Superkids 3

Superkids 3: Darlia's Storm


	"Lovely day for motorcycling", Gideon Turbo remarks. He's zooming along a country road, with clear blue skies above. He's decked out in orange denim jeans, with a black leather jacket over his burgundy muscle shirt, enjoying the cool breeze blowing around him. It's deceptively calm. As Gideon zooms along, the ground starts shaking. Gideon's motorcycle strikes a slanted rock which had risen out of the ground, sending him flying. Gideon is flung off his bike, and lands hard on the ground with a loud cracking noise. His bike slams into the trunk of a tree with a loud CRASH. Seconds later, the ground splits open not far from where Gideon landed.

	A few miles up the road, Saladora "Sally" Blitzer is chasing after Roadburn, a wanted criminal with a penchant for stealing fancy vehicles.

	"Give me back my Hovercar you jerk", Sally yells. She spots a rock jutting out of the ground. She rushes up the rock at superspeed and launches herself into the air. While in midair, She notices Gideon lying on the ground, and his bike seemingly parked beneath a tree.

	"At least SOMEONE's enjoying himself", she yells, trying to get Gideon's attention. Gideon hears Sally, but when he tries to move, he feels incredible pain from his right leg. Sally lands on top of the Hovercar, opens the trunk, retrieves her sword. She climbs into the passenger seat, and holds her sword inches from Roadburn's face.

	"All right, you overgrown grease monkey, get out of my hovercar NOW!", Sally demands. Roadburn turns to address her, but the distraction causes him to crash the hovercar into the same tree as Gideon's bike. Roadburn leaps from the wreckage, with Sally in hot pursuit. Sally lunges at Roadburn, her sword held aloft. Roadburn pulls a long knife out of his jacket and parries Sally's attack. Sally notices Gideon is still lying on the ground.

	"Are you gonna help me or not?" she yells.

	"I'd love to, but I think I broke my leg when I wrecked my motorcycle", Gideon responds.  It's then that Sally gets a closer look at Gideon's motorcycle and notices it is badly damaged. Roadburn lunges at Sally with his knife. Sally holds her sword out the block him. as they continue to fight, the wind picks up and dark clouds appear overhead. Thunder roars, lightning flashes, and rain begins to fall. As the two continue fighting, Gideon notices a tornado just up the road from where they are. It's heading in their direction.

	"Watch out for that twister", Gideon yells.

	"Guess I better finish you off quick, Saladora", Roadburn sneers. He knows full well that Sally hates it when anyone other than her parents calls her by her full first name. "When i'm through with you, i'll finish off the already-injured prince over there", He declares. Now, Sally is really enraged.

	"No one threatens Prince Gideon and gets away with it!", She shouts. Sally swings wildly at Roadburn with her sword. The tornado reaches the tree and sucks it in along with Sally's hovercar and Gideon's bike. The tornado is closing in on Roadburn and Sally. Roadburn has his back to the tornado and doesnt realize how close it is until he is lifted off the ground. With one last slash, Sally knocks Roadburn backwords into the tornado.

	Gideon feels the tornado pulling him in. Gideon manages to grab onto Sally's waist. Sally jams both her sword and the knife, which she parried away from Roadburn as she flung him, into the ground as hard as she can. Gideon places a hand on each weapon. The two of them remain anchored to the ground as the tornado passes around them. A few seconds later, the tornado vanishes and the sky clears up.

 	Darlia Annstein appears nearby. "Wondered where you two disappeared too", Darlia remarks, "I was back at Polymer monitoring weird weather phenomena on my supercomputer, which there's been a lot of recently, and I saw you two out here in the middle of a thunderstorm".

	"Darlia, how did you get here so fast?", Sally asks.

	"I finally got my Teleporter back up and running", Darlia responds, "and it looks like it's a good thing I did".

	"Gideon's badly injured", Sally explains, "He wrecked his motorcycle".

	"My watch is linked to my Teleporter", Darlia explains, "I can teleport us all to Polymer, where we can get Gideon the help he needs". Darlia holds Sally's hand and Sally holds Gideon's hand. In a flash, the three of them disappear from the area, reappearing seconds later in Polymer Kingdom.

	They landed on a glowing tile in Darlia's lab. "We got an injured Superkid here!", Darlia yells. The door to her lab bursts open and two people in white lab coats wheel a stretcher into the room. They lift Gideon onto the stretcher and whisk him away. A second later, Ezekiel Castor bursts into the room.

	"Sally, are you alright?" he asks.

	"I'm fine", Sally responds, "It's Gideon who is injured". Ezekiel leaves the room and goes to check on Gideon. At this point, Sally realizes her clothes are soaking wet. Feeling a little bit embarrassed, Sally rushes off. She returns a second later, now wearing a reddish-orange t-shirt, bright red shorts, and pink sneakers. She rushes over to where Gideon is lying.

