Leo's Brain Drain

Author's note: I spent a lot of time looking for the tape that had Brain Drain taped on it. Enough fooling. It's time to resume!
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Chapter 4: The Wrap-up -

BRAIN BUSTER SET
It was the middle of the night. The three of us slid down cables to reach the floor of the set.
"Time to open a capsule and see what we can find," Clover decided.
"Hopefully it'll be Sammy's brain," Alex responded.
"Or maybe the Prof's," I added, and we dashed over to one capsule hole and tried to open it.

CLICK! The floor began to lower. "Hold on!" Clover exclaimed. "Looks like we're going for a ride."

We landed in the middle of some kind of computer lab.
"Now this is what I call one nice dressing room," Alex commented.
"Dressing room?" Clover replied. "More like some kind of bad-guy basement hideout."

We heard screams from a nearby room. Alex recognized the voice as Margie.
"Sorry, Wink," Clover said before we dashed off to save her, "but there'll be no brain-sucking contestants on my watch."
We found Margie in a room, covered by a sheet. A man was doing something to her.
Clover was always ready. "Spies to the rescue!"
"Do you know how corny that line sounded, Clover?" I said, but she didn't hear me. Clover and Alex karate-kicked the man to the ground.

Margie got up, and she went from scared to confused to furious in seconds. "Hey, what gives? I still have 15 minutes of shatza left. WINK!"
Clover, Alex, and I shared this word: "Oopsie!"
I turned to Clover. "Hey, what's shatza?"
"It's a kind of massage," she replied.
Wink and two other men marched into the room as the masseur checked his damaged neck.

06:12 PM - SOUND PROOF BOOTH
Wink locked us in, and then approached us as we peeked out the window. "Welcome to Wink and Margie's Sound-Proof Booth of Doom, ladies."
"What a lame name," I commented.

Alex was the next to speak up. "Wink and Margie? You mean, she's in on this too?"
Margie responded in her usual ego-filled manner. "You got it, dollface."
Clover was furious. "The only dollface around here is you. I mean, hello, blue eye shadow much?"

Wink didn't even bat an eyelid. "You should respect your elders, young lady, especially one with an IQ of 192 and growing!"
"Yeah," I responded, "growing annoying!"

Alex had a different reaction. "Growing? So THAT's what you're doing with the contestant's brains! Giving them to Margie?"
"Well," Wink replied, "intelligence is not something you can buy at a store, is it?"
"Excuse me," Clover's reaction was, "but sucking out innocent people's brains is, like, majorly evil!"

Margie responded to this one. "Wow, evil? Sure. But Winkie and I realized you've got to bend a few rules to become rich and famous."
"And powerful," Wink added. "After tonight's Battle of the Geniuses, Margie's brainpower will be that of a thousand supercomputers! We'll be unstoppable. First, rulers of all television. Then, rulers of the world!"
"Plus, we get 10,000,000 smackeroonis!"
"That's right, sweet stuff!"

Wink and Margie started to kiss. I wanted to barf, and Alex's reaction was approximately the same. "Ew, gross! Like we weren't being tortured enough already!"
"Ooh, the show beckons!" Wink and Margie started to leave. "Unfortunately, there's not enough oxygen for you to make it until the first commercial! Bye-bye, ladies, and boy!"

As Wink turned off the lights and started to leave, I yelled "STOP!"
Wink flipped the lights back on. "Make it quick. What is it?"
"If this is a sound-proof booth, how can we hear each other?"
Wink gestured at the microphone system inside and outside the booth, then turned the lights back off and left. We were silent. I blushed a little.

BRAIN BUSTER SET
"Divide and Conquer round, geniuses!" Wink announced. "I give you the division problem, you give me the answer to conquer your opponents! And here we go: What number equals the year the spirally-groove rifle barrel was introduced divided by 10 to the -5th?"

One by one, the contestants' minds went blank. Except, of course, for Margie, who buzzed in. "50,200,000."
Wink wasn't surprised, but he was ecstatic. "Right again, Margie! How do you do it?"
Margie just smirked.

SOUND PROOF BOOTH
Clover placed her compowder and Alex's compowder on the ground. "Get ready to tuck and roll!"
Alex handed over her lipstick laser, which Clover shot at the mirrors at just the right angle, trapping the intense beam of light between them. Clover then aimed the mirrors at the door, burning a big hole in it.
"Awesome!" Alex exclaimed, looking at the hole. "How did you-"
"Old racquetball trick shot," Clover interrupted. "We'll play sometime. Now let's get out of here!"

BRAIN BUSTER SET
Wink carried on as usual. "Okay, players. The category is weird science. Chromosomes are to thermions as pizza is to-"

"Sorry, Wink," Alex interrupted, "you've been pre-empted!"

The three of us lobbed our smoke bombs, covering the area in smoke. "Winkie," Margie screamed, "do something!"
"Oh boy," I muttered, "if she calls him 'Winkie' one more time, I'm going to throw up!"

Frustrated, Wink held up his mic and shot a laser from it, narrowly missing Alex. He fired again, and Clover dodged.
"Man, we should ask Jer to buy us a couple of those mikes," Clover suggested.
"Time to take Wink off the air," Alex said, then ran after Wink as he fled. I rolled my eyes at this lame line as I followed.

