Sure enough, those crunching and metallic sounds the Onomatopoeia Grenade had distorted still wafted out from the back of the lab, only louder now.
Claire let out a squeal, her hands jumping, which sent a tongue of flame she’d been playing with up to the ceiling. The char mark spelled out a letter in a language I didn’t recognize. Weird. Clasping the gloves to her cheeks with a complete disregard for personal safety, she exclaimed, “I can’t believe I forgot!”
Everyone rushed together around the maze-like shelves and machinery to the source of the sound.
The Machine, swollen to the size of a car, hung half-buried in the shoulders of a blocky humanoid robot. Bins, refrigerators, and crates lay emptied and sporting bite marks on the edge of an empty space bigger than my bedroom. Dissatisfied with such puny fare, my Machine was now eating its way through the roof of the chamber.
In fact, it broke through into daylight as I rounded the corner.
Lucyfar skidded to a halt, sticking her hands in her squishy, cake-filled pockets with affected casualness. “Keeping our laboratory a secret just got harder. Good thing I love a challenge.”
Scale intruded. The chamber set up for Cybermancer’s lab was not exactly small. The ceiling rose at least fifteen feet above us, maybe more. And we’d been quite a ways underground. All that material now resided in a stocky, almost cubical robot with clumsy boxing-glove hands. The shoulders holding the Machine stuck way up into the hole in the ceiling, which kept getting bigger as the Machine ate.
That happened fast. Eerily fast. The Machine itself had gotten fat, bigger than a car and mostly mouth. We’d arrived in time to see it really hit its eating stride, and the head of the robot thrust up into the above ground world as my Machine carved big chunks out of the concrete, dirt, stone, piles, and what-all that used to conceal Cybermancer’s lab.
Uhh, Penny, why are you just standing here, watching?
Oops. Waving my arms, I yelled, “Stop! Stop! That’s enough!”
The Machine stopped eating. The robot twisted and jerked as the mass the Machine had kept for itself fed into the creation, and my little recycling baby fell from the heavens and landed in my outstretched hands. Probably quite hard, but the Machine and kinetic energy had a complicated relationship. The catch felt easy. When it landed, it spat out one of those metal sponge blueprint things.
My teeth clenched. “Criminy! Criminy! I finally have an invention that’s crazy amazing and I can show off to my dad, and now it’s irretrievably stained by criminality.”
“Maybe no one has―” Claire started to say, only to freeze as distant voices screamed.
Words now insufficient to express my angst, I covered my face with one hand instead.
Claire slid her arms around my shoulders and gave me a reassuring squeeze. “It’s just one schematic. The others will be just as great, and when you come clean to your parents, you can use this one, too.”
Aw. What really felt good was the silent admission that Claire was there for me in getting this straightened out with my parents, even though she’d be happier if we stayed villains.
Ray, too polite to drape himself over me in public, stepped close. It was good to have friends, even in this most trivial of emergencies.
Our hostess Lucyfar was less known for her sympathy. She pressed her hands to the gently curved metal above the robot’s ankle, and stroked up and down. The caress wasn’t nearly as longing as her voice. “So, you have no use for this particular robot?”
One word expressed my reaction: Dumbfounded. “You don’t even know how to control it.”
“There’s a cockpit inside the head. I’ve always wanted a giant punching robot, Bad Penny! Mmmm, mwah mwah mwah!” She kissed the robot’s calf, rubbing herself luridly against its ankle.
Nobody else found this disturbing. Claire snickered, even. But this sinuous display of mecha-lust oiled by pink slime sent gnawing discomfort through my gut. I threw up my hands and exclaimed, “Okay, okay!” just to make it end.
Lucyfar let out a squeal and jumped up, clinging to the leg like a gecko and climbing it like a monkey. The surface looked smooth and had nothing to hold onto, but that didn’t stop her. Maybe the frosting was more glue than lubricant. She certainly left a trail of it smeared along the surface behind her.
“Wait, is she going to―” Claire started to ask.
“―right now?” I sort of finished.
Cybermancer just looked at us, his smile wide and tight with amused cynicism. “I thought you knew her by now.”
