius herself, Penny Akk.”
“I'm Theodore!” the brown-haired eleven-year-old squeaked. Unless he had vibration super powers, he was way too excited to meet me.
It was cute, actually. My smile came back. I hadn't noticed it was hiding.
“Teddy,” Cassie corrected. He glared up at her.
The goth girl looked a lot less excited. She was wearing a completely different black dress today. It had petticoats, ruffles, laces, an actual corset – it must have cost a fortune. Her parents had to be super villains to afford multiple outfits like that. She hung back by the elevator, eyes looking everywhere but at me, one hand buried in her satchel with the knife-wielding cartoon girl emblem, and mumbled, “Barbara Tinsley.”
I must have jumped in shock, because Barbara gave me a weak, embarrassed grin, finally meeting my gaze. “You've met my sister Abigail.” She had peculiar eyes. They looked hazel at a glance, but there were flecks of stranger colors in them, like red and gold and purple, changing when you saw them at different angles. This was She Who Wots' sister, alright. Once I corrected for the dyed black hair, Barbara even looked kind of like me, plus about two or three years.
“Uh…” I didn't know what to say.
She let out one, brief little laugh, like an escaping bubble. Rather than ashamed, my knowing Barbara's sister was a terrifyingly insane eldritch abomination haunted sorceress with brown braided pigtails exactly like mine relaxed her. A little, anyway. The hand clutching the strap of her satchel waved a few fingers. “It's okay. She doesn't care about her secret identity.”
Cassie took the side of me opposite Claire, clapped her hands, and rubbed them together eagerly. “I've been waiting to do this since Penny asked me. Do you guys want to be heroes, or villains?”
“I want to be a hero!” Teddy declared immediately.
“Huh,” went Will. His mouth hung open. The question had hit him as hard as it did Cassie.
Claire tossed her platinum hair, tilting her hips and arching her back to show off the curves every girl in school envied. “I want to follow in my mother's footsteps.”
Will blushed. He blushed big, his whole face turning almost the ginger of his hair. He wasn't being shy. That was an absolutely appropriate reaction for anyone who knew where the Minx's footsteps led. I was just almost kinda used to Claire's eagerness to live a life both as criminally and romantically adventurous as her mother.
Barbara eased away from the elevator and the rest of us, sitting daintily on a metal chair Ray slid into place silently for her. She was back to studying her high heeled shoes again. “I don't really want to do heroing or villainy. I'm here because my step-mom told me to come. She said it only makes sense that I'll make friends in a club with other kids who have super powers.”
“But you do have super powers, right?” Cassie asked, eyebrow raised.
“Unfortunately,” Barbara muttered, her black painted lips curving up in a wry smile.
“My super powers are cool! Watch this!” Teddy shouted. He thrust a fist out in front of himself like he was throwing a punch. Fire roared up his arm, radiating heat.
“Teddy!” Cassie barked.
The fire went out. He scrunched up his shoulders sheepishly. “Sorry. Mom only lets me do sugar, and then not in the house.” Fingers spread, he shoved both hands out together. Crackling loudly, a crystal shield radiated out in front of them, hung in the air for a couple of seconds, then fell to the floor where it exploded into little grains of rock candy.
“Electricity control, of course,” Cassie bragged, holding out one arm. Blue-white light arced over it, and she walked the spark like a warm down her arm and up the other until she grabbed and reabsorbed it.
“Super speed. I just wish I had super reflexes,” Will said, rolling his eyes in exasperation.
Teddy sprang forward, telling me eagerly, “Cassie can do mad science, too. Can't you, Cassie?”
For the first time, Cassie looked embarrassed. She stuck her hands back in her pockets again, and grumped, “No. I play around with wires and batteries, but they don't do anything. I just string them up where they feel right running my power through them, or I stick wisps in them. It's like putting on a boxing glove, not inventing. Penny's the real deal.”
“Yes!” Teddy squealed, pumping his fists. “Show us ho
w you do it. I want to see you make a saw blade launcher, only with gears, and make it so Cassie can electrify it!”
For one terrifying moment, I thought my super power would bite on that, but it didn't. I put my hands on my hips and tried to look stern. 'Frustrated' would be close enough, and wouldn't require any acting. “If I build a weapon like that, my parents will be so mad, I'll wish they used it on me. I'm out of superheroing until I'm eighteen.” I cut myself off from ranting, and settled for a mere grunt of frustration.
