Cornelius saw no point in deceiving them. They would find out eventually anyway. So he told the truth. “I’m surveying my kingdom.”
When the heroes looked blank, the roach added, “Surely you’ve heard the expression ‘ruler of all he surveys.’ Well, I’m surveying.”
Fly Girl still felt confused. “Why? Why are you doing all this crazy stuff?” Of course, even as she asked, Elle realized “crazy stuff” was what Crazy Cockroach did!
Cornelius blithely explained, “I do this ‘crazy stuff’ because I can! Besides, it’s the dream of every cockroach to rule the world. But I, I alone, have the means to achieve that goal!”
Then he laughed his horrible, cackling, crazy laugh before going on. “At dawn I will lead my army of bad bugs against the world. Soon everyone will see that my evil army is unstoppable!”
Suddenly the egotistical villain noticed Eugene’s absence. “Where’s the third loser in your tepid trio?”
Before Fantastic Flea could stop her, Fly Girl blurted the answer. “My genius brother is inventing an antidote to your evil potion.”
The hills of trash and recyclables echoed with Crazy Cockroach’s obnoxious laugh. The villain laughed loud and long.
“What’s so funny?” Fantastic Flea finally demanded.
Cornelius shook his head. The 9,000-times-enhanced cockroach was too smart to reveal his formula’s secret ingredient. Instead, he basked in the knowledge that, “Super Fly will never discover the secret of my formula. NEVER!”
Fly Girl shuddered. Could Crazy Cockroach be right?
The evil roach ranted on, “My plan will work. We stand on the brink of world domination!”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Fantastic Flea asked.
Crazy Cockroach grinned his ugly grin. “I speak in the royal we, as future King of the World.”
Fly Girl looked around. “Oh, I thought you meant you and your witless assistants.”
At that moment, Number 1 and Number 2 were busy filling juice boxes. At least, that’s what they’d been doing when Crazy Cockroach left them. Knowing how reliable his henchbugs were, the villain muttered, “Perhaps I should check on the Dungs.”
Crazy Cockroach didn’t want to leave anything to chance. In the morning, the entire world would belong to him!
All Is Lost
The two superheroes spent most of the night trying to restore order to a town driven mad by the mad villain’s insidious potion. By the time Fly Girl and Fantastic Flea returned to the lab, they discovered Super Fly passed out on the floor.
Elle felt worried. “Eugene, are you all right?”
Her brother didn’t even bother lifting his head off the carpet. “Just . . . exhausted,” he replied wearily. “I . . . tried everything, and I still didn’t find the answer.”
“What are we going to do now?” a worried Elle chimed.
“But I did find the cure for stuttering,” Eugene said proudly. “Notice I don’t stutter anymore.”
“You never stuttered in the first place, knucklehead,” said Elle.
“Oh, then never mind,” replied the exhausted superhero. “I guess we should start panicking now then.”
Fantastic Flea tried to buoy his friend. “You will find the solution. You always do.”
But Super Fly didn’t feel so sure. Had that roach finally outsmarted him? He whined, “It was my invention that made him 9,000 times smarter. Why can’t I figure out what’s in his formula?”
Fantastic Flea and Fly Girl didn’t know. But they did have some scary news to share.
Elle began, “Crazy Cockroach plans to begin his invasion at dawn.”
Eugene sighed. Time was running out! “We must do something!”
So the three superheroes spent the next hour brainstorming ways to stop Crazy Cockroach’s evil army.
Fantastic Flea muttered, “There must be some way to trip them up.”
Eugene briefly brightened. “Trip them! We could dump tons of banana peels beneath the feet of the marching army.”
Elle asked, “Where would we get all those peels?”
Eugene drooped. “I don’t know. Monkeys?”
“What about a giant shoe?” said Fred. “Like how Cornelius is always tripping the smaller bugs in school.”
“Same problem. Where do we get a giant shoe?” asked Elle.
Then Elle suggested, “Maybe we can whip up a hurricane to sweep the evil army off its feet.”
