Read this short comedy by Merrilee Warren!
SUPERDUDE AND THE AMAZING HEROES
Superdude was an awesome superhero. He was Superman’s barber’s dog walker’s nephew’s sister’s best friend’s third cousin twice removed. He had three superpowers and was the leader of a group of superheroes called W.D.H.N (We Don’t Have a Name)
It was a very awesome group. Superdude’s three powers were the ability to stay up all night without getting tired (as long as he went to bed at eight PM every night), the ability to breathe underwater (as long as he’s not wet), and the ability to turn invisible (as long as no one’s looking at him.)
His group consisted of five other superheroes: the Communicator, Toothpick, Cheeseman, Mindreader, and Wings. The Communicator had the power to speak any language, as long as he had learned it first. (He had learned one whole language- English!) Toothpick could make one toothpick appear out of thin air once every two months. Cheeseman could melt cheese with his hands. Not anything else. Just cheese (but YOU can’t melt cheese with your hands, can you, now answer me THAT). Mindreader could read anyone’s mind, as long as they were thinking about dumpsters. And Wings could fly as high as she wanted, as long as she was in a plane.
Together, the group kept the world safe. They hadn’t actually fought any crime yet, but it was probably because the villains were to scared to attack when a bunch of brave superheroes were around!
One day, a terrifying group of one-inch tall villains tried to take over the city! Superdude and his friends got together to discuss the problem.
Mindreader narrowed her eyes. “We must stop these fiends!”
Superdude flexed his giant (no, they were not actually giant) muscles. “Brilliant plan, Mindreader! Time to rid the world of these foes!”
“…which we were planning to do already?” Wings pointed out. No one paid attention.
“Alright,” the Communicator announced. “Now that we have decided to actually fight the evil villains, we must hatch a plan! Fojhbnvjmosv!”
“Which language was that?” Toothpick asked, poking his teeth with a toothpick.
The Communicator smiled slyly, his eyes fixing on Toothpick. “It is not a language. I made it up.”
“I knew that,” Toothpick said.
Wings yawned. “I’m tired. Here’s the plan: we go to bed and take a nap while the bad guys take over the world.”
“Good idea,” Cheeseman said. “I’m pretty tired, too. You guys, I literally ate a whole bag of chips earlier. All that work completely drained all my energy.”
Superdude slammed his fist on the table, which was actually pretty hard, so he jumped up and started going oof! Oof! “We are not giving up!”
“Uh, we never started in the first place,” Wings said. “We just said we would. We can turn that into a lie.”
“But we’ll need a lie machine,” the Communicator said. “Oh, I know where we can find one! Yijnqv[nutvqvyqtniothq!”
“Which is where?” said Cheeseman.
The Communicator sighed. “Ah, my dear boy—you must learn one day in life that there exists no such place as ‘Yijnqv[nutvqvyqtniothq.’”
“But…” Cheeseman said.
“Now is not the time for potty humor!” Mindreader cried. “We must unite! WE SHALL NOT GIVE UP!”
“Please can we give up? I’ll give you a cookie.” Wings said. Mindreader began to drool.
The puddle of drool became so big that it flooded the room, and the doors burst open. The six heroes floated outside, all wearing scuba diving outfits.
The wave of drool swept them through the streets, and they ended up right in front of the one-inch tall villains.
One of the villains pushed his way forward. “I am mmm, the leader of the Bad Guys!”
“What?” Superdude asked.
The villain frowned. “I am mmm, the leader of the Bad Guys.”
“Sorry?” Mindreader said.
The villain’s face turned red. “I AM mmm, THE LEADER OF THE—”
“Okay, okay!” Cheeseman interrupted. “You don’t have to yell.”
mmm launched himself at Cheeseman. “You will pay!”
Cheeseman tried to shake him off, but he was too weak. A moment later, all of the heroes were tied up.
mmm stood on top of Superdude. “We have won!”
ddd and fff, mmm’s sidekicks, burst into ant-laughing. That was when Superdude realized—
“Hey! You guys are ants! Ants that just tied us up!” he cried. “THE BAD GUYS ARE A BUNCH OF ANTS!”
