JMJ

Ace in a Hole

Chapter One

I can read, so what?

It was one week since we had gone back to being like normal human beings. We had escaped Mojo Jojo, the whacked mad scientists, and the Powerpuff Girls. Most police were still in that hole in the monkey's backyard. Our hideout was waiting. We were free men. And yet… we all knew it could never go back to normal.

I had never thought about it much— us going green and all. Of course I knew it was the stuff we were given all those years ago— well, three-ish years ago. It was green. It made us green. We mutated. We were a little stronger, a little more resilient. You know. We were no Powerpuff Girls. We weren't even Mojo, but we were something. Something hard to catch for normal people. Something that made us able to eat what we wanted, drink what we wanted, and recover fast from internal and external injuries including gut punching throws without having to go to the hospital, much less having to go home and give up.

But now…?

How long had we sat round that table unmoved? Well, practically since we got there. Unlike when we were green it was a tougher thing to do too. I was so stiff in the joints I caught myself wondering for the first time what an old man felt after his prime was over. Had to be similar.

Mortality seemed to sink on me like the sun setting outside. The fact that I was making poetry in my mind too told me think it was either time to make the gang a music band or to start getting things done before it was too late. As much as I'd been told since an early age that I had a natural ear for music and the potential of a strong singer, I was not ready to give up my hedonistic laze. I didn't want an audience. I wanted people making way for me as I passed. I didn't want a following. I wanted to prove a point.

It was funny to realize that when I was fourteen this seemed pretty easy, but after taking what I now learned was a form of Chemical X, I knew that the only reason why I had been able to get away with Gangreen for so long was because of the green itself. Sure, I'd known it before, but I had not felt it like I did now. It was more than the feeling of an addict on withdrawal. It was like I had just survived from a disease and I was never going to be the same again after something was amputated. Like I had half a lung, or an artificial heart valve or even some sort of motor damage to the brain that I compensated for but could never fully overcome.

Slowly, I blinked, looking at Big Billy drooling over the table where he slumped and took up at least a third of the surface. Snake was drumming his long spidery fingers nervously and avoiding eye contact with anyone. Grubber was asleep and snoring loudly. Lil' Arturo was picking at a sliver coming out of the table; he was making it a gouge by scratching it with his indestructible comb.

They were normal.

Sometimes I had had to do a double-take when looking at them, but this time I just frowned. Without the green they looked like a bunch of sulky kids in detention fearing when their parents' would show up. I didn't want to think about what that made me, but as there was no parent or teacher coming I was the only one who could put a stop to this despairing waste of a scene.

I didn't believe in giving into angst!

I slammed the table.

"What are we all just sittin' around here for, huh?" I demanded.

Again the little sissy school kids jumped chicken at the idea of me calling on them with or without their hands raised.

"But Boththththth—" Snake began but cleared his throat and stopped.

His hissing was more like spitting now without his Chemical X mutation; it was obviously a hard thing to remember for him. The fact that some of that spittle got on me made him second-guess his protest. He shrunk back a little, but aside from narrowing my eyes behind my signature sunglasses, I didn't react to the spitting. We lived with Grubber for three years, I mean, one gets used to spit.

I wanted Snake to finish. I really, really did. But the awkward silence and my steady stare was only making Snake more unwilling. He looked like he wanted to just shrivel out of his skin and slither under the table and into that big hole in the floor, but he couldn't do that very well. Not now, anyway.

"'But Boss' what?" I finally demanded.

"Nothing," said Snake shifting his eyes in every direction but back at mine.

"Oh, I think somethin'!" I warned.

"Billy hungry," Billy suddenly moaned; I guess since we started talking he decided it was time to voice the obvious.

After a yawn and smacking the roof of his mouth with his much more normal tongue, Grubber just looked at him amused with half-sleeping eyes. He licked his lips. Then he put his tongue back into his mouth. Despite its relative normalcy, it was one of the creepier things I ever saw him do, and my mouth was hanging open when I found myself. Blinking I clamped my own teeth together and turned carelessly back to Billy as I leaned back hard against my seat.

"Well, then go eat," I told him flinging a hand round my head with a shrug. "Do I look like your mom or something pushing your seat in at the dinner table with hotdogs and Brussels sprouts? No one's stoppin' ya."

Billy dropped his chin on the table with another moan, and he yawned too. The contagion of the yawn was epidemic in this room by this point making the rounds.

