Super Goofballs, Book 4: Attack of the 50-Foot Alien Creep-oids!

Citation preview

Attack of the 50-Foot

Alien Creep-oids!

Written and Illustrated by

Peter Hannan

This book is dedicated with love to my parents, who cheered on a goofball, and to my parents-in-law, who took in a goofball as one of their own.

Table of

CONTENTS Chapter

1: Sleepless in Gritty City

Chapter

2: Sweet and Creepy

Chapter

3: Jealousy Is the Worst Policy

Chapter Chapter

4: Another Fine Mess 5: Blame Game

Chapter

6: Blunder Nut

Chapter

7: Trouble on the Line

Chapter 8: Goofballs in Action Chapter 9: Clear as Mud Chapter 10: Crime After Crime Chapter 11: Hard Time in Blunderland Chapter 12: Alien Home Invasion Chapter 13: A Highly Unlikely Story Chapter 14: Blunder Gone Bad Chapter 15: Think Like a Cockroach Chapter 16: What’s in Store? Chapter 17: The Power of the Scribble Chapter 18: Granny Watch Chapter 19: And to Think That We Built

It at Mulberry and Melrose Chapter 20: Blunder Gone Badder

1 6 9 12 17 19 24 27 30 34 38 42 44 48 51 54 57 62 66 68

Chapter 21: Scaredydog 71 Chapter 22: Many Hands Make Sloppy Work 72 Chapter 23: Blunder Sees the Error of Chapter 24: Chapter 25: Chapter 26: Chapter 27: Chapter 28: Chapter 29: Chapter 30: Chapter 31: Chapter 32: Chapter 33: Chapter 34:

His Ways Move Along, Nothing to See Here Secrets Beneath the Surface of Things Bigger Problems How Evil Can You Get? Eviler and Eviler Ready and Waiting Is There No End to This Nastiness? Creep-oids on the Move Fool-Proof You Can’t Go Home Again (Well, Actually You Can, But It Might Not Be There When You Get There)

Chapter 35: GLAX-O-WHA? Chapter 36: Bye-bye Backwardsmobile

74 77 78 81 85 86 89 92 94 96 98 104 110 114

Chapter 37: The Bigger They Come,

the Smaller They Fall Chapter 38: Brand-New Day Afterward

120 126 130

About the Author Other Books by Peter Hannan Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1 Sleepless in Gritty City

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here was a whole lotta pounding going on. It was 4:52 A.M. and I hadn’t slept a wink all night. Not even half a wink. My head was pounding. Rain was still pounding on the roof. And down in the basement, Blunder Mutt had been growling and pounding on his snare drum with his face, at a rate of thirty beats per minute—for seven hours. That’s twelve thousand, six hundred beats.

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I know, because I counted them. With most people, or dogs, or really anybody else, I’d worry about them hurting themselves, but Blunder seems to have no nerve endings within the general vicinity of his brain. At around 1:30 A.M., the Super Goofball roommates, also sleepless, had had enough and all started pounding on their floors and walls with their fists while shouting, “Stop that pounding!” Even though the roommates had proven to be pretty super occasionally, most of the time I doubted Granny’s sanity for letting them move into our house in the first place. And their numbers seemed to be growing daily: Blunder Mutt, Super Vacation Man (Blunder’s vacation-loving-but-not-taking partner), Scoodlyboot (the most beautiful dog in the world, who loves Blunder Mutt), Mighty Tighty Whitey (super British underpants), the Terrifyin’ Tubesock Lad (Mighty’s Irish cousin), Wonder Boulder (superstrong, supersolid citizen), Pooky the Paranormal Parakeet (“I knew you were gonna say that!”), SuperSass CuteGirl (her name says it all), the Impossibly Tough Twoheaded Infant (Biff and Smiff: two heads are more complicated than one), the Frankenstein Punster (monstrous super punner), T-Tex3000 (tiny and crazy

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space-cowboy–dinosaur). Plus, the original residents: Granny (the Bodacious Backwards Woman) and me (Amazing Techno Dude).

The three newest residents—the most adorable little stray cats you’ve ever seen—had been left on our doorstep in the pouring rain the night before. They had somehow slept through all that pounding. I could see their cute little tails sticking out from under their cute little blanket in their cute little basket. They were the sanest creatures in the house. Their youth and inexperience would make it easy for me to mold them into really good sidekicks. They had positive

attitudes, no bad habits, and were extremely eager to learn. I’d been looking for a sidekick ever since I stopped being Granny’s. Above the pounding, I heard some strange, unearthly sounds coming from somewhere out there in the rain. It sounded like a neighbor was watching a science fiction movie on TV. I found out later that the weird sounds were coming from much farther away, from the soggy heart of Gritty City.

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CHAPTER 2 Sweet and Creepy

crime was in progress at a candy store—the Big Fat Calorie ’n’ Cavity Warehouse—next to the Gritty City Mall, right across the street from Gritty City City Hall. A gigantic fist, the size of a midsized car, punched through the front of the store, sending glass and concrete flying everywhere. Then the owner of the hand scooped a huge handful of

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glass, concrete, and candy—sort of like trail mix you’d bring on a hike through a nightmare—and poured the mixture into his huge, horrible mouth. The mouth chomped and chomped and laughed: “GEE, GEE, GAR, GAR, GABBA, GABBA, HEE!” Then the owners of other huge, disgusting hands and creepy mouths also munched on this scrumptious snack. They chewed with loud crunchy chomps, eating the entire building in the process, but that was beside the point. They were there for the candy and they swallowed every last bit of it. And that’s a lot, because this was no ordinary candy store. Their slogan: “A million miles of crunchy aisles!” A million was an exaggeration, but it didn’t feel like that when you were in there. The candy-craving criminals jerked and

twitched with glee, shouting, “GEEE-GOR-GLAXO-BRAX! GEEE! GEEE! MEE-GOR-GLAX-OBRAX!”, whatever that meant. Sergeant Bub McButt (the police officer who continues to pretend not to know us) was the only eyewitness. “Although their huge glowing eyeballs helped somewhat,” he said, after they dug him out from under a mountain of candy wrappers and saliva, “it was still too dark to see much more than a spiny hand here or a mysterious, disgusting body part there.” This may have also been due to the fact that McButt was wearing sunglasses in the pouring rain in a failed attempt to look cool.

CHAPTER 3 Jealousy Is the Worst Policy

forgot to mention that Blunder was the only goofball in the house who hadn’t been awake all night. He’d done all that growling and drumming in his sleep. When his alarm went off at five

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he sat up and stopped drumming to turn it off. He lay there for a moment in silence, forgetting why he had been growling and drumming in the first place. “Self, why you so growly and drummy?” he asked himself. “Me no know,” he answered himself. But everyone else knew. It was because I had taken in those little lost cats and decided to train them to be my sidekicks. I’d already given them their super names: Fantastic Furball, Terrific Tabbykins, and Wonderpuss. Blunder was obviously jealous. He had been my sidekick for a short time a while ago, and

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even though he was happily sidekicking for Super Vacation Man now, that didn’t matter. Blunder would happily be everyone’s sidekick. “Whys not!” he always said. “I the bestest sidekicker in sidekicker histree!” So, he was jealous of anyone who was anyone’s sidekick. Plus, he had some crazy notion that the kittens were evil. Obviously just a classic dogs-hate-cats thing, but in any case, I was afraid Blunder might actually harm the kittens, so I made him sleep in the basement. This made him angry and frustrated, which caused him to growl and drum. But anyway,

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when he stopped at five A.M., everybody else finally fell asleep. Twenty-two seconds later, Blunder remembered. “Oh, me ’member!” he cried. “Dose evilish, evilish creatures!” He started drumming and growling again and woke us all up again. So, we all got twenty-two seconds of sleep. Needless to say, we woke up angrier than ever. The cats were obviously harmless. Blunder Mutt had flipped his lid.

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CHAPTER 4 Another Fine Mess

lunder was causing me to flip my lid, too. I finally gave up even trying to sleep. I had scheduled an important meeting for the morning but figured we might as well have it now. “All right, Goofballs!” I shouted. “Official Goofball meeting! Kitchen-lair, now!” I scooped up the kittens in their basket and went downstairs.

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The Goofballs stumbled in, half asleep and all grumpy. I put the basket on the table. The kittens purred and mewed and tumbled out. They did sleepy somersaults. They tried handstands and cartwheels, but mostly crashed into one another. The Goofballs watched with goofy smiles on their faces—the kind of smile you only get while looking at a ridiculously cute baby, puppy, or kitten. It’s like a reflex; you can’t avoid it. And then when the three cats formed a shaky pyramid and fell down laughing, the Goofballs said something that everyone must say when they see something like that, no matter how tough they think they are: “Awwwwwwwwwwww.” “Like, how could you not like these kittens?” asked SuperSass. “That’s, like, what I’d like to know.” “We all know that Blunder Mutt has lost his mind,”

I said, “but that’s not why I called this meeting. The first order of business is garbage: Thirteen-thirteen Thirteenth Street is filling up with garbage. It’s knee deep in places—actually over the heads of the shorter Goofballs.” I pointed down to a cowboy hat resting on top of the garbage layer on the floor. T-Tex3000’s hand popped through the surface and waved up at us.

“See?” I said. “We all have to pitch in and clean this place up!” “Awwwwwww,” they all said again, but this time meaning something quite different, like Awwwww, com’on. We’re big, spoiled babies and we don’t like to clean! One or two of them actually said it. “Awwwww, com’on . . .” said Biff. “We’re big, spoiled babies and

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we don’t like to clean!” said Smiff. “I mean it!” I said. “Everyone has to help!” “Awwwwwwwwww,” they all said as they pounded on the table. “That’s it, no more pounding!” I said, also pounding on the table. “After that, I mean. Okay. To help with this task, I’ve been working on a new invention that will make life around here a lot easier. Or at least less trashy.” I placed a small box on the table and put a bag of potato chips next to it.

