SG: Sporkman #22 - A New Spree - (DCB #7/12)

[Greg Fishbone]

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*  THE SPORKMAN LETTER COLUMN: READER Q&A
*
*  The Author reserves the right to excerpt, alter, or
*  invent all reader feedback presented in this feature.
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Q. If Number Thirty-One and Spoonstryke ever come into direct contact,
would there be an explosive cuteness/anti-cuteness reaction?

A. They're both extremely cute, so it would be more of an
acceptance/denial reaction.

A. But it would be explosive?

Q. You bet!


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**               The Sporkarific Sporkman
**               Episode #22: A New Spree
**                  By Greg R. Fishbone
**
**              Dillweed City Blues #7 of 12
**
** Mickey Dunne, a former child superhero, has reinvented
** himself as Sporkman, savior of the Supersonic Airship
** Unsplodable. Can he save the future by confronting the past?
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     The little red-haired girl stood at a ready stance with an
oh-so-cute pout on her lips. Her tiny fists shook ineffectually at the
store's general manager who was, at that moment, being dangled by the
lapels by a woman with pink hair and pixie ears. Around the three were
arrayed the twitching bodies of three checkout clerks, two mall
security guards, and a stockboy.

     "Let's try this again," said the pixyish woman, effortlessly
twirling the large man around like a rag doll. "My little sister wants
to know what your store's 'extreme cuteness discount' is, and it had
better be substantial."

     "Fifty percent! Sixty percent! A hundred percent!" the manager
pleaded. "Just take whatever you want an go!"

     "Yay, Tee-Tee!" The little girl jumped up and down like a sports
fan celebrating a game-winning score. "You're the best big sister
ever!"

     "Thank you, Number Thirty-One," said Tee-Tee, as she dumped the
store manager unceremoniously to the floor.

* * *

     "Quiet reading," the fifth grade teacher announced, and all of
the students dutifully shuffled books out of their desks--except for a
single empty seat in the front row. The teacher reached for a blue
sticky-note that had suddenly appeared on her desk:

     "DEAR MISS AMMY: I'VE GONE TO FIND MY QUIET READING BOOK. IT MAY
BE IN MY LOCKER, IN WHICH CASE I WILL BE BACK SOON. OR IT MAY BE BACK
AT HOME, IN WHICH CASE IT WILL TAKE ME A BIT LONGER. I HOPE THAT'S
OKAY. SIGNED, EUGENE."

     Miss Ammy smiled to herself as she pocketed the note. While the
class, minus Eugene, read to themselves, the teacher took a moment to
consider her career as the most permanent temporary teacher the
Dillweed City school system had ever known. Had it really been--she
grimaced--thirteen years since she'd taken this assignment? Thirteen
years away from her home and every friend and relative she'd left
behind? She mentally summed up the objective years, adjusting for
side-slips and skip-forwards, and yes, that's how long it had actually
been.

     The start of it all seemed like only yesterday, as she'd stood in
Nixon Elementary School's main office with Principal Harris, trying to
convince him that she wasn't quite as young as she appeared, that she
actually had all of the qualifications listed on her resume, and that
she really did intend to wear a short white dress and leather biker
gloves into the classroom.

     "Well, you've got me over a barrel," the principal had to admit.
"None of the other substitute teachers available, so I guess you'll
have to do."

     "How lucky for me," Ammy had said.

     Principal Harris reached down to pull a schedule sheet from the
printer. "Mrs. Leadbottom's classroom is on the third floor and--" He
blinked at the spot where Ammy had been standing, but she'd already
dropped through a dimensional portal and disappeared from view.

     Ammy emerged from the portal and hovered in mid-air directly
outside Mrs. Leadbottom's classroom window. She watched for a moment
as two fifth-grade girls walked into the room together--a blonde with
lopsided ponytails sprouting from the sides of her head and a short
redhead who radiated cuteness like no other child Ammy had ever seen.
A dark-haired boy immediately shut the door behind them and set a
string from the doorknob to a pail of water balanced on the ledge
above. He then spread grease on the linoleum in front of the door,
stepped back, and held his breath. The rest of the class also watched
with great anticipation except for the cute redhead, who rolled her
eyes disapprovingly.

