Thanks for the reviews. ) Not what I'd hoped for, but then again, after being gone so long it's amazing I have any readers. Thanks. Here's another chapter, after that terrible wait I put you through for such a short one last time!Chapter 13: Downtown Crazy Town
In the darkness of a nearby alley, Nick's evil clone practiced a few incredibly cool and slightly destructive moves with his hover board. He flipped and twirled in the air, knocking over a trashcan, and smashed into a sign in a nearby window advertising Purple Flurp. The sign clattered to the ground and Nick, unhurt, laughed at the damage he'd caused. Nearby, Butch's clone sat on a hover bike and spray painted a pair of glasses and a French mustache on a poster of the mayor.
"I love defacing private property!" Evil Butch proclaimed gleefully.
Suddenly, a footstep caught the boys' attention and they turned in mid-air. Searching the alley for whatever had caused the sound, Evil Nick's voice took on a bewildered tone. "What? Who's there?"
Out from the shadows stepped a dark figure. "Guys," the form said, attempting to sound ominous, "hand over your hover machines!" Even before the voice grated on their ears, the clones quickly recognized Sheen's lanky frame.
"Oh, yeah?!" Evil Nick snapped. "I'm not giving my hover board to you, Robo-dork!"
"Yeah, you'll have to take 'em from us first!" Butch's clone chimed in.
Sheen's threatening face took on a dramatic, determined expression. "Then taste my wrath, you fiends!" He assumed a sparring stance and threw a few kicks and punches at the air, obviously imagining he looked far more terrifying than he actually did.
The other boys simply stared at him, clearly unimpressed. "Uh…that's your wrath?"
But at that moment, a battle cry pierced the air and a shadow dropped off the roof and onto the hover board, right behind Nick! With one swift move, Cindy threw Nick into the air and sent him flying into Butch. They both toppled over and fell straight into an open dumpster.
"Ow!" Evil Butch cried, running his thick fingers over his forehead in pain.
Sheen grinned victoriously at them. "No, that was my wrath."
As Jimmy jumped off the roof onto Butch's hover bike, Libby and Carl ran out excitedly from behind a building.
"Good work, guys," the genius commended them.
"I think helping you and Cindy climb onto the roof strained my scapula," Carl declared, rubbing his back.
"Carl, you can't strain your scapula!" Jimmy exclaimed impatiently.
Cindy rolled her eyes and cut in. "Forget your scapula, Carl! We have to get out of here before that mob finds us!"
"I get the hover board!" Sheen shouted. Leaping onto it, he shook it around violently and almost caused Cindy, still perched atop it, to lose her balance. "Make room for Libbs, Cindy!" he cried, and without any ceremony, swept Cindy off her feet and threw her to the ground. Then he turned to Libby with a smile and gallantly offered his hand to help her up.
Libby stepped onto the hover board and sternly placed a hand on her hip. "Uh, Sheen, could you not throw my girl around?"
Sheen merely beamed back at her. "Sure thing, Cupcake!"
With a rigid frown, Cindy got to her feet angrily and scrambled onto the hover cycle behind Jimmy. As she grabbed onto him, she dug her fingers in painfully.
"Ow! Cindy!" Jimmy complained.
Cindy loosened her grasp a little, but her mood was still black after being thrown off a hover board.
With Carl too afraid to climb onto him, Goddard was forced to snatch Carl up by the back of the shirt again. As he rocketed himself off the ground and prepared to follow his master through the maze of city streets and alleys, Jimmy revved up his machine and turned back to his friends with a smile.
"OK, guys, follow me."
Jimmy led his friends through the maze of shadowy alleys toward the open "roads" surrounding the huge skyscrapers. He sped through the air effortlessly, but, behind him, Goddard struggled with the yelling load dangling from his mouth. Last of all were Sheen and Libby, fighting over how to maneuver the hover board. Sheen, thoroughly enjoying himself, twisted and jerked it about at a crazy speed while a nervous, slightly sickened Libby attempted to maintain control.
"Hey, look, Jimmy;" Sheen called to his friend, "I can flip upside down!"
Libby glared at him threateningly. "Oh, no, ya don't!"
"Uh…never mind," Sheen said sheepishly.
Meanwhile, swinging uncomfortably in Goddard's grasp, Carl kept his eyes covered as he nervously questioned Jimmy. "Hey, Jim, we're not going far, are we?"
"Don't worry, Carl," the genius reassured him. "We'll just search for Betty while we exit the city and find a place to camp. Even if we do find Betty tonight, Sheen has to get ready to fight Yoo-Yee."
"And that will take a while," Cindy muttered dryly behind him.
At that moment Jimmy came to the end of an alley leading to the main "roadways" and paused for a moment to take in the sight of the city. In the darkness, every light in the futuristic city glowed vibrantly, illuminating a metropolis still pulsing with life. Huge skyscrapers flashed with animated advertisements for lab kits and lessons in karate, collector's edition action figures and classic musical hits, llamas and lifetime supplies of chocolate. Without the aid of traffic lights, all sorts of hovering machines weaved paths around slender towers and through the steady flow of traffic. Below them, parked hovercars rested on the wide, concrete streets. Even though the asteroid city was in chaos, with citizens shouting, stealing, vandalizing, and smashing into one another's vehicles everywhere the gang looked, it was still an awe-inspiring sight.
Drinking it all in with eager eyes, Jimmy finally turned back to his friends. "If I can just get everyone to accept my inventions, this is what Retroville itself will look like in a couple years," he announced proudly.
"What are you talking about? With all the times you've nearly destroyed our city, it'd only take you a few minutes to make it look like Nutcase Utopia here!" Cindy countered.
Immediately, Jimmy turned in his seat to face her. "Hey, don't yell at me, Vortex! You're the one who got us in trouble this time!"
Cindy's eyes flashed and she raised her voice to a harsh shout. "Oh, yeah?! You're the one who created the evil clone that made this crazy town!"
"Even if I hadn't, we'd still be rescuing Betty because YOU got her kidnapped!" Jimmy fairly yelled.
"I did not! She was the one who was stupid enough to go with the ninjas!"
"Betty is not stupid!"
This time, Cindy simply crossed her arms and grinned spitefully. "No," she responded in a softer tone, "she's just a little slow."
Standing beside Sheen with her arms crossed, Libby lost her patience at last and threw her arms in the air. "That's it! If we're gonna rescue Betty, then you guys are gonna have to figure out how to stop fightin' every ten seconds!"
Jimmy and Cindy closed their mouths, but glared at each other without giving any sign of trying to be friendly.
"That's good enough. Now let's go!" Libby ordered.
Wordlessly, Jimmy veered out of the alley and zipped over a few parked hovercars as he flew through the city. He continued to study his surroundings in wonder, but none of his friends were enjoying it anymore. Hovercars raced around them, the air whipped through their hair, and the height at which they were soaring was dizzying. A nauseous Carl closed his eyes, Sheen was losing control of the hover board and nearly sending Libby over the edge, and Cindy still maintained a death grip on poor Jimmy while she scowled at the passing vehicles. When one hovercar nearly smashed right into him, even Jimmy stopped staring in awe and focused all his energy into dodging traffic. After all, this wasn't ordinary traffic. Here, every driver's goal wasn't to avoid a crash, but to cause one.