“I call it the Amazing Techno Dude Deluxe Trash Shrinkenator,” I said, pressing the button on top. After a tremendous flash of blue light, orange smoke, and a smell too disgusting to describe, the chip bag shrank to the size of a postage stamp. Unfortunately, Super Vacation Man also seemed to disappear into thin air. Turns out his chair had been

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accidentally shrunk by the Shrinkenator. But when he stood up, we saw that his arms were also about two feet shorter than they had been just seconds before.

“What the—shrink, shrank, shrunk—is going on here?” he said, munching teeny-tiny potato chips. “Well,” I said, “the Shrinkenator shrinks trash perfectly, but it’s hard to avoid shrinking other things, like furniture and the arms of roommates, for instance. It’s definitely not perfected yet. Don’t worry, SVM; they’ll grow back in no time. And I’ll get the kinks worked out, but in the meantime, everyone has to pitch in and stop being such slobs!”

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CHAPTER 5 Blame Game

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verybody claimed that they weren’t the ones messing things up. They did variations on their typical “Me! Me! Me!”-ing: “Not me!” “Definitely not me!” “Certainly not me!” “I never leave a—zip, zap, zowee—mess!” said Super Vacation Man as he tossed a can of PineappleCoconut-Mango Super Tropical Energy Shake (with pop-up umbrella) onto a nearby pile of identical cans and umbrellas.

You could see from the various types of trash scattered around the room that every single goofball was guilty. But no one would admit it, and they all blamed everybody else. Again, more variations: “Him! Him! Him!” “Her! Her! Her!” “Them! Them! Them!” “Sleep of lack from cranky just all are we,” said the Bodacious Backwards Woman. “And Blunder is to blame for that,” I said. “Blunder! Blunder! Blunder!” said everyone else.

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CHAPTER 6 Blunder Nut

lunder, still in the basement, heard his name and crashed through the basement door. He flew into the kitchen-lair and knocked over every single one of us. Although we used to find this trademark entrance oddly charming, it had definitely lost its charm. In fact, even Super Vacation Man and Scoodlyboot were mad at him. “Although Blundy usually drives me totally crazy

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in a good way,” said Scoodlyboot, “today he’s driving me totally crazy in a bad way.” Since Blunder hated the fact that Scoodlyboot was in love with him, he liked it that she was mad at him now. But he hated that everyone else was, too. “Yous oughta be mads at dems, not mees!” said Blunder, pointing at the kittens and growling. He held his nose and picked up the little cats with two fingers. He looked at them as if he was inspecting specimens in a biology experiment, and spoke in a paranoid whisper: “They’s dangerous!” All three kittens licked Blunder’s face and wiggled

their cute little tails, looking about as undangerous as three creatures could possibly look. “Dese are da evilest creatures I ever seed!” said Blunder. “They’s gonna be da ruin of we! I say we disposal dem right aways befores they do their evil creatury tings!” “Nooooo! Have you completely lost that tiny mind of yours?” yelled all the others, who were very taken by Fantastic Furball, Terrific Tabbykins, and Wonderpuss. “Don’t be so dumbish! I not lost mind,” said Blunder very seriously, pointing to his head. “I keeps it in here fer safe keepsin! And it know dose kitskys is bad!” Today Blunder’s stupidity was too stupid even for Blunder. “It’s the twenty-first century, man!” I said. “You have got to get over this whole dogs-hate-cats mentality!” Blunder’s eyes popped. He threw his head back, opened his mouth wider than I’d ever seen it open, and said, “Grrrrrr-owwwwwwwwoooof-wooof-boo-boogah-gah-grrrrrrrrrr!”

Apparently actual words could no longer express his true feelings. We all discussed what should be done to protect Fantastic Furball, Terrific Tabbykins, and Wonderpuss from Blunder Mutt. A number of solutions were proposed: “Train him!” “Leash him!” “Send him to the dentist and have his teeth replaced with rubber teeth!”

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And then very, very enthusiastically, in a phony voice that I almost didn’t recognize: “Throw him inta a bathtub o’ chocolate pudding wiff lotsa whipper cream and maraschino cherries!” “Hold on a minute,” I said. “Who said that?” We all looked over at Blunder, who just smiled and licked his lips. He was already clutching the abovementioned ingredients in his paws.

CHAPTER 7 Trouble on the Line

he phone rang. Blunder leaped to answer it, but a wall of goofballs blocked him and I got it instead. I put it on speakerphone. “House of Super Goofballs . . . Amazing Techno Dude speaking!” “Morning, Amazing,” said Mayor What’s-HisName. “Did you hear about the robbery in the candy store?” “LET ME THINK,” said the Frankenstein Punster. “IT WAS PERFECTLY DELICIOUS CRIME? OR . . . IT WAS VERY SWEET OPERATION ? THOSE NOT REALLY PUNS, ARE THEY? HOLD ON, HOLD ON, I GOT ONE. . . .” “Punster, stop!” I said. “What’s the real answer, mayor?”

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“There is no real answer, you goofballs, because it wasn’t a riddle, it really happened! They kept yelling GEEE-GOR-GLAX-O-BRAX! GEEE! GEEE!, whatever that means, as they ate everything, including the entire stock of the superspecial candy the store is famous for: Crackling Crunching Chunks of Chewy Chocolate Chowder on a Stick! It actually comes in several other forms, including Crackling Crunching Chunks of Chewy Chocolate Chowder Bubble Gum and Crackling Crunching Chunks of

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Chewy Chocolate Chowder Powder, for sprinkling on vegetables to mask their flavor! They ate all that, too! Every kid in Gritty City has been crying all morning! Every dentist, too! Especially the dentists! What a bunch of crybabies! Plus, the criminals ate the entire building, including the windows!” “Wow,” I said. “What kind of idiot eats a window?” “A really hungry-ish idiot,” said Blunder Mutt. “I eated a window once when supper was late-ish.” “Okay, that’s it, Blunder,” I said. “I need to think and you need to go back to the basement!” The other Goofballs wrestled Blunder to the basement door and were about to throw him down the stairs, but he volunteered to throw himself down instead, since that was his preferred method of going downstairs anyway.

CHAPTER 8 Goofballs in Action

said good-bye to the mayor and yelled down to Blunder: “STAY!” No matter how stupid or crazy Blunder got, he was still a loyal dog who simply couldn’t disobey a stay command from me. With the Goofballs anxious to solve the case, I decided to stay behind to begin training Fantastic Furball, Terrific Tabbykins, and Wonderpuss in the ways of superhero sidekickdom. Everybody else piled into the Backwardsmobile and headed off for the Big Fat Calorie ’n’ Cavity Warehouse with Granny driving. As they disappeared around the corner, I heard them all screaming in terror as Granny sped backwards, narrowly missing cars, buses, houses, and everything else. “Backwards Onwards!” she cried.

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Okay, first things first. I suited up the kittens in little superhero outfits that came with some superhero action figures I used to play with when I was a kid. Glad I saved them. I used a marker to personalize them and they looked surprisingly good. The three spunky little cats tried very hard and were beyond cute as they did their best to mimic my every move. When I kicked, they kicked. When I leaped, they leaped. When I ran up the wall, flipped over, and landed on my feet, they crashed into the wall, and rolled around the room like three furry tennis balls. I was bonding with them more and more. It was weird because I had never really thought of myself as a cat person—I always preferred dogs. But when I compared these kittens (who I would be able to mold from scratch into perfect sidekicks) to the resident dog (who was not only a disaster waiting to happen but

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also a disaster in the middle of happening, one that happened a few minutes ago, and one that would continue to happen well into the future), the cats seemed like a good way to go. I worked them hard—supermoves, supersnarls, supercrashing into things—and they were quick learners, but they were quick to tire out, too, like all little

tykes. They eventually fell asleep on a pile of trash. I put them in their basket in my bedroom, and they pulled the blanket all the way over their heads, so that just their cute little tails were sticking out. I didn’t say it out loud, but to myself I said, Awwwww. I know I’ve been using this word a lot, but they truly were adorable. I tried to fall asleep, too, but no luck. I gave up and went downstairs to raid the fridge.

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CHAPTER 9 Clear as Mud

eanwhile, the Goofballs arrived at the candy store. It was still raining. They scoured the area for clues, but the rain and mud made it difficult. It was also difficult because they were stumbling around the crime scene half asleep. They finally found something, totally by accident, as one by one they fell face-first into a giant muddy hole in the ground. “I see you’ve found the gigantic footprint,” said Mayor What’s-His-Name. “Footprint?” said SuperSass, only pretending to look around, since her entire face was covered with mud and she couldn’t see a thing. “Yes, of course, as I was saying, like, check out the gigantic footprint!” “It’s pretty clear,” said the mayor, “that there’s a

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candy-loving giant monster supervillain maniac roaming the streets of Gritty City.” “I knew you were gonna say that,” said Pooky, flying high above the ground. “But, actually, there are a lot more footprints, and not all the same kind.” The Goofballs gasped. “Loose the on maniac supervillain monster giant loving-candy one than more obviously is there,” said Granny. It took everyone a second to figure out what

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Granny had said, but when they did they gasped again. They had absolutely no experience with giants of any kind, much less the candy-loving monster supervillain maniac kind, and the idea of more than one of them was freaking them out. “Exactly how giant are we talking?” asked T-Tex3000 nervously. “Well,” said SuperSass, who happened to be a shoe expert, “judging from the size of this print, I’d say they’re in the neighborhood of fifty feet tall.” “That’s a tall neighborhood,” said Pooky, flying higher and higher. “Right about . . . here.” They all looked up at Pooky flapping in circles in the rain. She was small to begin with, but at fifty feet up, she was a tiny speck against the gray sky. They all imagined a giant, monster, supervillain maniac whose

feet started where they were and whose head ended way up where Pooky was, and they gasped a third time. “We chose a really terrible day to battle giants,” said Super Vacation Man. “I don’t believe my arms have even started to—stretch, sprout—grow back yet! Maybe I should just go on vacation for a while.” “Look,” said Wonder Boulder. “Something written in mud!” They all looked and read the words together: GEEE-GOR-GLAX-O-BRAX! GEEE! GEEE! “Means that whatever,” said Granny.

