The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy, Book One: The Hero Revealed (17 page)

“How many of you have a Professor Brain-Drain card?”

Every hand in the class shot up.

“How many of you need a Professor Brain-Drain card?”

I turned around. Nobody put a hand up. Well, at least not at first. Then I heard some whispering and I turned back to the front to see Halogen Boy holding up his hand.

“I don’t have one of my own yet.”

“I’ll sell you mine for eighty dollars,” Transparent Girl offered him, with no sense of shame whatsoever. I had to at least give her credit for figuring out where things were heading.

“Don’t even think about it,” Plasma Girl hissed at her menacingly.

Miss Marble continued with her lesson. “So, Cannonball, what do you think your card is worth?”

“At least twenty-five dollars,” he stated.

“And who would be willing to pay you that for it?”

“Halogen Boy?” he asked hopefully.

“I’ll sell Hal mine for twenty dollars,” Transparent Girl shouted out in undisguised desperation.

“Thikthteen dollarth, Hal,” Melonhead spluttered. “Ith a thteal!”

“I’ll sell him mine for ten dollars,” huffed the Spore, trying to brush the mold off his card.

“You can have all three of my cards for five dollars,” Puddle Boy said with anxiety as the puddle below his desk grew before our eyes. “And I’ll even throw in the collector bags.”

At this point panic had set in throughout the room.

“I’ll sell him mine for a dime!” wailed the Banshee in complete despair. As I plugged my ears, I marveled at how something purchased for one hundred dollars had fallen to a dime in less than an hour.

“I’ll sell you mine for a dollar—and a bike,” said Lobster Boy not fully grasping his bargaining position.

Halogen Boy fished a dime out of his pocket and handed it to the Banshee, and she transferred her formerly valuable Professor Brain-Drain card to him.

“And that’s what happens when supply is greater than demand,” Miss Marble concluded with a bit more of a smile on her face than good teaching required.

Everyone in class sat in stunned silence, contemplating their now-worthless Professor Brain-Drain cards.

“But don’t feel too bad, kids,” Miss Marble consoled them. “Most of your parents never learned this lesson either. Just ask them about the stock market.”

I didn’t think she needed to be quite so smug, but I had to admit it was a lesson in economics that no one was going to forget soon. Meanwhile, I had a more pressing question on my mind. Where had all these cards come from?

CHAPTER TWENTY

Hot on the Trail

At lunchtime my team got together to discuss something even more important than the sudden explosion of Professor Brain-Drain cards.

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” I began, “but last night I felt lousy after the fight we had.”

“Me, too,” admitted Plasma Girl. “And I’m not even sure what the fight was about.”

“It was about who would hold on to the card,” Tadpole snapped at her, as if that justified things.

“That’s a dumb thing to fight over,” said Stench.

“But the card is …” Tadpole’s voice trailed off as he noticed us all scowling at him. He wisely decided not to push his point.

“It’s not even worth anything,” Plasma Girl pointed out. “At least not anymore.”

“Is it still safe where we left it?” Halogen Boy asked. With his eyes hidden behind his dark goggles it was never easy to tell exactly what Hal’s expression was, but I could tell he was concerned about the success of his idea for hiding (or not hiding) our Professor Brain-Drain card.

“It’s safe, Hal. But in the end, the card doesn’t really matter,” I added. “What matters is our friendship. The Junior Leaguers are a team and we’re dedicated to battling all wrongs … or at least the ones that occur before bedtime and don’t interfere with our favorite TV shows. Just because adults squabble all the time, there’s no reason for us to behave like that. Are we agreed?”

I stuck out my hand with my palm facing down, rolled my fingers into a fist, but left my thumb pointing out. Plasma Girl did the same, wrapping her fingers around my thumb. Halogen Boy and Stench quickly added to the circle and did likewise. Tadpole paused for only a moment and then wrapped his fist around Stench’s thumb and inserted his own thumb into my fist. The circle was complete and we were once again a team.

“Agreed!” we all shouted in unison.

“And are the Junior Leaguers going to let this mystery go unsolved?” I asked.

“Never!” they responded as we unlinked our hands and prepared to do battle.

The problem, of course, was that none of us had a clue what had happened. Someone had obviously managed to create a whole slew of Professor Brain-Drain card duplicates, but how? It was while we were all racking our brains that we suddenly heard Cannonball shout from across the playground.

“Hey, there’s the creep who sold me the phony card!”

We all turned to look and caught a glimpse of a tall figure in a long, black flowing cloak, wearing a wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his face. He was in the process of trying to sell a card to an unsuspecting kid from another class. As soon as he knew he’d been spotted, he whipped off the cloak and hat and vanished into thin air.

“Get him,” hollered Lobster Boy. “He’ll be riding a bike with clawed-up handlebars.”

“Let’th thtring up the thuthpithiouth thtinker,” agreed Melonhead.

All of a sudden a mob of angry eight- to twelve-year-olds ran toward the spot where the stranger had last been seen. Stench and Tadpole were about to join, when I hollered for them to stop. We had already lost sight of the stranger.

