| "Crop Circles" | |
| Season 1, Episode 8 | |
| Episode Guide | |
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"Crop Circles" is the 8th episode of "The Hero Generation."
Synopsis[]
Mysterious inscriptions provoke Joe to conduct an investigation.
Plot[]
"What do you think?" Chris asked. We stood over the strange encryption.
"I'm... I'm not entirely sure," I replied, "but this isn't the first time I've seen this." I was at Chris's house, and we stood in his backyard, looking at the large symbol cut into the untrimmed grass- a cirlce inside of another circle. Back when I fought the monster snowmen, they had the same symbol marked into their sides. And when I went down into the City of Trash, the same symbol was engraved on the buildings.
"What do you mean?" asked Chris.
"I need to go check something out. Want to come with?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah, alien stuff! I am totally coming with." Chris answered eagerly.
As we arrived to the dumpster, I transformed into Rocky Toad and pushed it out of the way. Once I did, the hole that lead to The City of Trash was revealed. I grabbed Chris, and jumped in.
"Whoa, take it easy!" Chris yelped.
"Shh, keep quiet!" I rasped. "The Cardboard Mutants down here attack when they hear sound."
"Cardboard mutants!?" Chris whispered back. "We ought to take pictures." I jumped down from the hole and onto the ground, careful not to make too much noise. I motioned to Chris for him to follow me. He got the idea that I wanted us to be extremely silent, and followed cautiously.
We snuck around the back of a cardboard building. I pointed upwards, towards the top of the cardboad structure. Sure enough, there was the circle inside of the other circle engraved into the building. As we turned another corner, we jumped as we came face to face with a Cardboard Mutant. Fortunately, it couldn't see us from inside its cardboard shell. We silent went around it, only to approach the plastic street, the sidewalks lined with Cardboard Mutants. We needed to be absolutely silent.
Beep, beep, beep. The KeyTrix timed out, the signal alarm blaring through the underground space, echoing for what seemed to be the longest time. I reverted back to human, only to find the Cardboard Mutants were coming to life- they ripped apart, their foggy goop bodies slushing out, taking form of insect parts or remaining as a cloud-like formation. Some had blood-red jaws, along with beady black eyes that reflected in the dimly-lit street lights, the only real source of light in the underground city.
"This way!" I yelled to Chris, running inside of a cardboard building. It looked like a hotel lobby; I ran up the spiral staircase, Chris following close behind. As for the Cardboard Mutants, they couldn't see where we were, but they heard us trampling up the stairs. A Cardboard woman sitting behind the hotel desk sprung to life, oozing with the dark blue goop and crawling after us. Chris and I got against the wall on the first floor, and remained absolutely still. The cardboard mutant lady was inches from our face, listening intently. Both Chris and I held our breath, hoping not to be heard. After what seemed like forever, it scrambled back down the spiral stairs.
While I was still frozen with horror, Chris motioned for me to go down the hall. We started sprinting, but then Chris came to a stop.
"Wait," Chris whispered, "how many buildings had the symbol of the circle inside of another circle?"
"I thought all of them, but I only really saw the symbol on the outside of this building," I responded quietly.
"Alright," Chris said quietly. "Check all of these doors. Don't open any of them unless you see the circle symbol."
I nodded. I knew what he was thinking. Whatever was responsible for making these monsters must've engraved the circle symbol as some sort of a 'signature,' so to speak. So whoever did so must've marked their room with the circle inside of another circle symbol on the front of the hotel door.
Chris and I split up, going floor to floor, searching for the right door. (Hey, that rhymed.) Eventually, I found the symbol scratched into a door in the hallway just outside the lobby. Convenient location for the resident, but not for us. Now I had to find Chris. I peeked into the lobby, and the cardboard mutant lady looked like she had before- just a regular, poorly made cardboard cut-out. I retreated back around the corner of the hallway.