Fred liked that idea. “We could tell all the good bugs to stay inside.”
Eugene felt discouraged. “One problem: how do we whip up a hurricane?”
The superheroes considered flying in circles to stir up a funnel cloud, then dismissed it.
“We’ll probably just get dizzy,” Elle reasoned.
Eugene agreed. “I don’t think we could create a cloud big enough to wipe out Crazy Cockroach’s whole army.”
After a few minutes of head scratching, Fred announced, “I’ve got a really far-out idea: let’s fake an alien landing!”
Elle understood. “That might scare the evil army into running away.”
Eugene loved the idea of fake aliens. But he fretted, “What if they don’t run away? What if they attack our fake aliens? Besides . . .”
Fred finished for him, “How can we fake an alien invasion before sunrise?”
Discouraged, the three friends soon changed out of their superhero costumes. Their spirits were mighty low.
Eugene blamed himself. “Fred and I were having so much fun being best buds again, we neglected our superhero duties. We should’ve prevented our fellow students from drinking the juice boxes in the first place—instead of counting on creating a cure for Cornelius’s evil formula.”
Elle argued, “It’s not your fault. Crazy Cockroach had Number 1 and Number 2 working overtime on supply. Before we recognized the danger, there were just too many bad bugs to stop.”
Not knowing what else to do, the three friends went to the school bus stop as usual. They were the only bugs there.
Elle observed, “Something’s very wrong.”
The three heroes looked all around. The only thing out of the ordinary was the lack of other students. Where was everyone?
Then they felt a rhythmic movement beneath their feet. The ground shook like a drum under a steady beat.
Their enhanced hearing soon recognized the sound of many boots pounding the pavement. Crazy Cockroach’s army was on the move!
In their spiffy uniforms, Number 1 and Number 2 commanded their regiments like real officers. But, our heroes wondered, whom were they going to attack?
Elle suggested, “I guess we’d better change back into our superhero suits.”
In seconds, thanks to their super speed, the three heroes were back in spandex and flying high above Stinkopolis. The view was alarming: huge hordes of bugs marched in unison.
Even at a glance, Eugene realized this was way more than just the student body of Brown Barge. Thanks to their super hearing, the three heroes soon had an explanation.
Number 1 and Number 2 had given all the Jeremy-Juiced bugs extra juice boxes to give their parents. So by the time parents wondered why their children were acting so strange, the parents had drunk the Jeremy Juice too. So the army grew, gulp by gulp, until it was massive!
By the time they neared the edge of the dump, Crazy Cockroach’s evil army included almost every bug in Stinkopolis. The good and the bad were now all bad. And they were all under Cornelius’s command.
Just as the three heroes wondered what they could do against such a massive army, they heard a voice calling out from below.
“What’re you doing?” Hoops Hornet asked.
Super Fly replied, “We’re superheroes, and our mission is to stop the evil army.”
The tough hornet laughed. “Good luck with that.” Then she added, “I’m going to school so I can have perfect attendance. Also, I want to be able to say there was one day when I was the smartest bug in school.” Then she laughed again. “Because I’l
l be the only bug in school!”
When Hoops turned around, she almost ran into the Flystein and Flea parents. Before Elle had time to finish asking, “What’re Mom and Dad doing here?” the heroes watched in horror as their parents joined the evil bug army. Super Fly moaned, “Someone must’ve given them the juice!”
Fantastic Flea clenched his fists in frustration. “What’s in that stuff?”
Super Fly sighed. “I wish I could find out. That’s the only way to counter its effects. But I’m not sure—and it’s really bugging me!”
The Mad Mob
Super Fly flew to the front of Crazy Cockroach’s marching horde. He exclaimed, “I cannot let you leave this dump. Please don’t make me hurt you, but I will not let you attack the outside world.”
Crazy Cockroach laughed and laughed.
Various bugs threw garbage at Super Fly and otherwise demonstrated that they weren’t afraid of him at all!
Rotten tomatoes and even rocks rained down on the brave hero.
