“This is what people wore in 1987?” she asked.
“We’re not in 1987. We’re in 1977,” Heathcliff said.
“1977? Why did you send us so far back?”
“That was my idea,” Brand said. “A girl with superallergies, a boy genius, and a spy with a bum leg are no match for five superpowered kids and a crazy woman. We need help from kids who know how to handle these kinds of situations. Unfortunately, the NERDS team of 1987 was trapped in an ice prison by Dr. Frostbite that summer. So we’re going to recruit some new teammates—namely, the greatest NERDS team ever assembled. The first one.”
“You mean Four Eyes, Macramé, Ghost, Beanpole, and Static Cling?” Ruby cried as her heart did a backflip. She had studied the case files; she knew everything about every agent who had ever been in NERDS. If there was a team that could help them with the BULLIES, it was the NERDS of 1977.
Rupert P. Breckinridge III looked at his teammates and grimaced. They were a collection of sharp elbows, bony knees, runny noses, scabs, and insecurity. If their job was to protect the world, then the world was in serious trouble.
“Is there no better way to get into this facility? This is insanity!” Special Director Preston shouted after a tube had deposited him into a leather chair.
Rupert had been in that tube himself, and he knew it wasn’t a fun ride, nor was cramming into the locker to get to it.
Preston retrieved a shoe that had come off during the trip, then took off his horn-rimmed glasses and rubbed them on his pant leg. One of his pens was leaking in the pocket of his white short-sleeved work shirt. A piece of toilet paper was stuck to the back of the poor man’s pant leg. Rupert sighed. The boss was a bigger nerd than his agents.
“In three weeks, the school above this facility will open and you will begin attending classes with the rest of the children. When that day comes, the five of you will be officially activated and sent on missions, so we need to double-time your training. Let’s get back to our karate practice.” He took out a book titled Karate for Beginners and flipped through its pages.
Rupert wondered, not for the first time, why Preston had been put in charge of a group of superpowered agents. Sure, he was a spy—but most of his work had been in code breaking. He had no practical mission experience, no hand-to-hand combat training, and his karate knowledge came from watching Hong Kong Phooey cartoons.
“Aww, man!” came a predictable whine from Carmello Gotti, an Italian kid so pudgy he might have been made out of dough. Rupert had heard that before being recruited onto the team, Carmello hadn’t so much as thrown a ball. Now he had special implants in his gigantic round hairdo that fired massive blasts of static electricity. “Can’t we do something else? My parents are getting suspicious of all the bruises.”
“No, they’re not. They assume what everyone else assumes—that Billy Dunkleman is beating you up again,” came the sharp, sarcastic voice of May Price. Her wit was almost as fast as her fingers, which were supercharged with special gloves, allowing her to knit anything she could imagine out of yarn. Preston called her Agent Macramé.
“Burn!” Mikey Buckley said as he burst into laughter. He was as skinny as a cornstalk and had a brain for technology. He still hadn’t chosen a code name he considered cool enough but was toying around with “Fantastic Boy.”
“You guys are mean,” Minnie Dupont said. The tiny girl pressed a button on her jacket and vanished. Agent Ghost had a very cool power, and as far as Rupert could tell, she was the only one with a skill that could be valuable for spying. Unfortunately, she was brutally shy.
“People! We need to focus,” Director Preston said meekly, but he was ignored while the agents argued for another ten minutes.
Rupert sighed. The NERDS were never going to become a team. They didn’t even like one another, and all of them had scored zero on the self-confidence meter. It was a shame, really. When Rupert was recruited, he was sure the group would change his life. But it looked like he was headed back to the mundane world he came from, the one where he was chased home everyday by Matt Phaltz, the psychopath who enjoyed ripping the waistbands out of Rupert’s Fruit of the Looms. Well, Rupert liked his waistbands. He refused to go back!
