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© 2016 Richard Roberts
http://frankensteinbeck.blogspot.com
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ISBN 978-1-62007-425-1 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-62007-437-4 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-62007-453-4 (hardcover)
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All books about Penny are dedicated to Dana Simpson, because Penny is everything I love about us both.
Nicole, finish reading the book, or no more characters modeled after you!
And finally, thank you to so many other friends, who gave me the name Beaddown, who gave me the idea for Jacky, who deluged me with ideas for super powers, and a million other little things that all grew into a book.
y career as a mild-mannered middle school student ended the usual way, with a quarterback turning into a shark.
Or maybe he was a forward receiver. Or made line drives. Penelope Akk, nerd supreme, had more important hobbies than Sport. What mattered to me was that one second a boy on our team was human, and the next he turned big and bulky and grey. His jersey ripped over his suddenly massive upper body, and it was a blessing to us all that he wore stretchy pants.
“♪We will / We will♪” chanted the girl next to me, before trailing off with everyone else.
Shark boy certainly rocked them. In a display of truly bone-headed bravery in the finest Sport traditions, the opposing team tried to tackle him. They bounced off his shoulders like trout thrown at a freight train. One actually kind of clever guy tackled Sharky's stumpy legs, hoping to at least trip him up. No good. The poor brave sap got kicked all the way off the side of the field, and hopefully hadn't gone from halfback to hunchback.
As fast and sinuous and unstoppable as a hippopotamus, Sharky stomped down to the opposite goal, waving the football over his head and ranting at the top of his lungs. “I'm sick of this! I'm sick of hiding my super powers, pretending to compete with you humans when I'm stronger than all of you put together! Who's the Most Valuable Player now?!”
Actually, I was making up that part. Up in the stands, I couldn't possibly make out what he was yelling. Just call it an educated guess.
When he crossed the finish line, Sharky threw down the football and began his victory waddle.
The girl next to me asked in squeaky bewilderment, “Can he do that?”
The girl next to her asked more heatedly, “Does that touchdown count?”
The boy on the other side of me recoiled back in his seat. “He's heading for the other team again!”
That would be my cue. Standing, I pulled my goggles out of my pouch and buckled them ceremonially over my eyes. A careful twist of my wrists, and then a second careful twist when I didn't get the first one exactly right, and the rotors on my forearms blew the sleeves of my loose sweater off all the way to the shoulders. My brown braided pigtails flapped behind me as I soared up off of the bleachers, dropping down to land in a crouch next to the cheerleaders.
The head cheerleader, Marcia, slapped me in the chest with the side of her baton. Bared teeth accompanied a hiss like an angry cat. “You are not taking this from me, Penny Akk!”
Wincing, I pointed past her. “We're both too late.”
A girl with wildly spiky blue hair charged onto the field. Was that Cassie, from English class? What happened to her hair?
Brilliant blue arcs of electricity flew out of her body with every step, grounding in the ripped up turf. Well, that answered my question. A number of questions.
“No no no no no no no! You stupid, spotlight-hogging, neckless block of rancid fish oil!” Cassie screeched. She charged towards the shark boy, throwing out a double-armed blast of lightning bolts that fell into the ground yards short of their target. C- for mastery of her powers, but a solid A for villainous banter.
Instead of staying out of her range, the stupid, spotlight-hogging, neckless block of rancid fish oil lumbered up to meet her, yelling back, “What are you talking about?”
Lightning sprayed all around as Cassie waved her arms. Some of it hit the shark boy, but only made him shiver. Far more dangerous had to be the spit flying from her mouth as she screamed, “You clod! You heap of stinking chum! I had it all planned out! This was Lightning Wisp's big debut, and you ruined it, Fish Guts Man.”
“Sharky,” he growled.
I gaped. So did Marcia. I'd been thinking of him as 'Sharky' as a joke. He was still sticking with that dumb name? Yes, he'd used it before in a spectacularly failed bid to come out as a supervillain, and Marcia and I had both made fun of him for it.