Cassie looked more sour than I did. “We will find a way, Penny. We have to. Anyway, it's not fair. Nobody was even hurt. Malignant Marcia is fine!”
Barbara lifted her head. “That's… my fault, actually.” Rummaging through her bag, she meekly held up a plump rag doll, featureless brown except for the smiley face drawn on the head. It had pins as long as my fingers stuck through the torso and along one shoulder and arm.
We all stared at her until she explained, “I heard she got hurt trying to stop a rampage. I thought making sure she healed quickly was the right thing to do.”
Claire squinted in bafflement as she guessed, “Is that… voodoo acupuncture?”
Barbara slumped back in her chair, staring at us doe-eyed, like continuing to talk was the real act of heroism. “Sure. If I can stick a pin in somebody from a distance, and I can heal them by sticking a pin in them, then why not do both at the same time?”
“Because-” I started to say, and wheezed, grabbing the back of my head. Pain throbbed back there, where I normally saw the pictures my super power used to create.
I tried again. “My power… doesn't think… magic works like that.”
How stupid and insensitive I sounded barely had time to hit. The guilt swept away as Barbara giggled once, twice, and her eyes swirled with color. Echo thrummed in her voice, the only thing keeping it from melodious femininity as she said, “Science and Magic mean nothing, Penelope Akk. What you think are rules are but atoms dancing when their strings are pulled. I ask my puppeteer to-”
The voice cut off. Barbara threw her hands over her face, and mumbled hoarsely, “Sorry! Sorry!”
Teddy spoke for everyone except me, and maybe me just a little. “Are you kidding? That was wicked!”
Great. Now that the other kids could admit to having powers, I was the least cool person here, again.
Except when Barbara lowered her hands, it was me she looked up at with hopeful admiration. “So…,” she started.
When she hesitated, Teddy leaped in. “Yeah! I still want to see what a real mad scientist can do!”
Cassie folded her arms, her head pulled back a little as if she needed to get a look at how I'd changed. “Your power understands magic, Akk. That is just crazy. Come on. Claire told us we could watch you make something!”
That got a fake embarrassed giggle from Claire, but the apologetic grin and the nervous way she toyed with her blonde curls were an obvious act. If anything could make her feel shame, it sure wouldn't be showing me off.
She got me. I threw up my hands. “I'll try. You might as well get comfortable, because I'm having trouble getting my power to activate. I can't make any weapons, and it hates making boring, useful stuff. We've got almost no furniture. Maybe I can make some self-rearranging chairs.”
Ray, at least, was on the job, arranging dusty metal chairs from the old storerooms again. He'd been bizarrely quiet this whole time, just working in the background.
Or… maybe not so bizarre. When it was just us, he never stopped joking, so time and again I forgot that he was really shy with strangers. It must be even worse, being the only person here who still couldn't admit to having super powers. If my mom found out he had super strength, or that Claire's power made her shape change, me being Bad Penny would go from 'statistically insignificant' to 'You will wish you were just grounded, Penelope Akk.' He deserved better.
The basement went black, nothing to see except blueprints hovering in my imagination.
“Yes, cower! If you simpletons truly understood what you have just seen, you would be down on your knees worshipping me! HA! HA HA HA HA HA!”
My throat felt raw. I'd done way too much laughing. I swallowed awkwardly.
Uh, wait. That was me who just said that, wasn't it? While holding triumphantly above my head a pair of… metal gloves? I lowered them, and looked my new creation over while my dizziness cleared and my emotions swam back into place. Not metal gloves, exactly. Gloves made of gears. Hundreds of gears and little levers, tiny and interlocking with an intricacy that reminded me of the inside of The Machine. The gears rolled around when I waggled the fingers. Weird. Should I stick my hand in it?
No, they didn't fit me. That was obvious. At least, it was obvious because that was one of the pieces my super power had left behind for my conscious brain. Too bad it hadn't told me what the gloves actually do.
A little more haze lifted. Tesla's badly soiled pigeon coop mop. I'd been ranting pretty hard, hadn't I?
Yes. Yes, I had. Will and Teddy had their backs planted to the wall. Cassie hadn't retreated that far, but her chair had fallen over and she stood with her mouth opening and shutting like a goldfish. Ray was nowhere to be seen at all. Claire, of course, lounged in her seat with the easy confidence of the mad scientist's best friend.