CHAPTER 10 Crime After Crime

t was six o’clock at night by the time the Goofballs returned home. They were tired, cranky, and covered with mud. They sloshed up the front walk but started running when they heard the phone ring. They slid together through the front door just as Blunder Mutt crashed through the basement door (a ringing phone is one thing that will break Blunder out of a stay). He bounced off Wonder Boulder and landed in a garbage can. The garbage can tipped over, rolled across the room, and bounced back down the basement stairs. The rest of

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the muddy Goofballs slid across the room and crashed down the stairs behind him. I had finally fallen asleep, but this woke me up. I looked at the clock. I’d slept for exactly four minutes. I stumbled down from my bedroom just in time to see supermuddy, super-short-armed Super Vacation Man crawl back up the basement stairs and answer the phone. He put it on speaker. “House of Super—whacka, smacka—Goofballs. Super—arms-much-smaller-than-usual-and-althoughthey’re-supposed-to-grow-back-I’m-really-starting-tobecome-concerned—Vacation Man speaking!” “You really need to come up with a briefer phone greeting,” said the voice on the other end. It was Mayor What’s-His-Name again. Apparently while everyone was investigating the crime at the Big Fat Calorie ’n’ Cavity Warehouse, another crime was being committed. “They left a note,” said the mayor. “It said . . .” “Don’t tell me,” said

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Pooky. “GEEE-GOR-GLAX-O-BRAX! GEEE! GEEE?” “You are one talented paranormal parakeet, Pooky,” he said. “We all knew you were gonna say that,” we all said. “Oh, well, anyway, this time they hit the Garden of Gross and Greasy Delights!” said the mayor. “You know the place? Their slogan is ‘Twenty-Four-Hour Delightfully Disgusting Dining’? Well, the creeps consumed nine hundred buckets of fried chicken, two tons of French fries, and four hundred pounds of deep-fried doughnut holes in less than five minutes. Plus the six thousand gallons of grease it had all been fried in! Plus the vat! Plus the boxes it was all going to be packed in!” “Wow,” I said. “I’m not finished,” said the mayor. “Plus the trucks that those boxes were going to be trucked away in!” “Wow again,” I said. “These junk food–loving giant monster supervillain maniacs are definitely not fussy eaters.” “For cook to easy!” said Granny. “I still wasn’t finished,” said the mayor. “Plus the entire supply of what Garden of Gross and Greasy Delights is famous for: Great Big Gobs of Greasy

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Grimy Gooey Gunk. They used to be known for their Great Big Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts, but an angry mob of grimy gophers protested and they changed the recipe. They figured they wouldn’t have a problem with angry mobs of gooey gunk. Plus, it turned out the kids of Gritty City liked gooey gunk much more than gopher guts anyway, so it was a winwin situation. Where was I? Oh, yeah. So now, with all the candy and gunk gone, the kids of Gritty City have slipped into a deep, candy-and-gunk-deprived funk!” We all held our breath, sure that he still hadn’t finished. “Okay, I’m finished,” he said. “Finished all we’re think I,” said Granny.

CHAPTER 11 Hard Time in Blunderland

ight fell and the rain continued to fall. Blunder was still doing his whole I-nottrustee-thems-cats routine and growling louder than ever. “Them the evilest, evilest critchers me ebber layered eyeballs on,” he said. I marched Blunder back to the basement and locked him in the storage room this time. It’s one of those chain-link cagelike storage rooms, so it looked a bit like a prison cell. But it wasn’t all that bad—I set up a comfy little bunk bed for him on a storage shelf. I gave him two blankets and four pillows. I was feeling guilty about locking him up, so I tucked him in. I gave him a dog-food-and-peanut-butter cookie and a warm mug of maraschino cherry juice, his favorite

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bedtime snack. It was actually a much better arrangement than he’d had upstairs, where he slept on a hardwood floor. I even gave Blunder some Crackling Crunching Chunks of Chewy Chocolate Chowder on a Stick and Great Big Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gooey Gunk that I found in our cupboard. But despite all this, Blunder acted like he had been sentenced to solitary confinement in a terrible maximumsecurity prison. “I be stentenced to solitary refinement in turble maximar securbity prishon,” he said. “Woe be me! I rottin’ my life aways!” He immediately started pounding on his drum with his face again, so I took the drum away from him. “You meany old warden!” he said in a voice that sounded like he was being tortured. He dumped out his maraschino cherry juice and scraped the mug back and forth on the chain-link door. Then he cupped his hand over his mouth and imitated a harmonica. He played “air harmonica.” He was really getting into it, playing a mournful prison song, and then started to sing. He apparently had the low-down dirty blues and he wanted to tell the world about it:

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“Ohhhhhh . . . Me a supah mutt, baby, locked up in this turble jail, Me a supah mutt, baby, locked up in this turble jail, Me so low-down and bluish, Don’t even feel like chasin’ muh tail. Me said . . . me so low-down and bluish, Don’t even feel like chasin’ muh tail.

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You know . . . Mah frens don’ understab me, they tinkin Blunder losed his mind, Me said, mah frens don’ understab me, they tinkin Blunder losed his mind, Me should be battlin’ evil kitties, But all me doin’ is doin’ time. Me said . . .” “Blunder! I heard what you said and—guess what— your friends are right, you did lose your mind . . . if you ever hadded one.” I stomped up the basement stairs and slammed the door. Actually, though, the singing was an improvement, because it was much quieter than the head pounding and growling. In fact, with the door closed it sounded almost like a lullaby and everyone started dropping off to sleep, including Fantastic Furball, Terrific Tabbykins, and Wonderpuss, whose tails were sticking out of their blanket as usual. I looked at the clock as I slid into slumberland: 2:32 A.M. I felt like I could sleep for a week.

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CHAPTER 12 Alien Home Invasion

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o such luck. I slept for exactly eleven minutes. At 2:43 A.M., the loudest growling yet.

Plus, chewing and crashing. I ran down to the kitchen-lair and found Blunder Mutt in the middle of the floor. He was eating a candy bar, standing in a pile of candy wrappers and trash. His paws were covered with chocolate. He pointed to a gigantic hand-shaped hole in the kitchen wall. “Holy Goofballs!” I said. “It’s the junk food–loving giant monster supervillain maniacs!” The cupboards were empty and the refrigerator and all of its contents

were gone. Well, not everything. The giant maniacs had rejected some of the healthier items in the fridge: a loaf of whole wheat bread obviously had been tasted and spit out. The fresh broccoli was untouched. The tofu had been beaten beyond recognition. A note was scrawled on the wall where the fridge had been:

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CHAPTER 13 A Highly Unlikely Story

hat note contained a lot of information. First of all, now we knew that these were no ordinary junk food–loving giant monster supervillain maniacs.They were the kind from another planet. We also knew one of their names: Supreme Commander Cockroachia. I couldn’t help noticing the similarity between his name and a certain sixlegged gross household pest. Hmm. And speaking of gross pests, Grosspestia also had a familiar ring to it. The nature of our enemy was becoming clearer. And the phrase “soon to be our planet” added a chilling clarity to the nature of their visit. “Okay,” I said, “so obviously we need to find this Cockroachia guy. Blunder, tell me everything you heard and saw.” Blunder acted out everything he said. “Me heerd

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me playin’ my harmonicar . . . but me dint eckshily seeda harmonicar . . . but me playin’ one anyways . . .” “Could you get to the—zip, whoosh—point, Blunder?” asked Super Vacation Man, waving his stubby arms. “Yesh, yesh . . . me be playin and playin . . . it was a song ’bout livin’ my live-long life in prishon and how I gets no visters . . .” Blunder frowned a big frown, pantomimed huge tears rolling down his face, and continued, “ . . . and feelin so low-down lonelyish and . . .” “BLUNDER!” everyone yelled together. “Just tell us what you saw and heard !” “Okays, heres goes,” he said, speaking much faster now. “Me heerd me play harmonicar, heerd me sing

saddy song, heerd loudish noises, seed lock, broke lock, seed stairs, runned up stairs, dint see door, crash inta door, falled down stairs, break tooths, seed tooths, pick up tooths, runned up stairs, dint seed door again, crash troo door, runned inta kitchlair, seed disasterish sitcheration, bad guys already gone . . . enda’ story!” “And a bloomin’ likely story it is!” shouted Mighty Tighty Whitey. “Because look around! There are Blunder-sized paw prints all over the wall!” We looked around the room, and sure enough, there were brown paw prints everywhere. We looked at Blunder’s chocolate-covered paws. “So, like, how did the prints get there, Blunder?” asked SuperSass CuteGirl.

