Nikki Powergloves and the Power Council by David Estes

Chapter Twelve: Spencer’s gadgets

  They slept in the next day. When Nikki awoke she could hear Spencer snoring softly on the bunk above her. The previous night, he was really upset. Like Nikki, he thought he had ruined everything and that the Power Council would make them leave. He was so excited when he found out they would get to stay. “Hip hip hooray!” he had yelled.

  Nikki swung her feet over the side of the bed. She gazed around the room. Freddy and Mike were asleep, tucked tightly under their covers. Samantha wasn’t in her bed. Her pillow was rumpled and the bedspread had been tossed loosely over the bed. Nikki stood up and lifted her foot onto the bottom step of the bunk ladder. Climbing the ladder, she peeked over the top at her friend. He was breathing deeply, his bottom lip buzzing slightly with each exhalation. A small pool of drool had formed on his pillow to the side of his mouth.

  “Spence!” Nikki whispered sharply. “Wake up, Spence!”

  Her friend’s eyes fluttered open and he looked at her. “What time is it?” he groaned.

  “I don’t know. Time is different in here anyways. It’s time to wake up.”

  “Okay,” Spencer said. Then, “I’m hungry.”

  “Maybe you should have eaten your cookie instead of giving it to the Weeble.”

  Spencer looked at her sheepishly. “Yeah, I know. I just had to know what would happen though.”

  “Did you learn your lesson?”

  “Probably not,” Spencer said honestly. “I mean, I won’t be feeding the Weebles after midnight again, but I might do something similar, like break a rule just because I have to know something. I don’t know why, but I just hate not knowing something, you know what I mean, Kemosabe?”

  Nikki couldn’t help but to let the corners of her lips curl into a smile. “Not really. But I know it’s hard for you. It’s part of what makes you a good sidekick though.”

  Spencer smiled and pulled the covers off of him. They climbed down the ladder and left Freddy and Mike sleeping in the bunk room. They went looking for Samantha. She was in the first place they looked, the room with the purple couches. She was having breakfast with two other kids. When Nikki entered the room, she looked up and said, “Hey there, Weeble-feeders.”

  At first Nikki thought she might be mad at them for what they did the night before, but then Samantha grinned and Nikki knew she was joking.

  One of the kids, a short, Asian boy with thick glasses said, “Samantha told us all about it, way to go!” Then he stood up, extended his hand, and said, “I’m Dexter Chan, booby-trapper extraordinaire and Samantha’s sidekick.

  Spencer’s eyes lit up and he reached in front of Nikki to shake Dexter’s hand. “Spencer Quick, boy genius and Nikki’s sidekick. Very nice to finally meet a fellow sidekick, yeehaw!”

  “Hi, Spencer. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, too,” Dexter said, releasing his hand and shaking Nikki’s.

  Nikki was glad to see her friend so happy. She hoped he would make friends with the other sidekicks. The other kid sitting next to Samantha waved to them. She had long dark hair and deep, dark eyes. “Name’s Chilly. Chilly Weathers,” she said.

  “Seriously?” Spencer said.

  “That’s what my momma called me,” Chilly said.

  “That’s almost as bad as Nikki Nickerson,” Spencer joked.

  Nikki glared at him. “It’s Nikki Powergloves in here,” she said.

  “Whatever you say, boss.” Turning back to Chilly, Spencer asked, “So, what’s your skill, Weather-Girl?”

  “I’ll show you.” Chilly snapped her fingers and a puff of smoke appeared. When the smoke cleared, a white dove was sitting in her palm. “I’m an amateur magician,” Chilly said. “And I’m Freddy’s sidekick.”

  “Wow! Really good trick, Chilly!” Spencer said. “Can you make a bowl of Chocolate Covered Sugar Wheats appear for me?”

  A voice from behind them said, “She can’t, but I can!”

  They turned and saw Mike holding a bowl of Spencer’s favorite cereal. Spencer ran over and took it from him. He began to eat greedily and soon had a milk mustache below his nose. All the kids started laughing and Spencer said, “Milk—it does a body good!”

  At Nikki’s request, Mike whipped up some scrambled eggs and sausage. Freddy joined them halfway through breakfast, rubbing his eyes sleepily.

  Together, the power kids and sidekicks watched the news in Cragglyville. Even though an entire day had passed in the Power City, it was only lunchtime in Nikki’s hometown. The police and town workers were still cleaning up the mess that Jimmy’s crew of villains had made earlier that day. Nikki was relieved to find out that they hadn’t attacked again.

