by Dustin Brady
Eric shook his head. “No, we don’t. No. We. Don’t.”
“Whatever. I’ll take care of it myself.” With that, I unzipped Eric’s backpack.
Eric spun around and grabbed my arm. “Don’t you dare,” he said with his teeth clenched.
I pulled out a piece of the cake. “Too late.” I grinned. “Siri Lady, take us to Planet Poo—” Eric tackled me before I could finish my request.
D-D-D-DING! Fall. WHOOSH! “Welcome to Planet Poo!”
“AHHH!” I screamed, both because of the stench and because Eric was biting my arm. I dropped the cake and pleaded with Siri Lady. “Take us somewhere else! Anywhere else!”
DING! Fall. WHOOSH! “Welcome to Planet P-p-p-potato Park.”
I rolled outside the pod. We seemed to have landed in a potato-themed amusement park. A small potato with a camera around its neck hopped over to me and started trying to take my picture. To my right was a water flume ride where a baked potato boat was splashing down in a river of cream soup. I turned around. “I think we need to . . . ”
POW!
I flew backward like I’d been punched by the Hulk. When my head cleared, I looked up to see Eric standing over me, glaring with an iron fist equipped. “I’m going to do this myself. Don’t follow me.”
I’d been patient with Eric to this point, but he’d crossed a line. “You want to fight?! Then fight like a man.” I reached into my backpack and pulled out gloves of my own.
Eric held up his fists. “I’d love to.”
I smiled. Eric was in for a surprise—he hadn’t seen me pick up these gloves from the black hole planet. I clenched my fists to charge the gloves, and Eric started running at me. The photo potato backed up. He hadn’t been trained to deal with something like this. When my fists fully charged, I held them over my head, and Eric lifted off the ground slightly.
“Hey!”
I wasn’t done. I pointed one hand at Eric, while I pulled the other back like I was reeling in a marlin.
“Put me down!”
Oh, I’d put him down when I was good and ready. I pulled a little more until he was almost in reach, then I clenched to supercharge the gravity punch.
POW!
I went flying instead. Eric had punched first. The potato looked at both of us, then hopped away as fast as he could.
“That’s it!” I pounded my fist into the concrete, which caused the ground to cave in. Then I lifted my arm, and the ground bounced back into place, trampolining me into the air. “AHHHHHHHH!” I screamed like a maniac while supercharging my fist.
“AHHHHHHHH!” Eric yelled while he charged his own fist.
I flew into Eric, and we both punched as hard as we could at the same time.
POWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!
By this point, I’d come face-to-face with a prehistoric sea beast, battled nightmare royalty, and scaled a 10-story giant. I had yet to experience anything with even half the power we created when our fists collided.
First, there was the sound. Our punch had caused a blast so deafening that I couldn’t hear anything for
a good 10 seconds afterward. Then there was the
black hole. The space where our fists had met briefly turned black and almost sucked the skin off my face. Finally, there was the explosion. After a moment,
the black hole collapsed on itself and turned into a bright white energy ball that knocked the wind out of my lungs.
After it was all over, I lay on the ground for a few moments with my eyes closed fighting for breath. When I could finally breathe again, I opened my eyes. That’s when I saw the tidal wave.
Chapter 14
Combo
“RUN!”
Eric and I had accidentally created a blast so powerful that we’d demolished the log flume ride. We ran as fast as we could while the big hill toppled, then dove with our arms outstretched just as the cream soup overtook us. “WHOOOAAAA!” I screamed as I rode the wave. That scream of terror quickly morphed into a scream
of glee, however, when I discovered that I could bodysurf on cream soup a lot easier than I could on water. I rode the wave until I bonked my head on the Small Fry Railroad Guy train station.
When I finally stopped, I checked my health. It was still 100 percent! I couldn’t believe it! “What was that?!”
Eric stood and wiped the soup out of his eyes. “Combo attack.”