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“Ummm,” said Blunder. “Yes,” said Wonder Boulder, “how get there?” “Ummm,” said Blunder again. “I’d like to hear a sensible explanation, Blundy,” said Scoodlyboot. “Me also like to hear a sensical exaplation!” said Blunder. “I have an explanation!” I said. “Blunder helped this Cockroachia guy get away!” “Nooo!” cried Blunder. “Yes!” cried everyone else. You see, although this crime was smaller than the others, it was a lot closer to home—in fact, it was at home. And that made it personal. Everybody was mad. Mad at Cockroachia and mad at Blunder Mutt. Could Blunder really be working for Cockroachia? I was starting to think it might be true. “This why he act so strange,” said Wonder Boulder. “Why he so mean to Furball, Tabbykins, and Wonderpuss!” “Wait a minute!” I said. “Where are those little cats? Blunder and his buddy Cockroachia better not have harmed a hair on their heads!”

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CHAPTER 14 Blunder Gone Bad

e ran up to my bedroom and looked in their basket. I saw their tails sticking out and pulled back the blanket. Oh, thank goodness. There they were, rubbing their eyes and yawning. They jumped up, like they were responding to an emergency, ran around in circles, and fell back down. “Awwwwww,” we all said.

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Except Blunder, who growled. I mean, he growled with a meanness and intensity that was truly scary— at the three cutest kittens in the whole world! Then we noticed that Blunder’s paw prints were all over this room, too! I’d had it, so I said, “Blunder Mutt, I’ve had it! You’ve blundered your last blunder, Blunder! I’m officially stripping you of your official Super Goofball privileges and duties! You are no longer the Official Phone Answerer and you are not allowed to attend the secret Super Goofball Meeting we’re about to have in the kitchen-lair! Instead, you will return to your basement jail cell, and this time I’m really talking maximum security!”

I dragged him downstairs, threw him into the storage room, fortified it with super-unbreakable chain link, and locked the door with a super-unbreakable lock—once and for all.

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“Okay, Blunder,” I said. “That oughta hold you! Now, excuse me, we’ve got to find and defeat your best buddy.” “Cockroachocharia not my bebst bugby! You and Soupy Vacationeer and the redst of the balls of goof . . . yous my bebst bugbies!” “Yeah, right,” I said, climbing the stairs and slamming the door really hard this time.

CHAPTER 15 Think Like a Cockroach

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e all gathered around the kitchen-lair

table. “Cockroach a like think to have we,” said Granny. “Like a giant alien cockroach,” I said. “Oh, is this like role-playing?” said SuperSass CuteGirl. “I took an acting class once.” She got up on the table, crouched down, and started wiggling and walking around like a cockroach. The others thought it was a good idea and joined in.

Sometimes the Goofballs are such goofballs. T-Tex3000 fell off the table, disappearing into the sea of garbage. “Okay, if I were a giant alien cockroach,” I said, “where would I go next?

“Back up on the table?” said the cowboy hat on the floor. “No.” “On vacation?” said Super Vacation Man. “No!” I said. “To a doctor to have my arms enlarged?” “No! No! No! No! What junk food place or restaurant would I go to?” “Well, like, what do you feel like eating?” said SuperSass.

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“Is everyone doing their Blunder Mutt impression or something? I’m not talking about me! I said if I were a giant cockroach!” “I’m sorry,” replied SuperSass, “but we haven’t slept in two days! None of us is exactly at our superest or sassiest!” And she was right. We were all tired and stressed out and unable to think straight.

CHAPTER 16 What’s in Store?

stared into space, not knowing what to do next. That went on for a while. And then I noticed something. Actually, I noticed two things. First, I saw an ad in the Gritty City Times for the grand opening of a gigantic new candy and greasy food store. The Big Fat Calorie ’n’ Cavity Warehouse and the Garden of Gross and Greasy Delights were nothing compared to this place. In fact, the name of the new place was The Place That Makes the Big Fat Calorie ’n’ Cavity Warehouse and the Garden of Gross and Greasy Delights Seem Like Nothing! Instead of “A million miles of crunchy aisles!”, or “Delightfully Disgusting!”, its slogan was “Infinity Miles of Crunchy ’n’ Delightfully Disgusting Aisles!” Obviously not exactly truth in advertising, but the

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place was probably pretty darn large. And below that, and most importantly was: “Guaranteed: Plenty of 50-Ton Crates of Crackling Crunching Chunks of Chewy Chocolate Chowder on a Stick and Great Big Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gooey Gunk in Stock!” Bingo! The other thing I noticed was a tiny ant crawling across the floor. We’d had a problem with ants ever since the roommates moved in and the trash level had gone up. The ant was walking along minding his own business and then suddenly took a sharp right-hand turn and headed strait for an ant trap I’d set earlier in the week. The ant found the scent of the bait irresistible and walked right in.

Bingo again. A light went on. No, literally. It was raining outside, and it was really dark inside, so I turned on a light. “I have a idea!” I said.

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“I’m glad somebody does,” said Mighty Tighty Whitey. “Oim goin’ ta sleep. ZZZZZZZZ.” Then he fell over and landed on his cousin and partner, the Terrifyin’ Tubesock Lad, who had also just fallen asleep. For a fierce team of super undergarments, they sure looked a lot like a pile of dirty laundry. But then they fell off the table and woke up. “Could someone be explainin’ exactly woy dere’s a wee pair o’ Itty Bitty Pants on me ’ead?” said Tubesock. “I told you never to call me that, you blabbermouthing bloke!” said Mighty Tighty Whitey. It seemed like everyone was getting crankier and crankier and that no one would ever sleep ever again. But the important thing was that I had an idea.

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CHAPTER 17 The Power of the Scribble

pressed a button next to the oven and my super drafting table dropped from its secret panel in the wall. My drafting chair rose up under me from out of the floor and I sat down. A mechanical arm handed me my sketchbook. Another mechanical arm that held a tray of all my drawing tools—pencils, pens, ink, watercolors,

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markers, erasers, hammers—zipped over and stopped right next to my outstretched hand. Scribble Power time. I grabbed a marker and started scribbling designs as fast as I could. The Goofballs gathered and watched, amazed. They oohed and ahhed. They’d never seen anyone draw that fast before. You know the squeaky noise that markers make? I was drawing so fast, and the squeaking got so loud, that we couldn’t hear the rain or even Blunder’s singing from the basement. Smoke poured out of the end of the marker. Even I had never seen that before.

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I must have drawn fifty versions before I settled on a design. I hardly ever get something right the first time—my sketchbook has tons of bad, superbad, and superterrible drawings. But there are a lot of superokay ones and even a few superbrilliant ones. I just keep trying new ideas until I get the right one. Maybe Leonardo Da Vinci got all his ideas right the first time, but I doubt it. Who knows? Before the Mona Lisa, there might have been the Mona Blunder or the Mona Mutt.

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I still had some fine-tune scribbling to do, so I sent the Goofballs out on a shopping trip. There was no time to make all those separate shopping lists, so I told them each to run to a different store and that certain items would already be there waiting for them. “As always, we are kinda low on cash—actually, we kinda have no cash—so take plenty of trophies and medals to trade for supplies with store owners. You know the corner of Mulberry and Melrose? Where they’ve been building that huge ugly building for years? Hurry! I’ll meet you there and thanks for your help!” I heard myself saying the H word and wished I hadn’t.

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“Anytime and anywhere . . .” “Not now, SVM,” I said. But he couldn’t not say it. “Call for help . . .” “No time!” I said. And then he finished it really fast, like he also knew it was unnecessary: “ . . . and-I’ll-be-there-I-promise!” “SVM,” I said, “that goes without saying! You always promise to help!” Oh, brother. I did it again. I was tired. I could hear him starting the whole thing over— Anytime and anywhere—as he leaped through the window and into the rain.

CHAPTER 18 Granny Watch

quickly finished scribbling, scanned a different portion of the design for each Goofball with my built-in Amazing Techno Dude Monitor Scanner, and transmitted them, so that a unique list of

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items would be waiting at each store for each Goofball when he, she, or it got there. Whew, what a sentence. I packed up the Amazing Techno Dude Suitcase/Toolkit. I wished I could bring my new sidekicks with me. Were they ready? I looked in on them practicing their superhero routines in my room. Fantastic Furball had his cape tucked into his pants. Terrific Tabbykins was wearing his pants on his head. Wonderpuss was eating his pants. Cute? Yes. Ready? Definitely not. There’d be plenty of other missions in the future. Even though Blunder Mutt was locked up good this time, I was still afraid he’d somehow

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break loose and harm the kittens, so I asked Granny to stay behind and watch over the cute little ones and maybe serve some bread and water to Blunder—if he behaved himself. “Problemo no,” she said, carrying the basket of little cats to the basement, where she could watch them and Blunder at the same time. “Thanks, Granny,” I called, boarding the Backwardsmobile and, since it was still raining, carefully driving backwards down the street at barely 100 miles per hour. I found out later that Granny put the basket of kittens on the floor, dimmed the basement lights, sat down in her rocking chair, said, “Boy my Blunder, yourself behave you,” and immediately fell asleep.

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CHAPTER 19 And to Think That We Built It at Mulberry and Melrose

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hen I got to the corner of Mulberry and Melrose, the other Goofballs were already there waiting for me. They were

all wearing tool belts and carpenter overalls and were armed with power tools: power saws, power hammers, power drills, power everything. I looked up at The Place That Makes the Big Fat Calorie ’n’ Cavity Warehouse and the Garden of Gross and Greasy Delights Seem Like Nothing. We would have to work fast. “Power on!” I shouted, and all the tools turned on with a deafening wwwwwhhhhhiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Good thing it was really, really loud. It meant there was at least a slight chance that everyone wouldn’t fall asleep on their feet.

