Mutant Mike

[SceptileFan]

Hey there! I, SceptileFan, am a newbie here on serebii, but I've been writing for a couple years. Currently I'm writing a series, and I'll be posting new stories of this series, Mutant Mike, as I go along. These are NOT chapters in a big story, (even though they do follow a specific storyline) but rather a series of short stories. Here's the first one. Enjoy!

Mutant Mike #1
I Lose My Leg Hair

I’d never ridden in an ambulance before.
For my entire life I thought it would be a family member or somebody close to me that got hurt and I’d be riding in an ambulance with them, but I never expected for me to be the victim. An ambulance is surprisingly small, though.
Anyways, I cracked open my eyes. My vision was blurry, but I could still make out the shape of my dad and a couple of doctors inspecting my legs. The memory of what happened before wasn’t completely clear, so I was almost freaked out by being there. I sat up and tried to ask a question, but it only came out as, “Rrraara rraa?”
“Mike,” my dad said frantically as he slowly pushed me back down. “Try to sleep. Being awake only accelerates the mutation.”
I had no idea what he was talking about (and was too tired to care), but I relaxed and slept.
Little did I know that what was about to happen would change my life forever.

It all started the day before. I jumped off the bus and started to walk towards the back entrance of Jacobs High School in Chicago, Illinois. I had only been in high school for half of a semester, and I was still getting used to the fact that it was so much bigger than my junior high. But let’s look at the plus side: there are twice as many hot girls to check out. I don’t really understand the point though; I have no chance. I’m only fourteen, and they’re all older than me.
I walked down the long pathway towards the school. Suddenly, a hand slapped me on the back of my light brown hair. I turned around to see my friend Tyler standing there.
Tyler is skinny and very tall. He’s not like Yao Ming tall, but he’s fourteen and over six feet. He only shaves twice a week (he should do it more often), so he had a five o’clock shadow at 7:30 in the morning. His brown hair was covered by the red backwards baseball cap that he only didn’t wear when he had to, like when sleeping or a formal event.
“Hey man,” Tyler greeted. “How’s it goin’?”
“Is that the best greeting you can come up with?” I replied.
“Well what would you rather me say? ‘Hey doofus, your fly’s down’?”
“I’m wearing basketball shorts.”
“I was making a suggestion!”
“Are you two having another argument about greetings again?” Pierce commented in his scratchy voice as he walked up to us. Pierce is what you could call a “ruffian”. His dad works at a motorcycle shop, so Pierce knows more about motorcycles than Kobe Bryant knows about basketball. He tends to get in trouble a fair amount, but not for things too bad. The worst thing he ever did was throw water balloons filled with mayonnaise at one of our teacher’s cars. It didn’t do any permanent damage; it’s not like it was bleach or anything. Pierce’s blonde hair is always spiked up in the front (I’ve only seen it down once, and that was at the swimming pool) and he was wearing his favorite jacket: brown leather with the logo for his dad’s motorcycle shop on the back. He is a very interesting friend.
“Nah, we’re just messing around,” I replied, lightly punching Tyler in the arm. “So, we’ve got that Biology test today.”
“I know man,” Tyler said, “I’m freaking out! I forgot to study!”
“I’ll probably fail it,” Pierce said like he didn’t care about it at all (which he didn’t).
“You guys worry too much,” I jumped in. “It should be easy.”
“Easy for you to say!” Tyler exclaimed. “Biology is your best subject! Man, I wish one of my parents was a super-genius like your dad. Then, I’d be as smart as you.”
“I’ve got a C in English.”
“Who doesn’t?”
We continued our conversation as we entered the school. When I reached my locker I put my backpack in and took out the books I needed for History. Pierce’s locker was close to mine, since my last name was Anima and his was Benson. We both closed our lockers at the same time.
“Hey Pierce,” I began, “when are soccer…” I trailed off.
“Mike?” Pierce asked. “Hey Mike? Are you okay?”
I ignored him and kept my eyes fixed past him. No I wasn’t looking at the lunch menu or the clock. What was I looking at? I bet you can figure it out.
The girl walked down the hallway. Her dark hair with blonde highlights went down to her shoulders and her eyes were a deep blue. She had the perfect form and what seemed like no flaws. She was completely beautiful, and I was hypnotized.
SMACK!
Pierce slapped me across the face. He had the most annoying methods of getting your attention.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked.
I looked back at the girl and smiled. She smiled back, showing her perfectly white teeth, and proceeded to keep walking down the hallway.
“Oh, that’s what’s wrong with you,” Pierce realized. “Who is that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before. But she is beautiful.”
“Huh. She might be new here.”
“Maybe. Wow!”
“Calm down dude.”
“I’ll try.”

A couple hours later, I was in Biology class, the only class that Tyler, Pierce, and I all have together. I had already finished my test, so I was waiting for everyone else to. Ten minutes later, everyone was done, so our teacher stepped up to the front of the room.
“I’m glad to see everyone is done,” Mrs. McHurst said. “Now as you all know, the ninth grade is going on a field trip to the local university tomorrow. Chicago University is one of the leading biology schools in America, so we’ll be touring the biology area of the campus. Thankfully Mr. Anima, Mike’s father that works at the university, has agreed to be our tour guide. Now, we’ll be splitting up into groups according to teacher…” She went on to mention other details that I didn’t care about.
Tyler leaned over to me. “Dude, we are so lucky your dad will be our tour guide,” he whispered. “Anybody else would’ve made it boring, but with your dad, it might actually be interesting.”
“I just hope he doesn’t mention any embarrassing things about me,” I replied.
“Don’t worry, your dad is cool.”

6:00 pm

“Dinner’s ready!” Mom called from downstairs. I dropped my pencil as I finished my math homework and jumped down the stairs. Mom had made her famous fried chicken, and I was starving.
“Hey Mom, can I have a soda?” my twelve-year-old brother Dustin asked.
“That’s fine,” Mom replied. My mom is not like your average mom. Sure, she does regular mom things like encourage, fix non-life threatening injuries, and other things. What’s interesting about her is that she can outrun me.
I know that’s unusual for a mom to be able to outrun her teenage son.
I don’t care, though. She’s training for the Olympics. She’s a distance runner. Mom has completed more marathons than anyone I know, and she’s won about half of them. I probably won’t be faster or have more stamina than her until she’s 80.
Mom placed four pieces of chicken on my plate. I immediately began to eat them, devouring every last bit. Did I mention she’s an amazing cook? Dustin only had two, but he doesn’t eat much anyway.
Dustin is exactly like any other younger brother, but a technological genius. He knows how hack a computer, change everything possible, and leave absolutely no evidence. He took apart his cell phone, added a laser pointer into it, and put it back together again…and it worked. His light brown hair was over his ears. I always tell him he needs a haircut, but all he says is, “Sorry, I don’t listen to dorks.”
“All right, chicken!” Dad said as he walked into the room. “This looks great honey!”
My dad is one of the coolest dads ever. He has black hair and a mustache that I’ve never seen him without. He’s really enthusiastic about soccer and my soccer career, but he’s not one of those parents that make their kid focus on only soccer. He and I are a lot alike, but he tends to like to play mind games with me instead of physical ones. In case you didn’t catch it before, my dad is a super-genius. He works at Chicago University as a biology professor and researcher. He’s the head honcho for the biology people there, but he always is sure to be home on time (which Mom is always happy about). He’s basically (in my opinion) the best dad in the world.
Mom sat down at the table with a bowl of salad she had prepared for herself. She always tries to eat healthy. We ate in silence for a couple minutes until Dad spoke up.
“So Mike,” he began, “you’ve got that field trip to the university tomorrow. You know I’m going to be your tour guide, right?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “It should be cool. Are we going to see any experiments?”
“Yes. I’ve scheduled for our group to meet at the biology laboratory and we’re going to observe an experiment on a lizard. We’re trying to come up with anti-venom that works immediately. It should be quite interesting.”
“Sounds cool.”
“So how was the biology test today?”
“Easy.”
“Great.”
“Hey Dad,” Dustin said. “Didn’t you say your laptop was giving you trouble?”
“Yes. It freezes up every time I go into Microsoft Word. Do you think you could fix that for me?”
“Sure…” he smirked, “….for a reasonable price.”
Dad sighed. “How much?”
“It depends on what’s wrong with it. I’ll tell you after I fix it.”
“Hey Mike,” Mom said. “Do you want to go on a run after school tomorrow?”
“I’m not jogging more than two miles.”
“Aaw, you don’t want to go for five?” She munched on her salad.
“I don’t have the same stamina as you do. It’s not like I’m an animal or anything.”
After dinner, I returned to my room and flipped on my TV. My corn snake Cob hissed eagerly from his cage. I walked over to him and lightly petted his head. “You hungry boy? I’ll get you some food.” I put on a latex glove and reached into the box of dead mice I had bought from the pet store. I dropped it into Cob’s container. He slithered up to it and began to devour it. I jumped back onto my bed and began to watch the beginning of a show on Discovery Channel, but I didn’t really think about it. All I could think about was the field trip and how awesome it was going to be.

“And here is the classroom where I teach,” Dad said as we walked into the large classroom. I was with one third of the ninth grade (so about 100 kids) walking throughout the various parts of Chicago University. So far, Dad had made a really good tour guide. He’d even cracked a couple jokes that were actually funny. What we had seen was interesting, but I was really excited for the anti-venom experiment.
“And now what you’ve all been waiting for,” Dad finally said, “the live experiment.” The kids clapped. We strolled over to the biology lab.
We didn’t go inside the lab (we never would’ve fit), but there was large window that was about as wide as my entire classroom. On the other side of the window was the laboratory.
It was amazing. There were six scientists wearing lab coats messing with chemicals and strange machines that I’d never seen before. One was looking through a microscope, while another was feeding a turtle on the far wall.
One of the scientists stepped forward. He picked up a microphone and began to speak into it. “Hello students,” he greeted. “I am Dr. Dartel, one of the head researchers here in the biology lab (not as high as Dr. Anima of course). Today, you will be observing an experiment that we have been working on for a long time. We have combined various DNA of different reptiles in an attempt to create anti-venom that does not have to be injected. This lizard here…” he pointed to a cage holding a lizard about as long as pen. “…has just been bitten by a rattlesnake. We are about to make it drink the formula we have created, which we call, ‘Chemical Z’. Here it goes.” He set down the microphone.
“What do you think will happen?” Tyler asked me.
“I think it might work,” I replied.
“Famous last words,” Pierce commented.
The venom had taken its toll on the small lizard, which had now collapsed. A scientist turned it on its back and filled a small vile with Chemical Z. He poured the liquid down the throat of the lizard. We watched in anticipation.
Nothing happened.
The lizard’s legs fell limp.
We sighed. The experiment had failed.
Dad turned back to the crowd. “Sorry guys,” he said. “I know you were expecting-“
“Look!” Tyler shouted. We all turned back to the lab.
The scientists were all backing up from the lizard’s cage. It had gotten up, was jumping around and…growing.
“Dad,” I said, “what’s going on!?”
“I don’t know! Dartel!”
Dr. Dartel mouthed, “I don’t know!”
The lizard was growing at a more rapid rate. I could see its features change as well, like its claws and teeth get bigger. Finally, it got so big its cage shattered.
“Run!” Tyler shouted. The entire crowd turned and ran away from the window, but that didn’t stop the lizard. Now the size of a golden retriever, it jumped and burst through the window to the lab, shattering it. The class screamed.
The monster charged us. It was surprisingly fast, which was not a good thing. I was panicking. I really did NOT want to get mauled by a giant lizard. Soccer tryouts were in two weeks.
I felt teeth scratch the back of my shoe. The monster was attacking me.
“HELP!!!” I shouted. But I wasn’t fast enough.
The monster lunged and bit me in the leg.
I immediately went down.
As my chest hit the floor, I could see my friends turn around and stare at me in disbelief. All over my body I felt excruciating pain. I screamed and looked down at my leg. The lizard was digging its teeth into my leg. I tried to kick at it, but I felt myself getting dizzy.
Suddenly, an axe swung down and sliced the lizard in the back. My dad had broken out the axe that they keep in buildings to destroy debris in case of fire and was attacking the lizard. The monster hissed in pain and let go of my leg. Dad kicked it and sliced it again. In seconds, the lizard was dead and without a head.
I was still hurting. My body was shaking uncontrollably, like I was having a seizure. Who knows, maybe I was. I’d only been bitten in the leg, but the pain was all over my body.
“Dad!” I screamed. He ran over to me, his hands covered in lizard blood.
“Someone call 9-1-1!!!” he shouted. “Mike, try to stay calm.”
“I can’t! I…I…” I felt like an animal. “RRRRAAAAUUUGGHHH!!!” I roared. I dropped my head and blacked out.

*

I could hear noises. There were people talking and I could hear the beep, beep, beep of the heart rate machine. I could feel fluids being pumped into my arm through a needle.
I opened my eyes.
I was in a hospital room. I could tell that by the fluorescent lights, but I wanted a better look, so I sat up. The room was just like an average hospital room, with a TV in the corner and a couch on the side wall. Dad, Mom, and Dustin were sitting on the couch. Mom had her head in her hands and Dad had his arm around her shoulder. Dustin was playing his PSP. He was the first person look up.
“Well sleepy-head, it’s nice to see you’re up. You know I had to bring down your laundry for you,” he greeted. Yep, that’s Dustin for you. You get in a horrible accident, and all he cares about is that he had to do your chores.
“Mike!” Mom exclaimed and jumped up. She ran over to me and hugged me so hard it hurt.
“Mom,” I squeaked, “you’re choking me.”
She let go. “Oh, sorry.”
Dad stood up. “Hey Mike, I’m glad to see you’re okay. How do you feel?”
“I feel fine. Good actually…better than usual.”
“Um…how much do you remember about what happened?”
“Well…I remember that lizard getting huge after it drank that Chemical Z stuff. It then attacked us and bit me in the leg. I remember you killing it with an axe (that was pretty cool by the way) and then I blacked out.”
“So you know nothing about what happened?”
“What happened? What? Didn’t I just get some bad cuts in my leg?”
“Um…”
“You’ve got scales dude,” Dustin said.
“What? No I don’t, my arms and hands are completely normal.”
Dustin sighed. “Pull back your sheets.”
I looked at him like he was crazy, but did what he asked. I pulled back my covers and…screamed.
“AAAAAUUUUUGGGHHH!!!” I jumped out of the bed. From my waist down, I no longer had skin and leg hairs, but green scales. I ran my hand downward, and they were very smooth, but when I reversed direction the caught on my finger and pulled. I wasn’t wearing any shoes, which allowed me to see how my feet had changed. They’d gotten a LOT bigger and now only had three clawed toes. “What the heck!?! I’m a mutant!”
“You’ve also got a tail,” Dustin stated, not looking up from his game.
I turned around. Sticking out from under my hospital gown was a long, green, reptilian tail that was about the same length as one of my legs. Along the center top of it ran a row of darker green spikes. I swished it around as easily I could move my arm. My mouth couldn’t close.
“Dad, what exactly happened!?!” I asked, walking over to him with my reptilian feet.
“Well,” he mumbled. “That lizard was a mutant. When it bit you, it injected mutant DNA from itself into you, which is why you felt pain all over you because the DNA acted like venom at first, but your body began to get used to it. We were able to get you here in time to stop the mutation from continuing. If we hadn’t, you’d be a humanoid lizard-man. Unfortunately, there’s no way to reverse this.”
“WHAT!?! So I’m stuck as a mutant half-lizard freak for the rest of my life?”
Dad nodded. He looked like he felt two inches tall.
I sat back down on the bed and put my head in my hands. “This cannot be happening.”
Mom sat down next to me and put her arm around me. “It’s okay Mike,” she said. “I can cut holes in the back of all your shorts and underwear. This isn’t so bad.”
“Plus,” Dad jumped in, “the school has allowed for you to take the next week off to recover from your ‘accident’.”
“I don’t care Dad!” I snapped. He backed up. “I am now a monster! NO one is ever going to see me as an average teenage boy! They’ll see a freak-boy with a tail!” I swished my tail around. Dad looked sad.
“I’m sorry,” he said slowly. “This was my fault. I never should’ve brought you kids to see the experiment.”
I walked over to him. I was still angry, but I knew Dad shouldn’t feel bad. “It’s not your fault. I guess we can figure something out. And I’m sorry for snapping at you.”
He smiled and gave me a hug.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you home.”

It was about one in the morning by the time we got home. I never realized I had been unconscious at the hospital for six hours. We had left immediately, and after that it was quiet. I got some weird looks walking out of the hospital, though.
I sleepily dragged my feet into my room. I didn’t plan on brushing my now slightly sharper teeth, since I was so tired and was still getting used to the fact I had a tail. As I was about to drop onto my bed, I heard something.
“Why hello Massster Mike,” a hoarse voice greeted.
I whirled around and held up my fists. “Who said that!?!” I saw something stir in Cob’s container. I peered closer.
“No need to ssspaz out sssir,” Cob said. “I sssee you have a tail now, huh?”
I was speechless. “Since when could you talk?”
“I can ssspeak with all reptilesss. You obviousssly have somehow become one, or atleassst part of one.”
“So I can speak with all reptiles now?”
“Duh. I jussst sssaid that.” He rolled his eyes (I didn’t know snakes could do that).
I couldn’t believe it. I could finally know what my snake is thinking, and so far, he thinks I’m an idiot.
I really needed some sleep.

“Come on Mike, wake up!” Dad exclaimed.
I jolted awake. “Dad,” I groaned, “it’s six in the morning! You know I’m not going to school today!” It was Monday. I had spent Saturday and Sunday lounging around the house, and I was looking forward to “recovering” for a week. The truth was that I felt fine, except for the tail, which I didn’t have complete control over yet.
“I know. We’ve got to start early. I need to leave at noon since I have a class at 2:00.”
“Start? Start what?”
“Your physical therapy.”
“I don’t need therapy.”
“You’ve got an extra limb now. You need to know how to control it.”
I sighed. “All right, what’re we going to do?”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I complained as I pulled my tail over my head.
“You’re doing great,” Dad commented. “Only ten more seconds.”
“This is hurting me.”
“It’s supposed to, you’re stretching. Okay, release.”
I let go of my tail and it flopped back down over my butt.
We had been outside for ten minutes and Dad was making me stretch my tail to get warmed up. I thought it was ridiculous.
“Dad, I still don’t see why I have to do this. I can move my tail as easy as I can move my arm.” I moved my arm around and accidentally smacked it into the fence. “Ow.”
“That’s what you think,” he replied, having no sympathy. “Now, this is the last stretch. Just stick your tail out backwards and try to keep it perfectly straight.”
I sighed. “Okay.” I turned around and stuck my tail out.
“It’s not completely straight.”
I pushed it out harder.
“Still not straight.”
“I’m trying Dad!” I pushed harder.
“It’s still not straight.”
“Come ON Dad!” I pushed my tail out. Suddenly, all the tension was released, and my tail suddenly extended. It rocketed back right into Dad and knocked him on the ground. My tail kept extending, but finally stopped.
I turned around. My tail was longer than a car.
Dad stood up. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “It appears you can stretch your tail longer than it normally is. It looks to be about…twenty feet. Wow…that is quite impressive. Can you pull it back in?”
I easily pulled my tail back in.
“Nice work. Now we have more things to work on.”
I was both excited about the tail, but mad about the “more things to work on”.

“All right, now it’s time for your next exercise,” Dad said.
“It’s not more tail pull-ups is it?” I asked. “Those are harder than they look.”
“No, you might actually like this one,” he replied, reaching onto a large box. He pulled out a basketball and tossed it to me.
“We’re playing basketball?”
“Yes, but there’s a catch: you can only use your tail.”
“Huh?”
“I start with the ball.”
I tossed it to him. He walked to the end of the driveway. I got to the defensive position.
“I can still beat you Dad, even if I do have to use my tail,” I taunted. “You’re outmatched.”
Dad smirked and began to dribble. “It’s time for your first lesson, son,” he said. “When outmatched…” I shot my tail at him. He grabbed it with his free hand and pulled, knocking me to the ground. He dribbled past me and put the ball in the hoop with a perfect layup. “…cheat.”
I growled (literally growled, it sounded like an alligator) and pulled myself off the ground. He tossed me the ball. I began to dribble with my tail. It was pretty easy, until I began to run. I immediately lost control and Dad stole it away. He easily scored a basket.
It was going to be a long week.

The next day, Dad was making me do laps…around the yard.
“Dad, this is stupid!” I huffed.
“Just a little more!” he shouted from the other side of the yard. “Just a little more…” I ran past him. “Done!”
I put my hands on the house and leaned on it. I was breathing heavily. He had made me sprint around the yard at LEAST twenty times.
“I don’t understand why I have to do this,” I panted. “I didn’t have surgery or anything!”
“Um…actually…”
“Dad!”
“Just kidding.”
I sighed. “I’m getting a drink.” I tried to walk away from the wall, but as I pulled away, my hands stuck to the wall. I looked at them strangely and pulled again, but they still stuck to the house like they were attached with super glue. “What the heck?” I pulled one more time, and they came loose.
I turned to Dad. “What was that?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied and stared at my hands. “They just…stuck.”
Dad walked over to me and looked closely at my hands. “Mike, look at your hands very closely.”
I did as he said. I looked at my hands as closely as possible, and noticed my fingerprint patterns had changed. Instead of random swirls and other round shapes, they were in many rows of wavy lines, like this: ~.
“What happened?” I asked.
“When you were bitten by that mutant lizard, you absorbed some gecko DNA. The patterns on your hands are exactly the same as a gecko’s. Those certain textures allow them to crawl on walls and even upside-down. Their feet are so effective that they can stick to glass and crawl directly up it. If my hypothesis is correct, you can wall-crawl, just like geckos.”
I looked at my hands. “All right then. Let’s see if this works.” I walked back up to the wall. I placed both my hands on the wall and one of my feet. I pushed up with my foot and moved my hands up. Before I knew it, I was crawling on the wall as easy as it was for me to crawl on the ground. I kept climbing, and when I finally got to the roof, I pulled myself up. I turned around and looked at Dad. “I’m starting to think this mutation isn’t as bad as it seems.”

Now that I could wall-crawl, Dad was making me do more exercises involving it. We had spent the rest of Tuesday just wall-crawling, and I had gotten very good at it. I was now so good that I could be on a wall, jump, and land safely on another wall twenty feet away. We had done a lot of good work.
I was freakin’ exhausted.
“Dad, can’t we just rest today?” I asked as I rolled out of bed on Wednesday.
“Nope,” he replied. “You’ve got to perfect your wall-crawling. Or would you rather go back to school?”
“I’m starting to consider that.”
We walked down the stairs. As we walked into the kitchen, Mom and Dustin were already up. Mom had made bacon (not for herself of course) for breakfast. Dustin was already munching on his pieces. My mouth started to water. The luscious aroma of the amazing meat was wafting into my nose, creating a sense of amazement. I was hypnotized.
In case you didn’t notice, I really like bacon.
“Good morning Mike,” Mom greeted. “So I hear you can wall-crawl?”
“Yep,” I replied. “And extend my tail.”
“That’s wonderful. Would you like some bac-“
“YES!”
“Um…okay. Yours aren’t done cooking yet, but I have one extra. Dustin, give that extra piece to your brother before he goes crazy on us.”
“Mmkay,” Dustin said with his mouth full of bacon. He picked up a piece of bacon sitting on the plate and tossed it to me. He threw it way to my right (on purpose, obviously). But for some reason, instead of jumping over to catch it, I turned my head and stuck out my tongue.
My tongue fired across the room, latched onto the bacon, and brought it back into my mouth. Everyone in the room stared at me and dropped their mouth open. I probably would’ve been surprised, but with all the things that have happened these past couple of days, it didn’t astound me.
“Well that’s weird,” I said, completely calm. “So when’s my bacon going to be ready?”