	"Everyone over at Hyper is worried about their prince", she replies.

	"His leg has been treated and is almost completely healed", one of the doctors in the room declares. Gideon manages to stand up.

	"I grabbed you a change of clothes while I was over at Hyper", Sally tells Gideon, then hands him the black-and-green t-shirt and blue jeans she'd brought him. Gideon ducks into the bathroom, and emerges a few seconds later, changed into them.

	"I better head over to Hyper and let everyone know i'm all right", Gideon announces, and then the zooms off.

    "Wait Up!", Sally shouts, and then, after taking a second to kiss Ezekiel, she zooms off after him.

	Ezekiel makes his way over to Darlia's Lab.

	"Any idea what's causing these weather disasters?", he asks Darlia.

	"I'm still trying to figure it out", Darlia responds. An alarm sounds on the control panel or the lab's supercomputer. Darlia rushes over and pushes a button. An image appears on the computer's screen. The image in question shows a town with omnious dark clouds overhead.

	"Looks like another storm is brewing, this time in Reineback Town", she comments. Then, two figures emerge onto the screen. "Good, looks like the twins are there", she notices.

	Marcus and Mavis Cyon, a twin brother and sister from Polymer, have just arrived in Reineback Town to visit their grandmother. A few minutes after they arrive Mavis' watch starts beeping. Mavis presses a button on it and Darlia's face appears where the clock should be.

	"Marcus! Mavis! I want you to investigate around Reineback Town and see if you can find out what's causing these freak storms and quakes", Darlia requests.

	"We'll see what we can do", Mavis answers back. The twins notice the approaching storm and make haste to their grandmother's house.

	Meanwhile, in Hyper Kingdom, Prince Gideon has returned and assured his people that he is alright. Riley Burnout, the second-in-command of Gideon's bike gang, is dismayed when she learns Gideon's motorcycle was lost in a tornado.

	"Any chance of recovering it?", Riley asks Gideon.

	"I doubt it", Gideon responds. The ground begins shaking like crazy. Sally runs up to where Gideon and Riley are standing.

	"We gotta got this castle in the air NOW", she insists. Gideon, Riley, and Sally rush down to the castle's control room. Gideon presses some buttons and the castle lifts off. Down on the ground, a gigantic crack forms right in the middle of the kingdom's village. Gideon moves the castle so it's hovering right over the village, then fires its tractor beam. Everyone in the village zooms into the tractor beam and is lifted up into the castle. Once everyone is on board, Gideon fires the turbo boosters and the castle rockets away.

	Over in Spellbound Kingdom, Superkid Nadia Crystal, gazes into her crystal ball. What she sees terrifies her. Realizing what she needs to do, Nadia packs her crystal ball and a few other things in a backpack, hops on her broomstick, and flies away.

	Back in Reineback Town, Marcus and Mavis ask their grandmother if she has any idea what might be causing all these weather disasters.

	"My late husband had a secret lab somewhere in this town where he did some kind of odd experiments. In fact, the two of us moved here from Polymer so he'd be closer to it. He never told me where in this town it was located, and he never let me go with him when he went to it", She explains. Outside, the rain finally lets up and the sky clears.

	"Let's go look for that lab", Marcus suggests.

	"I'm coming with you", Grandma Cyon insists, "I've waited long enough to see my late husband's lab".

	Marcus, Mavis, and their grandmother make their way outside and head up the road. A little ways up the road, their grandmother points out an old house up on a hill.

	"One of your late grandfather's friends lives up there", She tells them.

	"Let's go see if grandpa's friend is home. He may know where the lab is", Marcus suggests.

	"I hear the place is haunted", Grandma Cyon informs them.

	"If there's any ghosts in there, we'll see them", Mavis reminds her grandmother. Both of the twins have the ability to see, and communicate with, ghosts.

	As they approach the house, a girl and 2 boys are visible outside it. Mavis and Marcus recognize the girl. Her name is Luna Boltright, a Superkid from Hero Kingdom who has lightning powers.

	"I heard someone scream in there", Luna tells the twins, pointing towards the house, "so I contacted my friends Chucky and Chumley and asked them to help me investigate". Marcus recognizes those two names. Chucky and Chumley are Superkid brothers from Hero Kingdom. Chucky has X-ray vision, while Chumley possesses super-elasticity.

	Mavis becomes aware that Chucky is staring at her. She realizes what he is REALLY doing, and slaps him.

	"Shall we go inside?" Mavis asks.

	Grandma Cyon turns to Chucky. "Be a dear and scan the house for me. I wanna know if Arnold is home".

	 Chucky scans the inside of the house, "I don't see him in there anywhere".

