Attack Doll 2: Junior Prime

by Douglas A. Taylor

Chapter 6

 

  "Sooo . . . where the heck are we?"

  That was Baxter, looking around us. The street we were on was dark, illuminated by just a few lights.

  "Offhand, I'd say we're in Ohio," I said casually, "about a quarter of a mile away from my parents' house." Some of the Trevors turned to look at me in surprise, so I shrugged and said, "The last time they sent somebody out, it was to get Angie and me. They probably never reset the teleporter after that."

  "Look, there's the studio," Angie exclaimed, pointing. "We really are home!"

  "Great!" said someone disgustedly from the middle of the crowd. "I live in Alaska. How am I going to get home?"

  "We got bigger problems than that!" Smith said. "Looks like we brought a bunch of those creeps with us!"

  He was right. In my experience, if you're holding someone's hand (or presumably some other body part) when you teleport, then that person teleports along with you. By chance or by design, almost all the Zoinks we had been battling had been in contact with each other (and us) when the teleport happened and had come along for the ride.

  And so had Mr. Creepy-pants.

  He began waving his sword feebly at us and moaning, "You must come baaaaack with me. Baaaaack to the baaaaase!"

  Baxter rolled his eyes. "Will somebody please shut that guy up!"

  Nobody moved to do so, which I thought was a good thing. It looked to me as if the monster wasn't about to attack anyone at the moment, and if it wouldn't, then the Zoinks wouldn't. Personally, I wouldn't go picking a fight like that if I didn't have to.

  I would have said something to that effect, but I suddenly caught sight of Angela slipping off through the trees. "Angie!" I hissed, "what are you doing?"

  She turned towards me, and for some reason she looked guilty as hell. Then she composed herself and gave me a sheepish grin. "I, uh, drank a lot of water at practice today," she said, dancing from one foot to the other, "and I, uh, I really have to . . . um . . . you know . . ."

  I glanced around; fortunately, no one was looking our way. The other Trevors were all eying the Zoinks, who seemed to be milling around aimlessly. "Fine, go take care of your personal business," I told her, chuckling. "I'll make sure nobody follows you."

  "Thanks, Trev," she said gratefully, and dashed off into the woods.

  I had a tense five minutes waiting for her to come back. I didn't think any of the Zoinks had wandered off, but I still breathed a sigh of relief when I saw her walk in from the darkness of the trees. "Feel better?" I asked her.

  "Yeah, a whole lot better!" She gave me a sunny smile that, oddly, seemed a bit smug, as if she knew something that I didn't. "Like a huge amount of pressure has been --"

  "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I protested. "Waaay too much information!"

  "Hey, guys!" one of the other Trevors interrupted, "it's the Primes! Over there!"

  I looked, and there they were, running out from among the trees -- all seven of them. I blinked and looked again. Yup, there were seven Primes: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet.

  I stared at the glowing figures, wondering what the heck was going on. I mean, I guess it was obvious what was going on -- Wizzit had pulled in reserve troops from somewhere. But why? More specifically, why now? It's not unusual for us to go into battle with only five or six of us. Had someone tipped him off that it would be a good idea to send out seven Primes to this particular battle?

  Sending out a fake Prime Indigo would not be that hard. It's dead easy for Wizzit to change the color of someone's force shield; after all, every single one of us had started out as Prime Violet. I figured that Nicolai would be the one pretending to be me, since he is about my size, and as I looked, yeah, I recognized his karate stance.

  But if Nicolai was playing the part of Prime Indigo, then who was Prime Yellow? Whoever he was, he had to be tall, close to Shelley and Toby's height, although he was disguising it by standing behind Trina and adopting a low, wide-legged kung fu stance -- not some fake Karate Kid, flapping-bird pose, but something real, from one of the hard styles, I'd guess. Something that indicated that he had actually studied kung fu.

