The Great Powers Outage (23 page)

He looked directly at me and smirked, clearly pleased that he had created an excuse for his own powerlessness before I could reveal it myself.

“So the question I have for you is a simple one,” he continued. “Do you want a mayor whose only talent up to now has been the ability to convince you all to overlook his shortcomings and incompetence? Or do you want a mayor who will solve the mystery of our missing powers?”

If the audience looked confused, it was nothing compared to the look of surprise on Mayor Whitewash's face.

“What are you saying?” he began to splutter.

“What I am saying is that I am officially announcing my candidacy for Mayor of Superopolis.” Professor Brain-Drain shouted with great fanfare, “Citizens of Superopolis! Give me power, and I will return yours!”

I could tell he was expecting a huge roar of support from the audience, but instead all he got was a skeptical silence.

“Haven't you attempted to destroy all of us a dozen times?” asked one man.

“You obviously haven't been keeping count,” the Professor responded indignantly. “I've tried to destroy all of you on seventy-eight different occasions.”

“So why help us now?” asked a female hero wearing a jeweled turban.

“A fair question,” Professor Brain-Drain admitted. “The truth is that there is no challenge in conquering a city of powerless individuals. Anyone could do that. My goal is to return your powers—as well as my own—so that I may renew my quest to destroy you all.”

“Well, that thar makes sense,” responded a hero known as the Cowpoke. “It's downright refreshin' to hear a politician respond honestly.”

“Professor Brain-Drain's plans may ultimately lead to my complete destruction,” proclaimed another woman, “but I can't help but admire his unflinching devotion to his beliefs.”

“Are you all crazy?!” I finally erupted as the crowd parted so that everyone could see me. “Professor BrainDrain is a convicted criminal—not to mention an evil genius.”

Thankfully, this caused the crowd to pause and think.

“That's right,” someone pointed out, “I'll bet the Professor thinks he's smarter than us.”

“Are you one of those people who think you know more than the rest of us?” another man demanded of the Professor. “We don't need any self-styled genius to manage the complex functions of the most essential aspects of our government.”

“Vote for me! I don't know anything,” blurted out Mayor Whitewash in a pathetic attempt to regain the support of the crowd. Everyone ignored him.

Professor Brain-Drain smiled cryptically. “You're absolutely correct in your skepticism of smart people. What have the few of them in our society ever done for us other than create our technology, produce our art, and unlock the secrets of science?”

“Exactly!” harrumphed the man in the fez.

“Fear not,” Professor Brain-Drain continued. “Neither of this lad's scurrilous charges is true. First of all, I have never been convicted of a crime nor spent a moment in jail.”

“How could that be?!” I accused.

“Look it up. You'll see that it's true,” he dismissed.

I turned to a reporter from
The Superopolis Times
, who was standing right next to me. “Are you going to investigate that claim?” I asked.

“I don't need to.” He shrugged. “The Professor himself just said it was true.”

Even as my mouth dropped open in astonishment, Professor Brain-Drain continued. “Second, with the loss of my power, I have also lost much of my intelligence,” he lied. “In a way it is a blessing. I now see the world from the perspective of a typical ignoramus and I can finally see how wrong it was for me to assume that my massive intelligence somehow made me smarter than you—the decent, painfully average folk of Superopolis.”

“Hooray for Professor Brain-Drain!” someone in the crowd began to shout. To my surprise, the chant was picked up, and little by little it spread through the crowd.

“He's just like us,” asserted a woman wearing a costume made of bird feathers.

I noticed a grimace appear briefly on the Professor's face, but he quickly caught himself and gave his best grandfatherly smile.

“So true. So true.” He beamed as he looked directly at me. “Never trust a smart person. In fact, I suspect we will ultimately learn that an intelligent person is somehow responsible for the disappearance of our powers. Come to think of it, I know of one such person who would have everything to gain by the elimination of all superpowers.”

I got a queasy sensation in my stomach.

“After all,” he continued, “who could possibly benefit more from everyone becoming ordinary than a young man named Ordinary Boy?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Tongue-tied

It's scary to think what might have happened if my friends hadn't been there. Egged on by Professor BrainDrain, the crowd turned angry—and ugly—fast.

“O Boy! This way!” Stench yelled as he pulled me toward him. He may not have been in full possession of his power, but he still had the size and bulk to knock away the nearest members of the mob who were pressing their way in my direction.

“Stay in between us,” Tadpole hollered, suddenly at my right side. A moment later, Halogen Boy appeared on my left.

“I'll watch the back,” Plasma Girl added as I felt her hand on my shoulders pushing me forward. “Let's get out of here!”

