by Jim Smith
It had Dr Smell’s nose, and Delores’s ears. It had thirteen eyes, which I guessed must be Dindle Frogshnoff’s ones, and sticking out of its body, which looked like it was made out of a bit of old robot granny, were Bunny’s ten arms. Next to the picture, in
scary-looking capital letters, were the words ‘GLADYS 5000’.
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Mr X peered down at Bunny and tilted his eyebrows into their scary positions. ‘SNIP SNIP!’ he roared, as Twoface floated past the window of the scorpion, inside his giant pink bubble. ‘Don’t worry gang, Twoface is back!’ he boomed, doing his superhero grin.
‘Twoface!’ I shouted, pointing at the picture of GLADYS 5000, and he floated round to look at it, then turned to me.
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‘What? I don’t get it!’ he said, floating upside down, his two faces turning red.
‘Don’t you see what’s happening here?’ I cried, pointing at the picture.
MAVIS 3000 had almost reached me, but I reckoned I had time to say one more sentence first. ‘Mr X is building
a brand-new, super-duper-keel, undefeatable-can’t-be-beatable robot granny out of all the stolen body parts!’ I said, and Twoface gasped.
‘Ohh! I see what’s going on here!’ said Twoface, clicking his fingers inside his bubble. ‘Mr X is building a new robot granny out of all the stolen body parts!’ he smiled, copying exactly what I’d just said.
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MAVIS 3000 stopped clip-clopping towards me and turned to look up
at Mr X, her metal eyebrows tilting into their sad positions. ‘IS THIS TRUE, MR X?’ she bleeped, as a lightning bolt exploded two millimetres from my bin.
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‘SORRY MAVIS 3000, BUSINESS IS BUSINESS!’ boomed Mr X, speeding
up the spinning saws, and Bunny screamed. He pushed his joystick forwards, and I looked around for Not Bird, seeing as there was no way
I was going to get zapped home inside my bin without him.
‘Not Bird!’ I cried, spotting him pecking
at the giant plastic chip I’d just dropped. ‘There’s no time for snacks - get the keelness over here NOW!’
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Not Bird looked up at me, then over
at Bunny, who was still screaming.
Jamjar was tapping her Triangulator
and pointing it at Mr X’s scorpion, her four spare arms flailing at the spinning saws. Splorg carried on patting Bunny’s forehead with the soggy flannel.
‘NOT!’ screeched Not Bird, grabbing the plastic chip in his little beak and trying to lift it.
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‘What the unkeelness are you doing!?’
I screamed, as a lightning bolt zapped past my full-stop nose, almost slicing
it off. I jumped out of the bin and forward-rolled across the roof, scooped up Not Bird, and was just about to start running back to my bin when a raindrop tapped against my scuba mask and zigzagged down it like a tear.
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I thought back to that Saturday night in my living room at home, when the window had been crying, and how I’d forward-rolled across the carpet with a tissue to cheer it up - because I was a superhero, and that’s what superheroes do.
I looked down at the plastic chip
Not Bird had been trying to pick up.
‘BY THE POWER OF KEELNESS!’ I boomed, picking it up and swiping it at the scorpion’s legs.
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‘NOOO!’ roared Mr X, as scorpion leg number one crashed into scorpion leg number two, which crashed into scorpion leg number three, going all the way up until the scorpion tipped sideways, its fish tank smashing
and the stolen body parts
pouring all over
MAVIS 3000.
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‘NIGHT NIGHT,’ warble-bleeped MAVIS 3000, her red traffic-light eyes popping and smoke billowing out of her ears.
‘Quick, get the body parts!’ cried Splorg, helping Bunny to her feet,
and him, Bunny and Jamjar scrabbled around picking them all up, which didn’t take long seeing as they had seventeen arms between them.
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‘I’LL GET YOU FOR THIS!’ boomed Mr X, waggling his joystick, and the scorpion leaned backwards, teetering on the edge of the building.
‘NOT!’ screeched Not Bird, tapping
the scorpion’s forehead with his beak, and it slipped off the roof and fell into the air.
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I forward-rolled over to the edge of the building and stared down at the pavement. ‘Phew, that was close!’ I smiled. The giant metal scorpion had crashed to the ground and was lying next to DOREEN XL97-220, its green eyes fading to black.