  And then I figured out who it had to be, the one person besides us Primes that Wizzit typically teleports: Prime Commander. I knew he and Shelley had studied kung fu together for years before she entered the Primes, and he was maybe a half-inch taller than she was. It couldn't really be anyone else. I shook my head and chuckled. The old man was probably getting quite the hoot out of dressing up like a Prime for once.

  Baxter interrupted my thoughts. "Why are you laughing?" he demanded.

  "Hm? Oh, I just think it's funny who showed up."

  "Well, yeah, the Primes showed up. I mean, it's cool to see them in person and all, but I don't see that it's all that funny. Come on, give. What are you laughing at?"

  "At who showed up," I insisted. "The seven Primes who showed up."

  There was a pause as he silently counted the rainbow of figures in front of us. And then he started laughing, too. "You idiot!" he shouted at Mr. Creepy-pants. "You were wrong all the time. None of us guys is the indigo Prime. That's him right over there! Man, you guys are dumb!"

  After a moment, the rest of the Trevors figured out what he was talking about and started yelling at the monster as well. Most of them were making fun of it like Baxter was, but some seemed pretty mad about the whole thing, and I was starting to worry that we might soon have a riot on our hands.

  At last, Shelley spoke up. Addressing the monster, she said, in that quiet, reasonable, persuasive tone of hers, "So far, we have not seen you actually attack anyone, and you do not, in fact, seem inclined to cause any injury. If you leave now, we will let you go unharmed. Otherwise, we will destroy you. Your choice."

  Mr. Creepy-pants took the hint. With an eerie moan, a final wave of his sword, and a flash of light, he disappeared, taking all the Zoinks with him.

  Beside me, Angela heaved a sigh of relief. "Boy, I'm sure glad that's over!" she said.

  "You and me both!" I said.

  "Sure, that's fine for you two," one of the other Trevors spoke up irritably. "You're, like, a block away from home. But what are the rest of us going to do?"

  "We might be able to help with that." That was Shelley's voice. She and the other Primes were walking toward us. (All except Yellow, I noticed. He had vanished.) She strode up to the speaker. "Where do you live, citizen?"

  He seemed startled at being addressed directly by Prime Red. "Uh, i-in Alaska. Fairbanks."

  "The address, please?"

  He licked his lips. "You, uh, you can just drop me off at the corner of First Avenue and Cushman," He gave a nervous laugh. "It's just a couple of blocks from the river."

  "Cushman and First. Got it." Shelley nodded to herself and grasped his wrist. In a flash of light, they were gone.

  The other Primes were mingling with the Trevors now, getting addresses and teleporting out with them. Baxter was the last to leave. He stuck out his hand. "Hey, Chiao, it was nice to meet you."

  We shook hands. "Same here, Baxter. Let's not do this again real soon, okay?"

  He grinned. "You got it, buddy." He hesitated. "You know, before the Primes showed up, I was kind of thinking you might be that indigo guy that they were looking for."

  "Me?" I gave him my best you've-got-to-be-kidding face. "I'll take that as a compliment. Take care of yourself."

  "You, too."

  Prime Green -- Trina -- stepped forward. "Come with me," she told Baxter. "I will take you home."

  He looked down at her and smiled. As a general rule, we try to avoid giving out any clues about race, nationality, or sex when we're shielded, but no force shield is going to be able to hide Trina's shape. "Sure thing, darlin'," he said. He winked at her. "I'll bet you're pretty cute under all that green haze, aren't you?"

  I pr
icked up my ears to hear her reply, knowing how Trina loves to flirt. "Beneath this force shield, I am very cute," she said, a hint of mischief making its way through the voice alteration. "I am also quite unclothed." She took a firm hold of his wrist. "Where would you like to go? Or should I just take you home with me?"

  His eyes widened, and he looked her up and down, obviously imagining what the green, swirling mist must be hiding. "D-Dallas," he stammered when he could find his tongue, and then he named a street address.

  Trina then turned to Angela and me. "The two of you will be fine here?" We both indicated that we would, so she nodded and disappeared with Baxter.

  And then it was just Angela and me. "Come on, little sis," I said, sounding as tired as I felt, I'm sure. "We'd better get on home. Mom and Dad will be getting worried."