Wink and Margie had disappeared. "We've got to stop them! Margie's got all of Sam's intelligence locked up inside that giant beehive head of hers!"
We saw Wink and Margie bolt for the exit, and followed. They hopped into a stage trolley to try to get away.
Of course, there was another trolley right nearby. Clover, Alex, and I boarded it. "Ladies, start your engines!" Clover cheered as we took off.

07:03 PM - WESTERN MOVIE SET
Two cowboys stood off against each other. The scene's impact was rather ruined, however, when two trollies sped by. "They're getting away," Clover yelled. "Give me a blast from your jet boots!"

Alex stuck her heel outside the back of the trolley and started it up, giving us more of a boost than we could've used. We were both flung from the trolley, and landed flat on the ground.
"Too much afterburner," Alex concluded.
"Well then, use less next time," I suggested.

We gasped as a plane headed straight for us, and ducked it. Wink and Margie were piloting it.
"Let's ride, partner," Clover decided, spotting some horses tied up nearby. Clover took a black horse, and Alex took a brown one. I didn't know how to ride a horse, so I rode behind Clover.

"It's time to rope 'em and ride 'em," Clover followed up. The girls both took lassos that happened to be on the horses and hooked the plane's wing. I held on to Clover's rope, keeping my pencil in my pocket.
"Sorry, sis, we've gotta cut you loose," Margie decided, pulling out an axe and using it to chop Alex's rope. Clover caught Alex just in time.

Wink was unfazed. "So, you girls- and boy- want to hang around. All righty then. Enjoy the ride!"
I noticed by now that in the past minute, we'd gone from the West to a moon base to a jungle. "Wow," I commented, "this is the kind of chase that can only be pulled off at a movie set!"
"Never mind that, Leo," Clover responded, "this is definitely not my idea of a fun studio tour!"
"We have to let go and jet-boot," Alex suggested.
Clover didn't like this idea. "If we do that, Wink gets away with Sammy's brainpower!"
I had to break it up. "That may be so, but we don't have a choice. Hit it, Alex!"

Alex jet-booted up to the plane's wing and used the afterburner to scorch the exterior until it crashed in a swamp. We ended up jet-booting to remain in the air. "Bingo," Alex cheered, "one bad guy going down!"
We jetted down to see the wreck. "Thanks for playing, Wink and Margie," Clover joked. "Unfortunately, you're our grand prize LOSERS!"
"Aw," I muttered, "I wanted to say that."

BRAIN BUSTER SET
Some WOOHP agents strapped Sam into the champion's capsule and Margie into another capsule. Jerry was busy typing at Wink's podium.
Clover was a little worried. "You sure this'll work, Jer?"
"Oh, yes," Jerry responded. "With Sam and Margie switching capsules, Margie will be the brain-drained contestant this time."

Jerry pressed one last button, and red drained into blue. We approached Sam.
"Hello, Sam?"
"Are you there?"
"Speak to us, Sammy!"
The drain was complete. Sam spoke up after a pause. "Clover? Alex? Leo? What's going on?"

Clover was ecstatic. "She said Clover!"
Alex hugged Sam. "Yay! Our best friend's back!"
I had to get a word in. "Now that's the Sam I know!"

Jerry then approached Margie, who wasn't feeling too well. "Whoa … my heads … I got a lights out …"
"You'll have plenty of time to rest in prison. But there are some ex-contestants we must visit first."
The WOOHP men carried Margie away.

09:03 AM - BEVERLY HILLS HIGH SCHOOL
As the four of us walked down the hall, Mandy stopped and gasped upon seeing Zach. She approached him.
"Tutor damage control time," Clover explained.

"Um, hi, Zach," Sam said. "You know, about the other day at the sushi bar …"
"Oh, forget, it's history," Zach responded. "Besides, I found another tutor."
Sam blinked. "Another tutor?"

And guess who that tutor was. "That's right, Sammy-kins. Zach needs a study-buddy with half a brain, someone who knows the difference between a hand towel and a hand roll. B-bye!"
As Mandy left, she hesitated as she passed by me. "Can I borrow that pencil? I forgot mine today."
"I can't lend you my pencil, but here's a pen," I replied, handing her a ball-point pen.

"Half a brain is right," Alex commented once Mandy was out of sight. "Mandy's about as sharp as a week-old nail file!"
"It's okay," Sam explained, "she can have him. I mean, really, who wants to go out with a guy who would fall for Jerry's lame 'Look! A three-headed man on a donkey!' trick?"

Jerry's voice came from Sam's compowder. "I heard that, ladies!" He led the rest of us in a short bout of laughter.

When the laughter died down, Alex asked me a question. "Say, Leo, exactly what did you give Mandy? Was it what I think you gave her?"
"You'll find out next period," I responded.

NEXT PERIOD
Mandy and Zach sat next to each other at a desk. "Okay," Mandy explained, "the trick to good knowledge is good note-taking. Let me show you a few shortcuts."
Leaving those words in the air, Mandy got out a piece of paper and started using the ball-point pen to write … and lasered a hole clear through the desk.
The teacher was furious at Mandy, who was furious at me. Luckily, I wasn't in the room at the moment, but anyone within fourteen yards of the classroom would've heard Mandy's scream.
"LEO!"
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THE END

Zooney World? Green with N.V.? Malled? Mummy? Queen for a Day? It's your call! Which one I do next is up to you, the readers!