Lightning Wisp put her hand to her ear, and mocked, “Sorry, what was that? Did you say your name was Filet-O-Fool?”
“SHARKY!” he yelled, and finished his transformation.
I'd seen him do this before, but I'd forgotten how big he was. And ugly. So, so ugly. Baboon butt ugly. Naked mole-rat ugly. He was at least six feet tall, bulging with muscles where he shouldn't have muscles, and his fanged mouth jutted out of a malformed, pointed face. Worse, instead of just on his neck, gill flaps opened and pulsed with glimpses of red meat all over his shoulders, arms, and the sides of his torso.
I screwed up my nose. I didn't even want to look at that.
For once, Marcia was more professional than me. With no sign of having to restrain her lunch, she strolled out to meet the two bickering young super-villains. Every cartoon's stereotype and every boy's dream of a dishwater blonde cheerleader in a short skirt, she didn't need powers to look more dangerous than both of them. She had poise and confidence, and they didn't.
She waved her wand, flicking it first at him, then at her. “Put your powers away and go home. You both look like fools, and Charlie, you oaf, you just made us forfeit the game. Neither of you got what you wanted, but you haven't broken any laws. Go home before a superhero gets here.”
They both glared at her, and Sharky gurgled, “Shut up, Marcia.”
Marcia twirled her baton, and sneered. “Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant go home, or I'll make you.”
“Shut up, Marcia!” Sharky repeated, ever the master of wit, and swung a brawny arm at her backhand.
Marcia Bradley, secret identity of Miss A, obnoxious sidekick to the Original, ducked smoothly under his arm and jammed the end of her baton up under his chin. Swinging wide, she followed up by stabbing the baton into the side of his beaky nose, and in the same motion turned and jabbed Lightning Wisp under the ribs.
Sharky blinked, showing off pearly white nictitating membranes. Lightning Wisp doubled over, wheezing.
Then Wisp flicked her head, and blue electrical threads leaped over to Marcia's body. Marcia went stiff, and Sharky backhanded her again. This time, she couldn't dodge. She hit the ground several yards away, skidding instead of rolling.
Ouch. I hated Marcia, but not enough to like seeing her hurt like that. She had to have a few broken bones.
How was I going to avoid the same fate? I had not come armed for lumbering dimwitted sea-life. I had no weapons that would penetrate his layers of gleaming mucus, sandpapery hide, and insulating blubber. Irregular slits flapped like biting mouths, displaying raw red meat.
I shuddered, but technically his superhuman ugliness was not a weapon. It couldn't actually hurt me.
I could sure use it to hurt him.
A look around revealed… jackpot! Just what the Akk ordered. Next to the cheerleaders' bench sat a clumsily discarded line marker, one of those little red pushcarts for leaving lines of chalk on grass. And next to the line marker… a big plastic bag still a third full of chalk dust.
With a grunt, I hefted the bag up into my arms. Criminy, who knew powdered rock was so heavy?
Armed with a bag of chalk, a deep breath, and a devious plan, I stepped onto the field and headed for the bickering super-kids.
At the first step, one of the cheerleaders grabbed my shoulder. When I ducked free, she yelled after me, “If Marcia lost, you don't have a chance, clock girl!”
“Let her make a fool of herself,” another girl sniped.
I arrived in the heroic nick of time. Sharky was drawing back a fist and Lightning Wisp had nearly disappeared in a corona of electrical squiggles when they noticed me.
Sharky reacted first, his toothy maw gulping spasmodically. “Get out of here, Akk. I'm not-”
There were two things I knew: First, don't give the guy who can throw hundred and fifty pound neanderthal throwbacks around a chance to throw a punch. Second, Sharky's villainous monolog would never be worth waiting for.
