#45: Reality’s Leftovers

Both Simon and I awoke early, not even daybreak, well before either Trent or Stella. We snuck down to the kitchen, me in my replacement civvies and Simon in his pajamas, clutching his stuffed dinosaur. I began to make us some pancakes. For a kid who’d nearly been blown to pieces by Arms of Krupp henchmen a mere twelve hours earlier, he hardly seemed traumatized at all—he seemed well-rested and cheerful, whereas I had hardly slept a wink. “I’m going to call her Dobie, Aunt Clarissa,” he said. “Dobie the Dinosword.”
     “How do you know she’s a girl?” I asked. “On second thought, don’t answer that; I want to go on thinking of you as an innocent kid for as long as I can.”

#44: The Saucer in the Back Yard

“You need to slip out of those grass-stained clothes,” said Preston. “Especially that bloodied Abyssinian Wolves sweatshirt, Trent. My people are bringing over a replacement even as we speak.”

#43: The Arms of Krupp

I didn’t know how to express my concerns to Trent: that we were all in grave danger, civilian and megahero alike; that malevolent scientists had split the universe apart, then recombined it, and might be trying to split it apart yet again; or that the only thing holding this crazy Everything-but-the-Kitchen Sinkverse together at the moment might be the two-year old offspring of Megaton Man and the See-Thru Girl, who at that very moment was busy chasing squirrels with a squirt gun in Broadway Park in Ann Arbor.

#42: The Theoretical Unraveling of the Kitchen Sinkverse

Avie and I immediately wanted to whisk our newfound grandmother up Woodward Avenue to Eight Mile to reunite with our Mama, who hadn’t seen her mother in over forty years. But Grandma said she had to make an urgent phone call first. Seedy used my dial-up rotary phone and Avie, Charles, and I—and Audrey, who was still dressed in my Ms. Megaton Man uniform—crowded into the tiny kitchen of my garret apartment to give Grandma some privacy. I had a feeling it was some kind of official scientific business.