	"I'm going in", Marcus insists. He rushes forward and jerks open the front door. Marcus, Mavis, Luna, Chucky, Chumley, and Grandma Cyon enter the house. Grandma Cyon takes a seat in a recliner in the living room.

	"I need to rest a minute" She decides. Chucky scans the second floor.

	"There's someone lying on the ground up there!", he shouts. Marcus and Mavis rush up the nearby staircase and find the dead body of Arnold Ershan. As they approach the body, Arnold's ghost appears.

	"Lab....Machine....Weather....DISASTER", Arnold mutters, struggling to speak. He is pulled upward and vaishes before he can clarify anything. The twins are spooked by the whole thing, and rush back down stairs.

	"Arnold's dead", They inform their grandmother, "looks like he suffered a heart attack". Grandma Cyon tears up a bit. Suddenly, the ground begins shaking. The house starts crumbling around them. The two brothers retrieve Arnold's body.

	"Another quake", Marcus notes, "We've got to get out of here". A giant crack forms along the floor, splitting the house in two. Chumley stretches out his arms and legs and fills in the gap so everyone can cross to the other side of the house, where the front door is. Grandma Cyon insist on them bringing Arnold's body with them. No sooner do they all get out the front door, then the back half of the house crumbles and falls down into the gap. A ghost appears where that half of the house had stood.

	"Grandpa!", Marcus and Mavis exclaim. Their grandmother turns around and notices him too.

	"Margaret", grandpa Cyon addresses grandma Cyon, "forgive me. this whole mess is my fault because of what I did in that lab".

	Grandma Cyon begins to cry. "Anthony", she responds, "If you tell your grandkids where your lab is, maybe they can stop whatever is in there".

	"What about you?" Grandpa Cyon asks.

	"I'm too old to be messing around in some 40-year-old science lab", Grandma Cyon responds. She begins to cry even harder.

	Grandpa Cyon's ghost floats right down to her. The two of them attempt to hug despite her being unable to physically touch him. Looking towards her grandkids, and then back to her deceased husband, Grandma Cyon makes a choice.

	A crack forms in the ground right in front of the house. This one is widening much faster than the first one. Chumley stretches his arm across the gap, making a bridge. Marcus,  Mavis, and Luna hurry across the gap. Chucky turns to Grandma Cyon.

	"C'mon we've got to go", He demands. Grandma Cyon notices Chumley's grip on the other side of the gap is slipping.

	"Don't worry about me, save yourselves", She demands back. The gap is getting even wider, putting a strain on Chumley. The front half of the house is starting to crumble. Converting herself into lightning, Luna leaps up into the dark clouds above, and then strikes down on the other side of the gap. She rushes to Chucky and Chumley's side

	The two of them yell at her, "Get Back! it's not safe!".

	"The ground under Chumley gives way, causing him to lose his grip on the other side of the gap. Chucky tosses Arnold's Body as hard as he can, and manages to get it over the gap. Next, he rushes to grab his brother before he falls. Chumley stretches his other arm up and manages to grab Chucky's shoulder. Unfortunately, the ground under Chucky crumbles. The two brothers plunge into the gap together.

	Grandma Cyon knows she doesn't have much time left. She turns to face her husband's ghost. "I'll be with you soon", She says, accepting her approaching death. Moments later the front half of the house gives away, dragging Grandma Cyon down with it.

	Marcus and Mavis collapse on the ground and burst into tears. Luna realizes she needs to get back across the gap, and then she sees someone on a broomstick approaching. Nadia swoops down and Luna climbs on her broomstick. Nadia and Luna fly back across the gap. It begins raining again as Luna, like Mavis and Marcus, begins to cry. Luna stumbles to the edge of the gap.

	"Chucky! Chumley!, She cries out, but there's no response. Luna cries even harder, her tears raining down into the crevasse.

	Nadia sees two ghosts, a man and a woman, floating towards them. Mavis and Marcus manage to dry up their tears as their grandparents' ghosts approach them.

	"Try not to cry", Grandma Cyon's ghost suggests, "I'm with your grandfather once again".

	"The entrance to my lab is over there", their grandfather's ghost points towards where his friend's house had stood. A small part of the basement is still there, including a door that seemingly leads into the ground, "You should find the solution to these weather disasters there". With that, the two ghosts embrace each other in a hug, and then float upwards into the sky and vanish.

	"Before we go any further, i'm contacting Darlia", Mavis insists.

	Back in Polymer, a blizzard is pounding the castle. Darlia presses some buttons on the control panel of her supercomputer activates the castle's lasers and melts the snow. As the blizzard begins to let up, The control panel begins beeping. She presses a button and Mavis appears on one of the screens.