I threw the bag of chalk at him. Not all of it, but an overhand swing dumped at least half the contents all over his lumpy, oversized body in a white cloud. Even if this plan didn't work, I had just performed a public service. Now he merely looked like a badly made rice dumpling.
Spitting and sneezing and rubbing at his face, he growled, “What-” only to break off with a croak. He squirmed. That malformed head was not built to be expressive, but his shoulders rolled and twitched. Hands slapped at his shoulders, and his sides. He managed a “You-” before the choking started.
Wheezing, struggling to breathe at all, Sharky fell backwards onto the turf and clawed at himself.
I wished I could take credit for the idea of pouring irritating dust into his gills, but I'd stolen the idea from a story about how my powerless mother took down Bull.
When I swiveled to face her, Lightning Wisp took a step back in sudden panic. The bag was light enough now for me to take a sheet of paper out of my pocket, and hold it up in front of her. In spiky blue letters, it read:
You'll see what I can really do at the football game on Saturday.
Unless you're too scared to face me?
“I assume you wrote this, and left it in my locker by magnetizing the tumblers open? That trick must have taken years to perfect. I bet it drove your parents nuts.”
She stared at me with wide, glowing eyes, then gritted her teeth and raised her hands. She had rectangular 9-volt batteries strapped to her knuckles, so many wires crisscrossing her hands that they looked like gloves, and whole rows of batteries running up her arms. So, was she a mad scientist after all?
Whatever she was, she had style. Without a real costume, she'd gone with the sparkling blue hair, a pale blue dress shirt ripped off at the elbows, and a black denim jacket ripped off at the shoulders. Hey, we were destroyed sleeve buddies! Blue lightning bolts were painted down the sides of her black jeans, and her thick, shiny black boots had massive rubber soles.
My villainous soul rebelled at ruining that look, but I dumped the rest of the chalk dust on her anyway.
Considerably smarter than Sharky, she blasted me - a fraction of a second too late. The cloud of chalk dust glowed, but all the electricity bounced off of it into the ground on Cassie's side. By the time she realized that, she was covered in the stuff.
Calcium carbonate is an excellent insulator. She made a few more clawing motions, but all she got were sparks spitting off random points on her body. Nothing useful. Nothing that stopped me from pulling the boxing glove gun my dad made me out of my pouch, stepping forward, and touching it to Lightning Wisp's nose.
Boop.
HA! A pity maniacal laughter would spoil the heroic image. Glee burned upwards from my stomach…
…only to disappear, washed away by the tears at the edges of Cassie's eyes.
Shivering, she whispered, “No. You can't beat me this fast. I had a plan. I had a giant monster. I was going to put on a show. It can't be over already.”
If there was one thing I'd learned from professional supervillainy, it was to come up with a Plan B really fast.
Leaning closer, I pitched my voice just as low. “Marcia is a jerk, but she's right. You don't have any time. Did you want to be a hero or a villain?”
Cassie peered at me past constantly-blinking, chalk dust irritated eyes, while a second line of tears carved lines down her powdered cheeks. Both squeaky and hoarse, she asked, “I get to choose?”
Holstering my gun, I held out my hand – the left hand, with the electricity-absorbing Machine around my wrist. I was sympathetic, not stupid. “Shake my hand. You lost this match, but it happens to everybody. You haven't hurt anyone, and you haven't broken any laws. You don't have to slink off in defeat. Shake the dust and make a show about it. You got what we all really want.” Leaning my head just an inch forward, I finished emphatically, “You don't have to hide your powers anymore.”
That did it. She clasped my hand. Still dazed, her grip practically hung in mind. Looking past me, she asked, “Charlie…?”
I glanced back over my shoulder in time to see Sharky, shrunk back to human shape, take a clumsy swing at the nurse bent over him. “Too dumb to help.”
She snorted, and gave my hand a hard shake, visible to the crowd. With a desperate grin, she turned her back on me, slapping away the chalk dust. By the time she'd marched halfway to the far goal, she'd shaken enough off, and a hissing white column of light shot up from one of her hands. Spreading her arms, she flapped wings made of blue electricity, to the whistling of the crowd.