I pulled out the KeyTrix, activated the holographic playlist like always, and scrolled to Makeshift. "Makeshift ought to be able to phase through these walls!" I said, pressing down the hourglass. When the transformation was over, I felt tiny.
"Aw, man! HayWire can't phase through walls. What now...?" I said aloud. Too loud, actually. The cardboard mutant lady at the front desk sprung to life.
"Oh, shut up." I said, zapping the mutant with a little spark of electricity. It fell to the floor, dazed. I sprinted down the hallway, my short legs working extra hard to go fast enough.
"Wait," I reminded myself, "I can fly, can't I?" I hovered off the ground, and zoomed through the air.
"Chris!?" I yelled. By now, all of the cardboard mutants should've been awoken by my screaming. But I couldn't control HayWire's arrogant atitude.
"Joe!" Chris screamed. I could hear him, but I couldn't see him. I looked down the next hallway. Chris came around a corner, followed by some sort of glowing orange light. It was Nuke.
"Run!" He yelled. I ignored him, picking him up by the hood and flying him to the room with the symbol on the door. I rammed against it, and broke down the door (which wasn't very hard, considering it was cardboard). I quickly proped the door back up, just in time as Nuke passed by the door. His radioactive form barely irradicated the cardboard walls.
The room was really dark. I was the first to say that.
"Shh!" Chris quieted me.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!" I complained. I sparked my finger, flickering some faint light into the room, but it wasn't enough.
"Don't you have, like, a glowing alien? One that can light the room?" Chris asked quietly. I used my electric energy to power the green light shining through my eyes, now acting like a flash light. The room glowed a faint green. Just enough light to see the enormous man standing face-to-face with Chris and I. We both jumped, completely startled.
"Who are you!?" The figure rasped. He looked like a scientist- white lab coat, green undershirt, black pants. Strapped on his head were an unbelievably large pair of goggles. His eyes were bloodshot, and his pupils were extremely large, like two giant black holes.
"Nunya bizzniss, bro," I responded. I zapped him lightly in the forehead with a spark of static. "Well, actually, we were looking for you. What's up with the crazy symbol thing? Sending weirdo monsters after me and trimming my friend Chris's lawn a bit too short. Now it's going to grow in uneven in the springtime, you know how bad that is going to look?"
"At this time, it does not matter who I am. However, you, my dear boy..." the man said, reaching for the hourglass symbol on my chest.
"You want my KeyTrix? I don't think so," I said, floating away from him. "Besides, it's sort of stuck to me while I'm in alien form." I gave the dial a half-effort tug to prove my point. The man grabbed me with his hand and pulled me out of the air, and put me on a metal desk.
"To answer your previous question," said the man, "I am Professor Krantz. I've been studying molecular structures and DNA for the past 20 years, and in that time I've constructed nearly thousands of creatures, all from scratch. And, to better understand DNA structure, I can use your DNA altering device. It will allow me to change my own beings into other types of creatures with only the push of a button."
"Yeah, that's probably not going to work out." I said, trying to fly away. Professor Krantz held me down, then positioned metal cuffs around my arms and legs. "On second thought, maybe it will work. Chris, do you mind giving me a hand!?"
"Already on it," Chris said, suddenly appearing behind the professor and wrapping his arms around his neck. I strained to reach the dial on my chest, but I just couldn't get to it. Wait- metal table? Metal cuffs? I didn't need to change form. I had what I needed already.
"Chris, back up!" I yelled. He jumped out of the way, leaving Krantz completely confused.
"Yes," Professor Krantz agreed, "stay out of my way. You're wise to agree with me, Electronian." Electronian? That must've been HayWire's species. Eh, not important right now. I waited for the right moment. From a tray in the corner of the room, Krantz grabbed some dangerous pointy tools- metal ones. Oh, man. This was gonna be a doozy. Krantz started poking at the dial on my chest, pressing in the hourglass symbol. Little did he know that only I could operate it. With one hand, he poked at the dial. With the other, he scratched the hourglass symbol, inspecting the material.