It turns out, now I have the tongue of a chameleon. I can launch it out up to eight feet away, and the tip of it doesn’t have taste buds, so if I hit a brick, it doesn’t taste bad.
Unfortunately, Dad was now making me do target practice with my tongue. He’d put up some cardboard targets all along the fence for me to hit. It wasn’t difficult, but made my tongue numb.
“Aw we done ye?” I asked with my tongue hanging out. It went just past my belly-button.
“Just hit three more targets and you can take a rest,” Dad replied.
“Aw wight.” I turned back to the fence. I launched out my tongue as my nose began to tickle.
Target Number 1: Terminated.
I fired my tongue again. My nose started to twitch.
Target Number 2: Terminated.
My tongue began to leap from my mouth just as I sneezed. My head turned as I did, but I couldn’t stop my tongue. I missed the target and hit the fence. Then, the strangest thing happened.
The fence tasted…good.
I brought back my tongue and walked up to the fence.
“Mike, what are you doing?”
I didn’t seem to have control over it, but before I knew it, I was tearing a piece of wood off the fence and putting it onto my mouth.
I chewed.
I swallowed.
It was delicious.
“Whoa!” I exclaimed. “This is really good!” I grabbed another piece. “It tastes just like toast!” I couldn’t stop eating the fence.
“Hmm,” Dad said as he scratched his chin. “It appears you’ve inherited the ability to digest any substance, which is a trait common in both snakes and alligators. That’s strange, since you were bitten by a mutant lizard, not one of the other reptiles.”
“Didn’t that anti-venom have DNA from all sorts of reptiles?” I asked with a mouthful of wood.
“Yes you’re right! The powers you’ve acquired before seem to have something to do with lizards, except with the tail extending, which must correspond with snakes. This is astounding and…Mike?”
“Yes?”
“Stop eating the fence.”

Thursday was hot.
Me now being partially cold-blooded (my body temperature is only partially dependent on the climate), I was VERY hot. Do you know what the worst part is?
Scales can’t sweat.
My legs were burning.
Dad was making me run again. Finally, I got so tired, I just stopped.
“Come on Mike, keep running!” he shouted.
I completely ignored him and dropped into a lawn chair under the patio. I was sweating on my upper half so much that my arms were wet.
Weird, huh?
“Mike, get up!”
“Dad!” I huffed. “I can’t freakin’ breathe! I am so freakin’ hot and so freakin’ tired that I don’t give a freakin’ crap about anything you have to say. So can you freakin’ stop talking?”
Dad sighed. “All right. I’ll go get you a glass of lemonade.” Dad walked inside. A couple minutes later, he walked out holding my glass of lemonade. I stood up.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem,” he replied. “It might be-whoa!” Suddenly, his shoelace caught under his other shoe. Dad fell forward and the glass flew from his hands. Dad caught himself on the ground, but the glass kept going. It was shooting right for my head. I instinctively flinched…
I felt a tap on my head and heard the shatter of glass.
I opened my eyes. Dad was looking up at me like I’d just announced I was in love with a monkey. There was a pile of shattered glass and lemonade on the ground around me. The glass had broken on something, but what?
Dad stood up. “Mike,” he began, “do you know what just happened?”
“No, not really.”
“The glass hit your head and shattered. You didn’t feel anything?”
“I felt something, but it was very light. It was like someone patted my head.”
Dad’s mouth dropped open. “Did you notice that when you flinched, your entire body temporarily turned grey?”
“Really?”
Dad scratched his chin. “It appears that you have the ability to become invulnerable…like a turtle when it’s in its shell. You must’ve acquired a small amount of turtle DNA.”
I looked down at myself and flexed all my muscles. As Dad had said, my entire body turned grey. I tried to lift my arm, but was completely immobilized. I quit flexing, and I returned to normal.
“I seem to be immobile when I’m invulnerable,” I stated. “But it’s still cool. Since it’s because of a turtle that I got these powers, I’ll call it…the Shell Shield.”

I spent the rest of the day getting hit with a baseball bat.
Dad wanted to make sure the Shell Shield actually worked, so he kept hitting me with it. After he sent the bat shattering into splinters (I knew Dustin was going to be ******), he tried to use a chainsaw on me.
We broke it.
Finally, he knew it actually worked, so we spent the rest of the day working on my reflexes and seeing how long it took me to activate the Shell Shield. Since my senses seem to have been amplified, within the day I was able to react quick enough someone could fire a bullet from ten feet away and I’d be able to become invulnerable in time.
The next day we worked on getting better at my powers. That day passed uneventfully. Well, I shouldn’t say that, but I didn’t discover any new superpowers.
Saturday was more interesting.
I heard a knocking on my bedroom door. I jolted awake.
“Mike? Are you awake?” It was Dad.
“Oh no,” I said to myself. I looked at my clock and saw that it read 9:00am. Dad had let me sleep later, but he never has classes on Saturdays, so I figured I’d be doing more training.
I did NOT want to train anymore. I’d done so much training these past couple of days I could probably beat Chuck Norris.
Okay, that’s a stretch.
I jumped out of my bed and opened my window, attempting to be as quiet as possible. I crawled out onto the wall outside the house and closed the window behind me. I crawled down and jumped down onto the flower bed.
“Whew,” I sighed. “That was close.”
I heard the window open. “Mike?” Dad called.
I flattened myself against the wall.
After ten seconds, Dad couldn’t see that I was out there, and closed the window.
I knew he’d be coming outside, so I ran for the back fence. I was running behind the garage (which is separate from our house) when I heard the backdoor open.
“Mike, are you out here?”
I hid against the back wall of the garage. My heart rate was increasing. I could hear Dad’s footsteps getting closer to the garage. I thought fast and wall-crawled up onto the roof, right as Dad rounded the corner. I ran up over the roof of the garage and got to the front. I jumped down onto our driveway and ran for the front of the house.
The sound of the gate squeaked as I jumped over to the front of the house and into the flower bed. Dad was walking into through and towards me.
“Hey Mike!” I turned and surprisingly saw Tyler and Pierce standing on my front yard walking towards my front door.
“SHH!” I whispered loudly. “Get down!” I grabbed both of them with my tail and pulled them down next to me.
“My God…” Pierce began, “you actually grew a tail.”
“And your legs are scaly!” Tyler exclaimed. “How did you stretch your tail so far?”
“SHUT UP!!!” I whispered.
“What are we hiding from?” Tyler asked quietly.
“My Dad.”
“Why?”
“He’s been training me every minute of every day for the past five days! I don’t want to train on a Saturday!”
“Mike?” I heard Dad call. He was getting closer to us.
“Go!” I shoved Pierce and Tyler away. I was about to run after them, but the pant leg of my pajamas caught on a branch of a bush. I pulled it, but it wouldn’t give. “No! Come on!” I pulled harder. Nothing.
“Mike, is that you?” Dad called.
I pulled, but my pant leg wasn’t coming.
“Mike?”
I closed my eyes.
Dad rounded the corner.
Strangely, there was silence. I opened my eyes. Dad was looking right at me.
“Hmm,” he said. “I could’ve sworn he was here.” He turned around and walked away.
I was shocked. I looked down at my arms to see what had happened.
I had no arms.
Or a body, or legs. I was invisible.
I turned back to normal quickly. Behind me, Pierce and Tyler walked up to me from their hiding spot. Both of their mouths were wide open. I was waiting for a bug to fly in.
“How did you do that?” Pierce asked.
“I don’t know!” I replied. “I’ve never done that before!”
“Man that was so tight,” Tyler said, giving me a high-five.
“Thanks. I’m still not sure how I did it though.”
“Aah, there you are Mike!” Dad said.
I whirled around. Dad was standing where he was before, smirking.
“Um…hey Dad! How did you know I was here?”
“I heard you talking. Hello Tyler. Hello Pierce. So…you actually used invisibility huh? That must apply to the chameleon. They can’t turn invisible, but they can blend in, which is practically what you’re doing. Very impressive.”
“Uh…thanks. Do we have to do training now?”
“Are you kidding? I was only waking you up to tell you that breakfast is ready. I was a teenager once. I know you guys never want to do ANYTHING on Saturdays.”
“Awesome.”
“Why don’t you bring Tyler and Pierce in for breakfast? That will give you a chance to explain exactly what happened.”
“Cool with me. You guys want to stay?”
“Sure,” they said in unison.

The rest of Saturday and Sunday went peacefully. But when on Monday the time came for me to go to school, I wasn’t feeling ready.
“Dad, do I really have to go?” I asked.
“Yes Mike,” Dad replied. “You had more than a week to get used to your mutation. Besides, you’re behind in your work.”
“But everyone’s going to think I’m a freak!”
“If they really care about you, like Tyler and Pierce, they won’t care what extra limbs you have.”
“But what about everyone else? All the kids older than me will think I’m a monster and beat me up.”
“We both know they won’t be able to do that.”
“Still! They’ll try!”
Dad sighed and put his hand on my shoulder. “You’ll be fine. You’re an Anima. We always pull through. Now you better go or you’ll miss the bus.”
I smiled. “All right Dad. See ya after school.” I opened the front door and walked out.
I walked down my street and saw the only other person at the bus stop was my 10th grade neighbor, Rodney. He was looking the other way, so he didn’t see me walking up. When I got close enough he could hear my footsteps and turned around.
“Oh hey Mike…” he began, but trailed off. His eyes got big. “Whoa…so the rumors are true. You know you’ve got a tail right?”
I sighed. “Yes Rodney,” I replied. “I was there when I got it.”
“Can you control it?”
I swished my tail around and balled up the end of it. “Yeah. I can stretch it too.” I stuck it out straight behind me and extended it up to full length.
Rodney had a look of complete shock on his face. “Dude…that is so tight!” He smiled.
I did a double-take. “Tight? Really?”
“Yeah man! You’ve got an extra arm (well, sort of). Plus, you can extend it! Those scales look pretty tough, too.”
I smiled. “You think the scales are tough? Check this out.” I flexed and activated my Shell Shield. “I’m completely bullet-proof when I do that,” I said as I returned to normal.
“Whoa! Awesome!”
I proceeded to show him the rest of my powers until the bus arrived. As we climbed on, I got several surprised looks as I walked down the aisle. When I sat down in my seat, there wasn’t anybody around me that wasn’t staring at me.
It was pretty sweet.
The bus ride was long, but silent. Everybody was too shy to ask me any questions. Personally, I was perfectly okay with that. I don’t like answering questions. When we reached school, I was one of the first ones off the bus, so I was immediately noticed. Most people would glance back, see me, look away, stare back, and tell their friends. By the time I reached the door to the school, everyone was looking at me (including the extremely hot senior girls, which I was pretty happy about).
The walk down the hallway to my locker was full of eyes looking at my legs and my butt. Unfortunately, I knew they weren’t checking out my butt, but looking at the fifth limb sticking out of it. At my locker, it was very awkward having everyone around look at you like you were some sort of animal.
Oh, wait.
Suddenly, I was greeted by Tyler and Pierce.
“So how’s everybody getting used to the new Mike?” Tyler asked.
“Why don’t you ask them?” I replied and turned around. I looked straight at Johnny, the guy who had the locker right below me. “So Johnny, what do you think of my tail?”
His mouth quivered for a moment. “To be honest,” he began as he stood up, “I think it’s weird.”
I turned back to Pierce and Tyler and gave them a “You see?” look.
“Weird,” Johnny continued, “but cool.”
We whirled around and stared at him like he’d just told us spaghetti was a new planet.
“Really?”
“Yeah. I mean, I’ve always thought lizards were cool, and now you kind of are one, so that’s a bit strange, but awesome.”
I smiled. “Thanks dude.” I turned back to Tyler and Pierce. “Well there you have it, weird but cool. Satisfying enough for ya?”
They shrugged. “That’s coming from a friend of yours,” Pierce said. “What about people you don’t know very well?”
“I’m not going to go around to people I don’t know well and say, ‘Hey, what do you think of my tail?’”
“I would.”
“Only you Pierce.”

Later, during lunch, Pierce, Tyler, and I were sitting together. I knew everyone was staring at me, but I ignored it (kind of). No one had the guts to ask me about my tail, though, so the lunchroom was filled only with quiet whispers and sounds of chewing.
Pierce, Tyler and I were discussing soccer tryouts when Tyler reached for a silverware pack to eat his applesauce with, but nothing was next to his tray.
“Oh crud,” he said. “I forgot to get a spoon.” He began to stand up.
“It’s okay,” I interrupted. “I’ll get it.” I reached out my tail and extended it across the lunchroom. The box full of silverware packets was sitting near the lunch line, and I almost knocked over someone’s tray as I picked one up with my tail. I brought it back to the table and handed it to Tyler.
“Thanks,” he said and took it like I hadn’t done anything weird. Everyone except the three of us stopped chewing and dropped their mouths open. I tried as hard as I could to act normally, but I couldn’t help smiling.
“Are you going to use your fork?” I asked Tyler suddenly, having no idea why I had.
“No. You need it?”
“Kind of.” He handed it to me and I shoved the plastic fork into my mouth. I chewed and swallowed. “Hmm, minty.” I returned to eating.
I heard the sound of someone fainting.

After lunch, the hallway was packed. I had had a bit of trouble with my locker (probably because I had been gnawing on the lock), so I hadn’t beaten the crowd. The hallway was packed.
I glanced up at the clock. 1:04.
“Crap!” I thought. “I’m going to be late for English!” I raced down the hallway, only to be pushed out of the way by the hoard of other kids, also late for their next class. I was pinned up against the wall. “Great, now I’ll never make it.” Suddenly, I felt my hand stick to the wall. I smirked. “Of course!” I turned around and began to crawl up the wall. Immediately, everyone near me glanced up at me and gasped. As I kept crawling along the wall, everyone I passed stopped walking and stared at me. I looked down at them and flashed a quick smile before crawling faster and into the room of my English classroom.
Unfortunately, my English teacher counts you tardy if you’re not completely in your seat when the bell rings, so I wasn’t safe…yet.
I crawled on top of the ceiling until I was directly over my seat. I let go of the ceiling and dropped down into my seat.
RING!
I smirked. “Right on time,” I said to myself. I began to pull my books out when I noticed someone staring at me. I turned my head to the right. I couldn’t believe it; it was the same girl I had seen in the hallway almost two weeks ago. Whoa. She was even prettier up close.
I smiled sheepishly. “Um…hi?”
She just kept staring at me.
“I’m guessing this is awkward for you…”
“How did you do that?” she asked suddenly.
“Do what?”
“Drop from the ceiling?”
“Oh. You see, I was just climbing on the ceiling and just let go.”
“You can walk on the ceiling?”
“Yep. It’s one of the perks of being a reptile…well, at least half of one.”
“I see.”
I smiled. She didn’t. I wasn’t sure what she was feeling right now.
“Can you do anything else?” she asked suddenly, with eyes bright.
I was taken aback for a moment, but grinned. “Yeah! Check this out.” I quickly turned invisible.
She gasped. “That’s amazing!”
“Okay, so Mike is absent…” our English teacher said out loud.
“No! I’m here!” I said quickly and reappeared. Mrs. Harper’s eye’s got big.
“I heard that you had grown a tail Mike, but I didn’t know you could turn invisible,” she said.
“Well…yeah. I can do other things too.”
“Can we see?” the girl next to me asked eagerly.
“Yeah!” the class agreed.
“Um…okay.” I stood up and quickly showed the class all of my powers, from eating pencils, to the Shell Shield, and even my super long tongue. During the entire time, the girl with the seat next to me never once took her eyes off me. When I finished with invisibility, the class suddenly stood up and cheered.
I did a double-take. “They’re cheering me?” I thought. “Whoa…not what I was expecting…”
“That was great Mike,” Mrs. Harper commented. “Now, let’s continue class. Students, open your books to page 136.”
I sat down. The girl was staring at me and smiling. “That was amazing.” Her blue eyes were shining.
“Thanks. But, I don’t believe I got your name.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I just moved here. I’m Candace. Candace Taylor.”

*

That was the best day of my life.
Almost everyone (at least in my grade) had accepted my new appearance and I had gained a new friend who was REALLY cute. I couldn’t have been happier. The rest of the week passed just as nicely.
Friday was when it got interesting.
It had been exactly two weeks since I’d become a mutant. Tyler, Pierce, and I were lounging in Biology class, half listening to Mrs. McHurst’s lecture on cell replication. When she said she had a video to show us, we perked up our ears, thinking it would be a Bill Nye the Science Guy video (not that we like those, but they’re not boring). She flipped on the TV. It was on the news for some reason. The report got us all on our feet.
“We are here at the Chase Bank on 44th Street,” the reporter said.
“That’s just down the street from the school!” Tyler exclaimed.
“Ten armed men have taken fourteen hostages inside the building,” the reporter continued. “They have rigged them with explosives and announced that if anyone interferes, they will blow them to smithereens.”
The class gasped.
“They are currently robbing the bank and will not deactivate the bombs until they are much too far away to track. They said they’ll blow up the people if anyone follows them. Authorities are trying to figure out a solution.”
The report switched to an aerial view of the bank.
Except for the TV, the classroom was deadly silent.
“Mike,” Tyler spoke up, “you could beat them.”
“What?” I asked.
He turned to me. “If you spent a solid week training with your dad perfecting your powers, plus the fact that you have powers in the first place, means that you should be able to kick those robber’s butts!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I protested. “I’m just a kid! I don’t think I’d be able to take out ten ARMED men!”
“You can be bullet-proof,” Pierce stated.
“He’s right,” Tyler continued. “Mike, we know you can do this. Am I right?” The class all nodded their approval. “You see Mike, we believe in you. The only person left to believe in you is you.”
I stood silently for a moment. I clenched my fists.
“I’ll be back.” I raced out of the room.

(it's too long, I'll continue this in another post)

[SceptileFan]

I was at the bank in fifteen minutes. It was surrounded by police cars, yellow tape, and cops holding guns. I started to run towards the entrance when I realized something.
“Wait a second,” I thought. “They’ll never let me run in there. The police would never allow a 14-year-old kid try to fight armed adults, even if I do have a tail. Plus, the robbers will probably blow up the hostages as soon as they hear someone running in. Huh. I’ll need to figure out a different way in.”
I stood still for a moment. Then it clicked.
I disappeared.
I ran directly past the officers and they didn’t move from their positions. I leapt over the tape and ran directly into the bank.
The place was trashed. Furniture was knocked over and there were a couple of bullet-holes in the ceiling. Papers were everywhere. One the left side of the wall there were fifteen people sitting on the ground with bomb vests strapped to them. All of them looked terrified. Nine men all wearing dark clothes were standing around the bank.
“Hey Rudy!” the tallest one called down the hall, “you done yet?”
“Not yet!” a faint voice replied from down one of the halls.
“Humph.”
“Can we leave yet?” a very fat robber asked.
“No. We haven’t got all the loot yet.”
“I’m sorry gentlemen but I don’t think you’ll be leaving with any loot at all,” I said.
All the men gasped and frantically started looking around. “Who said that?”
“I did.” I became visible and all of their mouths dropped open. I swished my tail around just to scare them a bit more.
“Kenny,” one said to the tall one, who was obviously the leader, “that kid just appeared, out of nowhere!”
“And he’s got a tail!” another robber squealed.
“I know!” Kenny held up his hand. He glared at me. “What do you think you’re doing kid?”
“I thought I made it clear before,” I replied. “I’m stopping you.”
Kenny chuckled. “Just because you have a little ‘mutation’ makes you think that you can beat us?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
His face grew dark. “I don’t appreciate sass, kid. Kill him!” All the robbers pulled out guns. Right before they fired, I flexed all my muscles and activated my Shell Shield. The bullets hit me.
It felt like I was being lightly poked all over. I struggled to keep flexing (it’s hard to flex all your muscles for a long time, just try it), but finally, the robbers ran out of ammo and quit firing. I deactivated the Shell Shield and smiled mischievously.
“Gotcha, didn’t I?” I taunted. The robbers just stared at me. I launched out my tongue and took the gun right out of Kenny’s hand. I brought it into my mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “Mmm, tastes like chocolate.”
The robbers dropped their guns.
Kenny growled. “Get him!”
The three men closest to me ran straight for my head. I extended my tail subtly around to the front and held it parallel to the way I was facing just off the ground. The robbers didn’t notice and ran into it, tripped, and face-planted on the ground.
One began to stand up, so I grabbed him with my tail, squeezed a bit (just for good measure) and hurled him into a shelf on the opposite wall. While I was throwing that robber, the second one had stood up and was swinging his fist at me. I activated the Shell Shield and he punched my face. It didn’t hurt me a bit, but he shouted in pain once he had made contact. I returned to normal and kneed him in the stomach before Spartan kicking him in the chest. He fell to the floor, unconscious.
The third robber got up and jumped at me. I shot my tail up and grabbed onto the ceiling light above me. I did a tail pull-up, jumped up, and stuck to the ceiling. I crawled around the light and shot my tongue down twice. I hit him in each eye once.
“Aaugh!” he shouted and held his face. I jumped off the ceiling and spun around. My tail swung around me and hit him directly, sending him rocketing into the counter.
“Three down, seven to go,” I said. I expected to be breathing heavily by then, but I felt completely normal.
I heard loud footsteps. I looked forward to see a robber run and jump at me. I ducked and punched upward as he was over me. He crashed behind me. I heard something stir behind and swung around, landing a punch to the side of a robber’s face. He recovered quickly (much quicker than I was expecting) and was able to punch me in the face.
It hurt.
I roared. Literally roared. It sounded like a lion. I tackled him to the ground and punched him until he was knocked out.
I stood up. Another robber was holding up a table leg and swinging at me from behind. I Shell Shielded. The table leg splintered.
“You’re going to have to better than that,” I smirked. I grabbed him by the ankles with my tail and smashed him into an overturned chair.
I stopped to catch my breath. The hostages were staring at me. Some were smiling. Some were too shocked for words. But others…
“Look out Lizard Guy!” a boy that looked about five shouted. I looked around.
Two robbers were running at me, one from my right and one from my left. I waited. Right before they hit me, I jumped up and grabbed onto a light. They ran right into each other and knocked each other.
I dropped down. Kenny was the only one left. He was glaring at me, his hand on the button of the detonator. He was angry, but I could see him shaking.
“You’re too late kid,” he said. “You may have defeated my men, but I have the detonator, and if you take one step closer to me, I blow up your precious civilians. Face it…you’re outmatched.”
I chuckled. “My dad taught me a very valuable lesson about that,” I said. “When outmatched…” I became invisible. Kenny frantically started looking around. I appeared behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned around, I swiped the detonator from his hand and punched him in the face, knocking him out. “…cheat.”
The hostages cheered. I smiled. I had actually beaten ten armed robbers.
“Wait a minute…” I said and turned around. I counted the unconscious bodies on the floor. “One…two…” I kept counting. “…eight…nine.” I gasped. There were ten robbers, right!?!
“What’s all the noise?” someone asked as they walked out of a hallway. “Why did you fire?” I turned around. It was Rudy, the guy who called from the hallway earlier. I sighed. He gasped. “Who are you?” I extended my tail, grabbed him, and smacked his head against the wall. He fell to the floor.
“Okay,” I said. “Now that’s ten.” I turned to the hostages. They were all smiling. “All right, since I have absolutely no idea how to deactivate bombs, I’m going to give this…” I held up the detonator. “…to the cops. Just sit tight and you’ll be fine.” I began to walk out of the bank.
“Wait!” someone called. I turned around. The five-year-old who had helped me earlier was calling to me. “What’s your name mister?”
I grinned. “Mike. You can call me Mike.”
I walked outside. The cops pointed their guns at me for a second, but when I held up the detonator, they lowered their guns. I handed it to an officer, but he was just staring at my tail.
“Did you defeat them all?” he asked.
“Yeah. It wasn’t that hard,” I replied.
“Where did you get that tail?”
“Not important. What is important is that you deactivate the bombs on those people. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to Biology.”

