That Stinking Feeling (Super Goofballs Series #1)

Super Goofballs, Book 1: That Stinking Feeling

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Chapter One

The Shrieking Stinkbug of Stench

I smelled her before I saw her. I don't have super-smelling powers or anything. She just really stinks. Queen Smellina the Shrieking Stinkbug of Stench is a very smelly, very evil, very insane flying-insect-supervillain lady. Number one on the Slimy Sleazeball Superchart for 137 weeks in a row.

Hovering six stories above us, surrounded by a vomit-green haze, her outstretched wings cast a shadow over Gritty City City Hall.

The queen smiled a huge, superloony smile and screamed. Her voice was as horrible as her stench.

"GOOD MORNING, STUPID HEROES!"

"Good 'til you stunk it up!" I yelled back.

"Stinkypants Miss Little, yeah!" yelled Granny the Bodacious Backwards Woman. She says and does everything backwards.

Queen Smellina arched her back way back and sucked in an enormous breath. I could feel the suction on my face. One of my gloves ripped off and flew into her mouth. Followed by my shoes, socks, and the other glove. And Granny's teeth.

Queen Smellina froze like an ugly floating statue for a few seconds. Then she lunged forward and hacked a huge horrible hurl of her Hyper-Bad Breath Ray right at us.

"HA-HA-HA-HA-HHHHAAACKKKKK!!!!!!"

"Stenchfire! Incoming!" I shouted, diving hard to the right. The hot, glowingstench burned my eyebrows. I whipped around in time to see the ray bounce off of five skyscrapers and out over Gritty City Harbor.

"There's a lot more where that came from, idiot-box boy!"

"Lady insect stinky, trap your shut!" yelled Granny.

"You wish, you butt-backwards old biddy!" she said before hacking again: "HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HHHHHAAACKKKKK!!!"

Her stench hit me like an atomic stink bomb. The screen of my Amazing Techno Dude Deluxe TV Helmet shattered, and I inhaled a massive dose of blistering disgustingness.

"I think you stink!" I gagged.

"Stink you know I!" gagged Granny.

"WELL, STANK YOU VERY MUCH!" Smellina cackled. "YOU GET IT? STANK INSTEAD OF THANK? HEE, HEE, HEE, HEE, HEE! I CRACK ME UP!"

She always explains her jokes. As if they're hard to understand. Any five-year-old could make a joke like that. Five-year-olds don't usually hack deadly bad-breath rays though.

Smellina unleashed yet another blast. Granny and I dove into a Dumpster as the ray slammed into its side. I reached into my holster for my Amazing Techno Dude Handheld Remote, punched in the secret code, and hit Enter. Then I crossed my fingers.

But nothing happened. Queen Smellina looked down at us and smiled her evil smile.

"LOOKS LIKE IT'S TIME TO TAKE OUT THE TRASH! HA, HA, HEE, HEE, HA!" Then her laugh turned into a shriek. This is her trademark. It meant she was about to finish us off with one final hack of horribleness.

"SHRIEK! SHRIEK! SHRIEK! SHHHHHHRRRRRRRRIEEEEEEEEEEK . . . !!!"

We were goners.

But wait! A huge male flying insect appeared from around the corner of Gritty City City Bank. He looked like a gigantic insect movie star--very muscle-bound, very handsome--well, you know, for an insect. He flashed a loverboy smile and spoke in a super-low, romantic voice. Strangely, he put accents on the wrong syllables.

"GreeTINGS, queeNIE-pie. HunKY ValENtine here. AND I am IN LOVE." Except he stretched out "love" for about ten seconds: "LOOOOOOOOOOOO-OOOOVE."

He wiggled his fingers at her, doing one of those corny love waves.

Queen Smellina stopped in midair and her eyes glazed over. It seemed like her brain had come unplugged. The bad breath ray she had been ready to hack leaked out of her ears and drifted away. This was my plan. I'd heard she was a sucker for muscle-bound loverbugs, and now she was gaga in love. So gaga she didn't notice that Hunky Valentine was actually the Bugzoid X-9000, my patented robotic, remote-controlled, jet-propelled bug-zapper.

Using the remote, I inched the Bugzoid X-9000 closer to the queen.

"EnchantING fragrance you ARE wearing, Your Royal StinKIness." He winked.

Queen Smellina was too love struck to talk properly: "Blah, bloo, blub, blub . . ."

"BeauTIful, smelLY, and such A way WITH words," purred the robot.

"Gloob goo, boo, boo . . ."

"Ooooo! HunKY love baBY-talk. How 'bout a big kisSY-wisSY?"

This was getting sickening, but it was working.

I moved the Bugzoid's hunky lips even closer and puckered them up.

Smellina closed her eyes and finally found the words: "Hunky--you fascinating fellow you--kiss me!"

"okIE-dokIE," said Hunky, and boy, what a kiss. One touch of my Electro-Lip-Lock Smoocher-Zapper button and it was all over. The Bugzoid's mechanical lips clenched Queen Smellina's in a hyper-vise-grip and zapped her. She tried to scream, but since her lips were locked tight, she just hummed a great buzz of pain. She sounded like a sick rat with a kazoo in its mouth.

Then the Bugzoid X-9000's robotic arms squeezed her in an industrial-strength hug-lock. The lip-lock/hug-lock combo always works. This battle was over.

And boy, was I glad. The Hyper-Bad Breath Ray is icky beyond belief. It's a miracle that Granny and I survived with mere third-degree stench burns and an inability to eat solid food for a month. It was more than worth it, though, to see the freaky-funny look on Queen Smellina's face as Hunky Valentine hauled her off to jail.

She growled as only a crazy bug lady can. She was so mad, saying, "i am sooooo mad! And I don't just mean mad-crazy, even though I'm well known for that! and i promise that one day I'll get you, you un-super blankety-blanks!!!!"

"Wow . . . maybe you're angry because you're embarrassed about falling in love with a fake mechanical insect," I replied. "I mean, didn't you notice that his head was held on with duct tape and his eyes were ordinary light bulbs?"

"But such dreamy light bulbs!!!" she cried.

How could a superevil mastermind such as Queen Smellina be so darn stupid? Well, love is stupid. No, that's not it. Love is blind. Or at least it has very blurred vision.

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Excerpted from Super Goofballs, Book 1: That Stinking Feeling by Peter Hannan Copyright © 2007 by Peter Hannan. Excerpted by permission.
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