The ceiling boomed. Debris fell as huge, boxy robot arms pushed up into the outside world. The robot creaked horribly, but to my surprise, pulled itself up and out.
Lucyfar’s voice, distorted by a scratchy, low-quality loudspeaker, echoed back through the hole. “People of Los Angeles! Stop taking photos of me and run, because I have gone mad and will destroy you all with my punching robot! Punch punch!”
My laughter died as it started, cut off by the sound of booming masonry. The problem with having a hilarious crazy friend presented itself to me. She’s hilarious, but also crazy.
I ran back and grabbed, uhh… the staff, the puzzle box, and the Onomatopoeia Grenade. Portable and immediate. When I got back, Ray had on his blasting gloves, and Claire had her grappling hook strapped over my new costume’s gloves.
The street was too high up for even Ray to jump, and I didn’t have my teleport bands. Claire fired up her grappling hook, Ray grabbed her and me both, and the tiny but powerful motors in the grapple whined as it pulled all three of us up to surface level.
When we got there, Claire staggered in a circle, cradling that arm. “Agh. Not doing that again. Really hurts. I’m out, Penny, sorry.”
At street level, the situation wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. Just bad enough. We occupied what was left of a vacant-lot-turned-basketball-court in a dusty commercial district. Most of Cybermancer’s lab was either under the street, or the grounds of a single building big enough to have grounds around it. Its formerly nice brick perimeter wall had been kicked to smithereens. The three story building on the other side had huge gouges in it. This being LA, traffic had not actually stopped on the street, but it had certainly thinned out, with only the most jaded pedestrians and bloody-minded drivers still passing by.
Lucyfar’s robot stood on the sidewalk, and in the grassy lawn, and a little in the street, and a lot of what was left of the basketball court. Seen in its entirety, I was no longer sure if I’d actually have wanted to show it off or not. The robot, well… it looked like a toy. A cheap, badly made toy. A gigantic, cheap, badly made toy, yes, but the whole body was nothing but a bunch of different-sized metal boxes. Ancient Romans could build a higher-tech looking robot. The Trojan Horse had it beat by miles.
Ugly and stupid looking it might be, but it worked. Rectangular fists shadow-boxed enthusiastically while the torso swiveled from side to side. Lucyfar’s magnified voice shouted out again, “Look at me, world! I’ve got a giant robot! Who wants some of this? If someone doesn’t want some of this soon, I’ll come up with a metaphor for punching stuff randomly!”
A gleamingly white figure swooped down from the sky. In a riot of six flapping white wings, the superhero Gabriel hovered before her. “Lucy, what do you think you’re doing?”
Even through the speaker’s scratchiness, I could hear the ecstatic breathiness in Lucyfar’s voice. “Oh, thank you, Daddy. This could not be more perfect. Hey, Gabey-Wabey. Watch this!”
With that, she punched him, or at least the robot did on her behalf. The arm moved faster than I would have believed, but not fast enough that Gabriel couldn’t have dodged. Instead, he left only two wings flapping, and folded the other four in front of him.
Those wings were reputedly indestructible. They didn’t stop the punch from sending him sailing off over the buildings across the street and out of sight.
Lucyfar’s shrieking cackles of glee thundered up and down the street.
Score one for indest
ructible wings, because the robot had hardly begun its lurching victory dance when Gabriel zoomed back into view. Out of metal fist’s reach, he yelled, “You’re going to make me break this contraption you stole, aren’t you? If I weren’t here, you’d have made it dance in the street or something, but now that I am you’ll force me to take the responsibility of stopping you from hurting people. Again.”
“Yep!” she answered, with a cheerful lack of shame I normally encountered only in women with the last name Lutra.
In a further Claire-like display, the robot’s upper body swiveled and bent forward, so that Lucyfar could look right down at me, Ray, and Claire through the crude rectangular holes that made up the robot’s face. “And we’re totally dating.”