I was back at the school in, again, fifteen minutes. When I walked into Biology, I was greeted by a huge applause followed by everyone running over and patting me on the back.
“How did you know I won?” I asked.
“We saw the news,” Pierce said. “They showed footage of you walking out and giving the detonator to the cops. They might even have the security footage up by the end of the day!”
I did a double-take. “You mean, I’m on TV? Everyone in Chicago knows what happened?”
Tyler nodded. “Well, at least, they will. Face it, you’re a hero Mike. And not just a regular hero, a superhero.” He held up my hand. “Everyone, give it up for Mutant Mike!!!”
The class cheered. “I think I’m going to like being a mutant,” I thought.

Completed 8/3/09

Thanks for reading! Consturctive criticism is appreciated.

[FlamingRuby]

You asked, and here I am

First and foremost, I kinda got a few vibes of Spiderman and the Powerpuff Girls from how Mike got his powers--was that delibrate or not?

Second of all it would make things easier to read if you spaced everything out--it was a little hard to follow when it's all scrunched up

Third of all, Mike's first mission sounded a tad cliche--but I guess every superhero had to start somewhere. Will Mike have a nemesis or not?

Rating:

Not bad, just be mindful of cliche and try to space paragraphs out.

[SceptileFan]

Thanks FlamingRuby. I will try to space things out, and yes, Mike does get a nemesis.
I never watched the Powerpuff Girls but yes, I accidentally based how he got his powers off Spider-Man. Don't worry, the rest of the series isn't like that. I'll put up the 2nd one tomorrow.

[FlamingRuby]

Okay, if you'd like me to review that, I will

[SceptileFan]

Here it is. I spaced out the paragraphs this time. Enjoy!

Mutant Mike #2
Fly Me to Doom

I rocketed into the sky. I was going up for a couple seconds, and then began to plummet.

Fast.

The air was shooting past me so quickly it was adding to the dizziness I already had. Fortunately, I was able to realize where the ground was and see that I was falling head-first.

Today was not going well.

I was too far away from the building to wall-crawl on the side. There was nothing for my tail to grab onto. I was free-falling.

I closed my eyes. I hope concrete is softer than it looks…

*

You’re probably wondering how this whole mess got started. Don’t worry; I’m still a little confused myself. Shall I start from the beginning?

It all started on Monday, exactly two weeks and two days since I had grown scales and a tail. Well, two weeks and two days since I had become Mutant Mike.

It had only been two days since I had kicked the butts of ten armed men attempting to rob a bank just down the street from my school. Only the people in my school knew I was the one who had stopped them, and I doubt any ninth graders at Jacobs High School know everyone in Chicago. So, for that reason, there was a TON of speculation and mystery going around the news as to “who is the tailed boy?” The hostages who had seen me fight tried to explain what had happened, but no one truly believed them.

Until they looked at the security tapes.

So now, the entire city, some way or another, is trying to figure out who the reptile kid is. I’m all over the news, on the radio, and even the president lightly addressed me for a bit. The entire city of Chicago was in frenzy because of me.

I loved it.

You see, I’m the kind of kid who loves attention. I prefer good attention, but when I’m really desperate, I tend to go for bad.

Not one of my better qualities.

So, you can imagine I was pretty stoked about the whole “hero” thing all weekend, right? Was I still excited on Monday?

Not a bit.

Why? I’ll give you a guess. What’s more important to a teenage boy than publicity, fighting, and being a hero?

Girls? Well yes, they are important, but not this week.

Sports? Yep, you got it.

This week was the week of soccer tryouts. It’ been the only thing Tyler, Pierce and I have been talking about for the past couple months. Sure, we quit talking about it for a bit when I got my powers, but then we just picked up again. As I told you before, it was Monday. Tryouts were Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday after school. We found out on Friday morning who made the team.

Monday. During lunch. Tyler, Pierce and I. Soccer. That’s where we are.

“I hope there’s not going to be too many goalies trying out,” Tyler commented with a mouth full of mashed potatoes.

“You don’t need to worry Tyler,” I said after swallowing. “You’ve got really long arms. That, plus the fact that you’re GOOD, makes the perfect combination for goalie. You’ll be fine.”

“Yeah. There’s going to be a lot more competition for regular positions,” Pierce stated. “You’re one of the lucky ones.”

“You guys will do awesome,” Tyler replied.

“I don’t know about me,” Pierce said. “Mike’s all set. Have you been working on kicking with your tail?”

“All weekend,” I replied, sipping down some milk. “I’ve gotten pretty good at the spin move. I’m going to practice more after school today.”

“Hey guys!”

We looked up. Candace and a blonde girl were standing by our table.

“Candace?” I asked.

“Hi Mike,” she replied. “This is my friend Marissa. She just moved here, too. She’ll be in our English class today.”

“Hey there,” I waved to her. She took one glance at my tail and a look of complete horror overtook her face. She probably would’ve thrown up if Candace didn’t ask if they could sit with us.

“Sure,” Tyler said.

“Cool with me,” Pierce agreed.

“Yeah,” I confirmed. Candace grinned and sat down next to me. Marissa sneered at me and sat down across from Candace and next to Tyler.

“You guys talking about soccer tryouts?” Candace asked.

“Yeah,” we all replied.

“You play goalie, right Tyler?” she asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“He’s really good,” I commented. “I don’t score on him very often.”

“That’s not true,” he protested modestly.

“Yes it is.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yes it is.”

“He’s a good goalie, okay?” Pierce interrupted. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

“So who’s the kicker?” Marissa asked.

Tyler, Pierce, and I stared at her in disbelief. For me, nothing was a turn-off more than a girl who doesn’t know sports.

“Everyone’s the kicker Marissa, except the goalie,” Candace said, “but the people who usually score the most goals are the Center Forward, the Striker, and Deep-Lying Forward. They play mostly offense. Then you’ve got Midfielders, the Center midfielder, the Defensive midfielder, the Attacking midfielder, and the Wingers. And don’t forget Defense. There’s Center-back, the Sweeper, the Fullback, and the Wingback. Not all these positions play at once, since only 11 players can be on the field at one time (including the goalie), so it’s up to the coach to figure out his formations.”

Tyler’s, Pierce’s and mine’s mouths dropped open.

A girl who knows soccer. I was in heaven.

“What position do you play Mike?” Candace asked.

“Um…any forward position,” I replied.

“And Pierce, you play…?”

“Midfield. When did you learn so much about soccer?” he replied, quickly changing the subject.

Candace laughed. “My dad has been a soccer coach for years. In fact, the reason we moved here is because he got a great offer to coach soccer.”

“Where?”

“Here. He’s the head soccer coach.”

I almost fainted.

“Your dad is the soccer coach!?!” I exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell us!?!”

“You never asked.”

We slapped our foreheads. “What does he look for in a player?” Pierce asked.

“They have to have skills, but also have to be a good sport.”

“All coaches say that! What makes him…‘tick’?”

Candace thought for a moment. “He hates show-offs…playing dirty is unacceptable…and using skills unique to you makes him really want you on the team.”

We sat silently for a moment. Having Candace’s dad be the coach was either a huge advantage, or an ENORMOUS disadvantage.

“How’d you get your tail?” Marissa asked suddenly, snapping us out of our trance.

“Me?” I asked.

“Is there anyone else with a tail in here?” she asked, sneering.

I was speechless. She finally got me to speak by rudely snapping in my face.

“Oh. Sorry,” I said. “I was bitten by a giant mutant gecko. We stopped the mutation before it covered my top half. And now I’m...well…Mutant Mike.”

“I think your tail is disgusting.”

I was taken aback. Sure this was the reaction I had originally expected when I returned to school after I had become a mutant, but when nobody reacted this way, I completely forgot about my worries. Now this new girl is calling me disgusting, and honestly, I had no idea how to respond. So what did I do?

I sat there silently like an idiot.

Candace scolded her friend. “Marissa! Don’t be so rude!”

“But it is! It looks just a like a snake with spines, and I HATE snakes!”

“I do have some snake DNA in me.”

“Eew!” she squealed. “I can’t be near anything that slithers. See ya, gross boy.” She took her tray, got up, and walked away.

Candace sighed. “I’m sorry Mike. I better go after her.”

“No it’s…fine. I’ll see ya later.”

“Okay. Good luck at tryouts!” She ran after Marissa.

I kept staring after them. “Well that was…weird. She didn’t have to be such a jerk about my tail.”

“My girl meter is getting a reading,” Pierce said. “I’m sensing a bit-“

“Pierce! Language.”


Later, Tyler, Pierce and I were sitting in Biology. Pierce was sleeping, Tyler was messing with his hat, but I was actually listening (If get lower than a 95 in this class Dad gets ******, him being a biological professor and all).

“Today’s topic is metabolism,” Mrs. McHurst began. “Metabolism is the rate at which an organism burns food. Now if you have a high metabolism, that means you burn energy quickly. If you have a low metabolism, you burn energy quite slowly. Now different organisms have different metabolic rates. For humans, it varies. Now, any animal that hibernates has a low metabolism, since it takes them a few months to burn off the food energy they gained while eating before hibernating. Most organisms have a high metabolism, especially insects, since insects almost constantly have to eat.”

I listened intently to the rest of her lecture. I wasn’t quite sure how this would help me later in life, though.


I dribbled the ball between my scaly feet. The defender jumped in front of me, and I easily dribbled around him. The goalie knew I was coming and readied his hands. I smirked. He was no match. I kicked the ball up, jumped, and spun around. I smacked the ball with my tail like I had the robber at the bank a couple days ago. The ball rocketed into the upper corner of the net, just past the fingers of the goalie.

“Hah hah!” I exclaimed and punched the air. “I am…the what? The winner! Ho ho ho! How many wins in a row is that?”

Dad and Dustin sighed. “I don’t know,” Dad said.

“I do! One-hundred, seventy-four! Only twenty-six more and I have beaten the two of you two-hundred times!”

“This is interesting Mike,” Dad began.

“What is? That I beat you again? That isn’t interesting I beat you guys all the time.”

“No, not that. Since your feet are too strangely shaped for you to wear shoes, you’re not able to wear cleats. But, your claws seem to work just as well. Now, when you kick the ball, does it hurt your feet?”

“No.”

“Remarkable. You can’t wear shoes, but it doesn’t matter, since your scales are obviously strong enough so kicking the ball doesn’t hurt.”

“How wonderful,” Dustin commented sarcastically. “Are we done yet?”

“Yes Dustin, you can go back to the computer now,” Dad replied. “Thank you for the help.”

“Finally. Now I can update my hard drive…” he talked to himself as he walked inside.

“He does that for fun?” I asked.

“He’s a techie Mike,” Dad replied. “Come on, dinner’s almost ready.” He began to walk inside. I followed him.

We were greeted by Mom. “Phone for you,” she said and held it out to me. “It’s Tyler.”

Wondering why he was calling me, I took the phone. “Hey Ty,” I greeted. “What’s up?”

“Mike, there’s a car chase going on,” he said quickly.

“Really? Cool, what channel?”

“That doesn’t matter. These guys just robbed a ton of houses. You’re a hero now, remember?”

“Darn. I have to stop it, don’t I?”

“Yep.”

“Man, dinner will be cold by the time I stop them. Where is it?”

“It’s going to pass by the entrance to our neighborhood in about ten minutes!”

“What!?! All right, I’ll go.” I hung up. “Dad, I need a ride.”

“What is it?”

“A car chase. It’s going to pass through the entrance to our neighborhood really soon.”

“Okay. Sorry honey, we’ll be back,” Dad said to Mom.

“Don’t get hurt Mike,” she warned.

“Can I come?” We turned around. Dustin was holding a video camera.

“Why?”

“I want to catch you kicking these guys’ butts on camera. Then I’ll post it on YouTube and I’ll get millions of views!”

We stared at him for a minute. “Okay fine.”

“Can I ride shotgun?”

“No!”


We were at the entrance to our subdivision quickly. Dad had parked out of the way, to makes sure the car was safe. He was standing outside of the driver’s seat with a pair of binoculars, while Justin was sitting on top of the car readying his camera.

“Here it comes!” Dad shouted to me.

“Gotcha!” I walked into the street.

“Mike! You can’t just stand there! They’ll drive around you if they see a kid just standing there!”

“Don’t worry Dad, I’ve got it covered.” Then I disappeared.

I looked ahead with my invisible eyes. An old and dirty red Mustang was being chased by two police cars. You couldn’t tell, but I was shaking.

The car was getting closer and closer. It showed no signs of stopping. That was obvious. It was about fifty feet away.

I reappeared.

The car didn’t slow down.

“It’s a kid!” the driver said.

“Run him over!” the passenger replied.

Twenty feet away.

I flexed all of my muscles.

The car crashed into me.

And flipped.

When it hit me, the front immediately gave way. Glass and metal shards flew everywhere. Once I was far enough into it, it flipped over forward. The car crashed behind me.

I didn’t feel a thing.

I deactivated my Shell Shield and walked over to the overturned car. Both men were barely conscious and bleeding from their heads.

“I got it!” Dustin shouted from the car. “Wow! That was so freakin’ tight! Smile for the camera!” I smiled and waved sheepishly as he zoomed in on me.

Cars screeched to a stop behind me. I turned around and saw four policemen jump out of two police cars. They stared at me in disbelief. I grinned and walked up to them.

“Hi there,” I greeted.

“You’re the tailed kid!” one of the cops exclaimed and pointed at me. “That stopped the robbers at the bank!”

I turned and looked at my butt. “Yeah that’s me.”

“How did you do that?” another cop asked me.

“Not important. What is important is that the robbers are unconscious in the car and a little cut up. I’ll let you take care of them. Now if you’ll excuse me, my dinner’s getting cold.” I started to walk away.

“Thank you tailed kid!” a cop called.

I turned around and smiled. “It’s Mutant Mike. And no need for thanks. It was fun.”

That night

“Have you figured out what went wrong with Chemical Z yet?” asked the young intern.

“Not yet,” Dr. Dartel replied. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why did it mutate the lizard? And why did when it bit John’s boy did it mutate him?”

“At least Mike is okay. Sure he’s got a tail now, but he’s alive.”

“Harley, do you realize that the tailed boy on the news is Mike?” Dr. Dartel stood up. His red hair was partially in his face and sweaty. He had been stressing about the Chemical Z incident for over two weeks now.

“The tailed kid that took out the robbers?” Harley asked. “I figured that. But the security tapes showed him using special superpowers. I thought Mike was only mutated in his appearance.”

“I don’t think Dr. Anima is telling us everything. Turn on the news. They’re probably still showing the security tapes.”

Harley walked over to a table. He picked up the remote on it and turned on the TV hanging in the corner of the lab. He began surfing the channels until he came to a news channel. Sure, it was a story about Mike, but it wasn’t what they were expecting.

“Here’s the footage shot from the police helicopter,” the news anchor said. The scene changed to an aerial view of a red car being chased by two police cars. Suddenly, a small figure appeared in front of the red car. It crashed into the figure and flipped over the front of it. You could hear the helicopter pilot cursing in amazement. Harley and Dr. Dartel stood and watched in awe.

The anchor returned. “The cops apprehended the men in the car, but first they spoke with the person who stopped the car. He wouldn’t tell them how he was able to destroy and flip the vehicle, but he confirmed that he was the tailed person who stopped the bank robbery last Friday at a Chase bank. Before he left, he told them to, “Call him Mutant Mike.” He then proceeded to tell him he did it because it was fun. The policemen on the scene estimated he was about 13-15 years old.”

Dr. Dartel turned off the TV. He stood silently for a moment before slamming his fist onto the table. He yelled in frustration.

“Dr. Dartel?” Harley asked.

“That’s John’s boy!” Dr. Dartel snapped.

“I know.”

“Don’t you get it Harley? We’ve created a superhero! And he’s fourteen!”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

Dr. Dartel sighed. “I don’t know. But do you realize what this means? We could be heroes too!”

“What?”

Dr. Dartel held up a vile of Chemical Z. “This is what created Mutant Mike. We could be the same! We could be Chicago’s city heroes!”

“I don’t think-“

“Ever since I was a little boy I’ve always wanted to be a superhero. I never missed an episode of Superman. Now this…this is my chance for greatness!”

“Dr. Dartel-“

“But I can make it more powerful,” Dr. Dartel interrupted. He ran over to the cabinet of DNA samples. He pulled out a test tube. “Fly DNA,” he stated as he mixed it with the Chemical Z. “They’re incredibly strong for their size, plus with the ability to fly and being extremely fast…” He grinned evilly at the vile of new chemical. “And with the powers Mike already has…it’d make the perfect hero.”

“Dr. Dartel, no!”

He was too late. Dr. Dartel drank the mixture.

Harley watched in horror as Dr. Dartel gagged and clutched his stomach. The doctor began wobbling around the room, knocking over beakers, shattering test tube, and causing random destruction. Dr. Dartel began to turn grey and grow.

His lab coat ripped in half, followed by the polo he had been wearing under it. His pants shredded below the knees. His features began to change. His eyes grew and elongated. His ears disappeared and two appendages sprouted from his head. His teeth grew sharp and his tongue long. Harley huddled in the corner, almost crying from fear.

Finally, Dr. Dartel stopped changing. He stood still for a moment. He surveyed over his 9 foot tall body. He grinned. His razor teeth shined.

Harley whimpered. Dr. Dartel immediately turned to him. He moved at incredible speed and held him up by his shirt. Harley shut his eyes.

Dr. Dartel chuckled. He chuckled. “I’m not going to kill you Harley,” he said calmly in a very deep voice. “Why? I always kind of liked you. Now if you were Dr. Anima, you’d be dead in a second.” He dropped him.

“I thought you liked Dr. Anima,” Harley said quietly.

“You idiot!” Dr. Dartel roared. “I’ve always hated him! I’ve always been good at hiding it. Why hate him? His job should be mine!”

“I’m sor-“

“Just shut up!!! Now, I am powerful. Unfortunately, I am not aware of the extent of my abilities, but I can already tell some of them. Now, I am free to be Chicago’s hero!” He laughed manically.

“Um…”

“But wait! Mutant Mike…. This city isn’t big enough for two heroes.”

“Sure it is-“

“NO!!! It’s not! There can’t be two heroes. So, the only solution is…to eliminate Mutant Mike. Right? Right!? RIGHT!?!?”

“No! He-“

“Yes! Mike must be destroyed. And with my new abilities…it won’t be a problem at all!” He laughed evilly.

“You-“

Dr. Dartel grabbed him by the shirt again. “But I am not a dirty fighter. I will not attack him without warning. Now this is your assignment Harley. Find Mike and tell him…” He glanced at the scales on his shoulders and the giant fly wings coming from his back. “…tell him Dr. Dactyl is coming for him.”

He dropped Harley and crashed a hole in the wall before flying out. Harley stared at the hole for a minute before fainting.

4:12 pm
The next day

KNOCK! KNOCK!

John Anima opened his front door. Harley, the intern who had been working at his lab for the past six months was breathing heavily and hunched over. He was sweaty and his clothes were torn.

“Harley? What are you doing here?” John asked. “You know it’s my day off. And why are you breathing heavily?”

“Had to…run…all the way…here,” he panted. “Car…destroyed.”

“What’s going on?”

“Is Mike here?” Harley asked after catching his breath.

“No…he’s at school for soccer tryouts. Why?”

“He’s in danger! It’s Dr. Dartel!”

“What? What’s wrong with Dr. Dartel?”

“I’ll explain on the drive. We need to get to Mike’s school NOW.”

4:13 pm

I bounced the ball from one knee to the other. All the forwards trying out had to do this drill, just so the coaches could check out our ball handling skills. I’d only dropped it once.

Coach Taylor had been paying extra attention to me. He obviously noticed my tail, but I hadn’t had a chance to use it yet. Maybe Candace had mentioned me. She most likely said good things about me, but Coach Taylor might be the kind of coach who doesn’t like his daughter hanging around with boys that may be considered “wild”. I had a tail. I was as wild as you could get.

“All right, that’s enough men!” Coach Taylor shouted after he blew his whistle. He had dark hair just like Candace, but without highlights. Otherwise, he was tall, ripped, and a bit scary. “Now it’s time to start scrimmaging. I’ll number you off. Go with the number I give you.”

When he got to me, he stopped for a minute. “Candace has told me about you,” he said. Oh boy. “That tail is very interesting. Hopefully you’ve been working on using it in games?”

“Yes sir.”

“We’ll see. Now let me just give you a warning. From what I’ve heard from Candace, you’re a nice kid. But let me warn you…if you EVER do anything to hurt her, I’m going to have your head.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it sir.”

“That’s right. Now where was I? Oh that’s right…3.”

I walked over to the team groups. Miraculously I was on the same team as Tyler and Pierce. It freaks me out sometime to how we always get put on the same teams.

Our team started with the ball. The defenders passed it to the midfielders. Pierce juggled it around a bit before passing it to a forward (not me). He had it for a little bit before having it stolen by the other team. They got it down the field and were able to shoot.

Tyler blocked it.

We thanked him from afar as he punted it down to midfield. Pierce passed the ball to me quickly. I could sense someone coming at me from behind and did a quick spin move to avoid him. I dribbled it down the field. My claws were making me move quite quickly as I raced down the field. I had a wide open shot. I kicked the ball up and jumped. Suddenly, I heard a crashing sound and saw the goalie turn his head to the side. I ignored it, spun, and smacked the ball into the goal with my tail.