CHAPTER 20 Blunder Gone Badder

ack at 1313 Thirteenth Street, Blunder Mutt paced in his cell. It was pretty dark, so he kept bumping into things. “Owee! Dat hurted me toe and dat was dose kats’ fault! Owee! Dat hurted me udder toe and dat was dose kats’ fault alsos!” Blunder was angry. You know how prisoners mark the passing days on the walls of their cells? Blunder tried to mark each passing second. He made marks all over the wall with a crayon. Because it was dark, and because Blunder can count only to five or six anyway, he got really confused and started to think he’d been locked up for years, even though it had only been about five minutes.

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He started acting like a hardened criminal. He found a permanent marker and gave himself “tattoos” all over his body. On the knuckles of one paw he wrote H-A-I-T. On the other: C-A-T-Z. He found some barbells on a shelf and started pumping iron and acting tough. He glared at Granny sleeping in the rocking chair and growled under his breath. “Okay, backerds

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granny warden,” he whispered softly. “I thoughts you was a nice backers womans, but no. You sended me ups the river, to da big house. Not evens in da big house, in da basement of da big house!” He lifted the barbells faster and faster, and with every lift, he gritted his teeth and grunted. “You and the man—grunt—thinkst me bad ?” By the man he meant me. “Mebee—grunt—if da man and da gram thimks me bad—grunt—mebee me is bad! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!”

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CHAPTER 21 Scaredydog

lunder heard a strange sound, which he described later as being “excremely scaredycattish.” He looked over and saw the rocking chair rocking, but Granny wasn’t in it. He went from tough to terrified in about two seconds. He scanned the darkest corners of the basement but couldn’t see much. “Grammy warden?” he said nervously. “Izzit you in the scaredy darkestness? Grammy?” And then, someone said in a soft, but weird and scary voice, “GEEE-gor-glax-obrax! GEEE! GEEE!”

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CHAPTER 22 Many Hands Make Sloppy Work

t the corner of Mulberry and Melrose, we were working fast and furiously to transform The Place That Makes the Big Fat Calorie ’n’ Cavity Warehouse and the Garden of Gross and Greasy Delights Seem Like Nothing into a huge booby trap for Cockroachia and his invasion force. We were so exhausted that, although we had the fast and furious part down, our craftsmanship was kind of sloppy. Chunks of wood and sawdust and nails and screws were flying everywhere. Biff and Smiff were supercranky, because they were superbabies after all. They kept hitting each other’s thumbs with hammers. Whack, “Ow!” Whack, “Wha!” Whack, “Ow!” Whack, “Wha!”

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T-Tex3000 was seen riding a power sander down the street. Super Vacation Man shouted to me from the top of the building: “Power saw, please!”, so I threw him my power saw. He reached for it, but missed it by two feet—those darn shrunken arms again! Sergeant Bub McButt had just written a parking ticket and was putting it on the windshield of the Backwardsmobile, when the power saw flew by and sawed the ticket in half.

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CHAPTER 23 Blunder Sees the Error of His Ways

lunder was still staring into the darkness. And then someone stepped into the semidarkness. Actually three someones: Fantastic Furball, Terrific Tabbykins, and Wonderpuss. They rubbed their eyes and yawned. “Yous!” said Blunder. “Bad, badder, and baddest!” They toddled up to the cage and looked at Blunder with their big, baby blue eyes. “Yous stay aways from mees, you evil, creepsy critters! Grrrrrrrrr!” Their eyes filled with tears. Their lower lips quivered. “Mew! Mew!” said Fantastic Furball. “Why do you hate us so, you supersmart doggy?”

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Supersmart doggy? Nobody had ever called Blunder Mutt not dumb, let alone smart, let alone supersmart. He was very flattered. Finally someone recognized his deep canine intelligence. “Wowz,” he said, “tanksh fer noticin’! I alwuzz tryin’ to splain to ebberbody jest how shmartish me is, but the man and the gram and all dose balls of goof nevber be unnerstannin that.”

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“I know,” said Fantastic Furball. “I understand how hard it is when people don’t understand you.” “Wowz again. Tanks fer unnerstannin how to be unnerstannin about unnerstannin,” said Blunder. “Berry unnerstannin of yous.” He finally saw just how innocent these little guys were. Innocent and nice! And unnerstannin! He realized how much of a jerk he had been. These were just little babies. It wasn’t their fault they had been born cats. “Oh, libble kibbies, me so sorry me treatered you baddishly. Me hope you finder in yer heartworms to forgiver me.”

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CHAPTER 24 Move Along, Nothing to See Here

ur work continued on The Place That Makes the Big Fat Calorie ’n’ Cavity Warehouse and the Garden of Gross and Greasy Delights Seem Like Nothing. To tell you the truth, there was so much sawdust and smoke and noise, you couldn’t see or hear anything. I recommended returning to the basement of 1313 Thirteenth Street.

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CHAPTER 25 Secrets

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ew! Mew! Oh, goodness yes!” said Fantastic Furball. “We forgiver the shmartish doggy, don’t we fellas?” “Purr! Purr! Most certainly!” All three of them start to laugh. Blunder was confused. “Why yous be laughin’, you silly leetle kitksy cats?” said Blunder. “We’re laughing because of the happiness we feel now that we are friends! And by the way, friend . . . do you happen to know where Amazing Techno Dude and the rest of the Goofballs went? We were supposed to go with them, but we overslept. We are eager little super kittens and we so want to help!” “Well,” said Blunder, “mees still mad at thems

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goofballs, but me like yous now, so I helps yous. They thinks I not hears whats they sayin in theirs meetin’, but me climbed up the shelvers and push my ears to ceiling and heerd every words! But, shhh—dis is big secretiveness.” The kittens leaned in close and Blunder whispered. “They settin’ some big trap for dose turble giant monster super spacer villains that bens eatin all the yummy foods in town. The trap is full of candy and gunky on the corner of Mulrooster and Strawberry.” “Blunder, do you mean The Place That Makes the Big Fat Calorie ’n’ Cavity Warehouse and the Garden

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of Gross and Greasy Delights Seem Like Nothing on the corner of Mulberry and Melrose?” “Thadts wuht I saided,” he said. “Wow,” said Fantastic Furball. “We just read about that place in the paper, but we had no idea it was a trap. You are a true friend and very clever . . . for a world-class, no, universe-class idiot!” “Tank you!” said Blunder. “I means, what?” Then all three kittens started laughing, a lot louder than before.

“Me don’t rilly sees the funny-makingness of this patikular sitsyayshin azackly . . .” Their cute little laughs became scarier and weirder. Then Fantastic Furball said, in a much, much deeper voice, “Okay, troops . . . it’s zipper time!”

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CHAPTER 26 Beneath the Surface of Things

ll three cats reached behind their necks and pulled zippers up over their heads. They made a very loud zipping sound: ZZZZZZZZIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPP! And then the kittens’ “heads” fell away. Out of the shoulders of what turned out to be kitten disguises popped their real heads. And there, in the middle of the dark basement, stood three small, but truly horrifying, alien creep-oids:

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Supreme Commander Cockroachia, Antglop the Awful, and Ratzorg the Rabid. Antglop was a disgusting, alien creep-oid version of an ant. He had one creepy, yellow, gloppy eye, but it wasn’t centered on his face like most Cyclopses’ eyes—it was off to one side, which made it even creepier. His bright red skin was slimy and bumpy, like a toad’s, and each bump was oozing bright blue, glowing—you guessed it—glop. Ratzorg was no slouch in the ugly department, either. He looked like a huge green rat, except he had twelve to fifteen eyeballs—all Day-Glo orange and all on fire. Nothing smells quite so delightful as flaming, alien rat eyeballs. His long, twisted, filthy fingers looked like rotting tree roots, caked with glowing space dirt, with disgusting little glowing space worms living in it. But Supreme Commander Cockroachia was the slimiest, the awfulest, the disturbingly cockroachiest. Deep inside his three green eyeballs, clouds billowed, tornadoes swirled, and lighting bolts crackled. It was like staring into really scary miniature universes. His mouthful of teeth was like one of those crazy multiblade pocketknives. Each tooth was a different razor-

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sharp blade—scissors, corkscrews, spinning dentist tools—all terrifying. His tongue had a mind of its own. I mean it actually had a mind of its own. And a mouth of its own. As Cockroachia talked, the tongue’s mouth talked along with him and slithered out into the room, curving its way toward Blunder Mutt, like a radioactive purple snake. “Okay,” said Blunder, “me startin’ to tink dat you not akshilly be kitties.” “GEEE-GOR-GLAX-O-BRAX! GEEE! GEEE!” said Cockroachia.

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“Geee-gor-who?” said Blunder. “Oh, right . . . English,” said Cockroachia. “So, you startin’ to tink dat we not be kitties? Well, right you are, smart doggy. We’re the giant monster supervillain alien creep-oids from another planet that you’ve heard so much about!”

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CHAPTER 27 Bigger Problems

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ow dat is impossibly!” Blunder laughed. “Cause yer monstery and creep-oidy, but yer not azackly giant.” “Not yet,” said Supreme Commander Cockroachia. “Okay, troops . . . it’s GROW TIME!” And then Cockroachia, Antglop the Awful, and Ratzorg the Rabid all started growing. A lot. Soon they were towering over Blunder Mutt. “I thoughted I shouldna trusted yous!” cried Blunder Mutt. Then Antglop pulled out a pair of fake dog paws. They were dripping with chocolate. “I knowed I shouldna trusted yous!”

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CHAPTER 28 How Evil Can You Get?

