"Alright, Skips," called out Feedback. "What's the holdup?"
"I feel silly!" I shouted from behind the door. "And these pants is making me chafe!"
"It's alright! You get used to them!"
I stepped out of the broom closet and showed myself to the League of Good Guys, all dressed up and ready to go. I truly did feel silly. A black mask, green bullet-proof vest with a matching shirt and cape, purple tights with matching gloves and black shoes. I noticed a funny shaped capital "G" on the cape. Weird, but I didn't come up with it.
"Are you sure about this?" I asked the Gazelle.
"If my hunch is correct," he said, a finger under his chin. "Once you put on that costume, all the powers of the Colossal Elastic Boy, powers and all."
My eyes widened with delight at first, but I stopped when I realized, "Wait. When I first came here, I said to the Mutant my only weakness is acid. Does that mean..." The Gazelle nodded his head. I panicked. "Oh, no! That means I'm going to be attacked by acid spraying robots! Or acid traps or...acid themed weaponry! I don't know, but if I'm sprayed with acid, I'm dead!"
"It doesn't matter if you're super or not," Flo said. "Acid still hurts a lot."
"If you guys are done jabbering about Skips' new powers, we have to go now!" shouted Molecule Man, heading for the door. "Root Rot's already heading this way!"
"How do you know that?"
He pointed to the air duct. Large vines with venus fly trap mouths at the end were creeping their way out and toward us! "Feed me!" they chanted. "Feed me! Feed me! Feed me!"
"Out now!" shouted Molecule Man. Everyone darted out of the room, an army of killer plants on our tail. "Can't take anymore chances. We have to get to the top floor and stop the Mutant, Frightmare and Mr. Fear before they activate the green beam and the Horrifyer!"
"Well, we can't take the stairs," I pointed out, gesturing to the staircase, now crawling with vine creepers.
"Uh, you're a super hero, kid," Molecule Man retorted. "Just punch them. Besides, the elevator's definitely a trap."
"Since when are you the one leading this group," shouted the Gazelle.
"I'm not! I'm just pointing out that the kid can just punch the plants away!"
"How do I do that?" I asked sarcastically. "Just stretch out my arm and make a fist?" I did exactly what I said, and my left arm stretched out to inhumane lengths and struck one of the vines. Like a yo-yo, the arm shrunk back to normal size. I looked at my limb with awe. "Now I'm liking comics again!"
To say I had fun punching and (if you excuse the stupid pun) whacking weeds with my friends would be an understatement. I loved it! This was more fun than the arcade games at Universal Studios! Okay, yeah, I did get bit a few times, and yeah, I did get hurt a lot. The Gazelle and Dinah nearly got eaten a few times but we managed to rescue them. The real problems I had with them were the ones that spat acid. Acid! Why did I have to say acid when I came to this world the first time? Looking back, I curse my younger self for being so scared to say the first thing that popped into my head.
"Heads up!" shouted Dinah. Oh, me and my big mouth. A wave of...guess what? Acid. Yes. Acid came rushing down at us down the stairs. Lucky for us; more importantly, me, Feedback managed to block and redirect the wave with his high pitched music. I'm so lucky I have someone to watch my back. Problem was, after that, no more enemies. Just stairs. And more stairs. And more stairs.
"Thighs burning..." I wheezed.
"Tendons hurting..." the Gazelle muttered, much to my surprise. Some fast runner.
"Can we make this go faster?" Flo asked. "Like an escalator?"
Fate seemed to read her thoughts as a level dropped out of nowhere that read, "Pull me." I will not deny this, we were hesitant, but we pulled it. Almost at once we were catapulted up into the air by a spring, landing on one of the upper floors. A greenhouse? Why would the lever take us to a...Oh, no! A large green man/plant/thing jumped out of one of the bushes and leered. "Time for you to be fertilizer!" Root Rot punched the ground and several plant monsters with mouths popped out, all ready and poised to eat me.
"Would you be happier if you just sang?" I asked one of them. It's response? It tried to take a bite out of me. I managed to throw a punch at the closest one of these things before it could take a bite out of my head, though I was too slow to stop another from wrapping around me and constricting me like a snake. I couldn't breathe! Thank you, Flo and your water power! Freezing the plant whole and shattering it. I saved Feedback from being eaten by kicking the plant holding him in the gut. No, stem. Yes, that's it. Stem. The plant groaned and dropped Feedback, leaving him in a daze, but he recovered. Heh. I got a stronger kick than the Gazelle now! Speaking of which, he was doing an impressive job taking down the weeds, but to our dismay, they just kept coming!
"Let me know when I can stop fighting now!" shouted Flo.
It's no use! They just kept coming the more Root Rot punched... "Gazelle, you and I are going after Root Rot! Shred him!"
"I'm the Gazelle, not the Shredder!" he shouted angrily, clearly fed up with the plants.
"Not you! That!" I gestured to the fan placed behind him. Seemed like a bad position to be in. The Gazelle seemed to get the idea. We both raced toward him, even though more Audrey II's kept popping up out of the ground. Feedback, Flo and Dinah fended them off while we headed for the true threat. Root Rot, realizing he was going to get hurt, blocked himself from us. It did little good. The force of the Gazelle's kick sent him flying straight into the fan, and collapsed the wall it was mounted on, exposing another room. No doubt this was a lab, judging from all the fancy equipment you can only find in a Frankenstein movie. The first people we noticed? The Masked Mutant and Frightmare!
"How did you get here?!" shouted the latter. Then he noticed Molecule Man. "You! I never would have thought that you would be a traitor! Then again..."
"I'm no traitor," Molecule Man shouted. "I'm just not mad enough to destroy a world that was meant to be ruled!"
"Ruled, destroyed," a soothing voice said. "It doesn't matter. You're not even real. I just want out." A man in a black coat and hat appeared from behind the two men, carrying a girl in a vice grip by the throat.
"Dinah, look!" Feedback shouted, but he stopped and softened his voice in confusion. "They have Dinah!" Everyone was silent. "How about that?"
"I should feel pretty stupid right about now," the Gazelle said.
I looked over to Dinah and said, pointing to the Dinah with the villains, "I don't suppose that's the evil Dinah?" She looked at me and smiled, teeth showing. "Yeah, didn't think so." Then she merged into her. "Ale."
"What did you expect from a copy of your own enemy?" Mr. Fear said, chuckling.
"What?!" I exclaimed.
"That's right. She is a part of the Masked Mutant."
"Wow. Didn't see that coming," Feedback muttered.
"You're slower than I thought," Mr. Fear said, pacing the floor with Dinah in hand. "Did you not notice how the two were so alike? The outfit colors, their personalities, their abilities to shapeshift into anything, the fact that they knew Skips here because they met a long time ago?" Then he looked at me, his eyes blazing fire. "I seem to recall that you liked her at one point."
I tilted my head in confusion. "I don't like her. I don't even know her."
Laughing, he walked over to Ale and placed his free hand on her scarf. "Do you?" With one tug, he yanked it off, then removed the glasses. My eyes widened. "You?"
Under his cloak and hat, the dark man grinned. "The Masked Mutant explained that you were friends with that girl the first time he met you. When he was disguised as that girl. So I thought to myself, why not take a piece of the Mutant and give it form and shape along with the memories of the time he was with you?"
"Libby?"