I waited for a longer explanation, then followed up when I didn’t get one. “Is that a normal video game thing? Like if we combine our attacks, we get something new?”
Eric made a “duh” face at me, then started walking away.
I sloshed after him. “Where are you going?”
“Dark King.”
“You think the combo is powerful enough to take down the Dark King?”
“I think it’s powerful enough to take down Max.”
“Wait!”
Eric turned. “Stop! I’m tired of arguing with you!”
“I just wanted to see if we could swing by the water park real quick to wash the soup off.”
Eric rolled his eyes, and we walked to Potato Pond. “Hey, listen. You were right, OK?” I tried after I’d washed off in the wave pool. “There was another way. Obviously, I didn’t think of it because I didn’t know about combo attacks.”
Eric ignored my apology as he wrung the water out of his shirt bandanna.
“If you know about stuff like combo attacks, you need to tell me. We have to work together.”
Eric remained silent as he put his shirt back on and dried off inside the air fryer.
“But you have to admit that my idea would have worked too.”
Eric walked back to the pod. When I realized he wasn’t giving me the satisfaction of a response, I jogged to catch up and almost slipped on a puddle of leftover cream soup.
“Dark King,” Eric said when the pod doors closed.
DING! Fall. WHOOSH!
We reappeared in the throne room, and the Dark King looked at us like, “Oh brother, you two again?” I started sweating more than ever. The king cracked his knuckles and stood up. By my calculations, we had four seconds before he started pointing.
One-one-thousand.
Eric ran behind the throne. I clenched my fists to start charging the gloves.
Two-one-thousand.
The king smiled and lifted his arm. The screeching violins started.
Three-one-thousand.
The king pointed at me. I put my head down and ran toward Eric.
Four-one-thousand.
I jumped-punched at the same time Eric did. Our fists connected just as the king shot his black beam.
POWOWOWOWOWOW!
The king’s attack only fueled our black hole, causing it to grow and grow. For a moment, the Dark King looked at the hole, confused. Then his face started to warp as his skin got sucked in. He tried scrambling backward, but he was too late—the hole exploded in a burst of light, swallowing the Dark King whole.
DING DING DING!
Bells chimed as our XP meters filled up.
“Woo-hoo!” I celebrated and danced. Even Eric took a break from his moping to crack a smile. We ran back to the pod. “What’s our XP?”
The number 42,221 appeared on the screen.
“Take us to the endurance challenge!” I yelled.
“Engage Perma-Perma-Perma—” Siri Lady got stuck in a Perma-Death loop.
“Yes! Do it!” Eric yelled as he banged on the wall.
Ding! Fall. WHOOSH!
The doors opened, and there was Max in another white room. He spread his arms. “Welcome, warriors.”
This time, Eric didn’t even try to punch him.
“Ultimate Warriors aren’t just strong in body and heart; they also have strong spirits. This might be your toughest challenge yet, but I’ll b
e waiting for you if you endure to the end.”
BING! A red square appeared on the wall in front of us.
“This is you,” Max explained.
BING! A green square appeared next to it.
“And this is where you need to go. Simple enough, right? I’ll even show you the way.”
The squares started shrinking, and lines began appearing all over the walls as well as the floor and ceiling. It almost looked like we were zooming out on something. Once the two squares had shrunk to the size of postage stamps, a dotted line snaked around the room, connecting the red square to the green square. That’s when I realized what we were looking at. It was a maze. And not just any maze, but possibly the longest maze ever constructed.
Max was beaming. “It’s a maze! The longest maze ever constructed.”
I groaned. We were bad at mazes. Specifically, Eric was very, very bad at mazes. Any time a teacher would give our class a maze activity when we were little, Eric would connect the start and finish dots with a line outside the maze. Last year, a few families in our neighborhood tried a corn maze together. After three minutes of wandering, Eric panicked and ran through row after row of corn until someone dressed up as a scarecrow kicked him out.
“If you follow this exact path, you should be able to finish the maze in eight days.”
