The rhythm of Bongo Boy’s clicking drew me in, but not entirely—not nearly as strongly as he had with drums.
I could think—barely—I half wanted to stand there, quietly waiting for orders.
I pointed my right arm at him, set the sonics to choose the most resonant frequency for the wood, and narrowcast a big pulse of sound as he brought the two shards together with a wooden click. Continue reading Under 30: Part 26
“Yeah, right,” Vaughn said. “Cause we’re going to let you guys run away, and keep on robbing banks, and protesting with monkeys. That’s totally brilliant.”
Unless Evil Beatnik planned to use magic to tell Justice Fist to stop, I didn’t know how he’d do it. I supposed he could use a cellphone if he didn’t care about the rain. That said, in this case, the rain would destroy Mr. Beacham’s cellphone, and Evil Beatnik probably didn’t care.
“Doing about it?” Jaclyn said. “We were working on a plan to stop them, but we can go to the riot.”
The Marvelous X shook his head. “Please don’t. We’ve reason to believe a villain named Evil Beatnik is involved. You’ve likely never heard of him because he hasn’t been seen in years, but he can influence young people. We’ve organized a number of heroes that are too old for him to control. They’ll take care of him soon enough.”
“You’re sure about that?” Continue reading Under 30: Part 21
And he didn’t just remind me of Mr. Beacham, this was Mr. Beacham—with 100% more beatnik.
I adjusted the picture, scrolling away from the monkey on the balcony and back toward Mr. Beacham, and his hangers on.
Having recognized him, I knew who the woman with him was—Mr. Beacham’s girlfriend. She’d visited the school once. Was she with him because she thought he was Evil Beatnik, was Evil Beatnik controlling her, or did she somehow like Evil Beatnik? Had they… uh… I put the thought out of my mind, but it opened up a lot of relationship questions.
Could Haley and I survive something like that? I liked to think we would, but you never knew. Worse, the deeper we got into this whole superheroism thing, the better chance we had to find out.
So I put that thought out of my mind too.
With Dixie Supergirl’s hearing, I hadn’t dared to turn on the roachbot’s rocket. I’d decided to wait until I thought it had a good chance to get away without being heard. That meant hanging on to her utility belt until she got back to their lair.
Lair.
That makes it sound so much more dramatic, and ominous than it actually was.
Sunday night, Marcus and I placed roachbots around the city, and sat back to wait for something exciting to happen.
It didn’t. We went home around two in the morning, having discovered that people really did sneak in after the beach officially closed to drink. They also got discovered by rangers, and then ticketed and fined by the police.
It seemed distinctly less fun than the stories I’d heard.
Continue reading Under 30: Part 13
After Vaughn and Jaclyn sat down, we started to make a plan.
“At least we know how it’s been done before,” Jaclyn said. “Once we stop his followers and reveal who he’s possessing, he disappears. Hey, do you think we might be able to take the ring if we’re wearing gloves?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “it’s magic. Who knows what the rules are? When one of the Hangmen lassoed me with his noose, it didn’t paralyze me like it was supposed to, but with Evil Beatnik, it might go the other way. The original League surrounded the ring with concrete and bulletproof glass for a reason.” Continue reading Under 30: Part 10
Taking the phone, I ran down to the family room, and turned on the television. Dad frowned at me from the counter where he was eating cereal. “It’s a little early for television—”
“No, Dad, this is different.” I still had the phone in my hand. “You said News 10?”
“That’s it,” Kayla replied.
I didn’t watch TV in the morning, mostly because I wasn’t up, but I knew that normally News 10 gave a little local news and weather before cutting over to “The Today Show” for most of each hour.
It wasn’t cutting over. Terry Smith, the Very Square-Jawed male anchor sat at the desk with DebbieLynn Vonk, the Very Beautiful, Blonde, female anchor.
They were laughing as I turned on the TV, and they kept on laughing for a long time. Too long. As in, “How much longer are they going to show these people laughing,” long.
Continue reading Under 30: Part 6
“Yeah. That was in one of their last reports.” Vaughn said. “The one where they finally caught him. So what does ‘spirit of chaos’ mean exactly? Chaos powers? I can cause chaos without powers. Just ask my mom.”
“I don’t know,” Jaclyn said. “Grandpa told me he could make things happen, like just about anything happen, but the more it violated reality, the harder it was.”
“OK,” I said,”so what does he want?” Continue reading Under 30: Part 5
While Gunther talked to Gimpius, I tapped out a message to Jaclyn.
“Busy?”
If she were in the middle of a fight, a text would be easier to ignore than a call. Probably.
Her message came back seconds later. Continue reading Targets: Part 25