I landed, expecting the players to pat me on the back for a nice goal, but they were all staring at something. I looked in the direction they were and almost fainted.

Something had crashed through the fence. It was about nine feet tall and covered in grey scales. The creature was ripped beyond belief and had the head of a large lizard, but filled with razor sharp teeth and a super-long tongue slightly hanging out the side of its mouth. Its hands and feet resembled my reptilian ones, but its hands had thumbs. A tail identical to mine (except being grey with darker grey spikes) sprouted from its torn jeans. Two thin hairy arms jutted from what looked like its lower ribcage. Two enormous wings that looked exactly like a fly’s came out its back. Two hairy antennae came out of its head and its eyes were red and that of a fly’s.

They were staring right at me.

“Mutant Mike,” the monster said suddenly with a very deep voice, “I have come for you.”

“What?” I asked, completely dumbfounded.

“I guess Harley didn’t do his job,” the monster said smugly.

“Harley? Isn’t that the intern-“

“YES!!! He was supposed to warn you of me, but I guess he failed.”

“Not quite!” We all turned our heads to the parking lot. Dad and Harley were climbing out of Dad’s BMW. “Mike!” Dad called. That’s Dr. Dartel!”

I gasped.

“My name is no longer Dr. Dartel…” the monster growled. “…I am now Dr. Dactyl!”

“Like a Pterodactyl?” I asked.

“YES YOU IDIOT! I’m a flying reptile!”

“He took Chemical Z Mike!” Harley called. “He added fly DNA to it though!”

I glared into Dr. Dactyl’s insect eyes. “Why would you do that?!”

“Because I deserve to be Chicago’s city superhero, not a scrawny little kid like you!”

“You’re crazy!”

“Crazy? HAH!” He laughed manically. That didn’t deplete my suspicions a bit. “You must be destroyed Mutant Mike, so I can be the hero!”

“I’d like to see you try!”

“Gladly!” he roared and turned to the side. He grabbed the chain link fence he had burst through earlier. He ripped a 20 ft. section out of the ground and swung it down at me. I activated my Shell Shield and I went right through the fence. I quickly hopped, ran along the fence at him, and jumped up. I swung my fist down, but he moved his arm up and grabbed my tail. I was so shocked at how quickly he had moved that I wasn’t able to flex by the time he had slammed me into the dirt.

I growled and looked up. He had both hands grasped together and was holding them above his head. He swung them down, but I disappeared and moved to the side before he hit me. He stood up straight and waited silently.

I don’t know how he did it, but I had appeared and jumped at him from behind. Right before I hit him, I saw his antenna twitch. He whirled around and landed a direct punch into my face.

I landed and held my face for a minute, but recovered. Suddenly, Dr. Dactyl turned to the side and flicked his tail at me. It extended just like mine and shot right at me.

I caught it.

“Ha ha!” I laughed. Dr. Dactyl just smirked. He pulled his tail back, launching me towards him. I let go in time so that I just flew over him. Thankfully I saw his hand coming and Shell Shielded in time for him to chop me in the back and sent me into the dirt. I wasn’t hurt, but if I hadn’t Shell Shielded, I know he would’ve broken my back.

As I stood up, he grabbed me by the back of the shirt and held me.

“Stupid child,” he said.

I stuck my tongue out at him. I fired my tongue at him. It hit him directly in the eye. He growled in pain and dropped me, clutching his eye. I fired my tongue at the other eye, but his speed was amazing, and he grabbed my tongue.

He grabbed my tongue! My tongue must move at least 60 miles an hour. How could he react so quickly?

The stupid fly DNA.

“Hewp!” I slobbered.

“Too late!” Dr. Dactyl snickered. He pulled my tongue forward and I flew into his hand. He held me up by the neck. He held up his fist. I flexed.

Nothing happened.

I tried to Shell Shield again.

Nothing.

What was going on!?!

“Here is where it ends Mutant Mike,” Dr. Dactyl growled. He pulled back his fist, but something hit him in the head.

It was a soccer ball.

He looked over. Tyler had thrown a soccer ball at him. “Get him!” Tyler shouted.

Everyone screamed and began throwing everything at Dr. Dactyl they could: soccer balls, cones, and even water coolers. The occasional item hit me, but I didn’t mind. After a solid minute of equipment rain, Dactyl dropped me.

“Your friends may have stopped me for now,” he began, “but I will return. I will not rest until you are DEAD Mutant Mike!” With that, he turned, began to run, and flew off into the distance.


“Okay, I’m just going to say…what the hell just happened!?!” I asked as Dad, Harley, Tyler, Pierce and I sat down on the benches outside the boys’ locker room.

“We told you that was Dr. Dartel,” Dad said.

“I know, but last time I checked, he was a normal human being without a tail, scales, or wings! And why would he want to kill me!?!”

“I’m not quite sure of that. Harley?”

“Well, last night, he saw you on the news and got all angry,” Harley began. “He said he deserves to be the ‘city hero’.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I know. But, he realized you got your powers from the Chemical Z (sort of), so he drank it…AFTER adding fly DNA to it.”

“Why’d he do that?” Tyler asked.

“He said something about flies being super-strong and flying and he wanted some of those powers. You obviously saw his super-strength.”

“But it obviously did something to his brain,” Pierce commented.

“Yeah. The normal Dr. Dartel wouldn’t want to kill me,” I agreed.

“I think you’re right,” Dad answered. “I knew Dr. Dartel very well and he would never dream of killing anyone. I don’t know why he wants to kill you, Mike. You barely knew him.”

“He said that this city wasn’t big enough for two heroes,” Harley said. “He said he had to destroy Mike to be the hero. He didn’t start acting crazy until after he became Dactyl, though.”
“
The Chemical Z must have affected his brain,” Dad hypothesized. “Now that he is basically an animal, his thoughts are irrational and violent, like many wild creatures. He no longer has any humane instincts.”

“Then why aren’t I like that?” I asked.

“Because your mutation was stopped early; Dr. Dartel’s wasn’t. You do still have a bit more of a wild side now. Like when you have the urge that you can’t resist to eat something?”

“Oh, right.”

“So what’re we gonna do about Dr. Dactyl?” Pierce asked.

“I don’t know Pierce,” Dad replied. “I guess we’ll just have to wait.”


“Oh my God Mike!” Candace said as soon as she saw me the next day. She ran up to me and hugged me. I was taken aback, but returned the hug. She released. “I heard about what happened yesterday at soccer. Are you alright?”

“Oh that? Pssh. It was nothing,” I replied.

“Really?”

“No. I almost died. If it wasn’t for Tyler and the others, I’d be dead.”

“Oh…I was talking to Pierce and he said that this Dr. Dactyl guy wants you dead.”

“Yeah. He thinks he has to destroy me to be the ‘city hero’.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“That’s what I said! But yeah, he’s really strong, fast, and has got some of the same powers as me. Plus, flying’s a bonus for him.”

“That sucks.”

“I know. But, I’m trying to keep him out of my mind so I won’t screw up at tryouts today.”

“My dad should cut you some slack.”

“Hopefully. Oh! That reminds me. He threatened to kill me if I ever hurt you.”

“Ha! He said that?” she asked giggling.

“Yep. I think I’ll be safe though. How could I ever hurt such a pretty girl?”

She blushed and smiled. I beamed at her. The tardy bell rang. We were late for class.

I didn’t care.


“Nice job today guys,” Tyler said, patting my back as Pierce, he, and I walked to his mom’s car after tryouts on Thursday.

“Thanks,” I replied. “All we can do now is wait for tomorrow.”

“Let’s keep our fingers crossed,” Pierce said.

We climbed into Tyler’s mom’s SUV. “Hey Mrs. Rickman,” I greeted.

“Hello Mike,” she replied. “Hello Pierce.”

“Hey Mrs. R,” he replied as he buckled in.

“Did you boys do well at tryouts today?” she asked.

“I think we did well,” Tyler replied. “But it’s the coaches’ opinions that count.”

“Yeah. We…”

RING! RING!

“Oops, that’s me,” I said as I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. The screen read, “Unknown Caller.” I answered anyway. “Hello?”

“Hello Mike,” a deep voice greeted.

I gasped.

“It’s your old friend, Dr. Dactyl.”

“What do you want freak?”

“Let’s not use harsh words Mike. Didn’t you ever learn manners?”

“What the hell do you want!?!”

“It’s simple. I want to fight. More so, I want you dead. But I’m a fair man-“

“You’re not a man. You’re a monster.”

“Same thing. As I was saying, I’m a fair man, so I want to destroy you in a fair fight. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like you to meet me on the roof of the Sears Tower…”

“I’m not going to fight you!”

“Ha! You see Mike, you don’t have a choice. I have what you call a ‘hostage’.”

I could hear the noise of a phone moving. “Mike, honey, don’t worry, I’ll be okay,” the voice said.

I gasped. “Mom?”

“Yes honey, I’ll be fine. Don’t-“ She stopped talking.

“Mom!”

“Now Mike, I’m an impatient person,” Dr. Dactyl said as he returned.

“Let her go!!!”

“I will, don’t worry. But like I said, I’m impatient. Now, if you’re not here on the roof of the Sears Tower in thirty minutes, I kill your mother. If you’re here before then I’ll let your mother go and you and I will battle. Hurry Mike. The clock’s ticking.” He hung up.

I closed my phone. “I’m sorry Mrs. Rickman, but my mom is going to be dead if I’m not at the Sears Tower in half an hour. I need to get downtown.”

(continued)

[SceptileFan]

Twenty-five minutes later, Mrs. Rickman’s SUV screeched to a halt in front of the Sears Tower. We had broken traffic laws all the way here and were even chased by cops. All I had to do was stick my tail out the window and they quit chasing us. I had never travelled at 120 mph before.

I leapt out the door and began to run inside the building when Tyler stopped me.

“The elevator’s too slow,” he said. “Go up the wall.”

I nodded and ran at the wall to the building. I stuck to it and began crawling up it as quickly as possible.

“Three minutes!” Dr. Dactyl called form the top of the tower.

I growled and climbed faster. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to Mom.

“Two minutes!” Dactyl shouted.

I was halfway there. You may think that I was climbing slowly, but this is the tallest building in the United States.

“One minute!!!”

“Okay!” I shouted back and practically began to run up the building.

“Ten...nine…eight…”

I climbed.

“Seven…six…five…”

I climbed.

“Four…three…two…”

I flicked my tail out and latched it onto the ledge of the building. I pulled myself as fast as I could and did a flip before landing on the roof. “One,” I said.

Dr. Dactyl was standing there, holding Mom up by the back of her blouse. He growled. “Oh well. I didn’t want to kill her anyways. Like I promised, I shall let her go.” Dr. Dactyl tossed Mom to the side.

“Go Mom,” I said.

“No Mike,” she replied. “I’m going to-“

“RUN MOM!”

She was silent for a moment, but then nodded before running into the door that led to the elevator.

“All right Dactyl,” I began as I held up my fists. “You got what you wanted. Now let’s fight.”

Dr. Dactyl chuckled. “It won’t even be a fight.”

We ran at each other. I jumped and kicked down on his head, giving myself a boost. Dr. Dactyl swung up and punched me in the side. I winced from the hit, but Shell Shielded before crashing into the ledge of the roof. I began to fall off, but returned to normal just in time to catch myself. As quickly as possible, I extended my tail and wrapped it around Dactyl’s neck. He struggled to breathe.

“What’s wrong Dactyl?” I teased. “You seem a bit tied up.” I ran around behind him while still holding onto his neck. I brought my tail down and smashed him into the concrete of the roof. I jumped up and tried to slam my feet down on his face, but he was too fast and snatched my ankles. He hurled me into a roof antenna, but I caught myself on it.

I quickly began to launch my tongue out repeatedly, but somehow, he was able to dodge every single attack. Finally, he flew forward and grabbed the base of the antenna. I Shell Shielded just as he swung the antenna around and smashed me into the ground. Releasing form the antenna, I jumped up out of the small crater that had been created.

Dr. Dactyl lifted up the antenna and swung it at me. I activated the Shell Shield and it hit me, splitting the antenna in half. I began to run at him. He pulled back the shorter antenna and shoved it into the roof. I leapt at him, but he pulled back the top of the antenna and it smacked me back. It had hit me directly in the nose and it was starting to bleed. I lied limply on the ground.

Dactyl picked me up by the neck. “Just to make sure you don’t survive,” he said. He slapped me across the face a couple of times and then proceeded to punch me four or five times. He finished by spitting in my face and hurling me off the edge of the tower.

I rocketed into the sky. I was going up for a couple seconds, and then began to plummet.

Fast.

The air was shooting past me so quickly it was adding to the dizziness I already had. Fortunately, I was able to realize where the ground was and see that I was falling head-first.

Today was not going well.

I was too far away from the building to wall-crawl on the side. There was nothing for my tail to grab onto. I was free-falling.

I closed my eyes. I hope concrete is softer than it looks…

I gasped. I had recovered quickly from the hits and had come back to my senses. “I hate that guy,” I said to myself before crashing into the street.

“Mike!!!” I heard Tyler shout. I heard the sounds of footsteps running towards me. In seconds, Mom, Tyler, and Pierce were staring at the hole in the concrete where I laid.

“Oh my God,” Mom said with tears in her eyes.

Pierce swore to himself.

CRACK!

The group gasped and backed up.

“RRRROOOOAAAARRRR!!!!” I roared as I jumped out from the hole and landed on my feet. I had Shell Shielded right before I hit the ground. I smirked at the group. “You didn’t think I’d be finished that quickly, did you?”

“Very impressive,” Dr. Dactyl commented as he landed on the sidewalk. “It amazes me how you recovered so quickly.”

“It amazes me how much of an a**hole you are,” I replied.

Dr. Dactyl growled. “You’re going down kid.”

“Bring it on!”

Dr. Dactyl roared and lunged at me. He swung his fist down, but I slid between his legs and he punched the street. I kept sliding behind him and jumped onto the side of a car. I pushed off and shot through the air. Dr. Dactyl turned around and I punched him in the face with my left hand, kicked him with my right foot, and spun around to smack him with my tail. He stumbled backwards and tripped over a fire hydrant.

He growled and picked himself up. He grabbed the front of a Prius and hurled it at me. It bounced harmlessly off me as I activated the Shell Shield. Dactyl grabbed the base of a street light and ripped it out of the ground. He swung it horizontally at me, but I jumped and somersaulted over it. I flicked my tail out at him. He did the same. Our tails collided and we latched them to each other. I pulled. He pulled. I jumped and he pulled me through the air towards him.

It was exactly what I wanted.

I activated the Shell Shield as I hit his open mouth. I landed on my feet and Dactyl spit out a tooth.

“Gotcha,” I smirked.

Dr. Dactyl wiped the blood from his lip. “Not quite.” He ran at me with amazing speed and punched me back. I was hurt, but I landed on my feet.

“That’s what you think,” I shot back. I turned invisible. Dactyl felt a tap on his shoulder. As he looked over, my tail appeared. He gasped and looked back in time for me to hit him in the jaw with an uppercut.

Dactyl fell back onto a car. Quickly, he picked it up and swung it around so fast I didn’t know he had hit me with it. I flipped back down the street and rolled once I hit the ground. I came to a stop when I hit a stop sign.

As I groaned and opened my eyes, Dactyl somehow had gotten to me within seconds of me stopping. He kneed me in the face, cracking my skull. He picked me up and slammed me into a car, shattering my spine.

Well, that’s what would’ve happened if I hadn’t Shell Shielded.

As soon as he kneed me, he shouted in pain from kneeing something harder than diamond. I hopped up and attempted to hit him in the eye with my tongue, but he snatched me too quickly. He threw me across the street and through a large store window.

I groaned and sat up. “Those antennae let him sense almost exactly where I’m going,” I said to myself. “Moving fast won’t help me anymore. He can predict my exact moveents.” I stared out the hole in the window and saw Dr. Dactyl pick up a station wagon and began to walk towards me. Suddenly, he stopped to catch his breath.

It clicked.

“Metabolism!” I shouted.

“Most organisms have a high metabolism, especially insects, since insects almost constantly have to eat,” I remembered Mrs. McHurst saying.

“Dr. Dactyl is part fly,” I said to myself. “And flies are insects! Hah! Now I know exactly what to do.” I picked myself up and jumped out of the store window. A young man was riding a bright green superbike by the store. I jumped in front of him and he stopped. “I need to borrow your bike,” I said.

“Oh my God you have a tail!” he said.

“So can I borrow it?”

“Why?”

I pointed at Dr. Dactyl who was getting closer, still breathing heavily.

“Here!” He jumped off and held the handles out for me. I jumped on and revved the engine. I slammed down on the pedal and rocketed down the sidewalk. While I was riding, only one thought was going through my head:

“This is so illegal, but fun as heck!”

I shot down the sidewalk and swirled around. I accelerated towards Dr. Dactyl. He saw me coming and threw the car at me. I swerved to the side and slid on the ground as the station wagon bounced over me. I straightened the bike up and rode past Dr. Dactyl.

“Catch me if you can!” I called back.

Dr. Dactyl growled but still breathed heavily. He began to fly after me. I slowed down and let him catch up to me, but did a180* turn and hit him with my tail. He turned around slowly.

“Slow…down!” he panted.

“Yeah right!” I called back. “Eat my dust you stupid insect!”

Dactyl growled and started to fly after me. This time, as soon as he started to chase me, I turned around. I rode straight at him. He grinned, thinking this was my final move.

Right before I hit him, I jumped off the superbike.

The superbike kept going under him, but I ran along his back and landed on the bike with ease. Dr. Dactyl was so shocked he landed and stood there to figure out what the heck just happened. Once he had, he growled again, but it was very quiet. By now, his tongue was hanging out his mouth he was so tired.

“What’s wrong Dactyl?” I taunted. “Feeling a bit sleepy?”

“I…am…not!” he huffed.

I stopped the bike. “You’re a terrible liar. You’re trying to tell me you’re not tired, and yet you’re panting? Wow, you’re a lot stupider than you look.”

“SHUT UP!!!” He flew at me. I easily jumped out of the way. He was so exhausted that he kept going and crashed into a street sign. He picked himself up and stared angrily at me.

Then I caught sign of the hot dog cart.

Dr. Dactyl must’ve seen me glance at it and grinned, showing his teeth. He leapt up and ran at the cart. The man at the cart ran away screaming. I jumped on the superbike and accelerated to the cart. I was going much faster, but Dactyl was much closer. I pressed down the pedal as hard as I could.

Then I jumped.

The superbike rolled on the street, but I landed directly on the hot dog cart. My momentum made the cart shoot forward, leaving Dr. Dactyl grasping at air. I was kneeling on the cart as it was shooting down the street. I somehow had to find a way to destroy it.

Ahead of me was a Shell gas station.

I grinned. This was going to be fun.

I ripped open the top of the cooking mechanism on the cart. It immediately began to get hotter and eventually caught the hot dogs on fire. I kept the cart’s path straight, heading directly for a gas pump.

“No!” Dr. Dactyl heaved as soon as he realized what I was doing.

“Sorry Dactyl,” I shouted. “No lunch for you!” The cart hit the pump…

…and exploded.

Flames engulfed a 20 foot radius around the pump. Everyone who saw it gasped. My mom fainted.

The flames cleared. What remained were an incinerated hot dog cart, a destroyed gas pump, and me, flexing all my muscles.

I returned to normal and grinned. “Damn I’m good.” I ran full speed at Dr. Dactyl who now was too tired to move. One punch to the face sent him down.

As soon as he fell, everyone cheered. Tyler and Pierce ran up to me and lifted me up on their shoulders. I waved to everyone.

“Nice job man,” Tyler said.

“Yeah. Hey would somebody call the cops to get Dactyl put away?”


By the time the cops got there, Dr. Dactyl had gathered enough energy to get away. Unfortunately, he now knows his weakness, so will probably come up with a way to get around it. I knew he’d be back. I wasn’t worried; I was ready for him.

Mom was perfectly fine, but I had some bad bruises and a black eye the next day. I didn’t care. I’d heal.

The next morning, I was greeted by a thunderous applause as soon as I entered the school. I later found out that the entire fight had been on the news.

“Funny,” Pierce said once we escaped the people trying to ask me what happened. “I thought they were clapping for you because you’d made the soccer team.”

“Oh crap! I forgot!” I said and raced down the hall towards the locker rooms with Tyler and Pierce right behind me. We screeched to a halt in front of the paper listing the players who made the team. I scanned down the list.

Pierce Bantime.

“Yes!” he exclaimed.

Tyler Rickman.

“All right!” he shouted.

And finally, I got down to the bottom of the list.

Mike Anima.

“Yeah!” I punched the air. Tyler, Pierce and I patted each other on the back.

“Congratulations Mike,” someone said. We stopped talking and turned around. Candace was smiling at us.

“Hey Candace,” I smiled. “And thanks.”

“You were great yesterday.”

“At tryouts?”

“No silly, fighting that Dactyl guy.”

“Oh yeah.”

She walked up close to me and placed a hand on my chest. I blushed. “I need to tell you something,” she said softly.

“What?”

“My dad would never be able to kill you.”

“Why is that?”

“Because the only way you could ever hurt me is getting killed yourself.” Her eyes started to tear up.

I lifted her chin and stared into her beautiful blue eyes. “Listen, I will never let that happen. I will always survive. Just for you.”

She smiled. “I believe you.” She kissed me on the cheek. I blushed. “I’ll see you in English…” she said as she began to walk away. “…hero.”

Pierce put a hand on my shoulder. “Today’s been good for you, hasn’t it?”

All I could do was smile.

Completed 8/10/09

All right, thats the 2nd one! Thanksfor reading and contructive criticism is appreciated.

[SceptileFan]

Here's the third one.

Mutant Mike #3
Eye of the Tigrhino


“Gggrrrrrrrrr…”

“Mike! Look out!” Candace screamed.

I looked above me. An enormous dark silhouette was perched atop the large rock formation.

“RRROOOAAAARRR!!!” the figure roared. It jumped at me.

“Move Mike!” Danny shouted. He held up his gun…


*


Whoa. Exciting, isn’t it?

I know, I’m terrible about jumping into stories without explaining what happens first. I’m sorry. It’s just the way I am.

Well, this whole mess was started last Friday, exactly four weeks since I had become a mutant. It had been eight days since I took down Dr. Dactyl. One week since I’d made the soccer team…

You get the idea.

Anyways, after the fight with Dr. Dactyl that a news cameraman had caught in full, everyone now knew who I was. Somehow, through very complex face recognition software, the police were actually able to figure out my full name, school, address, and even shoe size.

Wait. I don’t wear shoes.

Now, the school was being swarmed with news reporters. The same with my house. We eventually had to call the police to keep them away from me.

I wasn’t happy about that.

Personally, I would’ve skipped an entire day of school just to do interviews and show off my powers for the camera.

But then I wouldn’t have seen Candace. This brings us back to the story at hand. Friday. Candace had kissed me a week ago. Sure it was only on the cheek. It still counts though, right?