Gabriel groaned, sounding honestly exasperated. Then, before she could straighten up, he dove forward and slashed his wings at the arm of the giant toy. Lucyfar either had incredible reflexes, or expected it and had merely great reflexes. The arm flailed, swatting him backhand. He was also ready for that this time, rolling in the air after taking the blow, and sweeping back up to give the metal fist a solid whack.
Metal clonked. The hit left a visible dent in the boxy fist, but that was it. Both Lucyfar and Gabriel paused long enough for him to say, “Well, that was more resilient than I expected.”
“A layer of concrete behind the steel,” murmured Ray.
She started throwing punches, straight jabs just like a boxer, while he circled and darted around. A few of those blows hit the already battered nearby building.
I hoped everyone was out of there. Could I take that chance?
Also, should I be here, visible, in civilian clothes, right where Lucyfar was going on a rampage?
My mind ran through options. Tell the Machine to eat the ugly mecha? My Machine clung to my wrist where it belonged now, snapped into place when I’d gotten it so automatically I hadn’t noticed.
That would take forever. The Machine started slow.
Okay, time to throw everything else at her, while Gabriel tried to buzz the robot’s head. If he could get past the waving mechanical arms, getting into the cockpit was the best way to stop Lucyfar’s rampage.
Something else would slow it down. I turned the Onomatopoeia Grenade to full volume, and handed it to Ray.
“Woosh woosh squeak woosh crunch grind woosh,” the robot said as it batted at Gabriel.
“Swish. Floomp,” said Gabriel’s wings as he maneuvered.
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,” said the loudspeaker as Lucyfar burst into laughter. Confused, Gabriel slowed down. For a couple of seconds, the fight was on pause.
The robot was now so big, it had gaps thicker than my arm in the joints. I shoved the puzzle box into one of them, and flipped it open.
Wait, how did I do that? My power had left me a muscle memory without telling me. If I did it just right, twisted and… the memory evaded me and I didn’t have time to think about it. The point was, I made the box open itself.
As it did, I spun the gears at the end of the staff as fast as I could, stuck the tip into the same gap, and shook it around.
Something in that joint screamed, a sound more human than metallic, and the Onomatopoeia Grenade made no attempt to replace the noise. Steel buckled inward along the lower calf and upper foot. The two separated.
Tesla’s Unplayable Compact Disks, what was in the puzzle box, a black hole? Or had the staff done that?
The robot hopped on one leg backwards for two steps, a maneuver it was so badly designed to perform that I had to admire Lucyfar’s piloting skills. After that, gravity won, and it toppled over to land on its back, covering most of the hole we’d climbed out of.
“BOOM!” it shouted. Thank you, grenade. The actual crash might have damaged my eardrums. Cogs and pistons poured out of the severed leg.
“Screech squeak,” the grenade added, as Lucyfar pushed the mecha’s face open and climbed out.
Ray shut off the Onomatopoeia Grenade. I nodded approvingly. Its ridiculous work here was done.
Fluttering down to land on the robot’s metal chest in front of her, Gabriel stormed at Lucyfar. “What do you think you’re doing, Lucy?”
Phase two of my hastily improvised plan came into effect. I yelled, “Stealing my new invention! I was going to surprise my dad with it!”
I couldn’t really see Gabriel’s expression from down here, but it must have been a good one. A second later, Lucyfar said indignantly, “What’s the point of being a supervillain if I can’t steal toys from children? Hey, look, an invisible aardvark!”
She pointed over Gabriel’s shoulder behind him. He just folded his arms. “Would anyone fall for ―”
Lucyfar melted into black goo that evaporated before our eyes.
I heard footsteps, and spun in time to see Lucyfar round the corner of the big building on the other side, a considerable stretch of lawn away from us.
“Oh, you didn’t,” Gabriel growled, and took off after her, flying low and then hitting the ground running.
“That wasn’t on her list of known powers,” said Claire, a hint of pained groan in her voice. She still held her limp arm by the shoulder.
Ray stroked his chin. Someday, there might be a beard there. “I’m thinking… it’s an illusion she stole from someone, and only we and Gabriel have ever seen it used.”
Claire nodded. “Sounds right.”
“But what did Gabriel see? Are you in any danger?” Ray asked, turning his attention and concern to me.