Some started chanting, “Flies are stupid! Throw rocks at them!”
The mob turned on Super Fly, who had once been their darling. Fly Girl hid her face from the awful spectacle. Tears blurred Fantastic Flea’s vision. All three wondered, how had it come to this?
Super Fly, Fly Girl, and Fantastic Flea stood shoulder to shoulder before the legions of bad bugs. They tried to push back the mindless mob, but there were just too many of them.
Their lips and chins dripped with the evil orange juice. The army left a trail of empty boxes.
Elle knew that often the best way to defeat a gang is to attack its leader. So Fly Girl flew straight at Crazy Cockroach, pounding him with her 9,000-times-enhanced fists.
Fantastic Flea jumped up and down on the heads of the Dungs.
The evil army laughed.
Super Fly flew in super-fast circles, trying to create a hurricane to stop the evil army. But the juice-crazed bugs marched right into the winds!
Fly Girl dug a trench to keep the horde from advancing. But they simply kept marching.
Fantastic Flea started doing flea circus tricks to distract the massive army, yet they still marched on.
Everywhere Super Fly looked he saw more juice boxes. Despair and panic threatened to defeat him as much as the evil army.
Super Fly feared they were beaten, that the roach had won. As the army grew bigger and bigger, it seemed the world would fall. Crazy Cockroach would soon become the King of the World.
And that’s when Super Fly had his craziest idea yet.
Maybe he didn’t need to know what was in the juice to make a counter-potion. Maybe what was in it would work for him as well!
Bad Bug Juice
Super Fly told Fantastic Flea and Fly Girl, “Follow me!” Without questioning, they took off.
Number 1 and Number 2 watched the heroes fly away and then turned to Crazy Cockroach.
Their leader sneered. “They’re running away because they’re defeated and scared. They know they can’t defeat my army!”
With his 9,000-times-enhanced brain, Crazy Cockroach easily grasped the irony of the situation. No one else in the world knew the secret ingredient that had eluded Super Fly. How could anyone know it was roach tears?
Roaches don’t cry! But after continually losing to Super Fly, Crazy Cockroach had been so depressed tears had poured out of his eyes. The crafty villain mixed those tears into his bug juice, and that strange, rare ingredient turned the bugs that drank it into his helpless slaves. This time Crazy Cockroach would not be denied!
Crazy Cockroach flew high above the brainwashed bugs and began a big speech about “world domination and the coming new age of the roach, the year of the roach, the century of the roach, the millennium of the roach, the eternity of the roach, the double eternity of the roach, and the . . .”
Just then, Super Fly found the object of his search. Fly Girl and Fantastic Flea didn’t understand. Why did Super Fly want a big batch of the Jeremy Juice?
Fantastic Flea wondered, “It’s just more of the roach’s crazy cocktail that turns good bugs bad and bad bugs worse.”
Super Fly smiled slyly. “But it turned the WORST bugs good. Don’t you see? We couldn’t figure out how to make the counter-potion, but we have the poison and we know one cure for it . . .”
“. . . is even more of it!” Fly Girl exclaimed as she suddenly grasped her brother’s logic.
Fantastic Flea quickly agreed. “That’s brilliant!”
On the front lines, Crazy Cockroach droned on about how “roaches will have the age of the roach, the infinite millenniums of the roach, and the era of the roach and will never be defeated.”
Meanwhile, Super Fly, Fantastic Flea, and Fly Girl piled up box upon box of Jeremy Juice. Soon the boxes were so high the heroes had to be acrobats to balance them, super strong to carry them, and magic to see around them. They were bringing a whole lot of juice!
D-Day!
Finally Crazy Cockroach finished his super-long speech. He mentioned how bugs outnumber humans one billion to one, and with a brilliant leader like himself the human world was for the taking. He didn’t so much conclude as run out of breath.
He pointed to the outside human world beyond Stinkopolis and howled, “CHARGE!”