My heart sank. Days? Did he say “days”?
“I hope you’ve been getting a good look at the map, because this is the last you’ll see of it. It disappears in three . . . ”
“No, wait! I have a camera!” Eric shouted as he dug through his backpack.
“Two. One.”
Eric pulled out his camera just as the map vanished into the white walls.
“The good news is you shouldn’t die in here,” Max said. “The bad news is you’ll probably lose your mind. Good luck!”
Chapter 15
Glue Gun Crafting
Max disappeared, and the front wall lowered to reveal a hallway forking into five paths. Eric pulled a sledgehammer out of his backpack and started pounding the wall behind us.
CHUNK! CHUNK! CHUNK!
I sighed. “What are you doing?”
CHUNK! CHUNK! CHUNK!
The sledgehammer bounced off the wall like it was made of rubber, so Eric tossed it aside and pulled out a pickax.
CHINK! CHINK! CHINK!
“This is going to be pretty miserable if you don’t start talking to me,” I said.
CHINK! CHINK!
I grabbed Eric’s pickax before he could swing it again. “Hey! I asked what you’re doing!”
“I’m getting us out of here!”
“Really? Cuz it looks like you’re trying to break an unbreakable wall.”
Eric turned. Sweat was dripping down his face. “If you were paying attention, you’d remember that the end of the maze is on the other side of this wall. So if we break through, we win. Got it?” He snatched the pickax back.
CHINK! CHINK! CHINK!
Of course, Max wouldn’t have shown us the map if there were any way to break the wall. In fact, he’d probably put the start and finish so close together on purpose to drive people even crazier. If we were going to survive the next eight days, we couldn’t waste energy on dumb stuff like this.
I wiped the sweat off my forehead. Man, it was hot. Something about the maze was trapping heat big-time. Maybe it was the enclosed hallways, or maybe it was the reflective walls, but the maze felt twice as hot as anywhere else we’d been.
CHINK! CHINK! CHINK!
I couldn’t wait for Eric any longer. I started walking down the hall. “Hey!” Eric yelled. “Where are you going?!”
“If you run your hand along the right wall, you can solve any maze,” I said.
“Are you crazy?!” Eric shouted. “That’s gonna take forever!”
“You can catch up once you’re done fooling around. I’ll just be—YOWZA!” I jerked my hand back as soon as I touched the wall. It was at least a thousand degrees. No worries, I could just follow the wall with my eyes. I continued walking.
Squish. Squish.
“Hey, Jesse?”
Squish. Squish.
“Jesse.”
Squish. Squish.
“Jesse!”
“WHAT?!”
“You’re leaving footprints.”
I turned to see a trail of black tar footprints behind me. Weird. I checked the bottom of my shoe and—oh no. Ohhhhhh no. I hadn’t stepped in anything black—my shoe was black! The floor was melting my shoes! Once my soles were gone, nothing would be left to separate my feet from the lava ground. I ran back to Eric.
Squishsquishsquishsquish.
“Start swinging!” I yelled as I grabbed the sledgehammer.
CHINK! CHUNK! CHINK! CHUNK!
“Wait!” I set down the sledgehammer. “Let’s try the combo attack!”
Eric started charging his iron fists. I clenched my gravity gloves. Once they fully charged, I counted down from three and punched Eric’s fist with all my might.
POWOWOWOWOWOWOW!
Nothing. And now my shoes were getting soupy.
“Dump out your backpack!” Eric commanded as he emptied his.
We started sorting through the junk. Over the past week, we’d accumulated tons of random stuff. There was a Reubenverse flag, a beanbag chair, a party-size tub of cottage cheese (who throws a party with cottage cheese?), a World War II helmet, a . . .
“What’s that?”
“Oh, that’s a jet engine,” Eric said.
“Why did you keep a jet engine?”
Eric shrugged. “In case we found a jet, I guess.”
