Velveteen vs. the Junior Super Patriots Read Online Free PDF Page B

you? I mean, super-major.”
    “I am,” Cyndi confirmed proudly. “That’s how I knew what we’d need to do to exploit the amazing properties of this bean. I just brewed it at ten times regular strength and the super-ability awakening qualities totally started to manifest them selves.”
    “Right.” One of the coffee cultists grabbed Velma’s arm. She didn’t resist. Her questing mind had found what it was looking for. It was barely there, but she was almost certain that it was in range. If it wasn’t, well . . . no harm in trying. “So you totally have the action figures, right?”
    Cyndi froze.
    Velma closed her eyes and pushed.
    And the entire action figure lineup of the last ten years of The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division, and The Super Patriots, West Coast Division, burst out of the break room and swooped down on the bad guys like a tiny avenging horde.
    Opening her eyes, Velma commanded, “Go for the coffee!”
    “You can’t do this!” shrieked Cyndi. Velma could almost see a second shadowy form behind her, a man’s form, looking suspiciously like the picture of Andy that hung on the break room wall.
    “You people need to get some new dialog,” Velma snapped, and slapped her palms together over her head. “And lay off the coffee already. It’s making you jittery.”
    Cyndi never saw the tiny Mechamation swooping down behind her. She just felt the suddenly animated wireless router as it rose up and smashed her against the back of the head. The Midnight Bean Society let out a despairing wail, dissolving into shadow.
    Velma wobbled.
    The action figures fell.
    “Wow,” she said, somewhat distantly. “I didn’t know I could do that.”
    And then she collapsed.
    *
    Velma woke up in “her” bed—technically hers, at least for the moment, at least until the mechanic realized she’d gone and lost her job by attacking her boss with a squadron of animated action figure versions of her former teammates—with a damp washrag against her forehead. She sat up, catching the cloth as it fell, and looked bemusedly around the room.
    The mechanic (Paul? Mike? Chris?) was sitting in a chair off to the side of the bed, watching her with a measuring expression. “Andy’s got sucked into another dimension last night,” he said. “Pete saw it go, says it looked like the place was shunted off into a world of eternal shadow.”
    “. . . oh,” said Velma faintly, unsure what sort of reaction was expected from her. She was equally unsure of how she’d managed to get out of the coffee shop before it got “shunted off into a world of eternal shadow.” That would probably have put a damper on getting to Portland.
    “Guess that means you can’t pay your repair bill.”
    “No, I guess not.”
    “Guess that means I won’t charge you.”
    “I can—what?” Velma blinked at him. That response hadn’t been in her internal script.
    The mechanic shrugged. “Them damn shadow cultists have been threatening the town for months now. Guess it was about time some masked man swept in and took care of ’em. Can’t charge you after that.”
    “I’m not masked. And I’m pretty sure I’m not a man.”
    “Ma’am, you got carried out of the place by an army of tiny plastic superheroes. You get your repairs for free.”
    Velma decided not to argue, electing to go back to sleep instead. The mechanic laughed.
    “Superheroes,” he said wryly, and stood, walking straight through the wall.
    *
    A deep pool of shadow had formed at the center of the vacant lot where, until recently, Andy’s Coffee Palace had been located. The shadow appeared to be moving. That probably would have worried people, if anyone had been there to see it. It was almost midnight again, twenty-four hours after the coffee shop’s collapse, twelve hours after Velma “Velveteen” Martinez got into her car and got the hell out of town.
    At midnight exactly, the center of the shadow writhed, and a floating figure made of darkness shot through