No? Fine then.

By this point, both of us knew we both liked each other. So, all I had to do was gather up the guts to ask her out.

This was going to be interesting…


“Mike, we know that you like Candace,” Tyler said as he and Pierce stood beside me as I gathered my books for English class. “When are you going to ask her out?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, shutting my locker. “I’m not sure if she likes me or not.”

“Are you kidding!?” Pierce exclaimed. “She kissed you last week! Sure a girl could hug you and not like you, but kiss? She likes you dude.”

“I’m still not sure.”

“How?” Tyler asked. “You’ve asked out more girls than I can count. Sure, most of them rejected you, but you still asked! You’ve asked out girls you’ve never seen before. Like that one time at the amusement park? You asked her out. Sure she ended up slapping you, but you didn’t care!”

“Yeah,” I began, “but that was different. I didn’t like any of those girls. I just thought they were hot. I didn’t know anything about them at all. It was just for fun. But for Candace it’s different. I like her. I’ve never liked a girl before for something other than her looks. She’s beautiful, on the inside and out.”

Pierce and Tyler sighed. “Just ask her out.” Tyler said.

“English is the only class you have her in,” Pierce said. “Now I want you to come out of the class with a smile on your face. If you have the guts to walk out of that room without asking her out, there’s going to have to be a beat down.” He punched his hand and smirked.

“You know you can’t beat me up.”

“I can’t,” Tyler said. “But Pierce has had more experience in street fighting than you have. He could’ve beaten Dactyl if he had half the superpowers you do.”

I sighed. “You’re right. Okay. I’ll ask her out.”


“And that concludes today’s lesson class,” Mrs. Harper said as we closed our books. “You may talk amongst yourselves until the bell rings.”

I picked up my pile of books, set it on my desk, and leaned back. I glanced over at Candace. She was gathering her stuff. I smiled.

“Now is the time,” I thought. “Hey Candace?”

She looked over at me and smiled. God she had beautiful teeth. “Yes Mike?”

“Um…would you want to…I mean…do you…uh…are you…?”

“Are you trying to ask me out?”

I was taken aback. “Um…yeah.”

“I’d love to.”

I beamed. “Uh…great! So…”

“Movie? Tomorrow night?”

“Uh…”

“Great. I’ll meet you there at say…six?”

“Um…sure.”

RING!

“Good! I’ll see you there.” She stood up and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek before walking out of the room.

I sat there silently for a moment. “Well that was easy.”


“She said yes?” Tyler asked me during soccer practice.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I barely had to ask. She kind of finished my sentences. It was awesome.”

“Lucky you,” Pierce said. “Your life’s been going well lately, huh? I mean your black eye is almost gone, you’ve got superpowers, and now you got a hot girlfriend. I’m just waiting for something bad to happen to you.”

“Let’s hope not-“

“Anima!” a voice shouted. We turned around. Coach Taylor was standing about twenty feet away, motioning for me to “come here”. I ran up to him.

“Yes Coach?” I asked.

“I hear you’ve set up a date with my daughter,” he said. “Is that true?”

“Um…”

“Anima!”

“Yes sir! I’m taking her…I mean I PLANNED to take her to a movie tomorrow night.”

“What movie?”

“We didn’t decide.”

“All right, let’s get this straight.” He placed his finger on my chest. “NO hugging. NO kissing. NO romantic displays at all, got it?”

“Whatever.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry sir! I meant to say, ‘Whatever you say’.” I laughed nervously.

“Good. Now get back to practice.”

“Yes sir.” I ran back to Tyler and Pierce.

“What’d he say?” Tyler asked me.

“A bunch of stuff I didn’t listen to.”


11:34 pm Friday


The young blonde doctor sat in his office on the outskirts of Chicago. He was going over the statistics from his experiments on his computer. He jumped when someone frantically started knocking on his door.

“Come in!” the doctor called.

A short man burst through the door, breathing heavily and clutching a stack of papers.

“Oh hello Trevor,” the blonde doctor greeted.

“Dr. Jarvis!” Trevor heaved.

“Please, call me Danny,” the Dr. Jarvis replied.

“Danny, we just reran the tests, and we have very bad news!”

Danny expression darkened. “What?”

Trevor handed him a sheet of paper. “We discovered that whenever we run the machine, it adds a ferocity factor to the creature.”

“How?”

“We’re not sure, but however it happened, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that any creature that we create becomes extremely violent and destructive, destroying everything in its path and even attacking humans!”

“Oh my God…” Danny gasped. “The Tigrhino!”

“Oh crap!” Trevor swore and they bolted out of the room.

The duo raced through the dim hallways of the underground laboratory. They reached the door that read, “Creature Room”. Danny reached for the handle…

CRASH!

The ground shook and both men were knocked off their feet. Danny pulled himself up quickly and ripped open the door and gasped.

The largest cage’s door had been ripped off its hinges. Men were running around screaming, clambering for the emergency exit. An enormous creature the height of a school bus was stalking around the room.

Danny glanced to the right and saw the emergency tranquilizer gun. He broke it out of its container and cocked it back with a small click.

As soon as the creature heard the click, it roared and ran straight for him. Danny struggled get the gun in position. The creature was much too fast though. By the time he pointed the gun at it, the monster had already hit him with its horn. The hit sliced open his side and threw him into the wall.

Danny looked up. The enormous monster kept walking and burst through the door that Danny had walked through.

“Oh God,” Danny said, clutching his wound. “What have we done?”


The next day


My dad’s BMW pulled up in front of the movie theater at 5:57 the next night. I could already see Candace standing in front wearing a thin pink hoodie and white jeans. I started to climb out of the car.

“Thanks for the ride Dad,” I said.

“No problem Mike,” he replied. “What time do you want me to pick you up?”

“I’ll call you.”

“Gotcha. Have fun!”

I nodded and closed the door. He drove off and I walked up to Candace while wearing regular jeans and a black hoodie. “Hey there,” I greeted as I leaned in for a hug.

“Don’t!” she frantically whispered. “My dad is here!”

“What? Where?”

“Over there.” She motioned with her eyes to a blue Suburban. “He said no physical contact. We have to wait until we get inside.”

“Okay. Shall we, Madame?” I bowed and motioned for the ticket booth. She giggled and we walked up, careful not to touch each other.

Once we bought our tickets, we glanced back at the parking lot and saw Coach Taylor drive away. Once he was gone we hugged and walked inside.

A couple of hours later, Candace and I walked out of the movie theater. The movie was great, but I was more focused on the hand I was holding.

“Thanks for the movie,” Candace said, smiling.

“No problem,” I replied. “I had a great time. Is your dad coming to pick you up?”

“Yeah. He said-“

“RRRRRROOOOOAAAAARRRRR!!!”

“Mike!”

“That wasn’t me!”

“Then what was…oh my God!” She gasped and pointed out towards the parking lot. My mouth dropped open and Candace pulled herself up to me.

The enormous monster’s shoulder was as high as a school bus. It was slightly shorter than one, not including the long thin tail with a tuft of black hair on then end. The monster had a large head and a large mouth filled with razor sharp teeth. Its eyes were yellow and its pupils were slits, much like a cat’s. Two huge horns (the second one was much smaller than the first) jutted from its snout and curved back towards its face slightly. It had two short pointy ears coming from the side of its head. Its front legs were long and lean with cat paws on the end with large retractable claws sticking out of each toe. Its back legs were thicker and muscular with three round toes on each foot. Its entire body was covered with black and orange stripes.
The beast roared once more before knocking some cars away with its paw and throwing more aside with its horn. Suddenly, it looked up and caught sight of me and growled. It pawed the ground.

“Candace,” I said quietly. “Go.”

“No,” she replied, grabbing onto me harder. “I’m staying with you.”

“You don’t have to leave, just stay REALLY far away. This could get messy.”

She nodded and ran to hide around a corner of the building.

“Hey ugly!” I shouted at the monster. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size? Oh wait, there’s no one here that big, so you’ll just have to settle for me!”

The beast roared and charged. I held my ground until it was about 10 feet away before jumping out of the way. As soon as I turned around, the monster smacked me with its paw. I flew through the air, but Shell Shield before crushing a car. I jumped up and ran at the creature and hit it with an uppercut to its jaw. It backed up, but roared again and charged. I did a side-roll to dodge it and wrapped my tail around its horn. As soon as I was wrapped around its horn, the monster violently started shaking its head.
“Stay…still!” I grunted. “Whoa!” The monster threw me into the air. I kept my tail on its horn and pulled myself up to it. I grabbed onto the horn and held on as tightly as I could. The monster, again, attempted to throw me off by shaking its head up and down. When that didn’t work, the monster did what any other animal would’ve done.

Run.

The monster just started running. I was able to turn around and peek at what we were running at, and when I saw brick, I freaked out a bit. Quickly, I closed my eyes and Shell Shielded. I felt a light pat on my back and heard a loud crashing sound.

I opened my eyes.

We were inside an empty theater.

We had gone right through the wall.

I looked at the monster. Strangely, it didn’t seem a bit phased.

That’s when I realized I had loosened my grip on the horn.

“Oh crap,” I said as I was thrown across the theater. I crashed on top of some seats and quickly pulled myself up. “Hah! That didn’t hurt!”

“RRRRRROOOOOAAAAARRRR!!!” the beast roared and ran at me.

I leapt from seat top to seat top as the monster chased me, pulling them out of the ground as easy as you could pull a straw out of a cup. Finally, I reached the bottom of the theater and climbed up to the top of the screen. Thankfully, even when the monster put its paws up on the front of the screen, it still couldn’t reach me (I later discovered this was an IMAX theater).

Just to be a jerk, I stuck my tongue out at the monster. I launched my tongue out at it. I hit it in the eye and it growled in pain. I did the same to its other eye.

I took this opportunity while the monster was blind to run back outside. The monster obviously smelled me and ran directly in the direction I had. Once it had gotten outside, it immediately began to chase me. I knew I couldn’t outrun it, so when it got close enough, I turned around, jumped, and spun, smacking it in the face with my tail.

The monster stumbled back and crushed the top of a fire hydrant, knocking the top of it off, sending a fountain of water rocketing into the sky. I noticed that when the blast hit the monster, it whimpered slightly and tried to avoid the blast.

“It doesn’t like the water,” I said to myself.

The beast roared in anger and lunged at me, but instead of trying to maul me with its horn, it opened its mouth and tried to bite my head off. It barely missed me, but recovered quickly and knocked me aside with the side of its head. I landed next to a crushed car, and I noticed that one of its hubcaps had been knocked off and was lying on the ground next to the wreckage.

Then it clicked.

I snatched up the flat piece of metal. I began to sprint towards the spout of water, but the monster was more interested in me. It ran much faster than I did, but jumped.

Stupid move on its part.

I immediately ducked down and slid on the ground as it sailed over me. It turned around, but I had already made it to the hydrant. I placed a foot on the hubcap and held it with one hand. I shoved it down on top of the fountain, and the water immediately shot out and hit the monster directly.

It whimpered and began to back away. I just kept the water going.

“Take this!” I shouted as I pushed down harder and focused the water into a more concentrated blast. The monster roared, turned, and ran.

I let go of the hubcap and threw it on the ground. “No!” I swore. “It’s not supposed to run! Gah!” I frantically looked around and saw an overturned silver super bike lying on the ground, still running.

I smiled.

I ran up to it and picked it up. I revved the engine to make sure it was working, and started to climb on when a pair of hands grabbed my waist.
I turned around. Candace was staring at me.

“I’m going with you,” she said.

“No way,” I said, holding up my hands. “This is way too dangerous. I care too much about you to let you get hurt.”

“I’ll be fine. I know you’ll be there to protect me. Besides, I’m not taking no for an answer.” She sat on the bike.

I sighed. “Okay. Hold on tight.” We climbed onto the bike and she wrapped her hands around my stomach.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing!?!” someone shouted and ran up to us.

It was a very tall bald man. “That’s my bike.”

I waved my tail around to show him who I was. He gasped. “You’re Mutant Mike!”

“Yes.”

“Go ahead and borrow it.”

“Thanks. I’ll try not to get it destroyed.”

The man nodded and walked away.

“Mike?” Candace said.

“What?”

“Stop flexing your stomach.”

“I’m not flexing!”

“Yes you are.”

“I know.” I did what she said. “You know I was only trying to impress you.”

“I know. But you don’t need to.”

“That’s nice to hear.” I rocketed out of the parking lot.

We turned onto the road. I weaved in and out of cars, easily overtaking them. I got honked at a couple of times, but I didn’t care. All I was focused finding the monster.

“Where is it?” Candace yelled over the rush of the wind.

“RRRROOOOAAAARRRR!!!” we heard in the distance.

“Found it,” I smirked.

I turned down the street that I heard the noise come from. As soon as I entered the brightly lit road in downtown Chicago, I saw a huge orange figure barreling down the road, the occasional car being thrown to the side. I slammed down on the pedal and did a slight wheelie before rocketing after the beast.

The monster glanced back when it heard me rev the engine. It growled and ran forward faster.

“Oh no you don’t,” I said. “Hold on Candace.” I pushed the handles forward and ducked down low. Candace hugged herself against my back. This made us much more aerodynamic, and we sped up drastically. Finally, we were less than thirty feet away from the beast.

“I have you now,” I grinned.

Suddenly, the monster roared and turned around. It jumped at us. Thankfully, my reflexes were quick, and I swerved the bike out of the way in time. We turned onto a side street. The monster suddenly began chasing after us.

The hunter had become the hunted.

“Well that didn’t work very well,” I said.

“Ya think?” Candace taunted.

I grinned sheepishly at her.

The monster roaring at me snapped me out of my humorous mood. I looked back and saw it was almost directly behind us. It threw its head forward, attempting to bite my back tire off, but I dodged it by turning. I was now driving on the sidewalk, attempting not to run over any pedestrians. At my soonest opportunity I pulled back into the street. Then, at the exact wrong moment, an old lady began crossing the crosswalk ahead of me.

They always appear at the worst times, don’t they?

I easily could’ve avoided her, but I knew the monster wouldn’t care. I quickly extended my tail and snatched her up as I drove by. I slowed down just enough to set her down on the sidewalk. As I drove away, she almost dropped her walker from shock.

Unfortunately, the monster was still chasing us. It continually attempted to snap at us, but I kept moving the super bike from side to side to avoid it.

Then the strangest thing happened.

It stopped.

No, not me, the monster. It just stopped running. I noticed that when I didn’t hear its heavy panting. I glanced back and saw it turn onto a different street.

I slammed on the brakes.

“What is it doing?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Candace replied, pulling hair from her face. “We should go check it out.”

“Right.” I turned around and rocketed down the street. I looked to the side at the street the monster had turned onto.

It wasn’t there.

“What the heck?” I said. “Where did it-“

“Mike! Watch out!” Candace screamed.

As we passed the next street, the monster jumped out with incredible speed.

Before I could move, the monster slammed its horn into the side of the bike.

Candace and I were thrown off the bike and into the air.

It all seemed to happen in slow motion. The monster threw the bike to the side as we sailed through the air. I grabbed Candace by the shirt and held her against my chest. I curled my body around her and flexed.

We crashed into the street.

Our bodies (well, mine holding hers) blasted away the concrete as we slid.

Finally, we ran out of momentum, and I returned to normal. “Are you okay?” I asked Candace.

“I’m fine,” she said shakily. “Just a little startled.”

“Good. I was worried you…” I gasped. “Whoa!” I turned and held my body over her and flexed. The monster slammed its teeth into my back. When the first bite didn’t work, it kept gnawing on my back. When it backed up to take a breath, I made my move. I leapt up and smacked it in the face with my tail. It cowered for a second, but tried to bite me again. I jumped to the side just in time.

“Get out of here Candace!” I shouted.

“No! I’m not leaving you!”

“God! What is it with everyone not wanting to leave me!?!” I complained as I dodged a horn. “Now is the time that I need to be left! Go!”

When she saw the seriousness of my eyes she nodded and started running away.

I stared at the beast. “You need a trip to the pound!” I teased as I jumped up and slammed my feet down on its face. I caught myself on its back and immediately lied down on it. I grasped the fur on its back like my life depended on it.

Oh wait. It did.

“Grrrrrrr…” the monster growled. “RROOOAAARRR!!!” It immediately began
jumping around, attempting to buck me off. I held on, but the monster was too strong. I was thrown into the air high enough that the beast had time to turn around, jump, and smack me with its horn. I sailed through a store window.

I quickly leapt back out and ran at the monster. I jumped, but before I hit it I turned invisible. The monster felt something hit its shoulder. I reappeared and bit into its neck. It started to bleed.

I’m becoming more and more of an animal every day aren’t I?

I jumped off the side of it. I turned back to the monster and kicked it in the jaw. Unfortunately, I didn’t back up fast enough, and the monster sunk its teeth into my leg.

“Aaaugh!” I screamed in pain and fell to the ground. My leg was bleeding badly and was too weak for me to stand on. I looked up. The monster was hovering over me, deciding which part of me to eat first.

BANG!

A window shattered behind me.

BANG!

A hole was created in a dumpster. I looked over. Ten cop cars were all lined up and the policemen were shooting at the monster. Before I knew it, the monster was more focused on avoiding bullets than eating me. One grazed its shoulders as it ran away.

A cop ran up to me. He was followed by Candace.

“Oh my God Mike your leg!” Candace said frantically. Her eyes were watering up.

“It’s okay Candace I…uh….” I passed out.

“He’s lost too much blood!” the cop shouted. “Someone call an ambulance!”

He picked my body up and started to carry me away. Candace stood there, silently crying.


*


I eased open my eyes and sighed. This was my second trip into a hospital in one month. It was starting to get old.

I sat up. Candace had been holding my hand and almost jumped on top of me when I woke up. She kissed me on the cheek before hugging me again.

“Oh thank God you’re okay!” she sobbed.

I hugged her back. “I’m okay Candace. Trust me. It was just a little cut.”

“A little cut!?! You fainted from blood loss! Look at your leg.”

I pulled back the covers. A long scar was sown together by stitches ran down my entire left calf. I got a little woozy just looking at it.

“Okay, so maybe it was a big cut. How long was I out?”

“About an hour. Our parents are on their way.”

“Excuse me.” Candace and I looked up. There was a blonde man who looked like he was in his 30’s standing in the doorway. He was smiling, but his eyes looked sad.

“Can I help you?” I asked. Candace gripped my hand.

“Yes actually,” the man replied as he pulled up a chair at the foot of my bed. “I am Dr. Jarvis, but you may call me Danny. I am the head researcher at the Chicago Institute of Fusion Sciences, or CIFS.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“I know. It’s a secret branch of the government and we do research on fusion in an underground laboratory. Kind of like Area 51.”

“Area 51 exists?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. Never mind. I’m here concerning the monster that you fought today Mike.”

“You know what that thing is?”

“Yes. Actually, I created it.”

Candace and I stared at him like he was a psycho. Who knows, maybe he was.

“You see,” he began, “CIFS does research on fusion. I’m talking like fusing two things together to see what comes out. Now we tried fusing inanimate objects, and that didn’t work well at all. Then we tried fusing simple mice to lizards, and the results were astounding. We actually created a Mousard, a creature with similair traits and appearances of both creatures.

“When this worked so well, we went a bit crazy, fusing as many different animals as we could. Eventually we were able to acquire a Bengal tiger and a white rhinoceros. We decided to fuse them together, and what came out was the Tigrhino.”

Candace and I gasped.

“So that’s what was fighting me tonight?” I asked. “What was it doing here? And why was it going insane?”

Danny sighed an ashamed sigh. “Last night my assistant Trevor ran some last-minute scans on the machine before we reported the results to the government. Unfortunately, he discovered that somehow whatever we create becomes violent and constantly angry, for no reason. The effect was delayed, which is why we could keep the Tigrhino in captivity easily, but when it kicked in, it was actually able to escape. The other fusions we created were small enough that they couldn’t break out, but unfortunately we had to euthanize all of them.”

“Oh my God,” Candace sighed.

“And now the Tigrhino is on the loose,” I said. “I’m guessing you’re in here because you want me to stop it. Well, newsflash Danny-boy! Look what happened when I tried that!” I pointed to my leg. “I can’t take this thing out! It’s too big!”

“You don’t have to take it out. I will.”

“What?”

“I don’t know where the Tigrhino went, but we should easily be able to locate it. All we need to do is go out to where it is and you can distract it, since it has memories of you hurting it. It will focus its anger on you, which will give me time to kill it.”

“So I’m a distraction to you!?!”

“No! I just need someone to keep it busy so it won’t try to avoid the shot!”

“I don’t care! I’m not going to go on your stupid trip just so I can risk my life again so you can have some target practice. I’m out of here!” I jumped out of bed, but as soon as I put weight on my left leg, I collapsed. Candace helped me back into bed.

“This will be your opportunity to get back at the Tigrhino for hurting your leg,” Danny stated calmly.

I was silent. “When do we leave?”


*


It was Friday. I’d been walking with a limp since Saturday.

“So when are you going to go hunting that ‘Tigrhino’ thing?” Tyler asked me as he, Pierce, and I were walking down the hallway.

“I’m not sure,” I replied. “Danny said he’d give me a call once he’d tracked it.”

“Man, I would love to go with you,” Pierce said. “I love hunting.”

“Actually,” I began, “That might be a good idea.”

Pierce and Tyler stared at me.

“I mean, Pierce, you’re a great hunter. I’ve never been hunting in my life. Now I’m almost positive Danny is a good hunter. But, I think it would be a good idea if we had more than one person that’s a good hunter there. Just in case something happens to the other.”

“You’re right,” Pierce said. “Cool! I’ll be there.”

“Shouldn’t you ask your parents first?” Tyler asked.

“Don’t need to. I’ll just tell him I’m going on a hunting trip with my friends.”

“In that case, can I come too?” Tyler asked. “I’m not a great hunter, but I do know my way around the wilderness, me being the only Boy Scout out of the three of us.”

“Yeah! I wouldn’t mind,” I replied.

“Great! I’ll ask my mom once we find out when you’re going.”

“Okay. I’m sure Danny won’t mind. Actually, I don’t care if he minds or not. I’ll just tell him I won’t go if he won’t let you guys come.”

“Then I’m going too.”

We turned around. Candace was standing there, clutching her books.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m going on the trip with you,” she said sternly.

“Oh no. Definitely not.”

“Why not? You’re letting Tyler and Pierce come! Why not me?”

“Because both Tyler and Pierce have a lot of outdoor experience. Plus, I don’t care about them that much.”

“Hey!” they shouted form behind me.

“And if they get hurt,” I continued, “I feel a little bad for awhile, but get over it quite quickly. If you were to get hurt, I would never forgive myself.”

“Mike, I’m your girlfriend now,” she said. My heart skipped a beat. We hadn’t officially been calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend yet. She’d just made it official. “I don’t care how much danger I’m in, I’m sticking with you until the end.”