"Billy wish we was doing something like we used to do," he sighed.

"Pthzz. Plththttht, pfffzz, pth," said Grubber.

"Well, at least some things don't change," I muttered to myself; to the gang, I said, "And at least he has the guts to say what no one else here apparently does!"

No powers, more risk. Funny thing how we didn't even really know we had them till we lost them. We were different. Greener. Weirder. But I never thought of them as powers. I'm pretty sure no one else did either.

I looked around. Another pause.

"Ace, do you got an idea?" asked Arturo even his usually emotionless glazed eyes showed a little kid's pucker as he looked at me. All his hope was based on me.

I put my foot against a table leg and leaned me chair back farther until it hit the wall with a creak behind me.

"I'm workin' on one," I sniffed feeling a gnawing hunger myself that was getting hard to ignore.

"At least we don't have the Powerpuff Girls to worry about anymore," said Snake trying to sound optimistic.

He was afraid of being caught now by the police. He was probably afraid of a lot of things. So was everyone else.

Billy started chomping on something. I couldn't tell if it was jerky or a piece of leather at first, but then I noticed it was a picture of a roast beef from a magazine. I winced, watching him a moment. Then he spit it out. It wasn't edible, of course, but phew. He sure was hungry. He found a real bit of jerky after digging from a box behind him, but I was interested in the magazine that he ripped the picture of food from.

Pretty glossy like one of the National Geographic special things at the grocery store we use to pin up to throw darts at of the pictures of smarty scientists, baboon butts, and ideas for Mars bases five hundred years from now. This thing now was something Townsville only, though, even if it was scientific in nature. Don't know why there was a picture of roast beef on the page Billy was chewing, but as I looked at the unchewed page still open in the magazine, I read the words, "scientific research" half cut off in bold letters.

I snatched it up off the table in a second as I looked at the research facility. I'd seen it before. I was pretty sure I'd been there before— not for science but I noticed some good vending machines at academic type places. An idea started forming instantly in my mind as I read a few lines. Okay, some of the words were beyond my vocabulary, but I was smart enough to get the gist, and the gist was about Pr. Ex, the guy who made us what we were. Some geeks from this research facility with affiliations to the community college were going through his old stuff now that he was out of the picture.

"Bothsss!" he just managed to get through his teeth rather than his non-snaky tongue. "Are you actually reading a sssssssssciencccccce ma—?"

Smack.

Reflex on my part.

Snake, you know. It was the spittle. Really.

"Ow… !" he moaned after a few seconds.

It hurt more to get socked in the jaw than it used to, I'm sure. After a pause I winced myself. His jaw wasn't what I remembered either.

"Ow… !" I breathed suddenly unable to stop myself as I waved my injured hand.

"Now you have an idea, Ace!?" said Arturo.

"I'm gettin' closer…" I admitted as I read something about a scientist there who knew a thing or two about chemicals, and there was hint… just a hint, but I saw though it.

There was going to be some dangerous crap there. Maybe even something left of Chemical X. Sure, Chemical X was banned and all of it in the city was canceled out by that other professor with the Powerpuff Girls, but this stuff had been in a bunker. It might as well have been in a nuclear bomb shelter, and this guy Ex had been a genius. For the first time since I lost the green, I smiled an old Ace smile.

"We need more beef jerky," complained Billy.

"Nah," I said tossing the magazine aside and throwing my arm around the big lovable oaf. "Nah, you need to get yourself an education, Billy."

"Duh… what's a etch-okay-shun?"

"It's an etching on a diploma that makes you ready for a bachelor's degree that expands your mind, Billy my boy, and I think you just Aced the SAT, Saturday night 101 first day to get you accepted into the school that'll take you to the place where no one dares shun. I call it 'Getting your master's degree' from the ex-scientist's doctorate!"

Billy stared. "Duh…"

I patted his shoulder.

"Are you feeling okay there, Boss?" asked Arturo studying me very hard.

At least I had all their attention now. I beamed proudly upon them feeling very good about myself for having molded such a gang as this!

"Summer vacation's over, guys! I'm feeling like graduation day for the Gangreen Gang!"

