After School Villains Club (2)

Speedbuild

Claire Lutre

We didn't get to build the new machine that day, Penny was chafing at the bit to build something, especially now all the parts were gathered; except Penny had to reassure her parents.
Ray and Garfield stayed at the lab and worked to set everything up, while planning to have a boys night together. 'Changeling' as he was now being called, knew his way back to my place and would likely arrive later.

Arriving back Home, backpack on, bear feet skating along suburban streets I looked all the world like a kid returning from the park or a library. Running over the lawn I stopped. Lately mother had started laying booby-traps, the glory of training to be a cat burglar. Nothing dangerous, just noise machines. If I set any off I'd have left overs instead of cooked meals tonight.
Instead of going to the front door I went to the back, a polite entrance and an older lock. Squatting and getting out my picks I used my favourite lever and carefully clicked the well rehearsed pins into place. Carefully turning the knob I heard a click.

Good enough, fishing into my bag for string I hooked it to the knob, fed it up to a bar around the eves then proceeded to climb the drainpipe to the second story.
Any of the obvious doors would not only be trapped but mom would be waiting on the other side to catch me.

From my bedroom window I shimmied the catch, checking for sensors and carefully pushed it open enough to spray perfume through.
Yep this window was trapped too, only one thing for it, entering through the roof!

Pulling the string tied to the back door I heard it click, with luck mom would check that out.
I got all the way to the living room when mom caught me!

"Young lady, i hope your planning to fix whatever you broke to sneek in."
"I didn't break anything!" I responded, "Just removed a few roof tiles and dropped in. Left the manhole off, so I can close up as I leave!"
Miss Lutre, my mother, stood there in bunny slippers, the latest fashion denim jeans and a t- shirt that read 'Too soon?'. I could only hope to look like her when I was older, she had the perfect figure perfect hair and an annoyed expression.

"How about chicken tonight?" She responded. We had parmigiana and Greek salad with icecream floats for dinner! But before that I was made to replace the roof tiles.

The next afternoon, after Penny had reassured her parents that she wasn't 400 miles performing criminal activities, and I'd dealt with the loose ends of our captured patsies, we met up at the lab for the big build. Ray had already set up and Penny was getting ahead by extruding some plastic casing.

"So, the news this morning is all over the fact that our new conqueror orb is a warrior class, and only deactivated not damaged." I chided Penny as I arrived.
"Ray had already been at me about that!" Was Penny's response, I looked around for Garfield.
"Also, did you boys spend a night? Garfield never came back to mine."

A voice interrupted the thought from above. "Yeah, we watched movies and talked a lot!" Looking around for a bit, I struggled to find our animal. "I was trying to decide whether to tell you girls something important. If I'm to keep living with you and stuff I needed to know how you'd react"
Penny snerked back a laugh, "They've been acting cryptic since I got here, got the feeling this was important to him so I didn't ask."

That was when an actual boy walked out of the back room. He held a walky-talky, no doubt its pair was strapped to the ceiling. He wore skinny jeans, one of Ray's old black t-shirts and had messy hair and green skin.
Penny and I gaped at him slack jawed as Ray walked up and draped an arm over his shoulder.

"Ladies, this handsome young lad here is our Garfield Logan. The short story he told me last night is that he'd been in animal form since losing his family."
The boy nodded, "After working with you and all you did for me Claire, making me part of your home. I felt I owed you some honesty!"

I nodded, stared at Penny, who was still in shock. To be fair, Garfield was actually hot! I elbowed Penny, "Your line is, 'thank you for trusting us'". I prompted and she recovered.

"Aah, thank you for trusting us?" She hedged. "Seriously though, wow. That is definitely a change!"
An awkward silence spread, and Ray was the one to interrupt it. "I know, Pity me my luv, I had to go home and bring clothes back here so Garf wouldn't be naked." He slipped casually from his position by Garfield, to slipping his arm around Penny's waist. "But now we have a charming new team-mate. Who could help with a building montage?"

"Yes!" Penny declared, and we organised around her.

The conqueror orb was stripped, Penny carefully using the machine to strip out sections in chunks. Some of those were left misshapen, others formed into small crystals and mounted with gold and tin components. A large chunk, where the eye of the orb and main weapon was housed was carefully put aside. No doubt for a later project.

Working together, with Penny barking instructions at intervals five pillars were assembled, each four feet tall, but with extendable poles to increase their height and connected to a central hub. via some wireless network. The largest chunk of conqueror was mounted with wires feeding in and out of the system into a sixth device, placed near the back of the lab.

Halfway through the build the power from the orb kicked in and, part of the room suddenly had holographic versions of Garfield and Myself wondering around, replaying our earlier actions. Progressively, as the rest of the pillars came online and the monitoring system booted up the room was filled with echoes of our past movements, wondering around in high definition holograms.

"Alright Minions and Henchmen! What would you like? Remember that our theme is toys and whatever I build next we want to make more of!" Penny clapped her hands together eagerly, the hologram slowly watching up. "The Mad scientist wants to BUILD NOW!" she yelled. The pillars ran around the outside of the room blinked, the holograms cutting out. From now on everything within the lab was being recorded. She grinned, mad science goggles on we grinned back.

"How about stuff straight out of the Teddy Bears and Machine Guns game?" I enquired.
"Sure, let's make a list!"