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ow, now, Earthmutt, we’re your friends,” said Cockroachia. “We understand you, remember? You might be interested to know that we come to Earth from a wonderful planet called Grosspestia,” said Cockroachia. “We love our planet—it’s perfect in many ways. Grosspestia girls are much prettier than Earth girls— their skin has lots more oozing, glowing bumps that smell like rotting meat, for one thing. More flaming eyeballs, too. And the aroma of a Grosspestia sunrise—

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a fragrance Earthlings would call, how do you say, farty—simply takes your breath away.” “Let me tell it!” said Ratzorg. “Yes, our planet is truly paradise. Except for one thing: you cannot find good junk food on Grosspestia. I mean, it’s like trying to find a good milkshake on Venus or something—sure, they start out okay, but on your typical four-hundred-sixtytwo-degree day, they vaporize before you can take a sip! Anyway, we absolutely love your delicious Earth junk food. The greasiest possible French fries—the kind that harden into a heavy rock in your stomach— or in my case, eleven stomachs—YUM!

And the sugariest candy! The kind that makes your teeth hurt when you eat it, like you can feel the cavities forming as you chew? Scrumptious!” “There’s nothing like it anywhere,” said Antglop. “And we should know, because we’ve been everywhere. We’ve conquered countless planets, searching for these wonderful substances, but we didn’t find anything. The creatures on those planets were a little angry that we conquered them for no reason, but I’m sorry, it’s just the price of doing business with the Grosspestia government! Ha, ha, ha!” “That realllly not so funnyish,” said Blunder. “Hmmm, that’s funny,” said Cockroachia, “because we find it very funny. But here’s the funniest part: NOW WE’RE CONQUERING EARTH AND ALL ITS JUNK FOOD WILL BE OURS!” “YAY, YIPPEE, YUMMY, YUM, YUM!” said Antglop. He looked like a gigantic, excited kid. His ugly, yellow eyeball almost popped out of his head.

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CHAPTER 29 Eviler and Eviler

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ut waits! Yous sleepin’ upstairs when all thems crimes was bean commitsed!” said Blunder. “Well,” said Cockroachia, “we were supposedly sleeping, but we used the old fakekitten-tails-sticking-out-from-underthe-blanket trick. The oldest trick in the book! In fact, it was invented before the book! And then we just snuck out of that stupid basket and ran around town robbing stores and restaurants and eating more and more junk food! Aren’t we clever?”

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“Bad clebber, not good clebber!” said Blunder. Cockroachia, Antglop, and Ratzorg all laughed. And they continued to grow. “Okay, okay,” said Blunder Mutt. “Number one: I takes it back, you is giantish. Number B: I hopes you still appreciates Blunder’s super-smartishness. And Eleventy-seventy: Why you picks good ol’ Thirteenthirteen Thirteenf Steet fer yours headsquarters?” “Look around, smarty-pants!” said Commander Cockroachia. “So now yous sayin’ my pants is smart?!” “Your clothing may well be smarter than you,” said Cockroachia, “although we’d need to run some tests to know for sure, and we don’t have time for that. But, what I’m trying to tell you and your pants is that this place is a pigsty. And we looooove pigsties. AND YOU GUYS ARE A BUNCH OF PIGS!” This made Blunder mad. “Me no pig, me a mutt! Mebbee da udders pigs, but me be clean as a whistler!” he said, throwing a maraschino cherry candy wrapper onto a pile of identical wrappers. “Whatever,” said Cockroachia. “But since this place is such a pigsty, it is the perfect place, because, you see, sure we’ve been eating tons of junk food—

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exactly two hundred and eleven tons so far—but that’s just the beginning. Through a process that may be too disgusting for your sensitive canine ears to hear about—but what the heck—we’ve been feeding digested junk food, kinda like a momma bird feeding her young, to the normal house pests that live behind the walls of this filthy house! Through this appetizing stomach-to-throat-to-mouth-to-mouth technique we’ve successfully transformed the pests of Thirteenthirteen Thirteenth Street into an army of superpests!” Right on cue, super rats, ants, and roaches creeped out of every crack and crevice of the basement, and saluted Commander Cockroachia. They looked like regular pests on steroids, all smiling creepy smiles and growling creepy growls. “Hail, hail, Cockroachia!” they cheered in voices that sounded like cute animated characters, except really, really creepy.

CHAPTER 30 Ready and Waiting

e finished our work on The Place That Makes the Big Fat Calorie ’n’ Cavity Warehouse and the Garden of Gross and Greasy Delights Seem Like Nothing. The entire building had been transformed into a gigantic booby trap. Blinking signs said things like: “All You Can Eat!”, and “Free Junk Food!”, and “Guaranteed to Rot Your Teeth in Thirty Seconds or Your Money Back . . . Except It’s Free, So Forget That Part!” Flashing arrows indicated ways to access the huge supplies of everything sweet and greasy inside. Every door, window, brick, and shingle was wired with gizmos, gadgets, trap doors, and spring-loaded surprises—locked, loaded, and ready to blow. It would be impossible even to touch the place without

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getting slammed, bammed, or otherwise kablamboozled. Despite our extreme tiredness and crankiness, we had pulled together to construct a masterpiece of modern giant-monster-supervillainalien-trap engineering. Completely nonlethal, but oh, so effective. I was proud. All we had to do now was just sit and wait. Gritty City citizens started to line up for the grand opening of the new store. We told them there might be a slight delay due to the superhero-alien-monster showdown that was about to go down instead. They decided to hang around and watch.

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CHAPTER 31 Is There No End to This Nastiness?

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lunder looked at the gigantic aliens and the superpest army. “Okays,” he said. “So, yous and all dese bad pesters seems to really likes candy and pigstyles and blah, blah, blah. So whata heck dis aposta mean to me?” Ratzorg moved his face in close to Blunder. And close is something you don’t ever want to be in relation to Ratzorg, unless you happen to enjoy the smell of Grosspestian Sunrise, the cologne he was wearing. And he puts it on thick. “Well, smart doggy,” he said, “what this means to you is that we’re turning Thirteen-thirteen Thirteenth Street into our own private junk food factory! These new superpests will be the bosses and you and the other Goofballs will be our junk food factory drones!”

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“Yes!” yelled Cockroachia. “And you will all have to wear—get this—THOSE STUPID HAIRNETS!” “Me loves those hairnets!” said Blunder Mutt. “That’s beside the point!” said Cockroachia. “Believe me, you’re the only Goofball who does!” Just then, lightning flashed outside the house and inside Cockroachia’s eyeballs. In the flash, Blunder saw Granny in the corner of the basement, bound and gagged. “Backerds Grammy? No!!!!!!!!!” he cried.

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CHAPTER 32 Creep-oids on the Move

ockroachia, Antglop, and Ratzorg laughed and laughed and grew and grew until they burst through the basement and living room ceilings, through the roof, and then plowed through what remained of the walls and into the Gritty City night. The army of smaller superpests ran up Cockroachia’s legs, like rats boarding a

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ship, and they rode along, smiling insane smiles, as the terrible giants headed for the corner of Mulberry and Melrose.

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CHAPTER 33 Fool-Proof

he rain was still coming down hard. The Goofballs and I were sitting under sheets of plastic, except Super Vacation Man, who was holding forty-seven tiny paper tropical drink umbrellas above his head. Actually, he was trying to hold them above his head, but since his arms were still stubby, the umbrellas were in front of his face, maybe keeping part of his huge chin dry. Meanwhile, despite the rain, we were all struggling to stay awake. I held

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my eyes open with my fingers. Biff used Smiff ’s fingers, and vice versa. SuperSass used bobby pins. Just then, the ground shook. I thought it was an earthquake at first, but an earthquake would have been a day at the beach compared to what was really going on. The ground shook again and again and again and I realized these were the approaching footsteps of very large individuals. And I knew who the individuals were. We hid behind barricades. It was so dark, I was worried we wouldn’t see them coming. I didn’t realize all those ugly eyeballs would be glowing. Or flaming. Three Godzilla-sized alien creep-oids—Cockroachia, Antglop, and Ratzorg—stepped over the top of the Gritty City City Center and walked right up to The Place That Makes the Big Fat Calorie ’n’ Cavity Warehouse and the Garden of Gross and Greasy Delights Seem Like Nothing! Cockroachia opened his mouth so wide, you could have fit all of Gritty City in there. And then, of course, he screamed very, very, very loudly: “GEEE-GOR-GLAX-O-BRAX! GEEE! GEEE!” Those Gritty City citizens who had stayed to watch decided that maybe they’d rather not watch.

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They decided they’d much rather run screaming in terror, which is exactly what they did. But I was still confident that the trap would work. It was perfectly designed to be totally irresistible to extraterrestrial junk food junkies like these. This was going to be good. But it wasn’t good. Nothing good about it.

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Cockroachia took one look at The Place That Makes the Big Fat Calorie ’n’ Cavity Warehouse and the Garden of Gross and Greasy Delights Seem Like Nothing and smiled an evil, knowing smile. He looked down and admired the army of smaller superpests, which were still clinging to his arms and legs and growling high-pitched growls. He simply smiled a tad wider and gave them an order. “Attention, Super Mini-Troops! Do you know what time it is? It’s Sacrifice-Yourselves-for-the-GreaterGood-of-All-That-Is-Gross-and-Pesty Time!” And without hesitation, the smaller pests ran, jumped, and rolled down the giant’s legs and sacrificed themselves. The hundreds of booby traps and gizmos I’d designed went off, one by one. The smaller superpests were slammed, bammed, and flung into the night sky and far out over Gritty City Harbor.