I sat on the beanbag chair and put my head in my hands. Nothing we’d collected could come close to breaking through the wall. And if we weren’t getting through the wall, we weren’t getting out of the maze. I cleared my throat. I figured if I was going to cook in a horrible video game maze oven, I should probably make things right with my best friend.
“Hey, Eric, I . . . ”
“I know,” Eric interrupted.
“It’s just . . . ”
“It’s OK,” Eric said.
I looked up. Eric was smearing a melting Wiffle ball around on the ground. “I mean it,” I said.
“I do too.”
I felt like we should hug or something to finalize things, but there was no way I was going to cross the lava floor, so I just nodded at Eric. He nodded back.
I sat for a few more seconds before the smell of melting vinyl beanbag got to be too much, then I looked around for my next place to sit. That’s when I noticed something weird about the jet engine.
“Why is that melting?” I asked.
Eric looked at the misshapen engine. “The outside’s probably made of a light metal. Light metals melt easily.”
“That sounds like a dumb choice for a jet engine.”
Eric shrugged. “Aircraft use lots of light metals.”
“What, are you a pilot or something now?”
“I know lots about aircraft.”
Suddenly, my eyes got big. “Craft!”
“Huh?”
“We can craft now!”
Eric squinted at our pile of junk. “No, we can’t.”
“Maybe not nerdy video game crafting, but definitely mom-with-glue-gun crafting!” I used a small parachute to shuffle over to the engine without burning my feet. I rolled the engine over and nodded my approval when the bottom kind of stuck to the floor. “We use the ground as our glue gun to get the metal hot enough that it’ll stick to something else!”
“Like what?” Eric asked.
I pushed the jet engine until it chinked into the sledgehammer. Eric’s eyes lit up. “Rocket-powered sledgehammer!”
We immediately got to work on our new creation by
superheating one side of the jet engine. Then, we carefully rolled it over and smooshed the hammer on top. The hammer sunk in with a satisfying SQUISH. We waited a bit to let it set, then tried wiggling the handle. Not too bad! We smeared melty shoe tar and plastic around the bond to strengthen it, waited a few more minutes, and tried again. Perfect!
I flipped three switches on the engine.
VROOOOOOOOM!
The sledgehammer rattled in my hands. I tightened my grip, cocked it behind my shoulder, and swung with all my might.
CHUNK.
Instead of bouncing off the wall like before, the sledgehammer got a little stuck. My heart raced. I pulled it out and swung again.
CHUNK. CHUNK. CRACK!
On the third swing, I cracked a hole in the wall just big enough to peek through.
Eric checked it out first and pumped his fist. “I knew it!”
I looked, too, and grinned. The room was all green. Eric backed up, and I smashed a hole big enough to step through.
“Hi, Max! We’re here!” Eric yelled as he walked into the room.
“Congggggratulationszzzzz,” Max said. We spun around to find his glitching face on the wall we’d just smashed through. Our hole was right where his mouth should have been. “I did-id-id-idn’t think yoowoowoowoowoo . . . ”
The screen zapped black and went silent. We waited for a moment. Was it broken? Then, the room flashed blue.
It took me a moment to remember where I’d seen a blue flash before, but when I did, I gasped out loud.
“What is it?” Eric asked.
“We need to get out,” I whispered.
“But . . . ”
I pushed Eric back through the hole. “Now!”
We scrambled out of the room and hid around the other side of the wall—me on the right side of the hole and Eric on the left. I stood perfectly still and tried to catch my breath without gasping too loudly.
Eric held up his arms. “What?” he mouthed.
I tapped my ear. Listen.
Ten, twenty, thirty seconds went by. Silence. Then, I heard it.
The unmistakable sound of gas mask breathing.
Chapter 16
The Potato Sack Hop
When we broke the wall, we broke the Reubenverse. And when we broke the Reubenverse, we broke our pact with the Hindenburg. We were no longer pals to be protected. We were now bugs constructing overpowered weapons to destroy Max’s perfect prison. That made us the enemy.