Of our new, soon to be former club members, only Barbara was still in her seat. Her eyes were very wide, but she was smiling, so faintly I wouldn't have been able to make it out if not for the lipstick.
I cleared my sore throat.
Everyone burst into applause.
Seconds later, I was the center of a small crowd.
“That was wicked!” Teddy repeated. Mental note: Teddy had a catch phrase already.
“It was like you were a whole different person.” That was Will.
“You don't remember anything, do you?” Barbara asked, studying me up close with those somber, teasingly multicolored eyes.
Cassie had other priorities. Lifting one of the gloves out of my hands, she held it up to squint at all the gears. “What does it do?” She was retracing my mental steps. “Hey, it fits!”
With that, she left what I'd been able to accomplish behind. She slid her arm into the mass of gears, which went all the way up past her elbow like a glove off an evening gown. Cogs spun in pretty patterns as she flexed her fingers.
There was still no obvious answer to my creation's abilities until Cassie jabbed an ungloved finger into a rectangle near her elbow. “Hey, this looks like it could fit a couple of D cells! Will!”
A momentary breeze gusted around us as Will zipped over to the box of wires and batteries he'd left here on Monday. Two of said batteries were tossed through the air to Cassie, who caught them and snapped them into place in the clockwork gloves. They fit, alright. For all the good that did. The holder connected to levers, not wires.
Bending her elbow and wiggling her fingers in front of her face, Cassie went, “Huh. I wonder what happens if…” Straightening that arm, she pointed it up at the wall near the ceiling.
Sparks danced over the glove's gears. They spun into an elaborate dance, faster and faster. It took a second, maybe two seconds, until-
Blue-white light hurt my eyes as a bolt of lightning more like a laser blasted out of the glove. The 'pop' noise wasn't nearly as bad, but I had to blink repeatedly before I could see clearly enough to make out the charred, lumpy, partially-melted patch she'd left on my wall.
Teddy supplied the required, “That was wicked!”
Her face alight with villainous joy, and possibly a literal electricity-induced inner glow, Cassie spun to face me. “Can I keep these?!”
“No.” I waved my hand sharply, cutting off that thought. “My mother would kill me. She'd have me expelled. She'd shut down the club.”
That last one, at least, got Cassie's attention, and with a defeated pout, she pulled her arm free of the glove.
Naturally, Claire couldn't let any chance for chaos go so easily, and looked up at the c
eiling, tapping her chin and sounding thoughtful. “Would she? Being a supplier for superheroes isn't the same as being a hero yourself. Your dad retired from fighting crime, but he still does tech work for the community.”
It was an intriguing thought, but that wasn't the point. I just didn't want to give someone as gleefully unfocused as Cassie a major weapon! Besides, “That's not what the gloves are for.”
Ooh. Where did that come from? I knew it was true. Pointedly taking out the batteries, I studied the receptacle that held them. There was one in each glove.
Undaunted, or at least daunted in an energetic and playful way, Cassie flapped her arms around and complained, “I wouldn't even need those if Ruth and Rachel would just let me get the Upgrade. It's not fair. They weren't much older than me when they got theirs.”
Ray went from lurking in the background to sitting straight up in his seat, alert. Claire actually grabbed Cassie by the shoulders to squeal, “Someone's still doing Upgrades?!”
This enthusiasm did not budge Cassie's pout, and she folded her arms across her chest to further make her frustration plain. “If by 'someone', you mean the First Horseman, yeah, if you can convince him-”
Claire, Ray, and Barbara all exclaimed together, “The First Horseman is alive?!” Claire sounded gleeful. Ray just sounded surprised. Barbara sounded worried.
“Yeah, but retired. In hiding, even. I've met him a couple of times, and mostly he seems kind of sad, like he messed up with the whole supervillain thing. He treats Ruth and Rachel like they're his favorite granddaughters. I know he'd give me the Upgrade if they asked, but until they approve, no way.”
I listened to all that with half an ear, at most. The slots Cassie had plugged batteries into weren't perfectly shaped for them. I fished a super spring out of the dispenser, and pressed it into the metal rectangle.
It snapped right into place. Boom. Well, click, but a very triumphant click.
My superpower still didn't give me any clues what it was for. What had I been thinking about when my power went haywire? Something that must have really meant a lot, if it hit so hard that I blacked out.
Please Don't Tell My Parents (Book 3): I've Got Henchmen Page 5