Upbeats 2: Crime After Crime

  Chapter Two

  It all started on a rainy, autumn day about a month ago.

  The entire ninth grade was going on a field trip to the zoo.

  I found it hard to be thrilled about it: I have never been much of a zoo person. I just never really liked the idea of walking around and reading random facts about animals in enclosures and habitats that were not their own.

  But I wasn't going to complain about this trip because the zoo barely had any animals in it anyway: construction had not been completed yet.

  So, in all truth, it was just going to be a trip to an unfinished building, which was someday going to be a zoo.

  (And, seriously, do you know any kid on this planet that wouldn't jump at the chance to get a day off school?)

  The field trip was not well planned, though. Besides the destination consisting of an incomplete zoo, another problem arose when we arrived at the zoo.

  Only when the sea of ninth graders and a handful of teachers were all standing around the zoo lobby, dripping wet and shivering cold from the pouring rain outside, did the organizers of the field trip realize that there were too few teachers to shepherd the swarm of kids.

  The brilliant solution was to revert to the old buddy system.

  The plan was beautiful in its simplicity: groups of four kids could go their separate ways, meander freely amongst the few enclosures that had been completed and inhabited and observe the builders working hard on the "Under Construction" areas.

  None of the groups had assigned leaders. But Luke Rosenhart, a tall boy with neat-but-ruffled white blonde hair and the kind of green eyes that tell you he is sensible and responsible, automatically became our leader.

  He never said a thing and we never voted, but he's just one of those people you immediately turn to when you're in trouble, you need someone to look up to, or you don't know what to do next.

  His doofus of a friend, Ned Detwiler, was in our group as well. Ned is Luke's complete opposite. Luke is fair and Ned is from African descent, Luke is realistic and Ned believes that only bad things can happen to him, Luke is sensible and serious and Ned can crack a joke when he's bound, gagged and about to be thrown over a cliff.

  The selection was random: you didn't know who you were going to get stuck with. So I considered myself lucky when my long-time good friend, Robyn Diaz, got in with my group.

  Robyn is short with long, dark brown hair, tanned skin and brown, almond shaped eyes. Like Luke and Ned, Robyn may be my friend, but we're opposites at the same time. I'm fearless, and she's afraid of everything. She is soft, shy, a bookworm and loves exploring the woods around her house. And me? I read only if I have to, "soft" is an adjective no one who knows me uses in my description and I keep getting lost in the woods.

  Robyn sits quietly, observes, and notices every little detail and I can't even see what's right in front of my face half the time.

  And Robyn sticks up for loners.

  All kids assigned to a group and we were ready to head off.

  Just before we left, however, the teacher in charge, Ms Ling, realized a slight miscalculation.

  One kid had gone uncounted.

  Smithy.

  He moved to Rockwell about a month or two earlier but managed to remain below the radar. Because he never said anything and kept to himself, no one bothered with him. I don’t even think the teachers acknowledged his existence.

  To tell you the complete truth: I didn't trust Smithy right from the moment I learnt of his existence.

  What does he have that he has to hide? Why doesn’t he ever say anything?

  But Luke, our team leader, allows him to be in this team-(and insists we trust each other)-so I have to keep my suspicions to myself until I can prove anything.

  Robyn, just about the only one whoever does trust Smithy, invited him to join us.

  So, the five of us went wandering around.

  When we got to the reptile enclosure, the historic event that led to our careers as protectors of planet Earth took place.

  Bees (that's right: bees) chased us.

  (Bees have been known to make hives in buildings so it's not that odd that there were bees there. They would have continued their peaceful existence had I not come along and aggravated them.)

  So we did what any sane person confronted by outraged, ready-to-sting bees would have done.

  We ran, with no clear destination in mind, like a bunch of idiots.

  And that directionless run led us straight into the unfinished hippo habitat.

  Desperate and not thinking clearly, we followed Ned and jumped into the artificial lake to escape what could have been the most painful and uncountable series of bee stings ever delivered to a batch of fourteen year olds.

  Little did we know that the previous night, an alien had crash-landed into the lake and some... stuff... spilt into the water.

  He called them Amepips, which is Martian, I think, for superpowers.

  The alien was Joncelrin System of the Systematic Home World.

  Despite the image you may have in your mind, he is not green with a little antenna and black eyes.

  He's actually a skunk. He looks identical to Earth skunks... except for the fact that he walks and talks like humans... and he's about a hundred times smarter than us.

  Once he had introduced himself (and demonstrated his alien-ness by shape shifting from a normal human boy to a skunk), System explained the purpose of his little visit to Earth.

  System had discovered an evil villain's plot to wipe out the human race. He tried to get help from his people, but, once that failed, he took it upon himself to come to Earth, band together a team of superheroes and stop the villain.

  The villain's name is Gemini. System showed us a holographic picture that day we met him and I've see Gemini for myself once after that.

  The first thought that sprang to my mind when I laid eyes on that evil maniac was... "He looks so human. How can he be evil?"

  The picture showed him to be a tall, athletic man, probably in his thirties or forties, with black hair and silvery grey eyes. All of us were stunned when we realized just how much Gemini resembled Smithy. They could be brothers or something.

  Gemini looks so human that it deceives you into believing he is human.

  And I don’t understand it, but it's somewhat easy to glance over the left side of his face, which is covered with metal, the only obvious sign he's not human.

  He wanted to destroy the human race. He didn't believe that humans should keep living... not when we don't appreciate our beautiful home, carry on ruining it and go on fighting one another for no true reason.

  Okay, you will never hear me say that I don't agree with him… but let's not forget: I'm not the one trying to gas the entire planet here!

  We nearly had him. The Intergalactic Police were all ready to take him away to some secure prison in space, lock him up and throw away the key.

  Only problem being... he escaped.

  So, now he was out there, somewhere, anywhere, and we had to find him and stop him before he tried to kill us all again.

  Yes, it's true I said earlier that I am fearless, brave and afraid of nothing, zip, nada.

  But... there was something that scared me, deep down.

  It was the horrifying thought that if the Upbeats were too late in finding Gemini before he tried to get rid of humans again...

  Well, no one would ever wake up to another Saturday morning, to say the least.

  It was a lot to put on the shoulders of a bunch of fourteen year olds.

  In the meantime, however, I was determined not to let the responsibility cripple me.

  I was going to be normal.