“The correct term is a colony, actually, but that’s right!” mmm yelled. “And now we’re taking you to the Dungeon of No Picnic Food!”
Superdude threw back his head. “No
mmm snickered. “Yes!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
Superdude got tired of talking and fell asleep. mmm rolled his teensy little eyes.
ddd marched over and started to drag Mindreader and Wings to the dungeon with her tiny little ant-hands.
Mindreader started to sniffle. “No picnic food? Not even one tiny sandwich?”
“No!” laughed fff evilly. mmm gave him a low five (they had to do low fives because they were ants and seriously how would they do a five up high).
When they got to the Dungeon of No Picnic Food, Mindreader started to cry. Super-dude had a great idea.
“Cry some more! Let’s flood our way out of this place!” he said.
Mindreader gave him a dirty look, then fell to pieces. Wings patted her on the back. “There, there.”
The water rose higher and higher, and the heroes floated closer and closer, and I kept using the same word over and over.
Of course, one of the heroes could breathe underwater (not naming any names), but he could only do that if he wasn’t wet. And he was very very very very very very very wet.
The Communicator’s head bumped the ceiling. “How was flooding the room a good idea?”
Wings swam around in circles like a little wafer. “I don’t know! And we’re going to drown!”
Mindreader gave Superdude a haughty look. “Nice going, Superdude. Look what you just did.”
Superdude made bubbles with his mouth. “I can get us out of this!”
Cheeseman fell asleep in the water.
The Communicator tried to make him wake up. “Ah! Wake up! Abybbpybep8nioioiouioaslnhopanwvo8wnyovapnvojdhjaptpapwomwpao!”
“COMMUNICATOR YOU’RE BEING RIDICULOUS” Mindreader yelled.
Cheeseman woke up with a yawn. “What did I miss?”
“Oh, nothing, we’re just about to drown,” Toothpick said. “Maybe we can have yellow flowers at our funeral. I always loved those.”
“Quit thinking about funerals!” Wings snapped. “WE NEED TO GET OUT RIGHT NOW!”
Mindreader sniffed. “No. I refuse to get out unless you give me a cookie.”
“Literally where would she get a cookie?” Toothpick asked.
“Plus it’d be all soggy,” ddd added.
“What are you doing here?” Wings demanded.
ddd shrugged. “I wanted to come watch you all drown.”
Toothpick held up his hands, and suddenly, a toothpick appeared.
He ducked underwater and unlocked the lock. Water gushed out of the dungeon.
ddd scampered up the wall. “Hey! I almost got wet!”
“Tough!” snapped ooo, another ant. “You SHOULD be worrying about the fact that the PRISONERS ARE ESCAPING!”
ddd’s tiny jaws dropped. “No! We have to go get them!”
The two ants ran out of the room, and Superdude and his friends raised their eyebrows at each other. They were still sitting in the Dungeon of No Picnic Food.
“Oh, well.” Wings got up and hurried down the pathway. “At least those ants don’t know where we are.”
“Or do we?” Five ants named jjj, lll, iii, kkk, and www jumped down from the ceiling.
“Ha! You’re outnumbered!” called Wings.
“Or are we?” Two more ants, uuu and eee, jumped down. jjj laughed. “You’re going down!”
Well, it turned out all of these ants had not actually been practicing their fighting skills lately, and Superdude and his friends actually won. Can you believe it?
So anyway, the six heroes escaped the ants. But then they were caught by qqq, mmm’s daughter!
qqq glared at them. “Go away! We don’t need you to be ruining everything!”
Superdude looked at his friends. “That sounds like a pretty sweet deal. Anyone agree? I’m tired. Wings was right.”
Cheeseman, the Communicator, Mindreader, Wings, and Toothpick all raised their hands.
Superdude shook qqq’s miniature hand (one of them, anyway. She had six). “We’ll be going now.”
qqq nodded. “Good.”
And so the superheroes went home, and they vowed to never fight crime again.
Also ants took over the world.
THE END
Moral of the story: Do not ask a bunch of superheroes to defeat ants. They will lose.