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It sounded kinda like this: THWWWWWWIT . . . “AHHHHHHHHHHH!” SPPPROINGGGGG! . . . “NOOOOOOOOO!” KABLAMMMO! . . . “ OUCH! OUCH! OUCH! OUCH!” KABLOOOOOEEEEE! . . . “ OOOCH! OOOCH! OOOCH! OOOCH!” CLANGGGGGG! . . . “ HOMINA! HOMINA! HOMINA!” THWANNNNNNG! . . . “I-YI-YI-YI-YI-YI-YI!” This went on for some time, until every single booby trap was sprung. The

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plan had worked perfectly, except on the wrong pests. What a disaster. Now that the trap warehouse was completely harmless, the giants simply reached in, helped themselves to the two hundred tons of candy and gunk, and ate it before I could say candy or gunk. It was over in a matter of seconds. As they turned to leave, they laughed. “Thanks, not-really-all-thatAmazing Techno Dude!” This time they didn’t step

over the Gritty City City Center, they just marched right through it, knocking it over like little kids stomping through a tower of blocks. We were all flabbergasted. Who had clued them in? “BLUNDER MUTT!!!!”

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CHAPTER 34 You Can’t Go Home Again (Well, Actually You Can, But It Might Not Be There When You Get There)

e raced back to the Backwardsmobile, which was now covered with parking tickets, and sped to 1313 Thirteenth Street. Way before we got there, we saw the enormous spaceship. It was sitting on the pile of rubble that was

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once our house. It actually looked like a cross between a spaceship and a factory. We climbed under it and through the crumbled walls of our home sweet home. The only thing left standing was Blunder Mutt’s jail cell. He was sitting in there in the rain, playing air harmonica. Well, it was more like water harmonica now. Now we were positive he was helping the alien creep-oids. “Blunder!” I shouted. “Did you find out about the trap and tell Cockroachia?” “Well, yesh,” said Blunder, “but I can explainish.”

“Don’t even bother, that’s all I wanted to know!” I said. “We have been betrayed by one of our own. A clear violation of the Super Goofball code—an unforgivable offense!” “I’d like to hear his explanation,” said Scoodlyboot. Somehow she still had an ounce of faith in Blunder Mutt. “Well,” he said. “I dids listen to yer meeting troo dah floors, an’ I did telling the alien creep-zoids all ’bout the trap, but at the times I tinks they was jest teeny kittens! But the teeny cats wuz big giants in teeny disguisers and they chewed up the deliciousy foods and fed the pesters inside the walls and now dose pesters are part of Cockroachy’s army and me didn’t means to do it, but even doh me hated the kitties, they was so nicer to me than yous balls of goof who locked me up for ten years, and dey said me smartish and me trusted thems and me sorry, but me wishes you say me smartiness once in a whiles! But sees dis shacespip is not rilly jest a shacespip! It’s dah beginning of the Grosspestiaarila Junk Fooder Factory, and we all gonna work like slaves fer no moneys! So, everthin is rilly, rilly badness! ’Cept, we do get to wear dose hairnets, so dat’s good. Enda’ story.”

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We stared at Blunder in disbelief. “Blundy, I have officially lost my ounce of faith,” said Scoodlyboot. Of course, the rest of us didn’t believe him, either. We knew about Cockroachia, Antglop, and Ratzorg—we’d seen them. And, yes, we were clearly being invaded. But the rest—I mean, the story was so fantastic and the way Blunder told it was so idiotic! Plus, with all his tattoos and pumped-up muscles, he really looked like a bad dude now. He looked like he had joined the enemy. And when he claimed he’d been locked up for ten years, when it had really been only a couple of hours, he lost every shred of credibility he ever had, which was nearly none to begin with. Then we saw the kittens’ basket sticking out of a pile of rubble. It was empty! The little cats were missing! The Goofballs surrounded Blunder. We wanted answers! “What have you done with Fantastic Furball, Terrific Tabbykins, and Wonderpuss?!” I said. “I didded nuthin,” said Blunder, pointing into the rubble. “But they didded somethin’! They tied ups Backerds Grammy!” Just then, I heard some muffled noises. I dug through the rubble and found the Bodacious

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Backwards Woman. “Granny!” I glared at Blunder. “It was obviously you who tied her up!” I untied her and removed the gag from her mouth. She gasped and said a really long sentence: “Dude Techno Amazing, asleep fell I sorry so, so, so am I and creep-oids alien the are cats the and truth the telling is Blunder, amazingly!” Under normal circumstances, I would have understood her, but these circumstances weren’t normal. Keep in mind, I still hadn’t slept and wasn’t in the best shape for translating Grannyisms.

Everybody was trying to figure out what the heck she had said when in walked the little cats in their little superhero outfits, looking more adorable than ever. “Oh, thank goodness!” I cried. “No, thank badness!” said Blunder Mutt. He went nuts, trying to convince me that the little cats were really the giant alien creep-oids. Granny was also trying to say something, but this time we couldn’t hear any of it because Blunder was yelling so loudly. I was really at the end of my rope with Blunder. I unlocked his cage and kicked him out of the house. Well, there wasn’t really a house to kick him out of, so I just kicked him out of the pile of rubble. “And don’t come back!” I shouted. “You are no longer welcome in our pile of rubble!”

CHAPTER 35 GLAX-O-WHA?

looked down at Fantastic Furball, Terrific Tabbykins, and Wonderpuss. They were just amazingly adorable. “How could Blunder be so, so stupid?” I asked. The cats looked up at me with their big blue eyes and shrugged their shoulders. Then they said something together in a cute little whisper that surprised the heck out of me: “Geee-gorglax-o-brax! Geee! Geee!” A bolt of lightning crackled across the sky. The cats laughed their cute little laughs. Another bolt of lightning. The cats were still

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laughing, but now the laughing got a little weirder. Then a really huge bolt of lightning crashed, lighting up the entire city. And in the light I noticed something. It looked like Fantastic Furball had a weird hole in his neck. It seemed impossible, but it looked like something was chewing its way out from inside. And then, through that hole, came a twisting snakelike thing. It looked like a very gross tongue, but it had a mouth, with teeth, and a tongue of its own. This was just too weird and I thought, I’ve finally fallen asleep and I’m having a nightmare! But that little mouth started laughing and then Fantastic Furball laughed along with it. Together, they sounded like this: “HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!” I wished I were having a nightmare. Fantastic Furball, Terrific Tabbykins, and Wonderpuss all reached behind their necks and I heard a loud ZZZZZZZZZZIPPPP! and then

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Cockroachia, Antglop, and Ratzorg somehow grew up and out of the cats’ bodies. They grew in fast motion—up past the surrounding houses and trees. They towered above us like three super-ugly King Kongs! I couldn’t believe it! Blunder was right! The kittens were alien creep-oids!

“Blunder!” I cried. “I’m sorry! Come back! You’re welcome back in our pile of rubble!” Then I noticed scores of superpests marching into the spaceship factory! They’d swum out of the ocean, crawled across town, put on junk-food boss uni-

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forms, and were sewing our names on junk-food slave uniforms! And—the horror! the horror!—they were preparing to pass out those horrendous hairnets! “Lookit those coolish hairnets!” shouted Blunder. “You’re the only Goofball who thinks so!” shouted all the other Goofballs. But I didn’t say a word. I was shocked, stunned, and stupified. I stared up at Cockroachia, Antglop, and Ratzorg with my mouth wide open. The idea that they were the cute little kittens I had rescued and trained and showered with affection was simply impossible to comprehend. Cockroachia leaned down and glared at me with his three green eyeballs with the billowing clouds, swirling tornadoes, and crackling lighting bolts in them. His crazy pocketknife teeth—the scissors, corkscrews, and spinning dentist tools—were all slicing, dicing, clattering, and spinning in the air in front of me. And Cockroachia and his horrible tongue, which wound its way toward me with a mind and a mouth of its own, laughed at me again, this time louder and meaner: “HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!” I was frozen in shock.

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CHAPTER 36 Bye-bye Backwardsmobile

ut Granny wasn’t and she leaped backwards into action. She ran backwards to the Backwardsmobile and jumped in backwards. “Backwards! Upwards!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, driving backwards up Cockroachia’s leg toward his head. She was driving backwards faster than I’d ever seen her drive backwards, which is saying a lot. Cockroachia just grabbed the Backwardsmobile and shook it like a saltshaker. Granny fell toward the ground. Actually, she fell toward Ratzorg’s mouth. He was lying on his back, with his eyes closed and his disgusting mouth open in a big, disgusting smile, ready to catch and devour my grandmother.

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I wanted to do something, but I couldn’t move a muscle! But Blunder Mutt could. With a burst of supercanine strength, he crashed through a huge pile of rubble, saying, “Rubble, sweet rubble!” and leaped

about thirty feet into the air, catching Granny in his paws. But then they were just falling together. So, Scoodlyboot leaped up, with a burst of superaffection for Blunder, and caught both of them—but then all three of them were falling and screaming, “Help!”

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There was that H word again. Super Vacation Man sprang into action. “ANYTIME AND ANYWHERE, CALL FOR HELP AND I’LL BE THERE! (EVEN IF MY ARMS HAVE BEEN SHRUNK BY A SHRINKENATOR AND HAVEN ’T GROWN BACK YET—SPEAKING OF WHICH, WHAT GIVES, AMAZING TECHNO DUDE?) I PROMISE!!!!” He looked for one of his vast collection of bungee cords, but they were all hopelessly lost in the rubble. In a flash, he turned toward Mighty Tighty Whitey. “No!” said Mighty, but SVM had already grabbed and tied him to a couple of pipes that were sticking out of the ruins and stretched him way, way, back.

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SVM took off like a rocket toward the falling Granny, Blunder, and Scoodlyboot. He stretched out his shrunken arms, but he wasn’t going to make it.

