The Ones You Call When Everyone Else is Busy (13)

 Soon enough, CP called all the members of the Ones You Call When Everyone Else is Busy to come to the front room and one by one they came to meet Ian and hear the plan.

First came Morph, Ian greeted him enthusiastically, and asked straight away to see his power and to know how it came about. Nick was very interested. He had never seen Morph transform into a cube. Morph stood in front of them, cracked his knuckles, rolled his head around on his thick neck, cleared his throat dramatically and changed, just like that, into a cube, a cube that continued to look suspiciously like Morph. It was a cube with black hair, eyes, a nose and a mouth. With the exception of the top, which was skin colored; the rest of the cube was the deep red color of Morph’s superhero suit. With a loud pop, Morph turned back to himself and smiled at the amazed look on the faces of both boys. Ian asked him the regular questions: why couldn’t he morph into anything else, how did get his powers; and how did he find out that he had them. Again, Ian was disappointed when the only thing that Morph could tell him had no scientific explanation. “I was a linebacker for my high school football team. The player from the other team had the ball and was running toward the end zone. I ran toward him to tackle him. He was a big guy, and I was scared. I ran in front of him but instead of tackling him, I turned into a cube. I didn’t know it was going to happen. I didn’t even know I could do that. He went sailing over me and fell flat on his face. I popped right back into my usual form. Neither of us spoke about it. He thought he injured his head during the fall and was seeing things. I quit the team the next day. End of story.” “Interesting…” was all Ian would say.

Blumsy was next. He tripped on his way to shake Ian’s hand. As he reached out, he lost his balance, hit his head on the way down, and nearly pulled Ian down with him. While the others stopped to take care of Blumsy, Captain Pancake explained that he was extremely fast and extremely clumsy. His story was that he had trained all his life to compete in races. He wanted to go to the Olympics. So, he ran and he ran and he ran. He was fast, so fast that you didn’t see him travel from one spot to another but no matter how graceful he tried to be, he hurt himself whenever he wasn’t running. He had managed to break 50 of the 206 bones in his body just getting up from a chair. CP continued to say that while they would love to show Ian Blumsy’s abilities, they didn’t like to let him run in such a small place.  Ian nodded his head and said, “Extraordinary.”

Missy came up next. Ian was clearly impressed as he turned six shades of red when she shook his hand. “I hate to disappoint y’all but my power isn’t really super or anything. I was raised on a farm with ten brothers and sisters. When you wanted momma’s attention, you had to learn to be a little louder than everyone else. I learned to scream but my scream is so loud it breaks glass. After the first couple of windows and glasses, I wasn’t allowed to scream at home anymore. Now I can only scream that loud if someone scares me.  That talent qualifies me as a superhero I guess.” Ian gave Missy a scientific fact, “Actually, while it is possible for a normal human to break glass, it is extremely difficult because you have to be able to find the right pitch of the glass and be able to hold the note for a long time and even then the glass would have to be standing on its own like a crystal cup but windowpanes and mirrors, while humanly possible, are extremely difficult to break. So, if you can break glass every time you have a superpower!” Missy blushed and asked if he wanted a demonstration. Everyone in the room screamed “No!” at once.

Buzz introduced himself and explained his special ability right away. “Wow,” Ian said, “So you can turn into any bug you want?” “Well yes, but I can only do the fly well.” “How did you figure out that you had this power?” “It’s a family trait. I come from a long line of superheroes. I’m related to some pretty famous people; you know the ones that have cashed in on their special talents. Sadly, I am the black sheep of the family. Because I can only turn into insects and I can’t even do that well, they were embarrassed by me. So, I left the family and came here, where they understand people with the more unique talents.” All these words came out of Buzz so quickly that Nick was able to catch only some of the conversation, but Ian seemed to understand everything he said. “Oh,” Buzz said, in a voice that was barely a whisper, “and I’m afraid of bugs.” “You have entomophobia. They can fix that.” Ian said. Nick stared in amazement. He knew that Ian was smart of course, but he didn’t know that his friend was a walking encyclopedia.  Ian saw Nick staring at him. “What? I try to learn three new things a day and since I’ve been able to read since I was two, I have over five-thousand random facts floating around in my head.” Nick thought this seemed like a good practice and decided to learn something new every day too though he didn’t think he could possibly be as smart as his friend. “Hey kid, what’s your favorite insect?” “It’s a praying mantis.” Buzz closed his eyes and concentrated, he turned into a praying mantis with a tiny purple jumpsuit right in front of their eyes. It had Buzz’s head and human feet on the ends of its legs, but it was a praying mantis just the same. Ian said, “Cool,” in a voice that was clearly filled with admiration and amazement. Nick jumped back a little, but no one seemed to notice.