	"Our grandfather has a secret lab here in Reineback Town. We just saw his ghost and he says his lab may hold a solution to these weather disasters", Mavis informs Darlia.

	"I'll be right there", Darlia responds. Then, She notices Gideon and Sally.

	"I'm coming with you", Gideon insists.

	"I'll stay here and man the controls", Sally offers. Darlia and Gideon step onto the Teleporter tile, Sally activates it, and within seconds Darlia and Gideon appear in Reineback Town not far from where Marcus, Mavis, Luna, and Nadia are.

	"Did you foresee this house collapsing?", Luna asks Nadia.

	"Yes", Nadia replies. She seems worried, as if the worst is yet to come. "I also saw myself saving Luna", Nadia adds. The six of them make their way around the cracks in the ground and step down into what's left of the basement. The door  has been jarred off its hinges by the quakes and falls down when they try to open it. It leads to a passageway which seems to go upward into the mountains outside the town. The six Superkids make their way through the passage and then up a flight of stairs. There's another door that has been jarred off its hinges at the top of the stairs. On the other side, they find themselves looking at a complex machine that is shooting off sparks. A door on the far wall is standing open. Marcus steps through it and finds himself on the side of a mountain.

	"You can see the whole town from here", he realizes. Everyone else is more interested in the machine. It has buttons labeled "Thunderstorm", "Quake", "Tornado", "Blizzard", "Volcano", And "Sunny".

	"This machine must be what's causing all the weather disasters", Darlia realizes. Then, there's a deafening roar.

	"It's happening!" Nadia exclaims, "The big disaster I foresaw". Marcus, still standing on the mountainside porch, notices something orange gushing from one of the other mountains. Thick black smoke is also rising from that mountain.

	"The volcano's erupting!" Marcus shouts, and hurries back inside.

	"If we don't stop it, Reineback Town will get buried in the lava!" Mavis shouts. Then, Nadia freezes on the spot. She stares blankly for a few seconds, then snaps out of it. The others know Nadia just had a vision.

	"What did you see?" Luna asks.

	"Darlia's storm", Nadia replies. She walks over to Darlia. "You can save us all, and use this machine to do it", She tells Darlia, pointing at the weather machine.

	"I'm not even sure how this machine works", Darlia fusses.

	"Play the tape inside the camera that's in that cabinet", Nadia says, pointing to an ornate cabinet in the far corner of the room. Darlia opens the cabinet and, sure enough, there is a video camera inside it. And sure enough, the camera still has a tape in it. The shelf above the camera has a TV and VCR that are still hooked up. The shelf below the Camera is full of tapes. Darlia removes the tape from the camera and inserts it into the VCR. The TV comes on. The face of Arnold, the old man Marcus and Mavis found dead in the house, appears on the screen.

	"This will likely be my final recording. My old heart can't take much more. The weather machine is starting to wear down and if it keeps up, it may run amok and generate disasters across the land", Arnold records. He walks over to the machine and fiddles with some of its wires. "I can't remember how to fix it so I leave this recording in hopes that someone will find it and fix my beloved machine before it's too late", Arnold continues. He suddenly grabs his heart. "I've got to go", he finishes. Then, the tape ends.

	Mavis notices Darlia is crying. "The man in that recording...is my grandfather", Darlia reveals, "He must've given up on fixing the machine in order to make it back to his house before he died", Darlia says, fighting back her tears. "I'll try my hardest to fix his machine. The fate of the town depends on it", Darlia declares. She opens the lower compartment of the machine, where Arnold was messing with the wires in the video. Some of them are cut. "I need some kind of splicer to put these wires back together!" Darlia shouts.

	"On it", Gideon declares. He rushes down the mountain at light-speed and returns seconds later with a handful of splicers. Darlia quickly splices all the wires back together. The machine quits shooting sparks. Darlia aims the machine at the volcano and presses the "thunderstorm" button, but nothing happens.

	"It needs more juice!", Darlia shouts.

	"On it" Luna replies. she grabs the wires inside the machine. Electricity snakes down her arms and into the machine. Darlia presses the "Thunderstorm" button. The machine chugs to life.

	"It's working!", Darlia shouts.

	Nadia steps out onto the mountainside porch, where she sees the thunderstorm brewing over the volcano. "Darlia's storm", she recites. The thunderstorm cuts loose, dumping a torrent of rain on the flowing lava. The lava begins to harden. It stops flowing mere inches away from the town.

	"We did it!", Darlia declares, and then she breathes a sigh of relief.

	Darlia lets it keep raining for a few more minutes. Then, she presses the "Sunny" button and the storm clears up. Sunlight pours into the room through the open door. Darlia, Marcus, Mavis, Luna, and Gideon join Nadia on the porch. The skies are clear and blue once again.