     "All right," said the boy, looking up at the clock on the wall,
"if old Mrs. Leadbottom sticks to the same old schedule -- and she
always does -- she'll be coming through that door right about... Now!
Um... Now! Now?"

     My cue, thought Ammy, as she climbed in through the window. "Good
morning, class!" she announced, and the students all turned to gape at
her unexpected entrance.

     "Is that old Mrs. Leadbottom?" asked the girl with the lopsided ponytails.

     "No," the cute redhead told her.

     The boy ran over to the window and stuck his head out. "There's
no ladder out there, and we're on the third floor! How did you do
that?"

     "A modern-age substitute teacher needs some very specialized
skills," she told him.

     "But--  But--  Where's Mrs. Leadbottom?"

     "Ah, old Mrs. Leadbottom." Ammy looked down in a forlorn manner.
"She was hysterical when they found her, you know, down in the boiler
room, beating the stuffing out of a life-sized doll that she had
made--  It looked remarkably like you, in fact." She pointed at the
boy, who swallowed hard and seemed to be trying hard not to betray his
guilty feelings. Encouraged, Ammy pressed onward. "The doctors say
that the stress from all of the little accidents that Mrs. Leadbottom
has had around the classroom this year finally got the better of her,
but I'm sure you'll all be glad to know that she's getting only the
best treatment, and lots of tranquilizers."

     "Uh, yes... We're very glad to know she's okay." A drop of
nervous sweat rolled down the boy's face.

     "That's good, because Mrs. Leadbottom cares so much about all of
you. In fact, she's looking forward to coming back to Nixon Elementary
School eventually and having a special meeting with her very favorite
student. It's all she talks about, especially when the nurses are
jabbing her with needles."

     "Um, which student is that?" asked the boy, with a squeak in his voice.

     "His name is--  Well, I have it right here." She took a folded
sheet of paper from her pocket. "Michael Dunne?" she read, as if she
didn't already know the name as well as she knew her own. "Is there a
Michael Dunne here?"

     "That's, uh, me." The boy looked like he wanted to sink into a
hole and disappear.

     Ammy paused for a moment, struggling to keep all trace of emotion
from her face. Here she was, back in the past on her first official
solo assignment, actually holding a conversation with Mickey Dunne.
*THE* Mickey Dunne! This unassuming unpowered boy would someday become
her most illustrious ancestor.

     It seemed like Ammy had spent her entire life preparing for this
mission. She'd studied Mickey's life like no historian ever had
before. She'd written thousands of pages about his impact on the
world. She'd obsessed to the point where classmates seriously
suggested "Sporkmangirl" as her heroic code name. And now here she
was, suddenly thrust into the legendary hero's life, and her sworn
oath required her act like a total bitch to him until history returned
to its original path. It hardly seemed fair!

     "That's me," said the boy again. "I'm Mickey Dunne."

     "Oh, right. Well then, I believe this note is for you." Ammy
handed over the letter, which appeared to be written in blood. A
clever touch, she'd thought.

   "What's it say?" asked the blonde girl, who could be none other
than Mickey's cousin, Astatine Valance, also known as AquaRegia.

     Mickey read carefully. "You're a dead boy, Mickey. Dead. Dead,
dead, dead, dead, dead! When I get out of here, I will kill you and
kill you until you are killed and dead and--  Hmmm, I seem to be
running out of the blood I'm using to write--" Mickey dropped to his
knees and put his hands over his face. "Oh god, what have I done?"

     "Well, hopefully, you've learned your lesson about practical
jokes," said Ammy.

     "You--  You made that stuff up?" asked Mickey, hopefully. "Please
tell me you made it all up, even if you didn't..."

     "I made it all up," she told him. "Mrs. Leadbottom has taken a
sabbatical to visit with her newborn grandson in Akron, and she's left
me in charge of your class. My name is Ammy."

     "Thank you, Miss Ammy!" exclaimed Mickey. "Thank-you-thank-you- thank-you!"

     "You're very welcome. Now, why don't you take that bucket of
water off the door-frame and go clean the axle grease out from under
your fingernails?"

     "Yes, sure, right away!" Mickey dismantled his water trap, and
ran from the room.

     Ammy took a seat at the teacher's desk and opened a tiny portal
from her inner ear to the hallway outside the boy's bathroom. Sure
enough, she caught the sound of Mickey's voice approaching. "Wait a
minute," he was saying to himself. "Did that new teacher just make a
fool out of me in front of the entire class? She did, didn't she?
Well, I'm not going to give up that easily! This means war!"

