The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy, Book One: The Hero Revealed (11 page)

Stench and I just looked at each other. Neither of us was ready to make such a drastic pledge. I couldn’t help thinking, that Plasma Girl had a point. But right now we had to try and figure out where the three Professor Brain-Drain cards were.

“Come on,” I said. “It’s almost four o’clock. Let’s go meet Tadpole and Hal. We can figure out later how to tell AI what the Tycoon is up to.”

The Cavalcade of Candy was the biggest candy store in town. Shaped like a dollop of whipped cream, it was a hundred feet tall, but the entire interior was as hollow as a chocolate bunny. One long pathway inside the store spun its way to the top in a single continuous spiral.

All along this path were individual shops specializing in any type of candy you could possibly imagine: chocolates, toffees, brittles, cotton candy, licorice—you name it. Running all through the open space in the middle there was also an incredible roller coaster called the Sugar Rush. In my opinion, though, the coolest thing there was the scale model of Superopolis that covered the main floor and was made entirely of candy. Mountains were made out of chocolate, trees were made from wisps of green cotton candy, and the buildings were made of gingerbread. It was completely accurate, too. I could even find the model of my own house!

THE CAVALCADE OF CANDY

The brainchild of the Superopolis Dental League, the Cavalcade of Candy was built on the same location as their previous enterprise, the Little Tykes Puck-Whacker Hockey Arena, which had been shut down by the city over its refusal to provide kids with face masks. Home to nearly one hundred confectioners, the Cavalcade of Candy was a success from the day it opened and is recommended by four out of five dentists.

There was no time to spend looking at it now, though. Plasma Girl, Stench, and I headed up the spiral pathway. We passed the Rock Candy Menagerie, where they sold little figures of animals made of rock candy, scooted by Great Balls o’ Fire, whose jalapeño fireballs are even too hot for my dad, skirted around the Gummy Grave Robber, who sold gummy candy that looked like most of the major internal organs (Plasma Girl made an ick face as we passed by), until finally we reached the Collector Card Coliseum.

The department is enormous, but it was easy for us to follow the flashes of light over to where Halogen Boy was lighting up packs of cards while Tadpole checked out their contents.

“Any luck?” I asked.

“None at all,” Tadpole responded. “But we only just got started. Hal insisted on having a large Apple Super Seltzer at the Fizz Bar before we started looking, and the carbonation gave his light such an on-and-off flashy quality that I couldn’t focus on anything in the packs. It was only after he went to the bathroom that he toned down enough to be useful.”

Tadpole gave Hal an annoyed look, but he just shrugged his shoulders innocently and burped.

“There are hundreds of packs to look through, though,” Tadpole added hopefully.

“To be honest, I don’t think there’s any point in even checking,” I said, and then I told them what we had learned at Indestructo Industries. “Our only chance is the clue that the Tycoon gave us,” I said. “What could he have meant by three types of rock?”

“How are we going to find three cards scattered all across Superopolis?” Tadpole exclaimed in frustration.

“Our only chance is the clue that the Tycoon gave us,” I said. “What could he have meant by three types of rock?”

“Maybe he meant rock music!” Plasma Girl blurted out hopefully. “Let’s see, what are the different types?”

“There’s Heavy Metal,” Tadpole suggested.

“Right,” Plasma Girl agreed. “And there’s Punk Rock.”

“What about Rap?” Hal added helpfully. “Is that a type of rock?”

“I’m not sure that even counts as music,” Stench said.

I was only half listening. I drifted over to the railing where I glanced down at the scale model of Superopolis. My eyes focused on an enormous chocolate mountain in the center of the model. That was all it took for me to realize we were completely on the wrong track.

“He wasn’t talking about rock music,” I said, interrupting a discussion about the difference between Light Rock and Soft Rock. “He was talking about
rocks
!”

“What do you mean?” Plasma Girl asked.

“I mean regular, ordinary, old everyday rocks. The kind you find on the ground.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Tadpole said. “There are millions of different rocks.”

“No,” I corrected him, “there are only three. Don’t you remember in science class when we learned the three types?”

They all looked at me blankly, indicating how little they had absorbed of Miss Marble’s recent lessons on geology.

“I sort of remember a little about it,” Plasma Girl offered. “Just not very much.”

“Okay, fine,” I said. “Let me refresh your memories. Rocks are divided into three types—igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic.”

The blank looks remained in place.

“Let’s start with igneous,” I said. “Igneous rocks are crystal or glassy types of rocks that are created by molten lava when it cools.”

As they stood there silently, I realized I wasn’t getting through to them. So I jumped ahead.

“What it means,” I said triumphantly, “is that I know exactly where one of the cards is located.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lava’s Labors Lost

In the heart of downtown Superopolis is Lava Park. It’s called that because there is a live volcano smack in the middle of it. The volcano, Mount Reliable, erupts every day at exactly five o’clock. And without fail, one of Superopolis’s many heroes arrives on the scene and prevents it from doing any damage.

