The Hero Revealed Part 17

"You didn't help us fight," pointed out the Levitator, "so here's your chance to make up for it."

The Amazing Indestructo looked pathetically from one to the other.

"It's no use," he wailed. "I'm a failure as a hero and as a human being."

"That may be true-" Windbag started to say, but he was interrupted.

"You fellers jes need ta know the right sorta things to say," Whistlin' Dixie said as she barged her way into the conversation. "And a course how ta say 'em."

Taking a deep breath, and pulling her spangly rodeo gloves on tight, Dixie went to work.

"Oh, you big handsome feller you." She batted her eyes. "Ah hear yer the most powerfulest hero thar ever dern was."

Sure enough, AI looked up and his eyes were no longer teary-but focused on the damsel in distress. "Yes, ma'am," he replied, still a little weakly. "That is what they say."

"Then only you can help lil' ole me," she said, pouring it on. "Will ya?"

"Of course," he said a little more firmly as he once again got to his feet.

"Ya done such a darlin' job moppin' up all these nasty criminals here." She waved her hand across the field of victory that AI had had no part in.

"Well, ma'am, that is my job." A corner of his mouth rose in a rakish smile as he surveyed the wreckage.

"Well, thar's a lil' buckaroo who still needs rescuin', and someone has to take that tyke's poor papa out thar and help him save the boy."

"A perfect job for the Amazing Indestructo," he boasted, apparently fully back to his normal superior self. "Let's go!"

Windbag and the Levitator, standing on either side of Dixie, gaped in amazement.

"They don't keep me aroun' jes fer ma whistlin'," she said, giving them a wink.

Most important, the Amazing Indestructo started up his rocket pack and grabbed my dad from behind, hooking his elbows beneath his arms. As the fires from the rocket pack built up to a roar, the two heroes blasted off toward me and the blimp.

"Let's go save your boy!"

[image]

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

The Price of Popularity

They were coming to rescue me! Now I just had to keep the Professor distracted until they got here ... hopefully before he remembered to drain my brain.

Professor Brain-Drain set the blimp on autopilot, got up from the controls, and came back to find the Multiplier. I stayed carefully out of the way.

"There you are," Brain-Drain said in exasperation when he found the Multiplier sitting on the edge of the Ping-Pong table, smugly bouncing one of the b.a.l.l.s with a paddle. "Are you ready to do your job at last?"

An evil-looking leer spread across the Multiplier's face as he withdrew the fully-charged Oomphlifier from a pocket in his costume.

"Now you'll see my power unleashed," he sneered at me.

"No," the Professor corrected him, "it's my my power. I just happen to be lending it to you for my own purposes." power. I just happen to be lending it to you for my own purposes."

Professor Brain-Drain strolled to the back of the blimp and pulled open a hatch in the floor. A huge empty cargo area was situated below.

"Your job," the Professor continued, "is to fill this cargo bay with my collector card. It should hold about two million of them. You have ten minutes. I want to drop this first load over Lava Park."

The Multiplier removed the original card from a pocket in his costume. Touching it just briefly, he handed it over to the Professor, who slipped it into his lab coat. Then the Multiplier extended his arms, spread out the fingers of both hands ... and concentrated. In less than a second Professor Brain-Drain cards started shooting from his hands with such speed that he looked like a magician performing the world's most spastic card trick.

"Ahhhh, ha-ha-ha-haha-ha!" He let out that incredibly annoying maniacal laugh of his. "Witness the awesome power of the- Ouch!!"

I couldn't help it. I kicked him in the back of his knee. I think he was about to turn on me, but a sharp rebuke from the Professor stopped him.

"Keep making the cards," he commanded. "I'll [image]

take care of this one."

With that, Professor Brain-Drain dragged me toward the front of the blimp. I was sure this was it for my brain. How to distract him? I spotted the briefcase filled with the Tyc.o.o.n's contracts for a whole new line of Brain-Drain products.

"No kid in Superopolis is going to want any stupid Professor Brain-Drain merchandise," I blurted out.

"You wound me, son," said Professor Brain-Drain, looking genuinely upset. "Why would you say such a hurtful thing?"