“Don’t bother,” I said in frustration. “He’s already gone.”

“Who do you think you saw, O Boy?” Plasma Girl asked.

“You guys will think I’m nuts, but I think it was the same guy I saw at Aunty Penny’s Arcade. The one who stole the box of card packs.”

“Then let’s find that creep,” Tadpole said with determination.

“We have to,” I agreed, “but whoever it is, he’s too clever to be caught by a screaming mob of grade-schoolers. Everyone else went that way”—I pointed—“so I say we go the opposite way. C’mon!”

The five of us took off in the general direction of downtown. It was only after we had left the school grounds that I realized we were in the midst of committing a major act of hooky. It was only noon, and leaving school before three o’clock was strictly forbidden. Nevertheless, I knew this was too important a lead for us to ignore. We had to find out who was selling these cards.

“Which way do you think he went?” Stench asked as we approached Colossal Way, the city’s main east-west avenue. One direction led out to Telomere Park, the other straight into downtown Superopolis.

“This way,” Halogen Boy said. “I think I see something.”

Turning toward downtown, the rest of us immediately caught sight of what appeared to be a riderless bicycle five or six blocks ahead. “It’s Lobster Boy’s bike!” shouted Tadpole. We began to run faster, but there was no way we could keep up with a bicycle. We kept after it for almost ten blocks until we were once again traveling along the south side of Lava Park. It was there that we finally lost sight of it altogether. Exhausted, we all collapsed beneath a statue of an enormous potato chip.

I realized we were back at the Inkblot’s Newsstand. I blinked. And then I blinked again. For there, right in front of my eyes, was the answer.

“That’s it!” I said.

“What’s it?” Plasma Girl asked between breaths.

“The answer to the mystery is right in front of us,” I said.

“The Inkblot is the answer to the mystery?” Stench replied, baffled.

I thought the newspapers hung out on the Inkblot’s stand said it all: MULTIPLIER ESCAPES! screamed
The Hero Herald
; MISSTEPS AT MAXIMUM EMANCIPATE MULTIPLIER blared
The Superopolis Times
. Then, of course, there was also
The Weekly Daily
, once again living up to its motto of “Last Week’s News Today” with the headline: MULTIPLIER MAKES MESS OF MIGHTY MART. Sadly, my teammates just stared at the newspapers blankly.

“Don’t you see it?” I said. “The Multiplier could have made all those duplicate cards. And he escaped from prison just yesterday.”

“He looks like a complete loser,” Tadpole commented as he picked up a copy of
The Hero Herald
to examine more closely. That was all it took for the Inkblot to notice us. He turned his attention away from a squirrel he apparently had been talking to and instead focused on us. The squirrel wasted no time in escaping.

“So like I was saying, Captain Radio was the greatest hero of all time,” he started to say, seemingly unaware that there had been almost a two-day gap since our last conversation. “But even he couldn’t withstand the power of the Red Menace. Now there was an evil genius! His voice alone could make people do things against their will.”

“What about the Tycoon?” Stench asked me. “He could have printed up more cards just to irritate us.”

“No, that would have cost him money,” Plasma Girl pointed out.

The Inkblot kept right on talking, oblivious to whether anyone was paying attention. “As the Red Menace realized the extent of his power he got bolder. He corrupted Captain Radio and used the captain’s powers to broadcast his evil instructions to everyone in Superopolis. He told everyone that they didn’t have to work anymore. Well, people liked that message for a while—at least until the grocery stores ran out of potato chips and pizza places started taking two months to deliver pizzas and no one picked up the trash anymore. The price of a banana reached four hundred and seventy-one dollars at one point. But it was all part of his master plan.”

In a way, what I heard of the Inkblot’s story was fascinating, and normally I would have even enjoyed listening. But I had a feeling we were closing in on a huge break in this case and I needed to focus.

“Luckily, there were still some heroes who were smart enough to get their news from the papers instead of the radio. Five of them—just like you young whippersnappers—gathered together and formed the League of Goodness.”

My ears perked up at this, but I was busy arguing with Stench. “It’s too much of a coincidence,” I insisted. “The Multiplier escapes and all of a sudden we have multiple copies of Professor Brain-Drain cards? In this instance, one plus one clearly equals the Multiplier.”

“That’s addition, not multiplication,” Halogen Boy pointed out.

“I think you’re right,” Stench agreed, ignoring Hal. “Only the Multiplier could have made all these duplicates. But how do we find him?”

I pulled out my copy of the
Li’l Hero’s Handbook
.

“Even without my help,” the Inkblot admitted to no one in particular, “they managed to put an end to the Red Menace’s reign of terror and lock him away in a soundproof room. After that, they became the most famous heroes in Superopolis, while Captain Radio was disgraced and forced into retirement.”

I think the Inkblot muttered something like “served him right,” but I was busy flipping through the appendices in the back of my handbook. Ah, here was what I was looking for! Secret hideouts!

“According to the
Li’l Hero’s Handbook
, the Multiplier’s secret hideout is at Seventeen Skullduggery Lane,” I informed everyone.