  "Okay," she replied meekly.

  She was quiet for the rest of the walk home. Knowing her, I had expected non-stop chatter, with her excitedly reliving the events of the evening, but she didn't say a word, not until we got to our driveway. Then she gave me a thoughtful look and said, "Trevor, can I ask you a question?"

  I shrugged. "Sure. What is it?"

  She started to say something, then stopped. I studied her, concerned. Angie is never at a loss for words. Finally, she stammered, "Is -- is your knee okay? You're limping."

  Ah, yes, the knee that JB Swift had bashed with his pipe. It was pretty sore, and I bet it would be black-and-blue by morning, except that I was planning on a healing coma later tonight. "It'll be fine. Is there anything else you wanted to ask me?"

  She opened her mouth, shut it again, and then blurted out, "How long have you been a Prime? Ever since you left high school?"

  Startled, I looked into her dark eyes. She seemed nervous, as well she might, considering what she was asking me.

  I thought about denying it all. That would have been the right thing, I suppose. The correct thing. But I found that I couldn't do it. Angela and I had always been close, closer than I ever was to my older sister Joy, or to Jerome and Nick, my two younger brothers. We had always gotten along, had always understood each other. Avoid the topic? Sure, I would happily do that, but I just couldn't flat-out lie to Angie.

  I took a deep breath. "Yeah, pretty much," I said. "I graduated in June, and by mid-July, I was the new Prime Violet."

  She let out the breath she had been holding. "So there was never any Tae Kwon Do demonstration team?"

  "No. That's just what I tell people."

  She gave a shaky laugh. "Well, that's a relief, at least. Here I had been worrying that my big brother was frittering his life away, and now I find out that you're saving the world instead."

  "Angie, you know you can't tell Mom and Dad, right? Or . . . anyone?"

  She snorted. "Of course! I'm not stupid. I know you have to keep it a secret. Although . . . you know, if you told Grandmaster Park, I bet he'd promote you to fifth Dan right away."

  "Angie . . ." I warned her.

  "Forget it," she said hastily. "It was just a thought."

  "Good." I sighed with relief. "So, how did you figure it out, anyway? I'd have thought that seeing all seven Primes show up at the end would fool you like it did the others."

  "Figuring it out was pretty easy," she declared confidently. "I think everyone there had you pegged as the guy they were looking for. For one thing, you were the only one who wasn't scared out of his wits. It was like you had been through all this before and knew exactly what to do. Oh, and having the fake Prime show up? That was my idea."

  I stared at her in disbelief. "It was . . . what?"

  "It was my idea," she repeated patiently. "Well, sort of. See, I figured the Primes would show up eventually, because they always show up whenever a monster is around, right? And everyone knows that they never teleport right into the scene of a battle. So I went off into the woods hoping to catch them before anyone else saw them. I managed to spot the red guy -- I bet he's really cute, by the way -- and I told him everything that had happened and that the monsters all thought you were the indigo Prime, so --"

  "Prime Indigo," I corrected her.

  "What?"

  "I'm called Prime Indigo," I said again. "And the 'red guy' is Prime Red. That's how we refer to ourselves."

  "Oh. Well, anyway, 'Prime Red' told me to go back and pretend like nothing had happened, and I did, so . . . here we are!" She spread her arms, obviously proud of herself.

  For a moment I just stared at her, not really sure what to say. She sighed. "I think the words you're looking for, Trevor, are 'Thanks, little sis, for saving my secret identity.'"

  That made me laugh. She was right. "Thanks, little sis, for saving my secret identity," I said, and I meant it.

  "No prob." Then she suddenly looked worried. "You're not going to erase my memory or anything, are you? Because that would really suck!"

  "No, I'm not going to erase your memory," I assured her. "I wouldn't know how to do that. I'm just going to have to rely on your discretion."

  "No worries there, big brother." She danced an excited little jig. "My own brother is Prime Indigo. Geez, this is so great!"