#

Ah, nothing like a good old-fashioned falsie on the fire alarm. It was a little harder without Grubber in top form to voice on the loudspeaker or Snake able to slither under the cameras, but we managed. There was still fooling stupid kids to do stuff for you, which we found able and ready for a prank, and I'm sure that kid's in trouble for life and whatnot, but as all the professional personnel stepped out, we stepped in. We blocked cameras with candle flames close up to them to look like massive dangerous flames. It was genius, I felt.

Once that was taken care of we slipped into the basement where Ex's old stuff was hiding and with one more candle blocking the last camera we were free to hunt through the crates, piles and shelves. Apparently there was not just Ex's stuff in here. There was all sorts of geeky stuff from all over the place.

Hadn't quite anticipated that, but I was not gunna let that bog me down. Just had to hunt more. There had to be something. Anything.

"Come on, come on!" I urged my hands.

Sirens echoed.

"Thothe don't thsssound like fire truckssss, Ace!" Snake hissed trying not to spit.

I frowned.

"It's the police," said Arturo.

I put my hand to my chin.

I didn't want this whole thing to go to waste, but the police stopping here without the fire trucks meant someone figured us out. Maybe not having the Powerpuff Girls to rely on anymore really had made the fuzz pick up their game. But there was a grate in the floor, at least.

"There!" I said. "As soon as we hear someone coming to the door we slip down there. Just keep lookin'."

"Uh, Billy found this shiny thing," said Billy.

"I think that's a beaker," muttered Arturo.

"Oh."

"Billy found this lumpy thing."

"That's a gum eraser," grumbled Snake.

"Oh."

"Not gum, Billy!" I huffed.

"Oh…" Billy spit it back out.

Grabber was dumping out crates and scattering everything about.

"Hey, Boss, look! Look! Look! Big Billy find this!"

"Billy! That's a pen!" I snapped.

Then Grubber stiffened. I turned to him in an instant. Even without the chemicals, Grubber was something else. Like a hunting dog. Like a hunting dog's master, I was instantly in tune to his cocking head and intense listening.

Before I could ask, Grubber swept his hand towards the grate.

"C'mon!" I hissed.

That's when we heard the banging on the door. I couldn't help but turn. We couldn't be too late already!

No.

We hadn't exactly locked it, but we had so much stuff thrown up against the door that apparently it was holding off the pursuers. At least fortune was with us there for a few minutes, but just as I was turning back for the grate, I rammed face-first into Billy. I gotta tell ya, it felt like ramming into a boxboard. The wind was knocked clean out of me, but I never had a chance to feel faint as a stumbled back. Cold, wet, gooey something woke me up like a snow drift in July.

I was swallowed right into it like being sucked into a sinkhole. For that split second I was so mixed-up I hardly had time to feel pain or fear or anything. I just fell right through this blanket of gelatin-like substance and the next second I was out in free air colliding with the floor.

At least it was normal even if it hurt.

I almost felt like I had woken from some kind of trance, but I was still in the same predicament as before. Those people trying to push open the door were almost in. Half the gang was already half way through the open grate, and I was rolling off my back with a wheeze. I looked up at where I had fallen from. There was some kind of frame like a place to beat carpets or hang dried slabs of beef, and dripping from the corners of it was a gooey gelatin-like stuff like the stuff that comes out of some ice packs when you slice them open, except more kind of yellowish than blue. It was all around me and in my mouth and nose and—

But I didn't have time for that.

"Stop right there!" someone was barking on the other side of the door.

"Guys!" I growled but it came out more like a squeak.

I coughed up some of the goop and spit some out.

"Ace!" cried Snake and Arturo in almost unison. Grubber grabbed me and Billy pushed me.

We all went tumbling into the grate, landing painfully in the dark recesses beyond.

We didn't have time to assess anything else about our situation. No one had time to ask me if I was okay, and I didn't bother blaming anyone. We raced into the sewers as fast as we could, taking turns here and there and everywhere we knew would lose most pursuers. I knew this labyrinth pretty well, actually, but after the initial adrenaline, I could still feel it. That stuff was squishing in between my toes, it was blurring my eyes. It was in my ears making everything echo like underwater.

I was almost ready to jump right into the sewage to get it off, but I was not quite that desperate.

We didn't stop running till we got back to a safe zone really close to the dump. Home sweet home, I guess, and I guess I can't speak for everyone else, but I collapsed on the ratty couch as soon as I got to it through the shack door. Feeling really dizzy I just passed out.