What they needed was a James Bond type, a leader, someone the others could respect. If Preston couldn’t motivate the team, Rupert would do it himself. He flipped down one of the many lenses on his special glasses and a blast of white energy shot out of his eyes, causing a nearby wall to crumble.
“QUIET!” he shouted. “You kids are the most intolerable, unprofessional, frustrating, lazy, and cranky dweebs I have ever met. Mr. Preston has tried everything—pep talks, being your friend, being your enemy, being a drill instructor, begging, bribery—and none of it has worked. You bicker endlessly. You skip training sessions. You aren’t even sure how to use your gadgets. You treat this headquarters like it’s some kind of … some kind of playground!”
Preston blinked. “Yeah!” he cried.
Rupert pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and looked around. “You might be perfectly happy to go out on a mission and get yourselves killed, but I have no plans to join you. So here’s the deal: Take this seriously or quit and go back to being the pathetic, bullied misfits you were six weeks ago.”
The threat seemed to have the desired affect. The thought of having to return to their normal lives, without the gadgets, was more than the NERDS could imagine. Each one tried to stand a little taller.
“Goodness gracious!” Preston shouted when he discovered his ruined shirt. “Let’s take five while I find something else to wear.”
He dashed off, leaving the children alone.
“OK, he’s useless,” Rupert said. “So if we’re going to learn to fight, it’s up to us. Each one of us has a skill, and if we work together, we can be unstoppable. That’s why they chose us. So let’s get back to training! Who’s with me?”
Rupert could have heard a pin drop.
Minnie raised her hand. “Um, I gotta get going.”
“Yeah, me too,” added May. “The Gong Show is on in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ve got work to do on Benjamin,” Mikey said.
“Are you still working on that stupid calculator?” May asked.
The boy grew defensive. “It’s called a computer, and someday it will be a huge asset. I’m programming it with all the knowledge of one of America’s greatest spies—Benjamin Franklin. It’s going to talk, and think, and help with mission reports. I’ve already figured out how to make it fly!”
He pressed a button and a massive machine at the far end of the room let out a chorus of screaming gears as it rose off the floor: one inch, then two, then three—then it came crashing to the floor.
“Way to go, Fantastic Boy,” Carmello quipped.
The team shuffled toward the exit tubes.
Rupert took one of the tubes up to his locker. The hallway was empty except for a crew of janitors screwing in lightbulbs and touching up paint jobs in preparation for the first day of school. He was glad something was almost ready.
“Hey, Four Eyes!” a voice shouted the moment Rupert stepped outside the school.
Rupert cringed. It was Matt Phaltz!
He took off running without looking back but could hear Phaltz and his friends running close behind. They were shouting and laughing as they chased him down the street.
“Leave me alone,” he cried, but they ignored his plea. He made a sharp turn at the corner and was nearly home when he tripped over a garden hose someone had left lying on the sidewalk. He fell hard, bruising his knees and wrists, and before he knew it, the bullies were on top of him, trying to de-pants him right there in the middle of the street.
“C’mon, guys! Leave me alone,” he begged. The thought occurred to him to flip his laser lense down on his glasses and blast the bullies to kingdom come, but he and the others had vowed not to use their gadgets on civilians. It would blow their cover, and their devices were too dangerous. But that didn’t me
an he had to take a beating.
He pulled his fist back and swung. Matt Phaltz went sprawling across the sidewalk with a puffy eye. The only problem was, Rupert had missed. His fist had never connected with the bully.
Dumbfounded, Rupert looked around just in time to see Phaltz’s toadie Mitch crumple to the ground, followed by Ty and Paulie—all at the hands of a nerdy girl with glasses and poofy yellow hair, a redheaded kid who was probably half the size of Phaltz, and a man in a black tuxedo, holding a cane.
The girl smiled. “I hope you don’t mind, Four Eyes. I’m allergic to bullies.”
“Who are you?” Rupert asked.