"Surprise, Professor!" I yelled, sending out a huge discharge of electricity. The metal cuffs and metal table was enough of a conductor; but since Krantz was also holding a metal tool in each hand, he REALLY got zapped. Afterwards, it smelled like roasted chicken. Chris darted over and removed me from the metal cuffs.
"Nice move," Chris said. "That alien... HayWire, isn't it? He's pretty powerful."
"Yeah. I'm just surprised that he knew HayWire's species, but was dumb enough to strap me to a metal table." I floated back into the air.
"And if I ever see any more of that circle symbol stuff," I screamed into Professor Krantz's half-unconcious face, "then I will personally come back here and zap you even WORSE than I just did!"
Chris and I began to leave the room, when Professor Krantz suddenly got up and coughed.
"Get them," he said weakly. He said it ever so silently, yet it still somehow echoed through the entire City of Trash. As Chris and I made a run for it out of the cardboard hotel, the Cardboard Mutants sprang to life, chasing us with their dark blue deformed bodies. We hid behind another cardboard building, thinking we were safe. Of course, we were wrong. Nuke had practically picked up the building, half of it burning in his grasp. I'd hate to see what would happen if that cardboard building happened to be us one of these times, burning away in his radioactive grasp.
"This might be a little shocking!" I exclaimed, letting loose a reign of electricity onto Nuke. He stumbled backwards a moment, but stood up straight once again, completely unphased.
"My bad," I said. "That WAS a pretty bad catchphrase to attack you with." I turned the dial on my chest a couple of notches, and pressed in the hourglass symbol.
"You need time to chill out," I said. "See? Much better. I think Chill Factor is going to be my go-to-guy for puns for now on." From the palms of my hands, I blasted an icy mist, which froze on contact. When it touched Nuke, it just melted away.
"I can't freeze him. His body is too hot!" I said to Chris. He just looked at me.
"No pun intended," I added. I kept shooting icy mist clouds at Nuke, but it had no effect.
"We need another way," Chris said to me. "Try freezing the ground." I did as he said. Nuke slipped immediately on the ice, like it was some sort of giant slip and slide. He fell to the ground, crushing at least 30 Cardboard Mutants under his ginormous radioactive body. More Cardboard Mutants charged at us, but slipped on the icy ground.
"There's too many," I said hoarsely. "We can't fight them alone." I froze some more Cardboard Mutants. They looked even more eerie preserved in large chunks of ice. The exit to the City of Trash was all the way across from us, dug into the dirt wall. I cranked the dial again, and pushed in the hourglass symbol.
"Come on!" I said to Chris, grabbing him and flying away.
"BioHazard? You mean we're... we're running?" He asked.
"Not running," I responded. "We're preparing. We obviously don't have what it takes to beat these guys. And Professor Krantz said he made thousands of different creatures. If we can't handle those guys, who knows what the others have in store for us." I flew into the exit hole, and in a matter of seconds, reached the opening to the alley way. I put Chris on the ground, and quickly pushed the dumpster back over the hole to keep any of the monsters from getting out.
"Nuke came from the sewer pipes. Which means the Professor has access to the sewers somehow," Chris mentioned. He was right; sealing off this hole would only protect the public from finding the entrace. It wouldn't do a thing about keeping the monsters out.
The KeyTrix reverted me back to human. "Looks like something else on my to-do list. 'Destroy crazy scientist and his thousand experiments.' Should be easy," I said sarcastically.
"So, what now?" Chris asked.
"That's enough for today. We have enough information. Now we just need a plan. In the meantime, tell me if any monsters attack you. I'll personally kick their butts." I said.
"Will do," Chris answered. And then, we started to walk back to Chris's house. I was starting to think I was in over my head.
Aliens used[]
Trivia[]
- HayWire uses his electricity powers for the first time in the series.