I wasn't going to let her get all the glory. I jerked my fists in circles, and the fans on my forearms and ankles launched me into the air. I soared over the bleachers, over the school itself, and when I landed on Northeast West Hollywood Middle, nobody was there to see me trip and fall on my butt.
Victory! Bad Penny might be stuck as a supervillain, but Penelope Akk's heroic reputation was off to a glorious start.
ride goes before a fall.
Actually, the real quote is 'Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.' Mrs. Normandy in the 7th grade had a real pet peeve about misused quotes, and drilled that one into us mercilessly.
Either way, I pranced arrogantly to my doom. I had just recovered my dignity when my mom's car pulled up right in front of the school. I strutted over, glowing with victory. I had weapons I hadn't even had to use!
I opened the door to the back seat, and the sound of my mother's voice dumped a metaphorical bucket of ice water over my head. “Get in.” Not angry. Flat. Businesslike. Emotionless.
This was not Mom Voice. This was Audit Voice. I was in epic levels of trouble.
My butt was already in motion as the chill took over, sliding into the seat and pulling the door shut. My hands fastened the seatbelt before I knew I was doing it, and good for them. I didn't need any more trouble.
She was here already. We didn't live far away, but to be here already, she'd heard about the battle and left without waiting to hear how it ended. Was she worried about me? No. That hope fizzled as fast as it sparked. She would be gushing if she'd been worried. The silence I bathed in right now meant nothing but trouble.
Still, I tried, “I'm fine. I won.”
She didn't answer. She just turned onto Los Feliz, driving us home.
My voice soft and cracking, I added, “I didn't start it.” I couldn't get any further. The back of my mother's head in front of me didn't budge an inch. The eyes in the rear view mirror were concerned with nothing but driving. The silence swallowed all the excuses I wanted to make.
Seconds crawled pas
t, one by one, before she answered, “We'll talk about this when we get home.” Almost a monotone.
Panic closed around my heart. My mom was the Audit. I knew how she worked. She'd calculated exactly how long to wait to answer me, framed every word according to laboratory tests on intimidation, all to make me feel maximum terror. Knowing that didn't help at all. If she was angry enough to use those tactics on me, I was in catastrophic trouble.
Oh, Tesla. What if she knew I was Bad Penny? I'd just fought a super powered battle in public. Maybe in front of cameras. Had she identified me by body language, by something I'd never considered at all?
As nerve-rattling as that was, there was a much more obvious explanation. Maybe sneaking behind my parents' back to create a set of battle equipment and getting into a fight at a public school event was not a good thing. Put that way, it sounded almost… criminal.
That was as far as reason got. I sat there, frozen in mindless fear, until we got home. My mother opened the car door, and walked behind me like a prison guard into the kitchen.
Dad was there. He was a mess, unshaven, his hair uncombed, his shirt untucked. He must have been asleep when they heard. He was also sitting in a kitchen chair, not in his comfortable plush chair in his office. Another sign that I was in for it.
Still, just a little fear evaporated at his expression. The first thing he did was sigh in relief. He tried to hide it, but he didn't have Mom's poker face. Part of this was them being worried about me.
“Your clothes are ruined, Penelope,” was the first thing he said. It was so obviously not why they were mad at me, I didn't know how to answer.
And he'd used my real name. No 'Penny,' no 'Pumpkin,' no 'Princess.' My lower lip started to wobble. Please don't let me break down crying!
“May I see your new inventions?” he asked next. The concern and real curiosity in his voice gave me strength, held back the tears. I was in trouble, but he wasn't… mad, exactly.
I unbuckled the rotors from my forearms and ankles. It took some fiddling. They had to be securely fastened to work, after all.
Please Don't Tell My Parents I've Got Henchmen Page 1