  After breakfast, Dexter said excitedly, “Spencer, you wanna go to the Lab with me and Chilly?”

  Spencer jumped up and pumped his fist in the air while doing a tap dance with his feet. “Yeahyeahyeahyeah!” he yelled. “Let’s go!”

  When Dexter and Chilly stood up to lead Spencer from the room, Nikki started to follow them. “We’ve got other plans,” Samantha said.

  Nikki stopped. Watched Spencer leave. She wasn’t used to doing different things than him. They usually did everything together. But if she was going to be a superhero, she needed to accept that sometimes Spencer would have to do sidekick things, while she did superhero things.

  Once the sidekicks were gone, Nikki asked, “What are we going to do?”

  Samantha said, “We’ve got to check on the Weeble. You know, the giant, colossal, angry beast from last night?”

  “Right,” Nikki said, remembering that they had left it tied up in Weebleville.

  “All the power kids should be there just in case there’s any trouble,” Samantha said. Nikki nodded. It made sense. She would have to get used to doing things together with the Power Council. She was used to having to take care of any problems on her own. Like Jimmy and Peter. Suddenly, her heart soared: She would never have to fight the villains on her own ever again!

  They made their way through a few tunnels and then into the fiery tube leading to Weebleville. When they pulled open the heavy door, Nikki half-expected the enormous Weeble to come barreling through, dragging Samantha’s heavy ropes behind it.

  Instead, she heard the same carnival music, saw the same Weebles running and dancing and playing. A mischievous-looking blue Weeble ran up to them, turned around, raised its butt in the air and blasted a fart at them. Laughing hysterically, it rolled away from them, back into the city.

  Nikki smirked. “They are a strange bunch,” she said.

  “Try seeing them every day,” Samantha said.

  Taking long strides, Samantha led Nikki and the other two power kids into Weebleville, down the same road that Nikki had raced down the previous night. Every couple of minutes, Nikki craned her neck to look past Samantha, expecting to see the hulking shape of the tied up, sleeping Weeble—the green one that Spencer had fed after midnight.

  They rounded a bend and Nikki gasped. The thick coils of rope that Samantha had shot at the Weeble were lying in the middle of the street in a tangled mess of knots and twists. The Weeble was nowhere to be seen.

  “Oh no!” Nikki cried. “She escaped!”

  Samantha approached the coils slowly. “Hmmm,” she mused. “I’m not sure that’s what happened.”

  Nikki frowned. Was Samantha blind? She had to be able to see what Nikki was seeing. The massive Weeble was gone—only the ropes remained. “What?” Nikki said, scratching her head.

  Then she heard it. The soft sound of muffled breathing. And she saw gentle movement under the ropes.

  Samantha reached down and pried off a few loops of rope, and then exclaimed, “Gotcha!” as she darted her hand downwards. When she lifted her arm, she had a green Weeble clamped between her fingers. It had pink bows in its bristles. The giant Weeble from the night before! Samantha was holding her just under the chin, in a spot that Nikki hadn’t noticed before—there were no spikes, just soft fur.

  The Weeble’s eyes flu
ttered open and she blinked sleepily. Brown chocolate ringed her mouth. She licked her lips lazily and sighed, as if she could still taste the delicious cookie from the night before.

  “She shrunk?” Nikki said.

  “I guess so,” Samantha said.

  “Probably after she digested the cookie,” Mike said.

  “Or after she fell asleep,” Freddy guessed.

  “Maybe,” Samantha said. “But in any case, she’s back to normal. Everything’s fine in Weebleville.”

  Nikki let out a sigh of relief. It could have been worse. Much worse. She imagined what would have happened if the Weeble had broken out of the cave. A giant, green creature rampaging down the highway, headed straight for Cragglyville, smashing cars and houses and fields full of vegetables. She sighed again.

  The foursome left the Weeble by the ropes. As soon as Samantha set it back on the ground, it began giggling uncontrollably, like it had breathed in laughing gas. They heard it laughing during their entire walk back out of the city. Crazy, loony Weebles! Nikki thought.

  They went back to the purple couch room and settled in to wait for their sidekicks to finish with whatever it was they were doing. Nikki wanted to go find Spencer right away, to tell him the good news about the Weeble, but Samantha said it was better not to disturb the sidekicks when they were in The Lab.

  Eventually, there was a knock at the door and a voice hollered, “Come join us in The Lab!” Nikki could tell it was Chilly. Nikki sprang up and ran to the door to open it. When she pulled it open, there was no one there. “Huh?” she said.

  Mike said, “They like to surprise us.”

  “Oh,” Nikki said, shrugging.