“Ruby Peet, and let me say what an honor it is to meet one of the greatest members of NERDS that ever lived. I’ve read all your files and—”
Rupert flipped the laser lens on his glasses and prepared to fight. His secret was out, and clearly these enemy agents had been sent to kill him and the others. “I don’t know who you are, but you won’t take me alive,” Rupert said. He’d heard someone say that on an episode of S.W.A.T. It seemed appropriate.
“We’re not here to hurt you, Rupert,” the boy said.
Rupert could feel the heat in his glasses as his laser prepared to fire. “I asked you who you are. Someone better start talking!”
The man hobbled forward. “My name is Agent Alexander Brand, and I’m the director of the National Espionage, Rescue, and Defense Society from the twenty-first century.”
“The twenty-first century!”
“Some bad guys are coming and only you can help us stop them,” Ruby said.
“How can I help you? I don’t get activated for three weeks!”
“We need you, pal,” their redheaded friend said. “And we need your team—the greatest fighting force the world has ever seen.”
“Next thing she’s going to tell us is she’s from outer space. Do you know Luke Skywalker, too?” Carmello said when Rupert’s team had reassembled to hear Ruby, Agent Brand, and Heathcliff plead their case.
“Wow, you are even more annoying than your file suggests,” Ruby said to the boy.
“If you’re NERDS from the future, show us your gadgets,” May said.
Ruby looked at Heathcliff, then back at the kids. “We don’t have gadgets. We’re the gadgets. I’m filled with these things called nanobytes and—”
“Nano-what?” Minnie whispered.
“Microscopic robots that enhance our weaknesses,” Heathcliff said.
“Fascinating,” Mikey said.
“Oh, yeah?” Carmello said to Heathcliff. “What can you do?”
“Well, um … I used to have these big buck teeth and I could hypnotize anyone who looked at them, but they got knocked out and now I’m in between powers … but Ruby’s got superallergies,” Heathcliff said defensively.
“Superallergies!” Carmello shouted. “The future sounds pretty bogus. I’m going home to play Pong.”
Ruby stepped in front of Carmello. “All right, big guy. You want proof: Try to get past me.”
“I would never hit a girl or a person wearing glasses, and you’re both.”
Carmello tried to step past her, but Ruby stopped him with a punch to his flabby chest.
“Ow! That hurt!”
“Keep coming,” she said.
“I’m not fooling,” Carmello roared. “If you hit me again, I’ll—”
Before he could finish, Ruby slapped him in the face five times.
“I’m allergic to empty threats,” she said.
Carmello stomped his feet like an overgrown toddler. His face was red from anger and welts. “Fine!” he shouted, charging like an angry bull. Ruby leaped up and roundhouse-kicked him in the face. He fell down hard and stayed there.
“Let’s see her attack a smaller target,” Minnie said, activating her cloak.
Heathcliff watched Ruby move with lightning speed and land thunderous punches at what looked like nothing but air. She spun around and there was an “Oof.” She shot her knee upward and there was an “Aargh.” She jabbed a wicked uppercut and then there was a thump followed by a weak “I quit.”
When Minnie reappeared, she was on the floor with the beginnings of a black eye. “I believe her,” she croaked.
“This is a very important mission. The people we are going to confront are dangerous. Can we count on you?” Brand asked the bewildered kids.
Rupert nodded. “We’re in. We’ve only got one problem,” Rupert said. “We’re actually really lousy spies.”
“The worst,” Mikey said.
Ruby looked at Heathcliff and Agent Brand. “What can we teach them before I disappear?”
Heathcliff, Ruby, and Brand led the NERDS into a training room. Heathcliff was thrilled not only to meet such legends but also to feel like a full member of the team once again. Ruby was no longer giving him meaningless jobs to keep him busy.
Brand taught the children all he could about submission holds, pressure points, using leverage against opponents, and using their minds to combat muscles. His years of secret-agent training and knowledge of dozens of fighting styles were spread out before the freshman spies, and Heathcliff hoped they would take advantage of what they learned.
Ruby focused on intelligence, preparing the children for the environment they would soon visit and going over all the information about the BULLIES and Miss Information she had collected.