“I don’t care. I care about you too much to even risk you getting hurt. Even if I were let you to go, it’s not like you could come up with an excuse for your dad.”

“Then I’ll just sneak out.”

“For the last time Candace…NO.”

She huffed in anger. “Mark my words Mike Anima; I will get you back for this!” She stormed down the hall.

I sighed. “Great. Our first fight. We’ve only been dating for a week.”

“Don’t worry man,” Tyler said. “The road of relationships has to have its bumps. If it doesn’t, then you’ll never know when it’s smooth.”

I was about to respond with speechlessness at Tyler’s sudden profoundness when my cell phone rang. I pulled it from my pocket and opened it up.

“Hello?” I greeted.

“Mike? It’s Danny.”

“Hey Dan. What’s up?”

“I’ve located the Tigrhino. It’s about two-hundred miles from Chicago.”

“Good! When do we leave?”

“I’ll pick you up at your house at 5 am tomorrow morning. You good with that?”

“That’s fine. Oh! I’m brining a couple friends. Is that okay?”

“How many?”

“Two.”

“That’s fine.”

“All right.” I gave Tyler and Pierce a thumbs up and they high-fived.

“Oh! I need your address,” Danny said.

“Right.” I quickly gave it to him.

“Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t worry about supplies; I’ll bring all of that. All you need to bring is warm clothing.”

“Gotcha. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yes. Goodbye.”

“Adios.” I hung up and turned to Pierce and Tyler. “Okay. He’s meeting us at my house at five tomorrow morning.”

They nodded in approval.

“Okay. Whoa!” I exclaimed after looking at the clock. “We better get to class!” We bolted down the hallway.

Down the hall, Candace had listened to every word I’d said.


Tyler, Pierce and stood outside of my house at 4:58 the following morning. Pierce had lent Tyler and I camouflage clothing to wear. We looked like soldiers about to leave for the army.

“You guys excited?” I asked.

“I’m tired,” Pierce yawned. “The one thing I’ve never like about hunting is how early you have to get up.”

“I know, right?” Tyler agreed, stretching. “I think…oh! There he is!” He pointed down my street. A black Jeep Wrangler with an open top hauling a small trailer pulled up in front of the house. Danny, dressed in camouflage clothing much like us, walked out.

“Hello boys,” he greeted.

“Hey Danny,” I said. “These are my friends, Tyler and Pierce. Pierce has been hunting since he was eight and Tyler is a Planet Scout in Boy Scouts.”

“Star Scout,” Tyler corrected.

“Whatever.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Danny said as he shook their hands. “I brought extra camouflage clothing, but it seems you guys have got it covered. So, you ready to go?”

“Yeah!” we exclaimed.

“Good.” He turned and started walking back towards the Jeep when I noticed something.

“Hey, why is there a raft on the trailer?” I asked.

“Oh! I almost forgot!” Danny said brightly. “To get to the Tigrhino’s area, we’ll have to raft down the Painstake River.”

“Raft!?! We don’t know how to raft!”

“Don’t worry! The majority is easy Class 2 and 3. First time rafters can easily do that. But…”

“But what?”

“There is a section that’s Class 5.”

“What’s Class 5?”

“Umm…the highest level of river rafting. It’s for experts only.”

“Then why the hell are we going to!?!”

“We don’t have any other choice. We have to go through it to get to the Tigrhino.”

“Why didn’t you tell us about this before?” Pierce asked.

“Because I didn’t think you’d agree to go.” He laughed nervously.

We growled at him.

“But don’t worry!” He held up his hands. “You shouldn’t die. And even if you do it shouldn’t be too painful.”

“That’s comforting,” Tyler grumbled.

“Come on boys! Let’s just put this out of our minds for now and enjoy the drive! Let’s go!” He jumped into the Driver’s seat of the Jeep. I climbed in the passenger’s while Tyler and Pierce sat in the back. We drove off.

Little did we know we were carrying some extra baggage.


“What do you guys want to talk about?” I asked.

We had been able to sleep for the first two hours of the drive, but we had woken up after the car had hit a bump. We now, with an hour of driving left, were bored out of our minds.

“I don’t know,” Tyler said with his eyes half-closed.

“How ‘bout perverted stuff?” Pierce asked.

We stared at him.

“Well it’s not like there are any girls around!” he defended.

“Nah,” I replied, yawning. “It’s too early.”

They nodded in agreement.

“You boys play sports?” Danny asked after a minute of silence.

“Soccer,” we replied.

“You had any games yet?” he asked.

“Not until Tuesday,” Tyler replied. “We’re playing Harold High. They’ve got the stupidest mascot. The Hippos? It cracks me up just thinking about it.”

“Hippos are actually really dangerous,” I replied. “They can snap a crocodile’s spine in half with one bite.”

“Well what about our mascot?!” Pierce said. “I mean, we’re the Vipers. We’re venomous. One bite to a hippo and it’s dead.”

“Enough about mascots,” Tyler said. “Let’s just settle on that we’re going to kick their butts.”

We nodded in agreement.

We sat silently.

“So guys,” Danny started, “I know Mike here has a girlfriend. How about you guys?” He looked at Pierce and Tyler.

“I don’t like anybody right now,” Tyler replied calmly.

“Same here,” Pierce said. “I need to find a girl that knows her bikes.”

“Does a girl like that exist?” I asked.

“Probably. Speaking of girlfriends Mike, have you talked to Candace since yesterday?”

My face darkened. “No.”

“What happened?” Danny asked.

“She wanted to come with us,” I began. “But I said no. She got really mad at me and we haven’t spoken since then. I just…I couldn’t bear to even risk her getting hurt. I just care so much about her that to see her get hurt would kill me. She’s the most wonderful person in the world, and I will never let anything happen to her.”

“Oh, that is so sweet,” someone said from behind me.

I whirled around. Tyler and Pierce were sitting there dumbfounded. I stared at them.

“That wasn’t me!” Tyler held up his hands.

“Wasn’t me either,” Pierce protested.

“Then who…” I thought and saw something stir in the trailer. “Stop the car!”

Danny slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side of the quiet country road. I angrily stomped out of the car and trudged over to the trailer. I turned over the raft.

Candace was lying there, nervously smiling up at me.

“Hi Mike,” she greeted. “Beautiful morning isn’t it?”


“I still can’t believe you snuck out just to come on the trip!” I said once we had started driving again. Candace was now sitting in the seat between Tyler and Pierce. “Your dad is going to kill you. No, never mind. He’s going to kill me!!!”

“I’m sorry Mike!” she said for twentieth time. “I just don’t think it’s right to let you go out and risk your life for some stupid animal!”

“I have to do this!” I turned and looked at her. “If I don’t, who knows how many people could get hurt?”

“It’s just…” She looked away. “I couldn’t bear to sit at home this weekend, worrying that you may never come back. I’m sorry.”

A tear dropped from her face.

Tyler shot me an angry look. I could almost read his mind. “Apologize!” he thought.

I sighed. “No Candace, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. Plus, I should have trusted that you would be able to take care of yourself. It’s not your fault.”

She smiled. “Thanks Mike. It’s not your fault either.”

I grinned. “If I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt, I’d lean back and kiss you.”

Pierce sighed. “Please, keep it on.”


Forty minutes later, we pulled off the road and parked on an open field. Danny hopped out. He handed Candace a camouflage jacket and over-pants to wear and she quickly put them on. Danny pulled out two guns, each in a case. He strapped one to his back and gave one to Pierce. He handed Tyler a first aid kit and gave me a dry-bag. With my help, Danny pulled the large blue raft off the trailer and turned it right-side-up. He threw in five paddles (thankfully he’d brought an extra) and some more supplies. He told Tyler, Pierce, and I to each grab one of the handles on the sides of the boat. We picked up the raft and walked into the woods on the edge of the clearing. Candace walked behind us.

There was a very narrow trail. Thankfully we were all wearing long sleeves. Otherwise, we’d be chopped up worse than vegetables. We carried on.


“I can’t go on!” I wailed and dropped onto the ground. We’d been carrying the raft (which is quite heavy), hiking down a trail narrower than a doorway, and sweating in our jackets, for an hour. I was exhausted.

But you probably already knew that.

“I’m with Mike,” Tyler panted and dropped the raft. He lied down on the ground.

“I second that,” Pierce huffed. He fell to the floor.

“Oh come on boys!” Danny stopped and said. “You can keep going!”

“Danny, how old are you?” I asked, sitting up.

“Thirty-two.”

“Exactly. You’re way more physically fit than some fourteen-year-olds that have only been in soccer for a couple of weeks. We haven’t ‘adapted’ yet. Can’t we just rest for a minute?”

Danny sighed. “I suppose. Here.” He reached into the dry-bag that we had put into the raft and tossed us each a water bottle. I downed it in seconds. Tyler and Pierce did the same.

Candace, however, leisurely sipped hers. We stared at her in envy. “Oh come on guys,” she teased. “It can’t be too bad.” She smirked.

“You want to carry it?” I asked.

“No, you boys are doing a fine job.” She giggled.

I sighed. Well, as my grandpa always says, teasing is a sign of affection.

But since when have I listened to Grandpa?

Anyways, after five more minutes of resting, we continued. After thirty more minutes, Danny stopped.

“Do you hear that?” he asked.

“What?” Pierce asked.

“Shh.” We perked up our ears.

Nothing other than the sounds of the forest.

“That’s the roar of the river,” Danny stated quietly.

We listened. Finally, we heard the sound of water moving.

“Let’s go!” Danny exclaimed and we lurched forward. After two minutes of quick hiking, we reached the bank of the Painstake River.

It was enormous. It looked to be fifty feet wide. It had trees on the banks of each side. What interested was the speed of the water. The rapids were minimal in this area, but I could tell that this was not the majority of the river. One quick glance downstream and I could see that we were going to be in a bit of trouble.

“All right, everyone grab a paddle!” Danny said.

In minutes, we had put all our gear in the raft and had put it in the river. We all put on life jackets, jumped inside, and positioned ourselves. Tyler and I were in the front, Pierce and Candace in the middle, and Danny was sitting on the back as the guide. He taught us the quick paddle commands and in minutes, we were rafting.

“This isn’t so bad,” Tyler said after a little while.

“I think you spoke too soon,” I said. “Look!” I pointed downstream. The water was roaring. Huge rocks were positioned in the worst possible places, creating huge rapids. We shouted as we hit a hole and were soaked to the bone. The waves splashed into our faces as we turned, bumping past rocks.

“Watch out!” Tyler shouted right before we paddled to the side and barely missed a rock sticking five feet out of the ground. Finally, we reached calm water.

“My God!” Tyler sighed.

“That was crazy!” Candace said.

“You guys thought that was intense?” Danny laughed. “That was only Class 3. That was nothing. Class 5 is WAY more intense than that.”

“Danny,” I began, “if we survive this trip, I’m going to kill you when we get back.”


After a couple more Class 3 rapids, we got used to them. We actually got to the point where we were having fun.

That didn’t last long.

“You guys ready?” Danny asked, water dripping from his hat brim. He was grinning from ear to ear.

“For what?” Pierce asked.

“What do you think?” He pointed up ahead.

I looked forward and almost fainted.

The entire river for the next hundred yards was white. There was so many holes and waves that I couldn’t count. Now the river was enclosed by two cliff sides, which meant no escaping this.

“It was nice knowing you guys,” Tyler said.

“I know,” Pierce replied. “I’m an interesting person.”

“Mike…” Candace said quietly.

“I’m sorry,” I sighed.

“For what?”

“Listening to this crazy idiot guiding the boat!!!”

“You’ll have fun,” he laughed. “As long as you don’t fall out. Now here we…go!”

The river curved down. The raft accelerated at amazing speed. We immediately began bumping up and down in the water. We hit a hole and the entire raft was covered with water. We lurched to the side and Tyler almost fell out. We hit another hole.

This time, I couldn’t hold on.

The powerful force of the water knocked me out.

I was swimming in Class 5 rapids.

Today was not my day.

“Help!” I gurgled. My life jacket was keeping me afloat, but that didn’t stop the rapids from drowning my face.

“Mike! No!” Candace screamed. She tried to reach out from the boat.

“No!” Danny shouted and grabbed her arm. “It’s too dangerous! You could fall out too! Mike! Send your tail at us!”

I nodded and shot my tail out towards the boat. I kept extending until…

It didn’t reach.

“Try and swim closer!” Tyler shouted.

“I can’t!” I replied. “The rapids are too strong and I…”

“Mike! Look ahead!” Pierce warned.

I straightened my head.

A six-foot-tall rock was staring me down.

And I was headed right for it.

I thought quickly. I pushed my paddle down onto the bottom of the river. With that force plus the power of the river, I was able to launch myself out of the water. I soared through the air in what seemed like slow motion. I was headed right for the rock, but swung down my paddle and pushed myself off. I again flew through the air. Danny thankfully was able to steer the boat, and I landed safely on top of Tyler.

He pushed me off.

“Are you okay?” Candace asked, suddenly hugging me.

“I’m fine,” I panted. “Is that the end of the Class 5?” I asked Danny.

“I don’t think so,” Tyler interrupted. He motioned in front of us.

The river seemed to end. It just disappeared into nowhere. We frantically turned to Danny.

“A waterfall?” he said completely calm. “Huh. Guess I should’ve looked at the map better. Oh well. I hope you guys can swim.”

I held Candace in my arms.

We screamed.

The raft fell off the edge of the waterfall.

Candace and I immediately left the raft, followed by the others. We tumbled through the air for about three seconds. I’d never held anyone so tightly. Candace held me tighter.

We splashed into the water.

I opened my eyes underwater. Candace had let go of me and was swimming towards the surface. I was feeling a bit dizzy, but was able to follow her. We let the current carry us to shore.

Danny was already standing there. I helped Candace up. Tyler and Pierce crawled onto shore from behind us.

“Well that was great! Wasn’t it?” Danny beamed.

I growled. Everyone growled. This guy was really pissing me off.

“Danny…” I began, “I would say so many bad things to you right now if Candace wasn’t here. So I’ll just save them for later.”

“That’s nice to hear.”

“So what do we do about our supplies?” Pierce asked.

Danny stood silently for a moment. Then he gasped and grinned. He ran and jumped into the river. He returned with the dry bag. “So who wants to carry it?”

“I’m sorry,” I began, “I can’t hear you over the noise of the waterfall we just fell off!!!”

“I’m sorry!”

“What about the raft?” Tyler asked.

“I’ve got plenty of them. That was one of my crappier ones anyways.”

We stood in silence.

“So what now?” Candace asked.


“Danny?” I asked a couple hours later.

“Yes?”

“WHERE THE HELL IS IT!?!?”

“I’m not sure. We passed by the exact position that it was spotted yesterday, so it couldn’t have gone more that ten miles. I think.”

“That’s not good enough for me.”

“You’d think a giant orange monster the size of a bus would be easy to spot,” Tyler said, sitting down on a rock. “What time is it?”

Danny glanced at his watch. “About noon.”

“Can we take a lunch beak?” Pierce asked.

“Sorry guys, I didn’t bring any food.”

I wanted to strangle this guy.

“How could you think not to bring food!?” Candace asked.

“I thought we would’ve been finished by now,” Danny replied, laughing nervously.

I smacked my forehead.

“You’re lucky Mike,” Tyler began, clutching his stomach. “You can eat anything.”

“Oh yeah! I almost forgot! Hah!” I ran over and picked up a rock. I tossed it in my mouth and ate it quickly. “Mmm. Kind of tastes like cheese.”

I tried to offer some rocks to the rest of the group, but no one wanted any. I didn’t understand. Rocks are good.

Eventually my conscience got the best of me and I decided to go hungry with the rest of the group. As we were about to leave, Tyler stopped.

“Whoa!” he said and lifted his foot.

“What?” Pierce asked.

“Something just ran over my foot.”

“There!” Candace said and pointed to a small lizard scurrying over a log.

“Hey!” I shouted to the lizard. Suddenly it stopped.

“What do you want human?” the lizard turned around and asked. His voice had an Australian accent. “And how are you speaking with me?”

“Long story. Anyways, I was wondering if you could help us,” I replied, walking up to it. “Have you seen a monster about ten feet tall, orange, covered in black stripes, and with huge teeth and a big horn on its face?”

The lizard thought for a moment. “Yeah, actually. I passed by it about an hour ago. The jerk almost stepped on me.”

“Which way did it go?”

“That way.” He pointed to my right with one of its feet.

“Thank you.”

“No problem.” It scurried off.

I turned around, smiling triumphantly. Everyone was staring at me like I’d just told them I was a girl.

“Oh. Heh heh,” I laughed. “I forgot to tell you guys about that power didn’t I?”

They nodded.

“Oh. Woops.”

“You just sounded like you were a crocodile,” Tyler said slowly.

“You were talking in roars,” Pierce said.

“It was kind of hot,” Candace said.

Tyler, Pierce, and Danny stared at her.

I grinned.

“Anyways, what did you talk to it about?” Danny asked.

“Oh! I asked it if it saw the Tigrhino. He said yes and told me it went that way.” I pointed in the direction the lizard had indicated.

“All right! Let’s move out!” Danny started hiking ahead. Tyler and Pierce followed him. Candace and I stayed behind.

“So you really think my ‘lizard talk’ is hot?” I asked smoothly.

“I guess so,” she giggled. “But I think everything about you is hot.”

“I’m nothing compared to you.”

“Hey lovebirds!” Pierce called back. “Quit worshipping each other and come on!”

We laughed and ran after them.

[SceptileFan]

“This is getting old,” I complained an hour later. “We’re never going to find it.”

“Why can’t we just let it stay here in the wild?” Tyler asked.

“Because eventually it will make its way back to civilization and wreak havoc again,” Danny replied. “We can’t let it…” He gasped. “Look!” He ran over to a nearby tree. It had four claw marks scratched down the side. “This is from the Tigrhino! We must be getting close!”

“There’s another one,” Pierce pointed out.

“And another!” Candace said.

We kept following the trail of clawed trees until we reached a small clearing. Nothing much was in it except a twenty foot rock structure sticking out of the ground on the far side.

“Great, no more trail to follow,” Danny said.

“I don’t know guys,” I said as I walked out into the center of the field. “I’m getting a weird feeling.”

“I feel like I’m being watched,” Tyler commented.

“I always do,” Pierce said.

“I’m not sure,” Danny said and pulled his gun from its case. “We should always be…”

“Gggrrrrrrrrr…”

“Mike! Look out!” Candace screamed.

I looked above me. An enormous dark silhouette was perched atop the large rock formation.

“RRROOOAAAARRR!!!” the figure roared. It jumped at me.

“Move Mike!” Danny shouted. He held up his gun and fired at the Tigrhino.

It missed.

Barely.

I rolled to the side right before the monster landed on me. It swung its paw around and smacked me with it, knocking me aside. I rolled but caught myself and stood up.

“A little help would be nice!” I shouted at the others.

Pierce aimed and fired at the Tigrhino.

It dodged it.

“It knows we’re firing at it!” Pierce shouted. “You’re going to have to distract it better!”

I nodded and jumped. I punched down on the monster’s head but was knocked aside by its horn. I caught myself on the rock structure and crawled up it. Once I was on the top I jumped off it. I did a flip in mid-air and hit the Tigrhino with my tail as I did. I landed on my feet and one hand.

The monster growled. It lunged at me and tried to bite me, but I Shell Shielded in time. Unfortunately the monster was amazingly fast and was able to hit me as soon as I deactivated it. I shot back through the air and caught myself in a tree. A vine fell into my face.

I grinned.

I ripped it off the tree and ran at the Tigrhino. Danny fired another shot and missed again. The Tigrhino pounced at me, but I rolled to the side to dodge it. I ran up its arm and held on to its back.

“Time for a rodeo!” I said as I flung the vine around and stuck it in the Tigrhino’s mouth. I caught the other end as it came back around and pulled it back. The Tigrhino reared its head.

I had created reins.

“Giddy up horsy!” I laughed as the Tigrhino began bucking around the clearing. I had easily been thrown off of it before, but now I had something to hold on to. Eventually, though, the Tigrhino got the best of me and threw me off the front of it.

I was still holding the vine.

It had thrown me so hard that I gained enough momentum to land on the ground and throw the beast over the top of me. The Tigrhino roared and slammed into the dirt. It got up quickly and ran at me again, but I jumped and ran over its back. I leapt off its butt and landed in a tree.

I dropped down onto a thick branch about a quarter of the way from the ground. When I landed on it I bounced back up slightly.

“It’s really flimsy,” I said to myself. “Ah ha!” I held onto the trunk of the tree and pulled back the branch. I let it go and jumped in front of it. The force of the branch slammed me in the back (and I won’t lie, it hurt), but it also rocketed me forward. I shot through the air like a bullet.

“The bigger they are the harder they fall!!!” I cried and slammed my foot right into the Tigrhino’s ribcage.

It immediately went down.

I stood in front of it. In my peripheral vision I could see Danny aim his gun at the monster. Suddenly, I looked into the Tigrhino’s yellow eyes and saw…

Fear.

Sadness.

A heart.

“Stop!” I shouted.

But it was too late.

Danny had fired the gun.

I jumped in front of the bullet.

It harmlessly bounced off. I stood where I was and continued holding the Shell Shield just in case.

“What the hell Mike!?” Danny said. “Get out of the way!”

“No!” I replied. “Somehow, I don’t know why, but it’s like I can see into the monster’s soul. It doesn’t want to hurt us!”

“What about the ferocity factor?” Danny asked.

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t look like…agh!” Pain sliced through my leg. I fell to the dirt. I looked at my leg. The cut I had gotten a week ago had somehow reopened.

“Ggrrrrrrrrrrrrr…” I turned over onto my back. The Tigrhino was standing over me.

“Mike!” Candace shouted.

I stared at the monster. Its head came forward.

And it licked me.

Then it started snuggling against my face.

“Um, hey there,” I said as I petted it. “You don’t seem to want to kill me anymore.”

The Tigrhino’s eyes were bright like a puppy’s.

“That’s good to know,” I laughed.

The others walked up to me. “IT appears the ferocity factor has worn off,” Danny stated. “Well this is a surprise.”

“It seems a lot cuter now that it’s not evil,” Candace said.

“He’s not cute,” I replied. “He’s…cool. You need a name now, don’t you?” I asked as I turned back to the Tigrhino. “How about…?”

“Cragmore?” Tyler offered.

“Killer?” Pierce suggested.

“Danny?” Danny asked.

We stared at him.

“I like Rifle,” Candace said.

“Yeah. Yeah! That’s great!” I said as I tried to stand up, but the pain in my leg kept me down. Pierce and Tyler lifted me up and let me lean on their shoulders. “What do you say, Rifle?”

Rifle wagged his tail and roared in agreement.

“Great buddy,” I said. “Come on, let’s get home. I really need a shower.”


Danny’s Jeep pulled up in front of Candace’s house. We had already dropped off Tyler and Pierce, so now it was Candace’s turn. It was dark outside (since we didn’t even get near Chicago until 9:00 pm, now it was 10:00). Candace hopped out of the front seat of the Jeep and Rifle let me down slowly from his back. I limped over to her and held her hand as we walked up to her front door.