“The best example of igneous rock in all Superopolis is in Lava Park,” I informed my teammates. “Igneous rock comes from lava that has hardened. It makes perfect sense.”

“But how do we find a card that’s hidden in a live volcano?” Halogen Boy asked, glowing dimly.

“It’s not in the volcano,” I responded. “Can you think of a place that normally sells this sort of thing and also happens to be located right near the volcano?”

LAVA PARK

After early attempts to sell the land around Mount Reliable as housing lots failed, the city leaders gave up and declared the area a municipal park. At over two hundred acres, the park now provides a needed oasis of green (and bubbling red) in the heart of the Superopolis business district. The numerous thermal vents throughout the park make it particularly popular for barbecues.

“Inkblot’s Newsstand!” Plasma Girl cried.

“Exactly!” I said.

The Inkblot has had his newsstand on a corner of Lava Park for over fifty years. In that time he’s watched lots of major historical events pass by on the front pages of the newspapers he sells there. Today’s headlines weren’t all that earthshaking, though.
The
Hero Herald
had a headline about an investigation into the unusually large number of solid gold thimbles that Mayor Whitewash recently received as gifts—“They’re only thimbles of appreciation” the headline quoted the mayor as saying.
The Weekly Daily
had a story about the enormous jackpot available in the Superopolis Lottery, which of course was pointless since the drawing had already happened three days ago, and
The Superopolis Times
had a piece on AI’s capture of the Multiplier. They reported the Multiplier’s dramatic increase in power, but there was no mention of the fact that my dad and the Big Bouncer had really brought him down.

In addition to papers and magazines, the Inkblot’s stand also has a wide array of snack-size bags of potato chips, a selection of candy bars and breath mints, and, sure enough, a small assortment of card packs. Among them was a stack of Amazing Indestructo Collector Cards.

“Hello, young uns,” the Inkblot greeted us as we made straight for the cards. “Can’t get enough of that AI stuff, can you? When I was just a sprout, I was the same way about Captain Radio. You kids probably don’t remember him, but he was the Amazing Indestructo of his day. He could ride the radio waves like one o’ them surfer dudes. Now that was a power! I still remember the day I met him. I must have been about the age you whippersnappers are now. I couldn’t wait to show him my power.”

Hal illuminated his hand and I tried to both check out the cards and look like I was listening politely.

“I was still young enough to think my power was pretty impressive,” the Inkblot continued. “I was in my brand-new costume. White as snow it was, except for the shape of a dark blot of ink smack in the middle of my chest. My boots, belt, and cape were the same dark color as the blot. I felt like I could take on every villain in Superopolis! That’s when I met the captain.”

We were halfway through the cards at this point, but there was no sign of a Professor Brain-Drain card. The Inkblot kept rambling on, now seemingly telling his story to a pigeon that had landed on the far edge of his counter.

“‘Well, sir,’ I said to him, ‘wait’ ’til you see this!’ Then I took out my bottle of ink and poured it into my hand. Of course, it didn’t land there, ya see, because that’s my power. I can repel ink from my body, ya know! So I held out my hand to Captain Radio and the blob of ink hovered in the air above my palm. I moved that blob from hand to hand, working up its speed, and then,
wham!
I sent that inkblot flying through the air until it went
splat
against a wall over ten feet away.”

I only heard a portion of this. We were down to the last couple of packs, and there was still no sign of the card.

“I turned to the captain,” the Inkblot continued, “sure that he would be as impressed with my power as I was. He stood there silently for a few moments as my heart beat with excitement. I figured my skill had left him speechless. Then he burst out laughing, hopped onto a radio wave, and surfed away without saying a word to me. I felt pretty lousy for a while, but I also grew up a little that day. It wasn’t long after that I got my first job selling newspapers. And in sixty years, I haven’t once gotten my hands dirty handling them.”

The Inkblot finished his story and held out his ink-free hands for me to inspect. We had gone through all the packs, and none of them contained a Professor Brain-Drain card. Before I could ask him about it, though, an enormous rumble suddenly threw us all to the ground. Mount Reliable began to spit balls of fire into the sky. Tadpole shouted, “Hey, guys, look! It’s the Weatherman!”

Sure enough, the Weatherman himself was taking on today’s volcano duty. Soaring to the top of the peak, he whipped up a blizzard over the mouth of the volcano, instantly freezing the lava that erupted into the air. For five minutes he kept at it, turning molten lava into—well, igneous rock. Finally, right on schedule, the volcano calmed down. After waving to the cheering crowd that had stopped to watch his performance, the Weatherman glided off on an air current into the late afternoon sky.

“I could save Superopolis, too,” the Inkblot grumbled, “if the consarned thing ever erupted in ink.”

This brought me back to the issue at hand.

“Inkblot, are these all the cards that you have?” I asked, trying not to sound desperate.

“Sure are,” he replied. “I just put ’em out about an hour ago. Only sold one other pack, so far.”

We all looked at each other in despair. Could it have been the one with our card?