Ben Braver and the Vortex of Doom Read online

  William threw me to the ground. Then he clutched the hair on my head, except it wasn’t my hair – it was the invisible Nix. The squid screamed inside my brain. William’s grip on Nix was affecting my powers again.

  ‘It’ll work because he’s a cheater,’ William seethed. ‘He’ll show up to chaaange history. Just watch.’

  The city rumbled as some of the lighter abandoned cars began to rise off the ground. Billboards sparked as pieces ripped away, defying gravity and floating upwards.

  All I could do was watch the end of the world.

  But then, all of a sudden, William let me go.

  I fell on my knees as Nix’s voice reappeared in my head. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I wheezed.

  When I looked up, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  It was the last thing I expected to see.

  It was Donnie.

  ‘Ahaaaa!’ William screamed as he ran towards him. ‘I knew you’d show up, you time-travelling cheater!’

  But Donnie wasn’t alone.

  His parents were behind him.

  And his mum had the Power Dampener.

  Never mess with a mama bear’s cub.

  Mary squeezed the trigger of the crossbow, unleashing a glowing net that wrapped around William. He landed with a painful thud, unable to move or use his powers anymore.

  With William’s superpower in check, the vortex should’ve disappeared.

  Except it didn’t.

  It was still swirling strong.

  ‘Uh-oh!’ William said with a laugh. ‘It’s big enough to feed itself, and it’s a hungry wittle baby!’

  Donnie and his parents ran back to the ship with me. The other superheroes gathered around us.

  ‘What in the blazes is that thing?’ Richard asked.

  ‘The end of the world if we don’t stop it!’ I said.

  ‘How do we close it?’ Dexter asked.

  ‘By blowing it up,’ Duncan said. ‘Noah closed one back at the school with an explosion.’

  Noah pulled the same Street Fighter move he did back at the school, unleashing the biggest fireballs I’ve ever seen him make, but they were too small. Each one disappeared into the vortex like nothing.

  Noah shook his head. ‘The explosion needs to be bigger than I can make.’ He turned towards Magnific and his friends. ‘Can any of you do that?’

  ‘Not bigger than what you just tried, friend,’ Magnific said.

  And then Noah looked at Penny.

  Her eyes glazed over as she took a deep breath, and I knew exactly what she and Noah were thinking.

  ‘No!’ I shouted. ‘There’s gotta be another way! Maybe this ship’s got weapons!’

  ‘It doesn’t,’ Nix said in my head.

  The world was about to end, but that wasn’t something I was worried about. That kind of thing was so huge that my brain figured it wasn’t even possible, but Penny’s death?

  That was real.

  Richard knelt next to her. ‘Are you sure about this, darling? Nobody expects this of you.’

  She nodded bravely. ‘It’s okay. I’m ready.’

  Was she saying she was ready to die?

  I was pretty sure that’s what she was saying!

  ‘Penny, you can’t!’ I pleaded.

  ‘Yes, I can,’ Penny said calmly, putting her hand on my arm. The glow in her skin had disappeared.

  William was still in the street, watching the sky. ‘You’re too late!’ He laughed like a maniac.

  Penny squeezed my arm. ‘But I need you to take me up there.’

  I didn’t want that.

  I don’t think anybody wanted that.

  But we didn’t have a choice.

  She was the only one who MIGHT be able to close the vortex. All she had to do was make herself explode the same way Angel did.

  ‘Can you even do that?’ I asked.

  She shrugged. ‘Pretty sure it won’t be hard,’ she said.

  ‘What if your explosion is too big?’ I said.

  ‘Then the whole city goes up with it,’ Duncan said. ‘But at least it’ll only be the city and not the whole world.’

  He had a point.

  A terrible point, but a point.

  She put her arms around my neck as I hugged her tightly. Then I flew straight up towards the vortex in the sky.

  The suction was stronger the closer we got. Instead of flying towards it, we were starting to get pulled into it.

  Debris streamed past us, getting swallowed up by the eye of the vortex. I didn’t know what was on the other side, but I sure didn’t want to find out.

  The glow from Penny’s skin was still gone. She was doing a good job of keeping her power under control for the time being.

  ‘Fear versus love, fear versus love, fear versus love,’ Penny repeated to herself.

  ‘What?’ I asked, still making my way towards the eye of the monster.

  ‘Mary and Richard said I have to let go of my fear, remember?’ Penny asked. ‘I have to focus on love.’

  ‘It’s a good thing I’m with you then,’ I said, half-joking.

