The Marvels #1 : The Marvel of Water

Chapter 15

The marvels 12-hour deadline over, Barco noted, “Well now the Rebels can attack us. Do you think the Power know we broke the treaty?”

Inferno held up his hand, “Look at this,” he showed them a Power newspaper, and the front page it read, “Marvel breaks up with Rebels?!” Just then, the newspaper promptly burned up in Inferno’s hand. He blushed (a patch of his fiery body turned slightly redder than the already roaring orange flames of his body) and said, “Sorry.”

Barco glanced at the lonely highway as they traveled along the Barge Canal Highway. “Well, I’m sure the Rebels are pretty tight with us. They probably won’t attack us the minute the 12 hours are up!”

Dynamo waved his arms around. Barco ducked to avoid a shocking current of electricity. “The Rebels did try to shot us, didn’t they-” Dynamo barely finished his sentence when he froze up. “What’s the matter-” Tornado the wind marvel froze up too. Even Polaris the ice marvel kind of seized up. Barco glanced around, “What is going-” He stood still. He tried to move his muscles, but nothing worked. He tried to control the water, but he couldn’t. All his mind could think of was that horrible smell that was prickling his senses. The smell was not particularly bad, but something about it disabled them so they couldn’t move. Barco’s tongue tried to move, but he couldn’t speak either. Over the rise of a hill, a troop of man walked down. They were Rebels. “Looks like Dynamo was right…” thought Barco.

Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher. Sadly, he did not come back to life. No, Socrates Tupid was a Rebel. He invented stuff to capture Powers, or in this case Marvels. He hated his name. He wished he could change it, but it was too funny for anybody to want to change it. He himself hated it. Why? Because on a business card it would read, “S.tupid” That didn’t really help with one’s reputation. However, a one minute conversation with Mr. Tupid would show that he was anything, but stupid. He was a genius. His recent invention was ‘Smell Tubes’. The Smell Tubes or Smelts as they were often referred to, basically used the gasses and smells to manipulate the brain signals accordingly. The Smelts were about the size of a pencil tube (you know for those Smelly Pencil things?). On the top was a plastic top or cork, and the bottle a piece of metal that stuck in the Smelts. On the metal was several microchips and holes. The metal bottom generated the smell. Mr. Tupid had also invented a unit of measurement: Smell per Particle or SAP. The metal generator made 100 SAP’S per hour, and the smell was released out of the tube at a rate of 50 SAP’S per minute. It only takes one SAP to paralyze or do whatever the Smelt smell was supposed to do for one minute. The Smelts can hold 500 SAP’S in all. (Mr. Tupid tried to increase it, but it was on such short notice.) On the tube Mr. Tupid and his workers were carrying, it read on the cork: Paralyzing Smelt. On the tube itself the message was repeated. So when the marvels instantly got a whiff of the Smelt smell, they were paralyzed. (Sorry about the long science lecture.) Cackling evilly, Mr. Tupid explained his newest invention. (Imagine having all that information told to you by your formal allies!)

Barco retorted, “Sure thing STUPID!” But naturally, he couldn’t talk. Since Socrates had 16 workers (counting himself), he let each marvel have 2 Smelts. That meant 1000 SAP’S in all. So they were paralyzed for 1.666666666666666666666666 days. Barco rolled his eyes as Socrates bragged about his capture, but frankly bragging about capturing the world’s most dangerous organism while inlaying statistics was quite boring. But again, Barco couldn’t roll his eyes. As the last of the smell wafted out of the tube, they corked it again. “The Smelt will generate more SAP’S!” explained Socrates. Then he paused and said, “No last words?”

Of course Barco tried to say, “DIE YOU STUPID… S.TUPID!” But he couldn’t. (Again!) Socrates sneered, “Ah, cat got your tongue? ‘Tis a pity.” Barco refrained himself from saying, “I can’t speak anyways!! By the way, no one says ‘Tis’ anymore!” Two burly henchmen dragged the marvels to a large prison van (probably stolen.)

The people who captured the Marvels were the Rebels of Albany. Albany is the capital of New York, although New York City isn’t. It would take 2 days for them to arrive since S. Tupid kept insisting on showcasing the captured marvels to show that he was far from being stupid. However, he forgot that the Smelt had worn off, and the by the evening of the second day, the Marvels were discussing their escape.

“Oh great, just my luck to be captured again,” groaned Barco.

Dynamo scowled, “Hey, we all got captured plenty of times. Don’t you complain.”

Erebus interrupted, “Ladies, ladies, you’re both pretty! Now can we find a way out of here?”

Smirking, Dynamo said, “Watch this water marvel.” He wiggled back and forth before ungainly flopping to the ground with his head touching the floor.

“Real smooth,” Barco muttered sarcastically. Then he gasped with surprise as the noisy engine stopped humming. All the energy used to run the car was going to the marvel of… well energy! All charged up like a battery, Dynamo broke the stringy ropes that bounded him. He cut the other marvels ropes, and then shouted, “Stuff them up your noses! Stupid guy is bound to using his Smelt thingys again.”  

Sure enough, the door of the van was opened. Stupid lifted a Paralyzing Smelt in the air, excepting the marvels to fall to the ground. But nothing happened. The next that happened was rather… well stupid. To test if the Smelt was working, Socrates lifted the Smelt to his nose and took a long nice sniff. He tumbled to the ground, body stiff as a board. The Smelt rolled from his hand, and the deadly smell emptied into the nostrils of his workers. They all came crashing to the ground. Barco yanked the rope out of his nose and nimbly stepped over the paralyzed workers. He glanced outside and saw they were in the city radius of Albany, but still in the outskirts. Glancing forward, he saw a lake. He sat down on the ground and concentrated. He imagined the waters eyes were his eyes, and his eyes were the water’s eyes. Slowly, he saw what the lake water could see. The water led down in a long river before finally going into the Hudson River, which of course emptied into New York where the Journey was docked. 

“Guys! I have a way to get to New York!” shouted Barco. “I’ll summon a boat and urge the water to make it go faster. That way, we can surf the river quickly and arrive in New York in no time!”

Dynamo again scowled and said, “No way. I hate water.”

Barco shrugged, “You had your moment of shine, now it’s my turn!”

“Oh, this is all about you isn’t it?”

“Actually, I’m just trying to help us all with this boat idea. It’s your stubbornness that’s not.”

“Who rescued all of us when we were captured? ME!”

“Well, in my opinion any energy marvel is Youngling!” (A marvel takes 30 days to develop. 10 days for them to hatch from their Marvel Pods or Jelly Eggs as they are sometimes called, 20 days for them to learn. After 30 days, they go through a Change, in which their bodies are enveloped in an oblique jelly. On the 31st day, they come out bigger, as a real marvel. To be called a youngling which is before a marvel goes through the Change is a huge insult to marvels that aren’t younglings.)

Fuming, Dynamo shot a giant ball of energy at Barco. Reacting quickly, Barco sent a burst of water to combat the energy. As any good reader of my story would know, combining two different types of marvel energy results in a Marvel Pod (what we call babies!) This often happens in combat unintentionally, like it just did. A blue and yellow ball of energy formed, and then solidified into a single Jelly Egg. Gasping, Luciana the light marvel gasped, “You, are soooo immature.”

Now burdened with an extra marvel (who was defenseless for one more month) the tired marvel trudged on, deciding that going on the boats was the best idea.