     Next came a crashing sound of chaos, the result of some light
time-travel and prep work she'd attend to later in the day. As Mickey
pushed open the door to the boys' bathroom, a bucket of water fell
onto his head. Stepping forward in surprise, he slipped on a patch of
grease and fell onto a strategically placed whoopee-cushion. When he
finally managed to remove the bucket from his head, he saw a message
written in lipstick on the bathroom mirror: IF YOU REALLY WANT A WAR,
I'D BE MORE THAN HAPPY TO GIVE YOU ONE! LOVE, AMMY.

     And if his memoirs were accurate, Mickey Dunne would spend the
rest of his life wondering how exactly she'd done it...which brought
her back to 2008 and what passed for "the present," where the circle
was finally coming to a close. Ammy cleared her throat to get the
attention of her students. "Class? I have an important announcement to
make...after these important messages."

     The students, who had learned to take Ammy's predictive
statements at face value, looked up at the loudspeaker as it crackled
to life with the principal's voice. "Your attention please! For some
reason, I feel compelled to let everybody know that there's been a
supervillain-related disturbance at the Spoonside Galleria."

In the front row, Laney Arbauch sat upright in her chair. "Oh, no! Not
the mall!"

Principal Harris continued. "Also, members of the Competitive
Basketweaving Club are excused from Miss Ammy's class to attend a
practice session in Room 417. You may now resume your educational
experiences already in progress."

     "Yes!" proclaimed Laney, who was one of four members of Miss
Ammy's Competitive Basketweaving Club. She jumped to her feet along
with Richie Park and Darnell McSmalls.

     A blue sticky-note fluttered down from the ceiling. Richie caught
it and read, "DEAR FELLOW BASKETWEAVERS: I'M STILL LOOKING FOR MY
QUIET READING BOOK. I MAY HAVE ACCIDENTALLY RETURNED IT TO THE
LIBRARY. WILL CATCH UP WITH YOU ALL. SIGNED, EUGENE."

     "Figures." Darnell's headshake caused the diamond in his left
earlobe to scatter tiny specks of light around the room. "That boy's
never around when there's-- um... basketweaving... to be done."

     Richie let out an annoyed grunt and tucked Eugene's note into his
orange Trapper Keeper.

     "Come on! Faster!" Laney urged. "Forget about Eugene. Those--
um... baskets... aren't going to weave themselves!" Her silvery eyes
darted from side to side, checking that the other students weren't too
suspicious of their club's activities, but nobody else seemed to take
much notice. The Competitive Basketweaving Club missed two or three
classes per week, usually at exactly the same time the Preteen Patrol
was needed to take care of some urgent heroing business, but somehow
none of Ammy's other students had ever made the connection.

     "Have fun," Miss Ammy called after them. "I'll save my
announcement until you get back!" Under her breath she added, "and
then I'm finally going home!"


WILL THE BASKETWEAVERS GET TO THE MALL IN TIME?

WILL LANEY QUALIFY FOR AN EXTREME CUTENESS DISCOUNT?

WILL EUGENE FIND HIS QUIET READING BOOK?

Find out in the next episode of "The Sporkarific Sporkman featuring
the New Preteen Patrol", only on SUPERGUY!

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

[1] This flashback, modified to reflect Ammy's point of view, comes
from Preteen Patrol #9 posted Sat, 27 May 1995. I always intended that
Ammy would turn out to be Mickey's descendant from the future but the
old series ended before the big reveal. As a time traveler, Ammy
always had a smug sense of knowing what would happen combined with
stabs of pure panic whenever things went off the rails. It's nice to
finally catch a glimpse of the slobbering fangirl underneath her
professional facade.

[2] Guess who Eugene's dad is. Go on, guess!  :D

[3] With the next episode, "The Sporkarific Sporkman" officially
becomes "The Sporkarific Sporkman featuring the New Preteen Patrol".

-- 
Greg R. Fishbone - http://gfishbone.com
* Author: THE PENGUINS OF DOOM - http://septinanash.com
* President: Class of 2k7 - http://classof2k7.com
* ARA: New England SCBWI - http://nescbwi.org