Luckily, the long-winded roach talked so long that Super Fly, Fly Girl, and Fantastic Flea had been able to bring all the Jeremy Juice back to the assembled army. They immediately began passing it around.
The evil bugs chugged the sweet juice. Listening to Crazy Cockroach had made them thirsty. Besides, they were addicted to the evil beverage.
“I said CHARGE!” Crazy Cockroach yelled again.
Number 1 and Number 2 charged.
But everyone else was too busy drinking the roach’s delicious concoction.
Ba-WOOF, WOOF, WOOF! A loud series of barks echoed from the edge of the dump. A fierce junkyard dog took off after the charging dung beetles!
Fly Girl thought, “I bet that dog’s going to eat the Dungs!” Then she realized, “They deserve it.”
At first Crazy Cockroach seemed oblivious to the mass mutiny. The frustrated general kept yelling for his troops to charge.
Then, when he realized his thirsty army kept drinking instead of marching, Crazy Cockroach went wild!
He flew down, grabbed bugs, and chucked them toward the outer banks of the dump. He tossed Timmy Termite almost a hundred yards. He tossed Ted Tarantula. He threw Sid Vicious Spider like a baseball!
Meanwhile, Super Fly’s plan started working. As the concentration of juice in their bodies reached a high enough level, most bad bugs went back to their true, nice nature.
And the bugs who’d started out a little bit bad went back to being that, instead of mega-bad. At least they weren’t brainwashed into following Crazy Cockroach anymore.
Since someone had to stop the bully roach from tossing bugs, Super Fly torpedoed himself into the villain’s gut! ZOOM! POW!
SPRING! Fantastic Flea jumped up and kicked the roach in the butt.
With the precision of a brain surgeon, Fly Girl ninja-kicked him right in his roach nuts. CRACK! Together they crushed Crazy Cockroach with the worst beating of his life!
Peace in the Middle East (Middle East Section of the Dump, Anyway)
The next day, everyone was back to normal. All the Jeremy Juice had been guzzled, so no one was going back on the sauce anytime soon.
The town would’ve hailed Super Fly, Fantastic Flea, and Fly Girl as heroes, if they could remember what had happened. Unfortunately, it seemed all of Stinkopolis was suffering from a huge sugar-high hangover.
That was cool with our modest heroes. Eugene, Fred, and Elle were happy just to be back in school and doing the stuff young bugs should be doing.
As for Crazy Cockroach, he was at home in a full-body cast. Roaches don’t break easily since they have a pretty strong exoskeleton. Still, he’d gotten his butt kicked good!
And just to add insult to injury, Super Fly, Fly
Girl, and Fantastic Flea all signed Crazy Cockroach’s cast. It’s not like the roach could do anything about it; he couldn’t move or even talk.
So everyone was good. Well, everyone except Hoops Hornet. She was bad. And that was good—or, at least, that was the way she liked it.
Maybe someday Hoops would find her proper place in the bugaverse. In an ideal world, there’d be no need for violence and cruelty. But this was Stinkopolis. Sometimes bad bugs went wild, and you couldn’t reason with them because they were completely crazy.
And they had to be stopped. So that’s when you need superheroes, or good-bad bugs like Hoops, to kick evil’s butt.
A few weeks later, Cornelius finally felt well enough to go to school. During recess, he was playing on the playground all by himself when a dirt cloud landed at his feet.
Cornelius turned around, expecting to see Doo and Dee, who’d been home with bad cases of pinkeye. Instead, he was surprised to see Ted Tarantula, Willie Weevil, Wanda Walking Stick, Adam Aphid, Andy Ant, Harrison Hornet, Nate Gnat, Larry Leech, Frank Firefly, Timmy Termite, Marco Moth, and Killer Bee all standing behind him.
“What’s the deal?” asked Cornelius.
“We want you to stop,” said Ted Tarantula.
“Stop what?” Cornelius demanded.
“Tricking us, using mind control video games, giving us Jeremy Juice potions, all the tricks you use to make us do what you want,” said Ted.
Rise of the Evil Army! Page 4