With Stench plowing a way through the crowd, and the rest of my teammates acting as a protective cordon, we worked our way outward. But the mob still pressed closer. I was worried that even Stench wasn't going to be able to help us, when suddenly the ground began to rumble. Tremor Park was living up to its name. The shaking threw Stench to the ground just as he was about to block the Cowpoke, who was swinging a rope and rushing right toward me. I felt the rope brush against my head as I was yanked away at the very last second.

“I'll get you out of here.”

I don't know how she did it, but Plasma Girl had grabbed my arm and was leading me effortlessly through the crowd even as people all around us fell to the ground in confused heaps. The earthquake seemingly had no effect on her.

“I may have lost my power,” she said, answering my unspoken question, “but I still have a lifetime of experience maneuvering in a jiggly, joggly, wiggly way.”

She was right. No one knew better how to ooze her way through a tricky situation then Plasma Girl. Only a moment later we reached the edge of the park, which came out at the back of the Opera House, and we came to a halt.

“You sure know how to make friends,” she said between gasps of breath.

“This time it was hardly my fault,” I protested. “Professor Brain-Drain is trying to make
me
the fall guy for everyone's loss of power—and they're all upset enough to believe him.”

“Well, we need to get you even farther away,” she said, looking past me as her eyes widened in alarm.

I swung around and saw Tadpole, Stench, and Hal, running right toward us. But it was the mob directly behind them that got my legs moving again.

“Don't wait for us,” I heard Tadpole yell as he passed us by in a blur. A second later, I had caught up with him, and all five of us were running for our lives.

I never would have thought that a bunch of out-of-shape adults could have kept chase. But I guess the opportunity to transfer their confused rage onto an innocent target gave them that extra burst of energy. They stayed pretty close for the first four or five blocks, but then, one by one, our pursuers began to fall by the wayside. Finally, after a few more blocks, I turned around and saw the last of them screech to a halt. Their faces had gone white, and without warning they turned and ran in the opposite direction.

“What's . . . that . . . all about?” Plasma Girl asked between breaths.

“They just realized they were no match for us,” Tadpole boasted.

“No,” I corrected him, “I don't think that was it at all. Look where we are.”

“Uh-oh,” Halogen Boy said softly as we all looked up at the east entry gate of the Superopolis Zoo.

“There's nothing to be afraid of.” Tadpole snorted. “They're just a bunch of dumb animals.”

“Yes. Animals with powers,” Plasma Girl hissed.

“She's right,” I agreed. “They have powers while you all don't.”

“Uh, guys?” Stench was pointing behind us.

We turned slowly and discovered we were being watched by a group of five aardvarks. None of them was over a few feet high, but the menacing expressions on their faces made all of us feel nervous. Well, almost all of us.

“HA.” Tadpole let a single guffaw burst from his throat. “Look at these ridiculous creatures. What kind of stupid power do they think they can threaten us with?”

Before the words were even out of his mouth, five tongues snaked from the elongated snouts of the aardvarks. Loop after loop of wet, squishy strands wrapped around us until we found ourselves trapped in at least twenty feet each of aardvark tongue.

“Well, you were right about them having a stupid power.” Stench glared at Tadpole as the aardvarks began pulling us into the zoo.

The next thing we knew we were being dragged down the main path. It should have come as no surprise who we were being taken to meet. Sure enough, only a few minutes later, the aardvarks deposited us at the feet of the velociraptor, Gore.

“Welcome to Zooperopolis.” His face lit up in a razor-toothed grin. “That's what I'm calling the place now. Clever, no?”

“Yes,” I admitted as the last bit of tongue unwrapped itself from me and was drawn back into the snout of the aardvark that had dragged me here. “But why have you taken us prisoner?”

“I haven't.” Gore pulled back, genuinely hurt by my accusation. “I was on my way to Tremor Park to once again attempt a meeting with the mayor. So far, he's run screaming every time I've come close to making contact. Anyway, I was barely off the zoo grounds when I saw the trouble you were in. So I sent the aardvarks to drag you out of danger. I knew no one would venture into our domain, and the aardvarks' power seemed particularly useful for getting you to safety.”

“See”—Tadpole stuck a finger in Stench's chest—“it
is
a useful power.”

“So you're not going to eat us?” Hal asked. All our ears perked up the way they tend to do when your status as a meal is being discussed.

“Of course not,” Gore replied indignantly. “Do I really seem like a monster to you?”

We glanced at his three-inch incisors, the saliva dripping from his mouth, and his razor-sharp claws.

“Oh, fine,” he said with a sigh. “So I guess I do. But you should learn to judge individuals by their actions, not their appearances. Are you aware of anyone I've consumed since I've gained the power of speech?”

“Well . . . no,” I admitted, “but you
are
a carnivore.”

“So are you,” he shot back. “Yet how many creatures have you ever hunted down and consumed on the spot.”