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‘My superhero!’ cried Bunny, managing to give me a cuddle even though she was still holding all the stolen body parts, and I high-fived Splorg, then Jamjar, giving her a high-twenty-five seeing as she had five hands, and I was in a good mood.
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I looked up in the sky, smiling, and immediately stopped smiling. The storm cloud had floated off into the distance, just like the one on the moon had the day before.
‘MY LIGHTNING! HOW AM I GOING TO GET HOME NOW?!’ I screamed, wondering how long it’d be until the next storm.
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Jamjar tapped her fingers on the Triangulator and looked up too. ‘Hmmm, looks like there’s a fluctuation in the biometric quadrant that’s destabilising the entire jet stream for the northern sector.’
‘AND . . . ?’ I cried, pushing my scuba mask on to my forehead.
‘Could be another storm here within the fortnight,’ she
said, and I looked
down at the
ground.
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‘NOT!’ screeched Not Bird, pecking at Twoface’s bubble, and it popped, dropping him on to the roof next to me.
‘Good work, Ratboy!’ he grinned, patting me on my back, and he patted himself on his back too. ‘Bunny’s right - maybe you are a superhero after all!’ he said, and Splorg and Jamjar nodded.
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‘Yeah, Ratboy!’ said Splorg. ‘All you need now is your superhero name!’ he grinned, his dinosaur teeth glinting in the Sunkeels afternoon sun.
‘Hmmm . . . a superhero name,’ I said, glancing up and half-smiling again, seeing as a couple of weeks in the future didn’t sound TOO bad. ‘How about Colin Lamppost!’ I beamed, and they all shook their heads.
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Bunny ruffled my aerials with one of her spare hands, and Dr Smell’s nose twitched, maybe because he’d sniffed my eight-million-year-old pants. ‘I think you’re more of a FUTURE RATBOY!’ she smiled, and Dindle Frogshnoff’s thirteen eyes
all blinked in agreement.
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Suddenly there was a scraping sound
from the road below, and I peered
down at the pavement, spotting the
giant metal scorpion stumbling back
on to its feet. ‘FUTURE RATBOY, EH?’
boomed Mr X’s voice, and he smiled
up at me through his broken window.
‘I TOLD YOU I’D GET YOU FOR THIS!’ he
cackled, pressing a button.
The scorpion’s tail curled
into an evil question mark
and a bright green laser shot up through the air, missing me by half a millimetre.
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‘Phew, that was close!’ I said in my Future Ratboy voice, turning round to see the laser zap my wheelie bin.
‘NOOO!’ I screamed, as the bin glowed lumo green, then fizzled into nothing. ‘My bin! Now I’ll never get home!’ I wailed, and the scorpion clomped off down Shnozville High Street, Mr X laughing to himself.
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Not Bird flew over and landed on my head, and Splorg put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Future Ratboy, we’ll get your bin back,’ he said, looking over at Twoface.
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‘Yeah, piece of cake!’ said Twoface,
plucking a piece of plastic gherkin out
&
nbsp; of his hood, and I stared at Jamjar,
who was already tapping something
into her Triangulator.
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‘The laser seems to have discombobulated the internal metrics
of your wheelie bin,’ she warbled, pushing her glasses up her nose. ‘I’ll
have to totally reconfigure the Triangulator’s homing modules if we’re ever going to have a chance of finding it - but I’ll figure it out!’ she said, as a tear zigzagged down my cheek.
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Bunny gave me a cuddle and wiped my tear away with her flannel. ‘Until then, looks like you’re stuck with us lot!’ she grinned, and I looked at her ten arms and Jamjar’s five, Twoface’s two faces and Splorg’s one big blue one.
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‘I spose there’s weirder people to play it keel with,’ I said, and then I realised something.
‘Wait a minute, if today’s Sunkeels . . . doesn’t that mean it’s school tomorrow?’ I gasped, and they all sniggered.
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‘Don’t be silly, Future Ratboy!’ said Splorg. ‘There’s no school here in the future!’ he laughed, and my plug-tail did a wiggle.
‘Now THAT’S something I could get used to!’ I grinned, jumping a centimetre off the ground and shouting ‘KEEL!’ so loud I reckon even my mum and dad and little sister might’ve heard it.
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