  She stared into my eyes as a smile gently stretched over her face. Her skin instantly radiated stronger and cleaner than I’d ever seen before. There weren’t any bubbles, no drops of energy leaking out.

  She was an angel.

  Her body grew hotter and hotter, but I couldn’t stop hugging her. It was the last time I’d ever get to, and I didn’t want to stop.

  ‘Ben,’ she said. ‘You have to let go.’

  I loosened my grip, and she slid away slowly, but I held on until the last second, until it was only our fingertips that touched.

  The suction of the vortex took her, and she drifted towards the centre of it. Her entire body beamed with energy. She was the only light in all that darkness, but then she, too, disappeared, swallowed up in the eye of the vortex.

  I stared, waiting for something to happen.

  If Penny couldn’t pull it off, the planet was done for. Sure, that was bad, but the only thing I could think of was that Penny might possibly be dead at that moment.

  And even though I’d be dead in just a few seconds, it pained me to know that I could’ve been with her for those extra seconds.

  But it never came to that.

  The vortex lit up like the sun. The night sky turned bright yellow for an instant until it all faded back to black.

  Penny had done it.

  She had exploded.

  Everything was back to normal.

  The vortex had closed, and the planet was safe.

  Times Square was in perfect shape.

  I looked for Penny, hoping she had somehow survived the blast, but she was gone.

  … she was gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Nope!

  I was wrong.

  Penny was still there; I was just looking in the wrong place! She was way under me, falling fast.

  ‘You should probably grab her!’ Nix shouted.

  ‘On it!’ I said, flying full speed.

  I swooped down, carefully catching her. She was alive and smiling and everything. The glow in her skin faded as she hugged me.

  I landed next to Nix’s ship, but I didn’t put Penny down.

  I would’ve held her forever if she let me.

  Richard and Totes dragged William, Delilah and Matthew aboard the spaceship.

  Bystanders had pushed past the police barriers and were snapping millions of close-ups with their phones.

  News crews swarmed the area, their cameras pointed at us as reporters tried to make sense of what just happened.

  Magnific and his friends bid us a fond farewell and took off into the night sky.

  My friends, everyone – Dexter and Vic included –stood with me in the middle of Times Square. We raised our hands to the crowd, and they just went nuts with cheers as our faces suddenly appeared on the screens above us.

  We basked in glory, but not for long, because that’s when the
army showed up with their helicopters and tanks.

  That was our cue to leave, pronto.

  We ran back into Nix’s ship, and I hit the Launch button for Colorado.

  We were together.

  We were safe.

  We were heroes.

  The world was never gonna be the same.

  My face and my name were all over the news, along with the ‘Kepler Kids’ and the ‘Abandoned Children’.

  Headmaster Archer made an official statement to try to keep ahead of the rumours. He spilled the beans on almost everything. The secret was out, and there was no sense in hiding it anymore.

  So now the public knows people with powers live in their world, and if you ask me, they’re pretty okay with it.

  Some are scared, but most think it’s just as awesome as I did when I first learned about it.

  The only thing Archer kept secret was that Nix existed. Everyone who saw his ship on TV just thought it belonged to the academy, and Archer figured it was best to keep it that way. Superpowered people is enough to deal with. Throwing aliens into the mix would probably make heads explode.

  ‘One thing at a time,’ he said.

  William, Delilah and Matthew were hauled off to the same place Abigail was taken to – the prison for the superpowered. I wondered what that even looked like.

  Dexter and Vic were my friends now. Good friends, and they turned out to be two of the funniest people I’ve ever known.

  Nix is leaving for home soon.

  Am I bummed?

  Totally.

  I would love it if he stayed and gave me superpowers whenever I wanted, but … he misses his family. His home. And he needs to get back to them. I know that feeling better than anybody, so there was no way I’d stand in the way of that.

  Besides, I’m over having superpowers. If there’s one thing Magnific taught me, it was that I could do just as much, if not more, without powers. People need help, but you don’t need superpowers to help them.

  The Kepler family had the happiest ending of all of us. Richard and Mary aren’t going back to 1963. They decided to stay in the present.

  They didn’t come to the decision randomly, though.

  The history books say they disappeared in 1963, after their son vanished. Well, now we know where they went. They all travelled to the future – and stayed there. Richard and Mary will get to watch Donnie grow up now. They’ll even teach at the academy while Donnie finally gets to attend it, fifty years after it opened. They get to be a family.

  So we saved the world without anyone getting hurt.

  Pretty awesome, if you ask me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  A week had passed since the Battle of Times Square, and everybody was behind the school to say goodbye to Nix.