Heathcliff turned his attention to each of the children’s gadgets, helping them understand their capabilities, and even managed to find new ways to use them. Rupert could combine lenses to produce a bright flash that could temporarily blind an opponent. He expanded Macramé’s handiwork from yarn and knitting needles to rope and wire and even discovered she could chisel away at hardened concrete with her superfast hands. He taught Ghost how to expand her cloaking technology to hide other people and objects as big as cars. He taught Static Cling how to create a charge in his hair that he could hold and build in strength, making his electrical blast infinitely stronger. Mikey wanted to be known as Fantastic Boy for his ability to invent gadgets on the fly. Unfortunately, of all the agents, he was the most vulnerable in a fight.
“So,” Mikey said, grim-faced. They sat before a workstation he was using to create his inventions. “I sort of stink.”
Heathcliff shook his head. He knew exactly how Mikey felt. “No, you have the best gadget of the bunch. You’ve got a very imaginative brain. Your head will probably save the world more than the other gadgets combined. What have you been working on? Maybe there’s something here that you can use as a weapon.”
Mikey showed him a long stick with a claw on the end. When he pushed a button on its tip, the claw contracted. “It’s for getting things off of high shelves. I call it the Gator Grabber.”
“Um, probably not going to be much help unless your bad guy is hiding on top of a Christmas tree,” Heathcliff said. “What else?”
Mikey handed him what looked like a harpoon gun with a plunger on the end. “This is the Suction Gun. It’s also for getting things off of high shelves.”
“Right,” Heathcliff said as he tried to hide his nervousness. “You seem to have a thing about high shelves.”
“I’m tall, so everyone asks me to get things for them,” Mikey grumbled. “I build these things so people will leave me alone.”
“OK, but we need something that might be intimidating,” Heathcliff said.
“Oh! I got it!” Mikey scooped up what looked like a pair of Moon Boots made of metal. He slipped them on his feet and grinned. “What do you think? I call them Extend-o-boots. They’re designed to help you get—”
“—things off of high shelves?”
Mikey nodded, then frowned. “Yeah.”
Heathcliff forced a smile. “Maybe your skills are better suited for communications or planning.”
Mikey nodded. “Maybe you’re right.” He leaned over to take off the boots, and with a loud “Oops!” the boots extended him thirty feet off the ground on two spindly stilts. br />
Heathcliff craned his neck to look up at the boy. “Wow!”
“Sorry, the trigger is pretty sensitive,” Mikey said as the stilts lowered him back to the floor.
“How high can those go?”
“About forty feet,” the boy shouted. “But I could design them to go as high as a hundred. Why?”
“I think we’ve found something we can use,” Heathcliff said. “These amazing boots make you into some kind of butt-kicking beanpole. In fact, that would be a great code name for you—Agent Beanpole!”
The boy scowled as he descended to his normal height. “That’s the dumbest code name I’ve ever heard.”
“Well, they can’t all be winners. They used to call me Choppers—wait, what’s that?” Heathcliff asked, pointing to the massive silver box behind the desk.
“Benjamin!” Mikey cried. He pushed a button on the box’s side and it glowed with a blue light. “It’s called a computer. The other guys think I’m wasting my time, but someday it will help the team with its missions—if I can ever get it working.”
Heathcliff removed his backpack and took out the two halves of Benjamin he was trying to reassemble. “You’re not wasting your time.”
Mikey took the pieces and examined them closely. “This is my work. I mean, it’s super tiny, but this motherboard is my design! It works! Benjamin works!”
“Actually, it doesn’t at the moment. It’s damaged. I almost had it working again, but I had a setback,” Heathcliff said.
Mikey put on a set of goggles with thick lenses. “Well, it needs some wiring replacement, but I see a problem already. You’ve got a conductor in the wrong position.”
He took a set of tweezers and went to work on the robot’s inner workings. Heathcliff heard a click and then Mikey handed it back.