Evil Beatnik said, “Yeah?”
He snapped his fingers, and the music stopped. Then he let out a breath, and gulped in another. Losing the music wasn’t the end of the world. It had served its purpose. The way he’d snuffed it so easily bothered me more.
Then I guessed how. In the reports Jaclyn’s grandfather mentioned that he could make things happen, and the more probable it was, the easier. He’d described fighting Evil Beatnik as fighting someone with the power of Murphy’s law—anything that could go wrong would. Continue reading Under 30: Part 27 →
“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.
Continue reading Under 30: Part 25 →
“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 →
Evil Beatnik walked in. I’d never seen him in that body, but I knew it instantly. He wore a black beret, black jeans, and a black turtleneck. Scruffy hair on his chin (and above his upper lip) hinted that he must be growing a goatee.
Oh, and he wore a silver ring on his right hand.
Except for pictures from the late 60’s and the 70’s, he’d always looked like that—even if he did possess different people each time.
I wondered who he was. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Continue reading Under 30: Part 19 →
Vaughn walked over to us as soon as he saw us. He said something to Sean and the others, and met us just as I’d started to look over Vaughn’s pictures. Fortunately, only the senior pictures had been blown up. Some of them, specifically one where a five year old Vaughn had smeared red jelly over half his face, were mortifying enough at three by five inches.
I made a mental note to ask for veto power over any pictures my parents felt a need to share.
Continue reading Graduation: Part 12 →
The next day at school, it occurred to me that I should have been more scared after receiving that message.
I can’t say that I wasn’t scared at all, but I didn’t freak out. Marcus and I called Isaac Lim, and the FBI traced the call to a payphone somewhere near Nashville. It surprised me that Prime could even find a payphone.
I mean, seriously, who uses them? Continue reading Graduation: Part 3 →
I flipped through the roachbot’s viewpoints, watching them scuttle up walls, through windows to the outside, or into vents.
I had a brief moment where I thought that the best thing I could do would be self-destruct all of them, but I’d just made them last fall. I didn’t want to do it all over again.
I waited on the top of the roof.
Silently, Rachel faded into view next to me. “They both chugged some juice and they’re coming outside. We’d better go — unless you want to fight them.”
Continue reading Uncontrolled Substances: Part 4 →
Even though my life didn’t get immediately stranger as a result, the “national discussion” of the problem got heated. Some people hailed the unnamed leaker as a hero standing up against the potential for government tyranny. Other people described the person as a traitor who had endangered national security out of misguided idealism.
Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats had a consistent party line.
Continue reading Chemistry: Part 4 →
The Legion of Nothing: A Series of Online Superhero Novels (Updates Monday and Thursday)