  This time, Mike led the group down a short tunnel lined with bees’ nests. The buzzing insects swirled around them, but didn’t touch or sting them. Samantha said it was called the honeycomb tunnel and that the bees were not dangerous. Nikki was glad to hear it. She had been stung twice and she hated the way her skin puffed up!

  After the honeycomb tunnel was the diamond tunnel. Brilliant diamonds of all shapes and sizes sparkled on the walls and ceiling. Nikki didn’t know much about diamonds, but knew that they had to be worth lots of money. A lot more money than she had in her piggy bank, that’s for sure.

  They reached The Lab, and Mike turned around and said to Nikki, “Want to do the honors?”

  Excitedly, Nikki reached for the door and pulled. Nothing happened. She pulled harder, straining against whatever force was holding the door closed. Thinking the door must require a push rather than a pull, Nikki leaned on it with both hands. Still no movement. It wouldn’t budge. “I think it’s locked,” Nikki said.

  Samantha smiled at her. She looked at Mike—he was smiling too. In her peripheral vision she could see Freddy’s lip curled into a grin. Then she heard familiar humming further down the hall. Humming she had heard many times before. Spencer!

  Her friend came around the bend and into view. He was humming to himself, the way he always did when he was thinking. “Need some help?” he asked Nikki.

  Nikki shrugged. “Door’s locked, so unless you have the key …” Nikki said.

  “It’s not locked,” Spencer said. “Watch and learn, amigo.”

  Spencer raised his hand and Nikki noticed he was holding a canister of some sort. It looked like air freshener or bug spray or something. With a puff of awful-smelling fumes, he sprayed all around the doorframe, being careful to get into all of the cracks. Finished, he motioned to Nikki to try the door again. She sighed, not wanting to look stupid again when she couldn’t open a simple door. How could spraying the door with stinky gas help to open it?

  Gripping the handle firmly, she pulled as hard as she could and was shocked when her arm shot back and the door flew open. She almost fell over when the door collided with her hip, but Samantha was there to steady her.

  “What the heck!” she said. “It was a trick, right? Someone unlocked it right before I opened it, didn’t they?”

  “Guess again, Tickle-Me-Nikki,” Spencer said. “You have just witnessed the first thing I wanted to show you. I call it Sticky Situation Glue. I used it to seal the door. That’s why you couldn’t open it. The spray is the antidote, so to speak. It reverses the stickiness.”

  Chilly and Dexter popped out from behind a giant silver pot that had steam coming from its lid. “Surprise!” they said to together.

  Then Chilly said, “The glue is Spencer’s first invention. He came up with the idea on his own, and me and Dex helped him to create it and the spray.”

  Nikki turned to look at Spencer. He was beaming proudly. “What do you think?” he said.

  “It’s amazing, Spence. I wouldn’t have any idea how to create anything, much less super-sticky glue! It should come in handy against the villains.”

  “That’s what sidekicks are for! Cockadoodledoo!” Spencer yelled.

  “What’s in the cauldron?” Nikki asked, pointing to the steaming pot.

  Chilly laughed. “You make it sound like we are witches brewing up potions!”

  Nikki giggled as she pictured Spencer wearing a pointy, black hat, chanting strange words as he stirred a boiling pot of bat wings, salamander tails, and hair from a unicorn’s tail.

  Spencer said, “The ‘cauldron’, as you put it, contains a big batch of Sticky Situation Glue. We’ll give you a bottle of it to put in your utility belt, along with the spray.”

  “Utility belt?” Nikki said.

  “Yeah,” Spencer said. “All the other power kids wear them, right guys?”

  Samantha, Freddy and Mike all nodded.

  “Strapped to your belt will be all the gadgets that I make for you to help you fight the bad guys.”

  “Cool!” Nikki exclaimed. Suddenly, she was anxious to see what else Spencer had cooked up for her. “What else do you have so far?”

  Spencer pumped his fist. “I was hoping you would ask that!”

  He reached in his pocket and extracted a smooth object. It was about the size of an egg and shaped like one, too. The only difference was that it was green and had a hoop sticking off of one of the ends. Nikki’s eyes widened as she realized what it looked like. “Is that a….grenade?” she asked.

  Instead of answering, to Nikki’s horror, he stuck a finger through the hoop and pulled the pin out and yelled, “Fire in the hole!” and then dropped the grenade.

  Nikki knew it was too late to run, so instead she just watched the grenade clank off the floor and bounce twice before settling at their feet. While she waited to be blown to bits she wondered why Spencer had done it.