  We were all there – Donnie, Richard and Mary Kepler, Headmaster Archer, Professor Duncan, Totes, our parents, and even Dexter’s sister Darla, who had made the trip up to punch him in the arm for becoming cooler than her.

  I explained everything to my parents, but they already knew most of it from TV. They were happy, but I could tell they just wanted me to come home to a normal life.

  It was late, almost ten p.m., and we were gathered around a small bonfire. Penny strummed randomly on the uke her parents had brought from home at her request. She wasn’t afraid of her power anymore.

  The octo-bots that helped carry my luggage on the first day of sixth grade were inside Nix’s ship with him, prepping it for takeoff.

  I went into the ship.

  Nix stopped what he was doing. ‘Thank you again,’ he said.

  I acted cool. ‘Yup,’ I said. ‘Glad I could help. And now you get to go home.’

  ‘So do you,’ Nix said.

  We sat in silence for a second.

  Goodbyes are hard.

  Nix smiled. ‘I’m gonna miss you, Ben.’

  It seemed like he was stalling. Like he didn’t want to go home just yet. But I wasn’t gonna be the guy who asked him to stay. If he wanted to stay, then it had to be up to him.

  I smiled back. ‘Me, too.’

  Is it weird to hug a squid?

  Because that’s exactly what I did.

  A chorus of awwwwws sang behind me. Everyone was in the doorway, watching this private moment.

  ‘Shut up,’ I joked.

  Just then, Penny’s phone dinged from her pocket. She pulled it out and let out a gasp.

  ‘What is it?’ her dad asked.

  ‘Another group of Abandoned Children just attacked Denver,’ she said, holding up her phone so we could see.

  ‘There are superheroes to take care of that now,’ Duncan said.

  ‘But it’s only, like, ten minutes from here if we take Nix’s ship!’ Dexter said. ‘We’re those superheroes!’

  I looked back at Nix, but he wasn’t there anymore.

  Because he was already back on my head.

  Nix paused and then got super serious. ‘Ben … I will stay as long as you want me to.’

  I looked at my parents for permission. My mum nodded at my dad as he sighed. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But be back before bedtime.’

  ‘Yessss!’ I hissed.

  ‘Am I just not here?’ Duncan asked sarcastically. ‘Does anybody care that I disagree with this?’

  Nobody answered.

  ‘What’re we waiting for?’ Nix asked out loud. ‘People need our help!’

  Penny gripped her uke by the neck and ran into the ship. Noah, Dexter, Vic, Totes and Darla followed behind her.

  ‘Yes, I’m going,’ Darla said to us. ‘And no, you can’t stop me.’

  Nobody tried.

  Richard joined us, too, but Donnie stayed with his mum. ‘Go get ’em,’ he said to us.

  Noah took command. ‘Ben, you’re on pilot duty. Get us to Denver.’

  I punched in the coordinates as Noah laid out the plan for what to do when we got there. After everybody outside was clear of the spaceship, I pushed my finger through the holographic Launch button.

  My name is Ben Braver, and I am a superhero.

  Nailed it.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to all the awesome Ben Braver fans out there – you’re the best!

  Thank you to Sucheta Raj for all of your hard work and to everybody at Allen & Unwin for supporting Ben on his journey!

  Thank you to Connie Hsu for your support, expertise and help with making sense of Ben’s story. Time travel is hard! To Megan Abbate for your enthusiasm and your valuable insight – Ben and his friends wouldn’t be as cool without you. To Elizabeth Clark for making this book come to life with your awesome design skills. To my publicist, Morgan Rath, for being so, so, so patient with me. To Tracy Koontz and Jill Freshney for you’re rad copyediting skills.

  To Dan Lazar for supporting all of my crazy ideas and for making all of this happen. To Torie Doherty-Munro, Cecelia de la Campa and all the amazing people at Writers House who work so hard behind the scenes.

  To Camye, Evie, Elijah, Parker, Finley and Adler for being the reason I do this.

  And last, but absolutely not least, thank you ThunderCats, Silverhawks, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Captain N: The Game Master, the Bionic Six, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and that guy who turns into a car whenever it gets hot.

  MARCUS EMERSON is the author of several highly imaginative children’s books including the popular Diary of a 6th Grade Ninja series. His career started in second grade, when he discovered Garfield. He grew up playing Super Mario Bros, watching ThunderCats, and reading comics like X-Men, Superman and Wildcats. His goal is to create children’s books that are engaging, funny, and inspirational for kids of all ages – even the adults who secretly never grew up. Marcus lives in Eldridge, Iowa, with his wife and children.

  marcusemerson.com

  Diary of a 6th Grade Ninja series