"It's true," I pressed. "And it's your own fault. Yesterday, before you started creating these duplicates, every kid I know was talking about you. You were even more popular than the Amazing Indestructo. Kids were offering to trade thirty-two AI cards for just one of yours."

"Were they really?" Brain-Drain asked, his face brightening. "I always hoped that children would someday recognize my appeal. I must admit that it's nice to be loved-even by those one is planning to destroy."

"Well, thanks to you, that love only lasted about twenty-four hours," I informed him. "As soon as you sent the Sneak around this morning to sell the Multiplier's first duplicates the situation began to change. When kids found out your card wasn't rare anymore, your popularity dropped as fast as AI's self-respect."

"But I never sent the Sneak out to sell the cards," said the Professor. "My plan was merely to destroy all Superopolis with them."

"I guess he decided on his own that there was some money to be made," I concluded. "While following me and my friends, he must have figured out what those cards could be worth and decided to make some extra money on the side."

"Sneak!!" Professor Brain-Drain hollered, looking around the blimp's control room. As I had suspected, there was no sign of him. The Sneak had snuck off.

"He probably slipped away in all the confusion before we even got on the blimp," I said. "And now your short-lived popularity has been ruined."

"Yes, that's probably true," he agreed wistfully. "But tell me again, were children really more interested in me than in the idiotic Indestructo?"

"Yes," I said, "but you'll never be able to regain their affections if you bury them under trillions of cards. And now that I think about it, why are you making licensing arrangements anyway if you're planning on destroying the entire city?"

"They're both valid forms of self-promotion," he responded, "and if one doesn't work, hopefully the other will. A true genius never puts all his potato chips in one bowl. The truth is I have several fiendish plots that have been brewing for decades. I haven't moved forward with most of them because they don't provide a challenge. As you yourself have come to realize, the Amazing Indestructo is a buffoon. Outwitting him is about as difficult as cheating at solitaire."

Then he looked directly at me, his head tilting slightly, and a s.h.i.+ver ran down my spine.

"Without a worthy opponent, the thrill of destruction just isn't the same."

Even as he spoke, I could tell his mind was s.h.i.+fting gears. And I couldn't help but get a creepy feeling that what it was s.h.i.+fting to was-me. I began to back away.

"Speaking of destruction," he said. He was now [image]

looking at me the way a starving man looks at a pot roast. "As helpful as it is as a storage device, you know I don't need the Brain Capacitor in order to drain someone of their intelligence. The old-fas.h.i.+oned method works just fine."

Raising his left arm, he pointed his index finger at me and advanced to within an inch of my forehead.

"It almost seems a shame," he said sadly. "Given time, you might have developed into a truly interesting adversary."

As his finger came in contact with my forehead, the last thing I heard was my own sharp intake of breath. Then everything exploded.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

Thermo to the Rescue

I opened my eyes and saw chaos. The Amazing Indestructo was holding Professor Brain-Drain up in the air with one arm, while an even greater superhero was rus.h.i.+ng toward me.

"Dad!" I cried out in relief as I ran and threw my arms around him.

"Take it easy, hero," he said. "I'm here, and everything is going to be fine."

"Don't let Professor Brain-Drain say too much to AI," I warned my father. "He might turn him into a whimpering wreck again."

But apparently, the Amazing Indestructo had pulled himself together enough to finally lash back at his archenemy.

"You're in default of our agreement!" he hollered.

It wasn't exactly the heroic challenge I would have hoped for, but it seemed pretty typical for the AI I'd so recently come to know and disrespect.

"You know our contract says you cannot interfere with the production and distribution of any Indestructo Industries merchandise," AI said indignantly. He motioned toward the Multiplier at the back of the blimp. "Your unauthorized copying of these collector cards obviously violates our deal."

"Yes, a deal that ends quite soon." The Professor chuckled. "Perhaps you thought that by only manufacturing three copies of my card, you would make it seem like I was losing popularity, and thus I'd be in a weaker position to renegotiate."