  Then the grenade exploded.

  It flared brightly for a moment and began spouting green and red and yellow mist from one end. It swirled around her ankles, up her torso, and finally around her head. Soon she couldn’t see anything as the colorful gas covered the entire room. Reaching her arms in front of her like a zombie, she tried to find the door. “Ouch!” she exclaimed when she bumped into someone. She heard scuffling in at least four different directions as the power kids and their sidekicks tried to find the door.

  She heard Chilly’s exuberant voice say, “Got it!” and then a felt a whoosh of fresh air across her face. The mist was still heavy, but was not as thick as before. Nikki thought she could make out the outline of the door. She moved toward it and then broke through the fog, out of The Lab and into the tunnel. She could see again. Chilly was already out there, but Nikki was the second. Behind her, Spencer galloped out, laughing hard. The rest of the kids followed shortly after. Soon they were all laughing.

  Nikki said, “You scared me, Spence! I thought you were going to blow us all up!”

  Still grinning, Spencer said, “Now why would I do that, Cowgirl! Don’t you trust me?”

  Nikki felt silly. Of course she trusted him. She had known him her whole life. She said, “Of course I do, Spence, but after what happened with the Weebles last night…”

  Spencer chuckled. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot about that!”

>   They all laughed again. They all had a case of the giggles. “What was that stuff, laughing gas?” Nikki asked.

  “No,” Spencer said. “Just a colorful smokescreen. I call it Rainbow Fog. I don’t know why we are all laughing.”

  “Cool, we can definitely use Rainbow Fog against Jimmy and his friends.”

  “I have one more gadget to show you,” Spencer said, “but we will need to wait for the Rainbow Fog to go away before we can use The Lab.”

  Dexter said, “No problem, watch this.” The short Asian boy reached up and pressed a button on the wall outside of the room. Nikki hadn’t noticed it before. There was a loud whoosh! and the colorful mist in The Lab began to clear. It was like a huge vacuum had sucked it all up.

  “Great!” Spencer exclaimed. “Let’s go! Wakka wakka!” He led them back into the room. Once inside, he said, “I’ve saved the best for last, Nikki. I think you’re really gonna like this one.” He walked over to one of the lab stations and picked up a box. Removing the lid, he held it in his hand so Nikki could look inside.

  Nikki peered into the tiny container. There were a dozen cherry-sized marbles. They were black and gold and shimmered under the bright lights in The Lab. “What are those?” Nikki asked.

  “I’ll show you,” Spencer said. “But first I’ll need a victim—I mean a volunteer.”

  Everyone in the room inched away from him, clearly afraid of what the marbles might do to them. Sighing, Spencer said, “I guess I’ll have to use them on myself.”

  Before Nikki could object, Spencer had plucked a handful of the marbles from the box and dropped them at his feet. The small orbs landed with a thud! They sounded much heavier than they looked. They didn’t bounce or roll away; rather, they stuck to the floor, as if they had been dropped onto something sticky.

  Spencer said, “Be very careful with these, Nikki, they go after whoever they land closest to!” While Spencer was warning her, Nikki was watching the orbs closely. Suddenly, they sprouted tiny legs and began scurrying around Spencer. He tried to run away from them, but they chased him….and caught him. The little marble-bug-things scurried up his legs and disappeared beneath his shorts.

  “Ooh hoo hoo! That tickles!” Spencer said. A few of the bugs scurried out from his shorts, up his stomach, onto his shoulders and then down his arms. With a slap! his hands were clamped against each other. Metal ropes sprang from the bugs and tied his hands together! The rest of the bugs scurried out of his shorts to his feet, which were spread wide apart. Like his hands, his feet were forced next to each other and tied up.

  Spencer said, “And that’s how you slow down a bad guy.”

  Nikki laughed. “Or a best friend who is annoying you!”

  “You better not use my own inventions against me!” Spencer yelped.

  “Just kidding, Spence. I think it’s really cool. Nice work! Now how do we get them off of you?”

  “Simple,” Spence said, “just splash some water on them. For some reason they don’t like that.”

  Chilly ran and got a cup of water and poured them on Spencer’s hands and feet. The bugs let out a strange squealing noise and then the ropes disappeared back inside them and Spencer was free. The bugs dropped to the floor and their legs went into the marbles. Spencer scooped the orbs up and slipped them back into the box, and then gave a slight bow. “Voila!” he exclaimed. “That’s the end of the show for today. I hope you all enjoyed seeing Spencer’s Gadgets, presented by Spencer, certified genius. I would like to thank Dexter and Chilly for all their help!”