Just then, he felt a funny feeling and his arms sprouted back to their normal size. Which made all the difference. His huge arms caught the three of them just before they were swallowed by Ratzorg, and all four landed safely on a trampoline that was actu-

ally Biff and Smiff ’s diaper being held and stretched by the remaining Goofballs. Luckily, it was a relatively fresh one. This made Cockroachia angry and he squished the Backwardsmobile in his hand like a soda can. He arched his back and pounded his chest with his six huge insect fists and roared to the heavens: “GEEE-GOR-GLAX-O-BRAX! GEEE! GEEE!” Then Cockroachia stared harder than ever at me and shot laser beams out of all three of his eyes. I hid behind a huge pile of my old Popular Super-Mechanics magazines. Sometimes it pays to be messy.

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CHAPTER 37 The Bigger They Come, the Smaller They Fall

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omething caught my eye in the corner, half hidden by rubble. I needed to get to it, but laser beams were zapping all around me. “Super Goofballs!” I cried. “Give me cover!” Pooky momentarily hypnotized the three alien giants with her super-mystical-spiraling eyes. Then

Blunder Mutt, who still had that stash of Crackling Crunching Chunks of Chewy Chocolate Chowder on a Stick and Great Big Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gooey Gunk, used it to tempt and distract them. They were really such slaves to their candy and gunk habits that when Blunder tossed the stuff up to them, they immediately started fighting over it. “GLAX-O-BRAX! GLAX-O-BRAX! GLAXO-BRAX!” they said. I ran across the battlefield I once called home, picked up the object I was looking for, and aimed it at Ratzorg. I pressed the button. A huge Amazing Techno Dude Deluxe Trash Shrinkenator flash lit up the night sky. We were all temporarily blinded by the blue light and orange smoke and disgusted by the smell too disgusting to describe. I blinked a couple of times, coughed twenty times, and looked around. Standing next to me on a pile of trash was Ratzorg. But a teeny-tiny Ratzorg. He was crying for his mommy. I wondered what Ratzorg’s mother might look like, then quickly tried to think of something else—anything else. Next I shrank Antglop, and he was even more of a baby.

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But, by far, the biggest baby was the great evil Cockroachia, who cried and screamed and scurried away, trying to find a hole in the wall to crawl into. But since there were no walls standing, the three simply decided to run. It looked like they might just get away, too, until they suddenly took a sharp right turn. They had noticed the same small ant trap that I had seen earlier. They ran right into it. I could hear the first ant,

the one who had walked in there earlier that day, yelling at Cockroachia. Apparently, he wasn’t too happy about his entire family getting turned into superpests with fancy jobs as bosses in a cool spaceship factory while he was forced to remain a regular old unemployed ant. The Super Goofballs all looked inside the trap and laughed—evil alien creep-oids are much cuter when they’re teeny. And they’re a whole lot funnier when a regular old teeny ant is beating them up. “Oh, by the way,” I said, “what does ‘GEEE-GOR-

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GLAX-O-BRAX! GEEE! GEEE!’ mean anyway?” “I have no idea,” said Cockroachia in his new, teeny-tiny voice. “We actually speak English on Grosspestia. That was just some alien-sounding gobbledygook I made up to try to scare you.” “Well, it worked for a while, I’ll give you that,” I said. “Yeah, it’s such a shame,” continued Cockroachia. “A handsome lady’s bug such as myself would have loved to have gotten to know the girl Goofballs better. If only their skin had more oozing, glowing bumps that smell like rotting meat, or at least a flaming eyeball or two, they wouldn’t be half-bad looking.” SuperSass looked at him and pretended to stick her finger down her throat. “Um, like, so long,” she said. “It’s been bad to know ya,” said Scoodlyboot. I stuck the ant trap inside the spaceship and shrank the whole thing down. Way down. It was so small, you’d need a microscope to find its tiny ignition button, and my microscope was currently under a ton of rubble.

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I asked Pooky if she could peck the button with her beak, but even her beak was too big. “I knew it would be,” she said. “But go ahead, do what you need to do.” So I shrank her, too. She flew through the tiny hatch of the tiny spaceship, started it up, and escaped just as it blasted into space. At least I’m pretty sure it did. It was so tiny, it disappeared at an altitude of about ten feet. It left a tiny vapor trail with the unmistakable odor of a silent but deadly Grosspestia sunrise.

CHAPTER 38 Brand-New Day

he next morning, the sun came up—luckily odor-free—and broke through the clouds. The rain was stopping and the best rainbow ever appeared over the skyline of beautiful, gray Gritty City. The mayor tore up all the parking tickets and had the Backwardsmobile repaired. The mechanic delivered the car, left it in a no-parking zone, and Sergeant Bub McButt came by and put a ticket on the windshield. Mayor What’s-His-Name arranged for his contractor brother-in-law to rebuild 1313 Thirteenth Street free of charge. He built on a whole new addition with tons of mantels and pedestals to hold trophies, including the many we received for saving Gritty City from Cockroachia and the Grosspestia

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Invasion Force. The mayor informed us that since we now had plenty of space for trophies—a trophy museum, if you will—we had no excuse and shouldn’t sell them because it would be an insult to him and the citizenry. I promised not to sell them, but when the mayor left I decided to rent the trophies to unsuper people who feel the need to impress their friends. We got a bunch of free samples from all the grateful junk food manufacturers in town and we stuffed ourselves, since we hadn’t eaten in several days. We all had gigantic balls of grease in our stomachs and our teeth hurt . . . but we were happy. The Bodacious Backwards Woman unveiled a huge garbage can with one of those basketball hoops to encourage the Goofballs to throw away their trash. They were very excited about it and all threw junk food wrappers toward the hoop—and all missed. Everyone apologized to Blunder. He had been right all along about those kittens and nobody believed him. We treated him terribly and we all felt terrible about it. We gave tearful tributes to him, and when we finished, and were standing there with red eyes, in a huge pool of tears, Blunder said, “Me wasn’t even mad atchoo anyway. Yer my best bugbies.”

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But he said that he was really, really starving, because he’d been locked up without food or water for twenty years. Watching him relax in a “bathtub o’ chocolate pudding wiff lotsa whipper cream and maraschino cherries” made us all feel a little better. The Invisible Superbad BlueFanged Ferret appeared out of thin air with his guitar blaring and Blunder pounded his drum with his face in the bathtub, sending pudding, whipped cream, and cherries flying. A fly was buzzing around my head and I was just about to swat it when I realized it was Pooky. “Sorry about that,” I said. “I predict I’ll grow back,” she replied. I gathered everyone into a circle, and we put our arms around one another’s

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shoulders. I planned to say a few words of appreciation to them all, like a coach after a big game, about how everyone had pitched in and defeated the creepoids, how the House of Super Goofballs had risen again from a mere pile of rubble, and how good that was—rah, rah, rah—but before I could, I noticed that everyone was asleep on their feet, including Pooky, who was asleep on her feet in the Frankensein Punster’s ear. The Invisible Ferret and Blunder Mutt, of course, continued to pound and blare. Ordinarily it would have kept me awake, but at that point not even their racket could keep me from drifting off.

AFTERWARD In Dreams Begin New Episodes

opened my eyes and although I was still in the living room, the pounding and blaring had stopped and I was alone. The Super Goofballs came in from the kitchenlair. They were whistling a happy tune and getting along beautifully. “Like, please let me clean the toilet!” sang SuperSass CuteGirl. “Be my guest,” chirped Pooky. “Because I predict there are plenty of fun chores for everyone!” “Yippee!” cheered everyone. Blunder Mutt came up from the basement. He didn’t crash through the door, didn’t fly across the room, and not one of his teeth bounced off the walls. He simply turned the knob, opened the door, and

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entered like a civilized human being. He had a chessboard in one hand, a large book in the other, and he was wearing glasses. “Greetings most distinguished ladies and gentlemen!” he said, pronouncing every word perfectly.” I just spent forty-five glorious relaxing minutes memorizing the collected works of Shakespeare—the comedies, the tragedies, the sonnets—and now I find myself in the mood for a stimulating intellectual conversation. Or perhaps a rousing game of chess?” Excuse me? Blunder Mutt plays chess? I’d often wished I had someone to play chess with! The others were happily working away like happy elves in a happy workshop and the house was looking better than ever. “Oh, by the way,” said T-Tex3000, “I just inherited twenty million dollars, which I will gladly share with you all!” “Yippee again!” we all cheered. Okay, this was good. This was very good. This was too good.

It all ended with a bright flash, a deafening crash, and lots and lots of smelly purple smoke. But it wasn’t smoke; I was floating in a churning mass of electrically charged storm clouds. Tiny lightning bolts zapped me all over. Then the clouds parted, revealing a bottomless pit of snickering, snorting pig-dragon-Goofballs and they breathed fiery garbage up at me. As I dodged a billowing ball of flaming candy wrappers, the dragonpig-Goofball who looked a lot like Blunder Mutt smiled a huge, dumb, scary smile and waved to me like a crazy beauty-pageant contestant on a parade float. I was beginning to think that something was terribly wrong.

About the Author

Peter Hannan is an artist, writer, producer, and professional goofball. He is six feet one inch tall in his bare feet, eight feet three inches tall in his special shoes, and several miles high in his supershoes. He is shockingly handsome. People have been known to faint when they see him. He is the creator of the animated TV series CatDog, which is based on a true story. His writing, illustrations, and single-panel cartoons have appeared in lots of newspapers, magazines, and books. He lives in sunny California with his perfect wife and kids. You can visit him online at www.peterhannan.com. Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

SUPER GOOFBALLS Book One: That Stinking Feeling Book Two: Goofballs in Paradise Book Three: Super Underwear . . . and Beyond!

Credits Typography by Joel Tippie Cover art © 2007 by Peter Hannan Cover design by Joel Tippie

Copyright SUPER GOOFBALLS, BOOK 4: ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT ALIEN CREEP-OIDS!. Copyright © 2007 by Peter Hannan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader March 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-185561-0 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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