From the guilty-looking expression on the Amazing Indestructo's face, I could tell that the Professor had hit it right on the head. This whole collector card crisis was just because AI wanted to be in a better position to renew a contract with Professor Brain-Drain. From the look on my dad's face, I could tell he was appalled as well.

"Maybe what you need is a new archenemy," the Professor said. "I'm sure someone like the Human Jellyfish would be available to take my place. Good luck with that! Meanwhile, I'll continue with my own plan to reestablish my fiendish reputation with the good people of Superopolis."

From the way his arm holding the Professor began to drop, I could tell that AI might actually cave in.

"You're going to bargain with him?!" I blurted out. "Even as he attempts to destroy Superopolis?"

"A hero has to have an archnemesis," AI shrugged.

"Not under contract!" my father said.

"Oh, like you understand what it takes to maintain an ongoing relations.h.i.+p with a name-brand supervil-lain," the Amazing Indestructo snapped.

"Your archenemy should be 'maintained' by the Superopolis Correctional Facility if you've done your job right!"

The Professor interrupted them. "Perhaps it might interest you all to know that we are currently dropping toward the earth at a velocity that some might consider dangerous."

We all looked out the window to see the blimp drifting less than a couple hundred feet above Superopolis's warehouse district. I guess the added weight of AI and my dad was more than the airs.h.i.+p could handle. Then it occurred to me that if the Multiplier had done his job properly (always a very big if) there were also close to two million Professor Brain-Drain cards weighing us down. I turned to look toward the back of the car. Sure enough, he was heading right for us, his primary job completed.

"Look out, Dad," I warned. "It's the Multiplier."

"You!" screamed the Multiplier as Dad turned to face him. Apparently he suddenly remembered who had actually stopped him at the Mighty Mart. "You'll regret ever having tangled with the Multiplier!"

"I doubt it," my father replied calmly.

The Multiplier raised his hands, and I s.h.i.+elded my face. But I should have known that if anyone could mess up an attack it would be him. Reaching for the nearest object, which just happened to be a Ping-Pong ball, he began making more and flinging them at us. I grabbed both the paddles and tossed one to Dad. Using mine, I swatted away the b.a.l.l.s coming at me from the Multiplier's left hand. Dad didn't even bother swinging. The b.a.l.l.s simply bounced off him as if they were no more than drops of rain.

"Stay away from me," the Multiplier wailed as the mighty Thermo walked right up to him and smacked him over the head with the Ping-Pong paddle.

"Don't ever mess with my kid again," he snarled as the Multiplier crumpled to the floor.

Dad hadn't bothered to set the paddle on fire. He just gave the Multiplier a good old-fas.h.i.+oned whup-ping. Of course, the floor was now full of Ping-Pong b.a.l.l.s, and we were in serious danger of slipping on them. I rushed over to the gondola's side boarding door, unlatched it, and swung it open. The b.a.l.l.s rolled to that side of the blimp and continued right out the door.

Then I walked over to the unconscious Multiplier and picked up the Oomphlifier. I slipped it into my pocket just as he began to stir. To be honest, I felt a little sorry for the Multiplier. I mean, sure, his only goal in life was to do evil, but he was so pitiful at it I couldn't help but feel bad for him. So I decided to give him some advice.

"You know," I whispered to him, "you could start your own company selling traffic cones and make a fortune. You didn't pay anything for them, so you could sell them for less than anyone else."

"I won't need them," he hissed. "I'll just use my Oomphlifier to ..."

He began feeling around for the missing device and I slowly backed away from him. Even as stupid as he was, he would soon figure out that I was the one who- "Where is it?!" he shrieked. "You've stolen my power!"

In a flash, he was up on his feet, past my dad, and coming my way. Luckily, I ducked just as he lunged at me. His scream blared in my ear at first, but then trailed off dramatically. But then I guess that's natural for someone who's just dived through an open door and was now plummeting toward the ground. I ran to the doorway and looked down just in time to see him crash through the gla.s.s skylight in the roof of a building. The second before he hit, I realized that it was his very own warehouse. I heard a m.u.f.fled fump fump as he landed in what I figured had to be a pile of traffic cones. as he landed in what I figured had to be a pile of traffic cones.