It was open before we got to the porch.

“Candace!” Coach Taylor exclaimed as he ran out and hugged her. “Thank God you’re safe!” He let go of her.

“I’m fine Dad,” Candace replied.

“No you’re not! You were kidnapped by this!” He jabbed his finger into my chest. “This is all your fault Anima! You took my daughter!”

“Um…” I stuttered.

“No Daddy, he didn’t! I snuck out!” Candace jumped in.

“What?”

“Don’t blame this on Mike; none of it was his fault. He actually tried to stop me from coming, but I still went anyways. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care! Yes, you will be punished severely for this, but it is Mike’s fault that you wanted to go in the first place. It’s too dangerous for a teenage girl to be around someone who is constantly fighting things. Anima, I don’t want you near my daughter EVER AGAIN!!!” He turned around. “I’ll give you a minute to say goodbye.” He stormed inside.

Candace had tears in her eyes. She turned around and saw me just standing there smiling. She grinned. “You didn’t listen to a word he said, did you?”

“Not one,” I replied.

She laughed and kissed me.

A real kiss.

We held it for five seconds before she stepped back. “I’ll see you at school, my little lizard.” She smiled and ran inside.

I stood there for a moment, my lips tingling. Rifle barked and snapped me out of it.

“Sorry boy,” I said as I hopped in the Jeep and turned back to him. “Come on; let’s get you back to the zoo.” We started to drive off as Rifle followed us.

“So today still turned out well after all, didn’t it?” Danny asked, elbowing me lightly.

“I’m still going to get you back for sending us off that waterfall,” I replied.

“But you had fun, right?”

“A little bit.”

“I knew you would.”

“Shut up Danny.”

Completed 8/20/09

Thanks for reading!

[SceptileFan]

Mutant Mike #4
Down by the Bay
By Michael Groth

The web smacked into me. The force was so powerful I was launched backwards. I tried to grab onto the red metal as I passed it, but I was moving too fast and plunged downwards off the edge.
I struggled to remove the sticky rope from my neck as I was falling, but it was no good. It wouldn’t come off.
My Shell Shield was useless.
I sighed. “All this trouble for a stupid plant,” I said to myself.
The water was getting closer and closer…

*

What is it with me and falling off of things?
First the Sears Tower? Now the…well, I won’t give it away just yet.
It all started the Tuesday after we had “saved” the Tigrhino, which we had later named Rifle. Rifle is now living a life of leisure at the Chicago Zoo, where he is now the most popular attraction there. Now that the ferocity had worn off, he’d actually become a fun-loving ten-foot-tall rhino monster.
Now that Rifle’s problem was solved, I had time to focus on the soccer game that night. It was an away game at Harold High School, and as I’d heard, they weren’t very good. Tyler, Pierce and I had already resolved to whip their shorts off.
But that’s going to happen to everyone we play, right?
Now back to the story at hand.
Tuesday. In the hall.
I pulled my Biology binder out of my locker. I felt a hand touch my waist and I whipped my tail out, wrapping it around the person who had touched me.
“Mike! What are you doing?”
I turned around. Candace was struggling to get my tail off of her. I released her from my grip.
“Heh heh,” I chuckled. “Sorry Candace. You startled me a bit there.”
“It’s okay,” she replied. “I probably shouldn’t have scared you like that. Your reflexes are getting a lot better. I’m impressed.”
“Thanks. That should help me a lot in the soccer game tonight.”
“Oh yeah! I almost forgot. You’re going to destroy them.”
“Thanks. Are you coming?”
“My dad’s the coach. I have to. But it doesn’t matter. I was going to anyway.”
“Cool. What will you be wearing, so I’ll be able to see you in the crowd?”
“My yellow Vipers shirt and my red Vipers hat.”
“All right! Ooh! We’ll be late for class soon. I’ll see you at lunch!”
“Okay.” I kissed her on the cheek before jogging into Biology.
I sat down at the table with Tyler and Pierce. They greeted me quickly before the bell rang.
“You ready for tonight?” Tyler asked.
“You bet I am!” I replied.
“This’ll be a piece of cake,” Pierce commented.
“I know, right?”
“Uh oh…” Tyler said.
“What?” I asked.
“Turn around.”
I did as he said and saw a blonde girl standing by the door to the classroom.
“Marissa?” I said to myself.
“Isn’t that the girl that dissed your tail a week or two ago?” Pierce asked.
“Yeah,” Tyler answered. “She’s one of Candace’s friends.”
“I don’t think she likes me very much,” I stated. “But what is she doing in our class?”
“Class,” Mrs. McHurst began, “this is Marissa. She got a schedule change and will now be in our class.”
I gasped. Tyler and Pierce gasped.
“Now, let me see where there’s an open seat…” Mrs. McHurst thought out loud. “Aha! There, at the table with Mike, Tyler, and Pierce.”
Marissa looked over in our direction and sneered. She trudged over to the seat across from me and dropped her books on the table.
I hesitated, but finally spoke. “Um…hey there,” I greeted. “We’ve met before, but in case you didn’t remember, I’m Mike. Mike Anima.” I held out my hand.
She sneered even harder and scooted her chair away from me. I took my hand back. “I know who you are,” she said. “You’re that disgusting boy with the tail that’s dating my friend.”
“I’m not sure ‘disgusting’ is the right word…”
“Just shut up! I don’t want to be here at all, so I’m going to pretend like I’m not! Now get away from me you horrible freak!”
Now I was ******.
I lowered my voice. “Listen here, Marissa. I just happen to be the one who stops a lot of crime here in Chicago. If it wasn’t for me, that Tigrhino would’ve destroyed the entire city a week ago. Now if you don’t mind, I think I deserve a little respect!”
“All you deserve is to be put in a cage.”
I growled and raised my fist, but Tyler snatched it first. He shook his head and I calmed down a bit. Mrs. McHurst started the lesson.
I was too mad to listen.

I walked out onto the large soccer field in the north end of the Harold High School soccer field. Their field was a lot more prestigious than ours, so I was glad it was an away game. The sun was just starting to set as we started walking over to our bench. My yellow kit had just been cleaned, so the team looked their best. As we started to warm up I noticed the Harold High team getting ready, each player wearing a purple and light blue kit.
They didn’t look so tough.
“Mike!” I looked up. My dad, mom, and Dustin were sitting in the stands. They waved to me. I quickly waved back and walked over to our bench.
Coach Taylor motioned for us to huddle up. “All right men,” he began, “this is our first game of the season, so let’s try to start on a good note. They tend to be a brute force offense, which we’re good at defending, so just do your best. The goalie can’t blocks shots in the upper corner, so forwards, try to aim towards there. The starters are Anima, Bantime…” he proceeded to name off the rest of the starting players. “…and Rickman you’re at goalie.”
Tyler nodded.
“All right men, Vipers on three.” We put our hands together. “One…two…three…”
“VIPERS!!!” the whole team shouted.
We jogged onto the field.
Our team had won the coin toss, so the Hippos were kicking off to us. One of their players punted it towards us. Pierce stopped it with his chest and began dribbling down the field. An opposing player tried to steal it, but he passed it to another forward before the opponent could. Our forward dribbled it a bit and passed it to me. I dribbled down, dodging players and saw Freddy running towards the goal. I passed it to him and he kicked it at the goal.
He made it.
We praised him from afar as we jogged back to midfield. The Hippos dribbled it down the field, passing it occasionally. Gary, one of our midfielders, tried to steal it but failed. Eventually the other team was able to make a shot.
Tyler stopped it.
The game continued like this for awhile. Eventually, when halftime came, the score was 4-3, with the Vipers winning. The sun had now set and the field was being lit by stadium lights.
“You were doing great out there Tyler,” I said sipping down some water.
“Thanks,” he replied. “You too.”
“Nice goal earlier Mike,” Pierce complimented.
“Thanks.” (I failed to mention I scored our team’s third goal).
“Mike!” I looked up. Candace was waving to me from the stands, wearing the exact same outfit she told me she would be.
I waved back. She gave me a thumbs up and blew me a kiss. I grinned and turned back to the game. Coach Taylor stood in front of us.
“Good going men,” he said. “Now, we need to work on….”
He was interrupted by the sound of a megaphone.
“EXCUSE ME PEOPLE,” the voice said. “WE NEED EVERYONE TO EVACUATE THE PREMISES IMMEDIATELY. PLEASE DO SO IN A CALM AND ORDERLY FASHION.”
We looked up. A balding man was standing in the middles of the soccer field. He was wearing a blue suit kind of like a janitor’s.
“What in the world…?” Coach Taylor mumbled. He stood up and began walking towards the man. I followed closely behind him. We met in the center of the field with the other team’s coach and one of the player’s.
“What seems to be the problem?” the blonde Hippos’ coach asked.
“There is gas leak of Gargonite over there,” the man with the megaphone answered (with his regular voice), pointing to an area about a hundred feet from the soccer field.
“Gargonite isn’t poisonous, though,” Coach Taylor stated.
“Yes, but it is flammable and there could be an explosion if we don’t get everyone to safety soon.”
“So does this mean we can’t play anymore?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, but we’ll have to continue the game some other time.”
I swore under my breath. Finally, my first high school soccer game, and we had to stop because of some stupid gas leak. I looked back to the crowd. They were leaving the stands in a very confused way.
I turned to look over at the area where the megaphone man had pointed to. A group of six men in blue suits and two cops were standing around an area of grass that was slowly releasing a green gas. Suddenly, I noticed an upside-down U shaped pipe sticking out of the ground about twenty feet away from the men.
It was shaking violently.
None of the men seemed to notice. I knew I had to warn them and started sprinting towards them. Coach Taylor and the other men started yelling after me, but I ignored them. I skidded to a stop when I got near the men investigating the gas leak. When my claws dug into the ground, they knocked up a hard chunk of ground that was about the size of a golf ball. Wondering what it was, I picked it up and spit on it, cleaning it up with my shirt. When I cleaned it off, it gave off a blue shine.
I gasped.
“Karbonite,” I said to myself. I remembered a science lesson during last year in eighth grade:
“Now when elements come together, they form a compound,” I remembered my science teacher saying. “Some fusions are calm, but others are very violent. For example: Karbonite is a simple element used for a variety of purposes. Gargonite is a gas that is completely harmless to humans and acts a lot like Helium. But, when enough of each of these elements come in contact, they explode violently and create a new element in liquid form, Narvanium, which is very poisonous to humans.”
I swore.
“Get away!” I shouted at the men and ran at them, leaving the Karbonite piece on the ground. I started to push them backwards. “Run away! The pipe is shaking! And there’s Karbonite in the ground!” I pointed to the shining blue piece on the ground.
The men in blue gasped and immediately began running away, with the cops and me following them. When we had gotten two hundred feet away we stopped. Suddenly…
“Mike!”
I whirled around. Candace was standing less than twenty feet from the pipe.
“What’s going on!?” she called.
“CANDACE RUN!!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
“What!?”
“RUN!!!”
She gasped and saw the pipe. She turned and started running.
But she was too late.
The pipe burst.
And the ground erupted.
The force was so powerful the other men and I were knocked off our feet. Candace was thrown ten feet and then covered with the purple liquid that shot out of the explosion and rained down on everything within fifty feet of the blast. When the smoke cleared, Candace lay limply on her back.
“CANDACE!!!” I screamed. I started to run towards her. A hand stopped me.
“You can’t!” One of the men in blue said. “Narvanium takes ten minutes to dry before it’s not toxic to the skin anymore!”
“Is it poisonous to reptiles?”
“No.”
“Then I’m fine!” I sprinted over to Candace. I held up her unconscious body and could see the purple liquid start to seep into her skin. “Candace? Candace! CANDACE WAKE UP!”
Her body was motionless.
I growled in agony. I picked her up and began running towards the parking lot. I could see the Narvanium on my feet harmlessly drip off as I ran. I ran considerable slower while carrying a body, but I finally made it to the parking lot. “Somebody call 9-1-1!” I screamed and set Candace down gently.
“Candace!” Coach Taylor shouted as he ran up to us. He knocked me aside and held her body. “Is she dead?” he asked.
“No,” my dad replied grimly as he walked up. “But she will be soon if we don’t get her to a hospital.”
I looked up and saw everyone on their cell phone, calling 9-1-1. I sighed in anger. “Don’t worry Candace,” I said to myself. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”

An hour later Candace was laying in a hospital bed, breathing through an oxygen mask. Coach Taylor and I were waiting outside her room while my dad and another doctor were examining Candace. Candace’s mom was on her way home from a business trip to be with her.
“I’m sorry Coach Taylor,” I said eventually. “You told me to stay away from Candace, and I didn’t. We’ve still been dating even though you told us not to. If we had stopped, this never would’ve happened. If she hadn’t have followed me, she’d be perfectly okay right now. I’m sorry.” A tear dripped from my eye.
Coach Taylor sighed. “No Mike, I’m sorry.”
I gasped. Was Coach Taylor actually apologizing to me?
“I should’ve known from the start that you were a good kid,” he continued. “I got a little overprotective of Candace. You know how we fathers can get. Well, you don’t know now, but if you ever have a daughter you’ll understand. Plus, that protectiveness is amplified since she is my only child. I overreacted a bit when she started dating you since you are her first real boyfriend. When she snuck away to go on that hunting trip with you, I had never been so scared. When I found out where she’d been, I took my anger out on you, since you’re her new boyfriend. I never should’ve reacted that way. What’s even worse is that it takes my daughter having her life in danger for me to apologize. God. Mike, you’re a great young man, and I would be honored if you would be my daughter’s boyfriend.”
I smiled. Then my expression darkened. “If she survives.”
Coach Taylor sighed. “Yes, you’re right.”
We were silent for a moment when suddenly my dad walked out of the door. We stood up.
Dad sighed. “She’s in bad condition,” he began. “She got a lot of Narvanium on her and it’s now circulating her bloodstream, causing a lot of damage.”
“Will she be okay?” I asked.
Dad sighed again. “She’s got a week to live.”
Coach Taylor swore and slammed his fist on the wall. I clenched my fists and roared.
And cried.
“But,” Dad said.
We looked at him.
“I have heard that a certain antidote can be made that can cancel out Narvanium poisoning.”
I gasped in excitement. “Can you make it?”
“Yes, but unfortunately to create it, I need some leaves from a Baron Weed plant.”
“Where does it grow?”
“The only place it has ever been found is on the bottom of the San Francisco Bay.”
I swore.
“We have to go there and get it,” I said.
“I know,” Dad replied. “I’m thinking we leave for the airport immediately after we pack the scuba gear we have at the house. Then we’ll get the next available flight.”
“I’ll stay here with Candace,” Coach Taylor said.
We nodded in agreement.
“Let’s go Mike,” Dad said and began walking down the hallway.
I started to follow him when Coach Taylor stopped me.
“Good luck, Mike,” he said. “I believe in you. And I know Candace does too.”
I nodded. “Thanks Coach Taylor.” I ran after my dad.

Hours later, I was sitting on a plane headed for San Francisco.
Dad was asleep next to me. I expected that. It was 4:30 in the morning. Almost no one was on the plane. I mean, who wanted to be on a plane in the middle of the night?
I was too scared. The girl I loved was going to be dead in a week. At first, I thought my world was ending. But when Dad told me that we had a chance to save Candace, I immediately leapt at it. I don’t care how much make-up work I have to do for school. I was going to save Candace if it was the last thing I do.
I stared out the window into the blackness of the sky and drifted off to sleep.
Little did I know this was going to be much harder than I had thought.

Three hours later, our plane landed in the San Francisco. It was 5:30 am.
Time zones are annoying, aren’t they?
Dad and I walked out of the airport, each pulling a suitcase full of scuba gear. The sun was just starting to creep up over the horizon.
“Which way to the bay?” I asked Dad.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “We’ll figure it out eventually, though.”
“Why can’t we just ask for directions?”
“We don’t need to. Besides…” he put his head near my ear and started whispering. “…people in San Francisco are crazy.” He started walking down the street.
I stared at him as he walked away.
This was going to be a long trip.

3 hours later

“Dad, I’m about to have a heart attack because of all these freaking hills!!!” I panted. “Where the hell is the bay!?”
“I don’t know,” Dad replied, not breathing heavily in the slightest. “I’m pretty sure it’s over the top of this hill.”
“Ugh. Fine.”
We kept trudging up the ridiculous steep hill until we reached the top. We looked down the street (which now tilted down).
Water.
“Found it!” Dad exclaimed. He began to jog down the hill.
I ran after him. Finally, we reached the bottom of the hill and looked out over the water. But then I noticed something.
Alcatraz was nowhere in sight.
Neither was the Golden Gate Bridge. Or the Bay Bridge. Or any land on the opposite side. It was just…water.
“Dad,” I began, “this is the PACIFIC OCEAN!!!”
“Oh crud,” he replied. “You’re right. It looks like we went the wrong way. Well, at least we know which way to go now.” He turned around and started walking back up the hill.
I sighed. “Why didn’t you just ask for directions?”
We kept hiking towards the bay. I’d taken Chicago’s flatness (for the most part) for granted. I am NEVER going to live in San Francisco.
“Dad? How are you not dying from these hills?” I asked a little while later.
“I’ve had a lot of practice. I used to live in Alaska and…”
That’s when I heard the scream.
“What was that?” I asked.
Another scream.
“It’s coming from up there!” Dad pointed ahead of us. We raced ahead. We stopped when we reached where the screams were coming from.
Lombard Street.
The most crooked street in the world.
We were at the bottom. The cars that were driving down it had their doors open and people were running out of them. I couldn’t tell what they were looking from until I looked up at the top of the street.
A very skinny man a little over six feet tall was standing at the top. He was balding on the top of his head and he had black hair surrounding the lower part of his scalp. He had a very thin black mustache and a thick black unibrow. He was wearing dark clothing. But what was interesting about him (besides the fact that he looked downright creepy) was what was coming from his hands.
Ropes.
Sticking out of the lower palm of each hand was a long rope. I could tell he wasn’t just holding the ropes because his fingers were outstretched.
I think he was doing that on purpose.
“Come on people!” he laughed. “You’ve never seen someone shoot ropes from their hands? Haven’t you ever seen Spider-Man?” He laughed more. Suddenly, he flicked out one of the ropes. It detached from his hands and hit a very attractive girl. The rope wrapped around her, restraining her arms and knocking her to the ground.
The man did the same to a boy running away behind him, but to his ankles. Every time after he launched a rope from his hand, somehow it immediately grew back. Eventually, he “wrapped up” everyone within fifty feet of him. Then he retracted his ropes and started walking up to each person and emptying their pockets and purses, stealing money, credit cards, and anything valuable.
He didn’t take a thing from the first person before I hit him.
He doubled back but caught himself. “What the…” he gasped. “You have a tail!”
“Duh,” I replied. “Now let these people go before I decide to hit you with it.”
“Hah. Yeah right.” He flicked a rope out from each hand and whipped me with one. I flew backwards and into a flower bush. I noticed that when he hit me, the rope stuck to me slightly.
“Mind your own business lizard-boy!” the man shouted and tried hitting me again. I jumped up and started continuously dodging the whips. Finally, I caught one.
“The name is Mutant Mike!” I shouted and pulled.
The rope came right off his hand.
The whip man laughed. “That’s not going to work ‘Mike’.” He flicked a new whip out of the hand I’d pulled it from.
“You’re obviously new here,” a voice said.
I turned. A boy that looked about my age and slightly shorter than me was standing about ten yards away from me. His spiked up hair was so blonde it looked white and he was a little on the skinny side. He was wearing light grey pants and a darker grey long-sleeve shirt, which had a symbol on it that looked like an A with tornadoes as the tails. He had on grey ski goggles.
And he was hovering.
I didn’t understand it. From his waist down his body seemed to be a small tornado, and it was keeping him off the ground.
“Nice work tailed-kid,” the hovering boy said. “But you’re going to have to do better than that to fool me into thinking that you’re not Weblash’s new sidekick. There was no way you could fool me by fighting that badly.”
I was kind of insulted.
“But, as the saying goes,” the hovering kid continued, “crime doesn’t pay.” He punched the air in front of him. Suddenly, air shot from his hand and hit me like a train. I was thrown back and Shell Shielded before I made a crater in a brick building.
“Dude!” I shouted as I pulled myself out. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m not ‘Weblash’s’ sidekick! I was just trying to stop him!”
“Yeah right,” the hovering kid replied and flew at me. As he did, he swung his arm down and a boomerang shaped piece of air shot out. I jumped out of the way just in time. The air kept doing and damaged the building I’d just crawled out of.
I sighed. “You leave me no choice.” I jumped at him, spun, and smacked him with my tail. He crashed into a flower bed.
Before he could get up, I had run over to him and picked him up by the shirt. I threw him at Weblash, who had been watching the fight and enjoying it. They toppled over each other. Once they stopped I wrapped my tail around both of them and picked them up. I slammed them into an overturned car and pulled back my tail.
Weblash recovered first and shot a web-rope at me. I turned invisible and jumped to the side. Both of them had gotten up now and were frantically searching around for me. I touched their shoulders and as they turned around, I hit them both in the eyes with my tongue.
Both were blinded.
I jumped in between them. “Over here guys!” I taunted. Both of them turned to me. I jumped and crawled on the side of a building as the air kid was hit with a whip and Weblash was knocked back by a blast of solid air.
“You guys ready to give up yet?” I asked from the side of the building.
“Aaron,” Weblash said from the ground, “he’s destroying us. Honestly, he’s not my sidekick. I’d rather be destroyed by both of you than he destroys both of us.”
“Why?” the kid who was obviously “Aaron” replied.
“It’s a pride issue.”
“Oh I see.” Aaron stood up. “I’m sorry tailed kid…”
“My name is Mutant Mike,” I replied, keeping my tail at the ready.
“Sorry. My name is Aaron Aero and I’m the superhero for San Francisco. This is Weblash, San Francisco’s local super villain.”
He waved to me. I rolled my eyes.
“I guess we got off to a rocky start,” Aaron continued. “What do you say we kick Weblash’s butt?”
“I don’t think so,” Weblash replied and shot a web at the car that they had crashed into before. He pulled his arm back and picked up the car. He swung his arm down and the car was sent hurtling at Aaron Aero.
I knocked him out of the way.
The car crushed me.
Well, at least it would have if I hadn’t Shell Shielded.
I pulled myself out of the hole in the car that I had created. When I looked around, Weblash was gone and Aaron was laying on the ground, staring at me in disbelief. I smirked at him.
“You saved my life,” Aaron said.
“All in a day’s work,” I replied.
“You went right through that car!”
“I know dude, I was there.” I jumped off the car and started walking back towards Dad.
“Wait!”
I turned around. “What?”
“You’re obviously not from San Fran. Otherwise I would have heard of you.”
I chuckled. “I’m from Chicago. I’m the ‘city superhero’ there.”
“Why are you here?”
My face darkened. “My girlfriend is mortally ill. We need to create an antidote but we need an ingredient that’s a plant that only grows on the bottom of the San Francisco Bay.”
“The Baron Weed?”
“Yes. How’d you know that?”
“I know this city like the back of my hand. Hey! Let me help you! It’ll be the least I could do.”
“How could you help?”
“I have air powers. That includes…tornadoes.”
I stared at him. This Aaron kid was not your average teenager.
Well that should’ve been obvious. He’s from San Francisco.