I thought about it. “I may have to hide the Onomatopoeia Grenade. He didn’t see the nightmare box.” Which now lay, sealed again, in a small crater on the asphalt by the broken foot. “I wanted to claim the punch cards anyway. Miss Lutra and Lucyfar are friends, so my parents know Claire knows Lucyfar, which means they know I know Lucyfar, so this won’t surprise them. And, umm… how good are those gloves?”
Claire let go of her shoulder to raise her uninjured hand, still covered in thick brown leather and strips of brass. “You would not believe, Penny. They guide energy, as if you were waving around a streamer. Any energy.”
I reached up to tap the gears orbiting the staff still, and then clutched its haft covetously. “Bad Penny has enough weapons. I’m keeping this one. I… found the staff when Lucyfar dragged us off. Cybermancer made the main part, and my power told me that gears of just the right materials would channel the crazy magic his potions give off, then release it when I wanted. Dad won’t be able to refute that, because he won’t meet magic halfway until he can explain it completely.”
Ray said, “So, we pick up the rest of your stuff, ask Cybermancer to help us transport it, say our goodbyes, and then you go tell your parents a slightly edited version of the day’s events that leave out the Bad Penny parts?”
I nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
“And I seek medical attention,” wheezed Claire.
Suddenly, she had both my and Ray’s focus. Touching my hand to her good shoulder, I asked, “Are you really hurt?”
Her lower lip wobbled, but we were serious, so she was honest. “Maybe a sprain. Probably not. It’s really, really sore.”
Ray grimaced and looked down at his badly scuffed wingtip shoes. “Sorry. We were in a hurry. I didn’t think it through.”
“Neither did I.” She flashed him an unsteady but forgiving grin.
“If it’s worse, get your mom to call us, okay?” I said.
She nodded, but in the perfunctory way of someone who thought the odds of that were remote. Reassured, I went over to pick up the nightmare box. Hey, should that be its official name? “Today was more important than you know, guys. I have an idea. If I make a public show of Bad Penny and Penny Akk being different, I can retire the former. When I confess to my parents, they’ll feel like I’ve been honest with them, and just trying to keep a public cover. That would stop them from going into apoplexy, at least.” That thought made me shudder. Which would be worse, the punishments, or the anger? Both would be off of any scal
e I’d ever faced before.
Ray hmmmed. “There are a lot of holes in that.”
“But fixable ones. It’s a start,” said Claire.
Reaching the nightmare box, I crouched down to grab it, only to notice the folded, remarkably clean sheet of paper it now lay atop.
Even before I opened up the note, I knew who it had to be from. That settled it. The city’s arachnid crime boss did have a sense of humor, and it ran to finding the creepiest ways possible to deliver her messages.
Dear Penny,
Someone highly unexpected came looking for you. Letting her pass unimpeded and sending you this note seemed like the limit of how deeply I should get involved. Be on the lookout.
Concerned,
Spider
hat I should have done was find an excuse to immediately go grill Spider about who was after me, then either finalize my plan to confess to my parents or prepare a plan to deal with this mystery stalker.
What I actually did was go lie to my father about how my new staff works. The story I made up was so good, it was apparently right! At least, as right as you can get without getting into a lot of math. Physics is all math. All math. My parents both live for math.
Oh, and after that I had a new computer game, because dad was rolling out the pet names with me getting more mad sciencey. The Princess Jar actually filled up. I had a bunch of new games, but the most fun was this horror game called Little Reaper Girl, supposedly based on a real event. The game had me playing a ten-year-old with a scythe turning the tables on more than a dozen superheroes trying to trap and kill her in a huge, haunted, blood-splattered palace. As soon as I finished and wouldn’t spoil the story, I was so looking up what actually happened historically. Yow.
And I needed extra sleep, because while I was totally jazzed at the time, by bedtime my body was paying the price for that inventing spree. I was draggy for a couple of days, which interfered with my dad’s sudden desire to have me learn the names of all the different kinds of clockwork parts. Rote memorization was never my forte, and procrastinating from doing that took a lot of time.
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