“I don’t know about this Aaron,” I said an hour later. Aaron had guided us to the bay after I introduced him to Dad. Once we had gotten there, Dad and I tried to put on our wetsuits. For some reason, Aaron had stopped us.
“Don’t worry guys,” Aaron held up his hands. “I’ve got this covered. Just watch.” He walked and stood in the water of the bay. He kept walking until he was knee-deep. “Hoo,” he shivered. “It’s a bit cold.”
“Aaron, you need to get out!” Dad shouted.
“Not quite yet,” he smirked and began spinning. Suddenly, his body became a small upside-down tornado. It shot up, turned around and began drilling through the water.
Underwater, Aaron shot through the water like a torpedo. When he neared a patch of dark green plants he stopped spinning, grabbed one, and shot back up to the surface. He stopped triumphantly in front of us, holding out a Baron Weed.
“Got it!” he panted.
“Thank you Aaron,” Dad began, “but we’re going to need a lot more than just one weed.”
“How much do you need?”
“Twenty.”
“WHAT!?!?!”

Aaron was able to get four more plants before collapsing from exhaustion (being a tornado obviously tires a guy out). So, Dad and I actually had to get on our wetsuits and scuba gear.
“Is your radio working?” Dad asked.
“Yep,” I replied, fiddling with the tiny radio he had fitted on the inside of my breathing mouthpiece.
“Are you ready?” Dad asked as we stood before the water.
“I always have been,” I replied and put on my goggles.
We jumped into the water.
The sight was amazing. The massive amount of blue was filled with fish and the occasional sea lion. The bottom of it had what seemed like grass covering it, with the occasional rock or dry patch. I could see the underwater mountain of Alcatraz shooting up out of the bay and was astounded.
It was cold as Hell too.
Oh wait, that’s a terrible comparison.
“Up there,” Dad said into the radio and pointed to a green patch about a hundred yards ahead of us.
I nodded in understanding. We swam ahead.
When we got to the patch of plants, Dad pulled out a large cloth bag. We pulled Baron Weeds and kept placing them in the bag. Suddenly…
“Aah!” Dad exclaimed and started swishing his hand around.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I cut my hand on a rock or something,” Dad replied. I could see blood drift up from the back of his hand.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’ll be okay. We just need to…oh no.”
“What now?”
“We forgot to add air back into the air tanks. What’s your air meter say?”
“I’ve got twenty minutes left.”
“I’ve got three. I’m sorry Mike, but I need to return to shore, but we don’t have all the weeds yet. Can you stay down here and gather the rest up?”
I nodded.
“Okay. Hurry back.” He handed me the weed bag and started to swim back towards shore.
I turned back to the plants. We already had six in the bag, so we just needed nine more. I pulled one out and put it in the bag. I did the same thing again. And again.
That’s when I knew something was wrong.
All animals have their instincts. Mating instinct, migration instinct, and etcetera.
Right now, my survival instinct was kicking in.
I slowly turned around.
And screamed.
A Great White Shark was swimming right at me. It must’ve smelt the blood from Dad’s hand.
“Mike? Are you okay?” Dad asked. I realized we were still connected by radio.
“Dad!” I shouted back. “It’s a-“
I was cut short. The shark lunged at me. I swam to the side, but my mouth piece was knocked off. I struggled to hold my breath.
“Mike? Mike!?” Dad called. My headset was still attached, so I could hear Dad, but he couldn’t hear me.
I swam for the surface. It seemed like eternity before I finally broke through to the air.
“SHARK!!!” I screamed. I was able to reattach the mouthpiece back to my mouth. Suddenly, pain shot through my leg and I was dragged under. The shark had a hold of my right leg. It had broken the skin, but having scales decreased the damage a bit.
It still hurt.
I slammed my free foot into the snout of the shark. I’d always been told that if you’re being attacked by a shark then you have hit it in the nose, eyes, or gills.
It worked. The shark growled and released its grip. I flicked my tail and pushed myself through the water at the shark. I punched it in the nose once with each hand before kicking it in the jaw. The shark swam away…
For about three seconds.
It turned and shot at me again, this time barely missing my arm. I returned the attack by hitting it with my tail. The shark backed up, but did a spin maneuver and sunk its teeth into my side.
After I had Shell Shielded.
The shark growled and let go. Blood dripped from its mouth as a tooth fell out. I knew it didn’t care. Sharks had hundreds of teeth.
I swam around and under it and hit it with an uppercut in the gut. The shark coughed and swam around, trying to bite my head.
This was one persistent shark.
I ducked just in time to turn around, but the shark was too fast. It sunk its teeth into my air tank and wouldn’t let go.
I tried to smack it with my tail, but I was facing away and couldn’t see where I was swinging it. My arms and legs were too short to reach back and hit it. Meanwhile, air was leaking out of my tank.
It was drowning me.
My vision had just started to blur when I saw swirling drill of air shoot through the water.
Aaron.
Aaron dove down under us and suddenly curved up. He hammered into the shark on the underbelly and drove us up. We burst through the surface and kept going about twenty feet into the air. Aaron returned to normal and hit the shark with a solid blast of air, sending it rocketing three hundred yards away.
That was after it had let go of me.
The shark had let go so suddenly that all the air in my tank was released at once. No, it didn’t explode, but acted like a rocket, sending me shooting over the water. I instinctively Shell Shielded and skipped on the surface a couple times before crashing through a wall and into a concrete floor.
I opened my eyes. I was in a crater of concrete inside of an empty prison cell. I could see the enormous hole in the wall that I had burst through. I looked up. A group of people with cameras were staring at me.
I was on Alcatraz.
“Um…” I began, “Does anyone have a Band-Aid?”
The camera flashes started.

“Well that sucked,” I said a couple hours later after we had gotten me back to San Francisco. I hadn’t held on to the bag of weeds, so at the end of the day, we had five weeds, one empty air tank, one destroyed one, and a bill for the hole in Alcatraz.
I was ******.
“What are we supposed to do now?” I asked as the sun started to set. “Dad, do you have money for a hotel?”
“No, I had to use most of my money to pay for the damage to Alcatraz,” he replied.
“You can stay with me tonight,” Aaron said.
We stared at him.
“Yeah! It’s just me and my mom and we have a guest room, so one of you can use that and the other can sleep on the couch. I’m sure my mom won’t mind.”
“That you’re bringing in a strange kid with a tail and his scuffed up dad to spend the night?” I asked.
“Yeah! Don’t worry, my mom’s cool.”

“Absolutely not.”
We were standing in the entryway to Aaron’s apartment watching him and his skinny mom argue. Aaron’s mom had blonde hair like him, but not nearly as light colored. She was in good shape for a forty-year-old woman, but looked like she had been in a lot of difficult battles (Dad and I understood this. Aaron’s dad had been an alcoholic who left her when Aaron was five).
“Come on Mom!” Aaron protested. “They’ve come all the way from Chicago and have no money or anywhere to stay! Plus, Mike helped me defeat Weblash today!”
“I don’t care! I don’t want strangers sleeping in our house!”
“Mom, they need a place to stay!”
“Why? Why do they need a place to stay so badly?”
“I think Mike should explain.” They turned to me. Aaron with expectant eyes, his mom with critical ones.
“Um…” I stuttered due to suddenly being put in the spotlight. I sighed. “My girlfriend Candace was involved in an explosion. She wasn’t killed, but the explosion had Karbonite and Gargonite and she was poisoned by Narvanium.”
Aaron’s mom seemed interested.
“She has a week to live and right now she’s in a coma. My dad and I came here to collect some Baron Weed, which, when combined with other ingredients, is said to create an antidote that can cure Narvanium poisoning. We would’ve slept in a hotel, but after an incident with a shark (long story), I accidentally burst a hole through a wall of Alcatraz, and we had to use our money to pay for it. We need a place to stay, because personally, I don’t find benches very comfortable.”
Aaron’s mom sighed and smiled. “Mike, you obviously care a lot for Candace. And you’re leg doesn’t look in the greatest shape (I’m guessing that’s from the shark), so, I’ll let you guys stay here for as long as you need.”
Aaron playfully punched my shoulder. I grinned sheepishly.
“Aaron, you do realize you have school tomorrow, right?” Aaron’s mom continued.
“Crap! I forgot!”
“It’s okay, we’ll be fine,” Dad replied. “I’ll visit a Bank of America and get some money so we can buy replacement scuba gear.”
“I know a place where they sell that,” Aaron’s mom stated. “I can take you guys there tomorrow.”
“Thank you.”
“Come! Sit down! You look like you haven’t eaten in ages.”
“We haven’t,” I replied. It was true. I hadn’t eaten since before my soccer game, and that was an entire day ago.
“What would you guys like?”
“Anything’s fine for me,” I replied.
“He means that literally,” Dad replied. “He’ll eat anything you give him.”
“I bet you can’t eat a whole can of uncooked chicken soup,” Aaron smirked and placed a can on the table in front of me.
I smirked, picked up the can, and dropped the entire thing in my mouth. I chewed and swallowed. Aaron and his mom stared at me. Their jaws looked like they were about to hit the floor.
I decided to change the subject. “So Ms. Aero,” I began, “what’s this place that sells scuba gear?”
“Oh,” she chuckled. “My name’s not Aero. That’s just Aaron’s superhero name. Our real name is Archer. Anyways, the scuba shop is over in the Fisherman’s Wharf. I have to work tomorrow, but I can drop you there on my way if you’d like.”
“Sounds good.”
“Okay, Mr. Anima, is chicken okay?”
“That sounds wonderful.”
“And Mike would you like the packaging?”
“Sure.”

*

“We need to get the cheapest air tank possible,” Dad commented as we walked through the scuba gear store. Ms. Archer had dropped us off after we had gone by the bank. Dad and I were wandering around the small store.
“Yeah, but we have to make sure we get one that works. I don’t want to be down there and have it start leaking,” I stated.
Dad nodded in agreement. I really didn’t know anything about scuba gear, only how to use it. I wandered aimlessly around the store, hoping dad would hurry up and pick out a good tank so we could be on our way.
“Excuse me sir,” Dad asked the cashier. “How much is this tank?” Dad pointed to a lime green one. I hoped it wasn’t too expensive. Lime green is my favorite color.
“Fifty bucks dude,” the cashier replied, not looking up from his comic book.
“Great! We’ll take it.”
The bell next to the door was hit so loudly that it was knocked off its hinges.
“Morty!” an unshaven twenty-year-old-ish guy shouted as he burst through the door. The cashier looked up.
“What is it man?” the cashier asked.
“It’s Weblash! He’s taken hostages on top of the Golden Gate!”
Dad looked at me. I grinned.
“Dude, can you give us a ride there?” I asked.
“I don’t even know you…” the guy replied. “…you’ve got a tail!”
“Point?”
“Definitely man! Tails are awesome! Come on!” He raced outside.
I really like easily amused people.

A couple minutes later, Jerry (I had learned his name in the car) dropped my dad and me off near the toll booth of the bridge. The bridge was enormous up close and the upper part of it was covered by clouds. All the cars on the road were stopped watching something on top of one of the towers. When I looked up, I could see a tall figure on top of the close tower holding two smaller figures up by ropes coming from his hands on top of the close.
Weblash.
I raced onto the path for walkers and bikers, but no one was moving. They were all staring upward with wide-open mouths. I felt like time had paused because of it.
When I reached the low point of the cable I leapt up and began crawling up it.
That got people’s attention.
I’ll be honest; it felt kind of cool to be watched by thousands of people as you do something that’s no trouble to you at all.
Well, it wasn’t any trouble at first.
As I got higher, the wind got stronger. Thank goodness my hands were sticky; otherwise I would’ve fallen right off. The enormous red cable was too big to wrap around and swayed slightly in the wind, making it all the more difficult, but I was doing fine. Finally, I pulled myself up on top of the tower.
Fog surrounded us on all sides. Weblash turned around. He was grinning evilly, but as soon as he saw me, he sneered.
“Why do you keep showing up!?” he shouted at me.
“If you have two hostages, a superhero is going to show up, dude,” I replied.
“I wasn’t looking for you! I was looking for Aaron!”
“Why?”
“I want to destroy him, and what better way to lure him here than with hostages?”
A teenage girl that looked a little older than me and a plump man were being held by his webs. The man was looking at me with hopeful eyes, while the girl seemed to be checking me out.
I swear that is EXACTLY what happened!
“Why not go out and find him?”
“I’m too lazy.”
“My enemy isn’t.”
“Does it look like I care? Ugh. I guess I’ll need to distract you while I wait for him. You can either save the man or the girl.” He was talking like he was very annoyed (he probably was). “But you can’t save both.”
“You stole that from Spider-Man!”
“I can shoot webs. I steal a lot of things from Spider-Man.” He detached the webs from his hands and threw the hostages over opposite sides of the bridge.
I jumped off. I straightened my body and shot through the air faster and caught up with the girl. I wrapped my arms around her and tried to tune out her screaming. I reached my tail forward and grabbed onto the tower, but used it to throw myself past it. I grabbed onto the man as I passed him and turned back around. With all my strength, I threw both of them upward and straightened my body out. I fell much faster than them and Shell Shielded as I crashed into the concrete of the bridge. I got up quick enough to catch the girl in my arms and the man with my tail.
I let the man down and he thanked me before running off to his family. When I looked back at the girl she was smiling at me.
“Um…” I stuttered.
“Thanks,” she said. She looked really cute right now. She started to lean in for a kiss.
“I have a girlfriend,” I spat out.
“Lucky her.” I couldn’t stop her from kissing me.
I pushed her off. She was grinning. I laughed nervously and set her down.
“Thanks tailed-boy,” she said.
“It’s Mutant Mike,” I replied. “And no problem. It was fun. Unfortunately, I’m not quite finished yet.” I ran at the tower and began crawling up it. As I did, only one thought was going through my mind:
“Candace is going to kill me.”
I pulled myself over the edge of the tower. Weblash had his arms crossed and was smirking. “Impressive,” he said. “You’re obviously a better hero than Aaron Aero. He never could’ve saved those people.”
“Hey! He’s my friend, and one thing that really pisses me off is when someone makes fun of my friends. You’re going down.” I ran at him and jumped. I spun so quickly and smacked him with my tail so quickly he didn’t even flinch. He fell over but pulled himself up. He launched a web at me, but I sidestepped to dodge. I launched out my tongue and it collided with one of his webs as he swung it. They stuck together, but I pulled first and sucked up his web like spaghetti.
“Yummy,” I chuckled. Weblash ran at me, obviously not amused. I rolled on the ground around him and turned invisible. When I reappeared, I was behind him. I Spartan kicked him to the ground. He lay limp. “I told you not to insult my friends.”
Suddenly, he turned over and fired a web at me. It stuck and wrapped around my neck. I backed up and tried to pull it free, but it was too sticky and wouldn’t come off. Weblash ran at me and punched me in the face.
My Shell Shield failed.
I struggled to dodge him, but the web was tight and slightly restricting the air flow to my lungs, so I was moving slowly.
“This is it for you, Mutant Mike!” Weblash shouted, laughing. He flicked out a web-whip and swung it at me.
The web smacked into me. The force was so powerful I was launched backwards. I tried to grab onto the red metal as I passed it, but I was moving too fast and plunged downwards off the edge.
I struggled to remove the sticky rope from my neck as I was falling, but it was no good. It wouldn’t come off.
My Shell Shield was useless.
I sighed. “All this trouble for a stupid plant,” I said to myself.
The water was getting closer and closer to me. I didn’t really care about me. I just knew that if I died now, there was no way Candace could’ve survived.
Just as I was thinking it was all over, I suddenly began to slow down.
Then I stopped.
I quit falling. I turned and looked down and saw Aaron flying below me, blasting a gust of wind up at me to stop me from falling. I laughed with relief and he redirected me at the bridge. I latched on.
“You really think I’m going to let you take out my enemy for me?” he chuckled as he flew up to me. His lower half was a tornado again.
I smiled and sighed. “I was beating him.”
“Yeah, you seem to be doing a great job at that.”
“How do I get this web off?” I asked.
Aaron laughed and flew down to the bay. He dove underwater and blasted water up and soaked me.
“Hey!” I shouted at him as he flew back up. “What was that for?”
“The webs come off with water,” he replied pointing at my neck.
I looked down. The webbing had melted and was running down my shirt.
“Come on slowpoke,” Aaron teased and flew back up towards the top of the tower. I turned around and crawled up at him. We reached the top at the same time. Weblash was utterly shocked.
“I don’t understand it!” he shouted at us. “I throw down one annoying teenager and he somehow comes back up with another one! God, that’s it! I’m finishing you two right now!”
He flicked a whip at each of us. Aaron flew to the side and I ducked. Weblash swung again, this time hitting Aaron. He would’ve fallen off if he didn’t fly back and hit Weblash with a punch of wind. I took the opportunity while Weblash was recovering to smack him with my tail. He fell to the ground.
“Watch out!” I warned. “He could be faking!”
Aaron laughed and dodged a web shot at him by Weblash. “I’ve been fighting him for years, Mike. I know every trick in his book.” He swung his arm and hit Weblash with a scythe of air.
Weblash caught himself and wrapped a web around me and threw me into Aaron. I stupidly Shell Shielded and an indestructible mass crashed into Aaron. He was knocked down and to the side, obviously hurt.
“Except that one,” Weblash sneered.
I broke free of the web and hit him in each eye with my tongue. While he was blinded, I ran over to Aaron.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” he replied. I helped him up. “Why’d you Shell Shield?”
“Instinct. I’m part animal. It’s both helpful and annoying at the same time.”
“Huh. Watch out!” He tackled me to the side as a whip missed us by a hair. We hopped up and continued to dance out of the way of whips.
“How does he keep going!?” I shouted.
“I don’t know!” Aaron replied. “He must’ve been working out! How are we going to stop him?”
“Don’t ask me! You fight him all the time!”
“I’m clueless!”
I swore and noticed something. I saw one of his whips graze my foot.
And it all clicked at once.
I remembered catching Weblash’s web and pulling it out of his hand. I remembered how he wrapped the whip around the people over at Lombard Street. I remembered how the people tripped.
I quit dodging.
Weblash flicked out a web at me. I sidestepped and caught it in my hand. I pulled and it detached from Weblash’s hand.
He laughed. “Haven’t you learned boy? You can’t stop me by taking my whips!”
“That’s what you think!” I shouted back and smirked. I flicked the web at his feet. It wrapped around and I pulled. Weblash’s feet were pulled out from under him and he smacked into the red metal of the Golden Gate Bridge.
I ran up to him and pulled his other whip out of his other hand and tied his hands together. I backed up. “Caught in your own web,” I said. “You’ve got to get better at this.”
Weblash growled. Aaron patted him on the head just to be funny.
“You need to get back to school,” I said.
He laughed. “So do you.”

*

We ran through the hospital doors. It had taken us two entire days to get the rest of the Baron Weeds, and then we had to wait an entire day for the next flight to Chicago, etcetera.
In short, we finally got back to the hospital on Tuesday night. Candace had half an hour to live.
We ran through the lobby, ignoring the shouts of the receptionist. I stormed through the doors to Candace’s room with Dad on my heels.
“Mike! John! You made it!” Coach Taylor exclaimed. He and another dark-haired woman stood up. The woman was obviously Candace’s mother. “Did you get the plant?”
“Yep,” I replied. I held up the bag and tossed it to Dad. He ran over to the counter and pulled out various medications and began measuring them. After he’d measure one, he’d drop the amount into a beaker. Finally, he mashed up the Baron Weeds and dropped them into the mixture.
He quickly stirred the mixture. It had taken him twenty-five minutes to make it.
Candace would be dead in five minutes.
“Here.” He handed the mixture to Coach Taylor. “She needs a blood relative’s DNA. Spit in it.”
Coach Taylor looked at him strangely but did as he said.
Dad mixed it up a little more. Finally, he ran over to the head of the bed and opened Candace’s mouth. Over the week her skin had gotten covered in purple spots. Dad poured the mixture in.
We sat in silence.
Candace’s heart monitor got slower and slower.
Then it stopped.
I didn’t know what to do.
Dad turned to Coach Taylor and his wife. “I’m sorry.”
A tear dropped down my face.
BEEP.
We looked up.
BEEP.
We smiled. Candace’s heart monitor was beeping. She was alive.
I saw the purple spots disappear from her face. I laughed in relief. She coughed and looked around the room. Coach Taylor and his wife embraced her. She smiled.
“Hi Dad, hi Mom,” she greeted weakly. “How long have I been out?”
“An entire week,” said Coach Taylor. “Mike and Mr. Anima went all the way to San Francisco to get a certain plant for the antidote. They saved your life.”
She smiled and looked up at me. I walked over to her.
“Is that true?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I replied. “I met a new friend named Aaron Aero. He’s got wind powers. He helped us a lot.”
“Cool. You look bruised. What happened?”
“Shark attack. Super villain with webs. Nothing special.”
She laughed. “Thanks Mike.”
“And a girl kissed me.”
“What?”
“I rescued a girl and she kissed me.”
Candace looked ******.
“You have to believe me, I pushed her away.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Yes I did!”
“He did,” Dad jumped in.
I sighed in relief and sent him a thankful smile.
“Okay, I believe you,” she said. “Now it’s my turn.”
I looked nervously over at Coach Taylor. He nodded in approval.
I leaned down. Candace and I kissed.
We pulled back and smiled at each other.
“Thanks Mike. You truly are a hero.”
I grinned. Candace lied back down and went to sleep.
I backed up. She was so beautiful. I turned to my dad.
“Thanks Dad.”
He nodded.
I turned to Coach Taylor.
“Thanks.”
“No need for thanks,” he replied. “You did everything. I am in your debt.”
I smiled. “I’ll see you for practice tomorrow.”
He nodded and Dad and I walked out of the room. As we were walking out of the hospital, a hand grabbed my shoulder and violently whirled me around.
“You did this to Candace!” Marissa screamed at me.
“What?”
“You killed her!”
“What are you talking about!? She’s alive!”
Marissa backed up. “Really?”
“Yes. She’s sleeping right now.”
Marissa smiled. Her eyes watered up. That was the first time I had seen her do that.
It faded quickly. “Just let me warn you Mike Anima. If you ever endanger Candace again, I will personally take you down.” She ran off towards Candace’s room.
I stood there in shock for a moment.
“She doesn’t like you very much, does she?” Dad asked.
“Not a bit.”
Dad chuckled. “Come on. Let’s get home.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I’ve been wearing the same underwear for a week.”
“You didn’t have any deodorant, either, did you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I bet you can figure it out.”
“Dad!”
He laughed and started to run out of the hospital. I chuckled and ran after him.
Life was good.


Thanks for reading!