The Adventures of Kid Combat Volume Two: The Heist of Spring Road Toys (7 page)

Each boy entered the tree line and descended
into The Playground. Roller was inside, hard at work. He had stayed
behind, instead of helping out at Spring Road Toys, to work on the
finishing touches to Kid Combat’s newest gadgets. He was also
tasked to gain more intel on the curator.

As the boys entered The Playground, they
dispersed. The twins went into their respective rooms. Gears went
to Main Computer Lab 1 to check on various scripts he had running.
Kid Combat walked into the Main Lab A, where he found Roller.

Roller was busy getting the new Pepper Creek
Acceleration Vehicles, or PCAVs, up and running. Designed to be
watercrafts, the small two-person boats were experiencing some
delays. Roller spent most of his time here, working on them.

The crude devices were made out of metal
sheeting found discarded near a Jones Industries construction site,
then heated and formed into the two bases of the ships. From there,
Gears and Roller had designed the rest of the craft. It had two
seats side by side, and the left one had a steering wheel in front
of it. The seat on the right had a huge electronic control panel
that housed buttons for a variety of different things. When finally
functional, the buttons would control secret entrance and exit
points into The Playground from various areas within Maple Forest.
They would also have GPS built into them, running the latest of
Gears and Roller’s locator software.

The project, however, was not going well.
Constant problems kept occurring, causing headaches for all members
of SOCKs. It appeared to Kid as he walked up to Roller that the
situation was not getting any better. Roller looked stymied at the
situation and sat back in his chair in frustration.

“Hey, buddy,” Kid said as he walked up behind
Roller and patted him on the shoulder. Roller turned around and saw
Kid.

“Hey,” a disheveled Roller said. “How’s it
going?”

“I should ask you,” Kid said as he circled
around the large table. On it sat several pieces of what looked to
be formerly an engine. Kid picked up a piece, turned it over a few
times, and set it back down on the table.

“Well, I wish I had better news for you,
Kid,” Roller said as he pushed his wheelchair away from the table.
He made his way over to another station behind him, grabbed another
piece, and rolled back to his original work area.

“That bad, huh?” Kid asked.

“Worse. The mechanism isn’t working properly,
the shifter keeps sticking, and the steering column broke this
morning,” Roller said.

“Yeah, that’s pretty bad,” Kid said back.

“Well, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to
matter much,” Roller said disgustedly.

“What do you mean?” Kid said, startled.

“Oh,” Roller said quietly. “I guess she
hasn’t told you yet.”

“Told me what?” Kid said back.

“Well …” Roller started. He pushed his
wheelchair back a bit further from Kid. “Sam said there’s no way
she’s going to be able to complete the access tunnel from the back
of RD1 to Pepper Creek. She just doesn’t have the tools or man
power to do it. It’s hundreds of feet. It would take her months,
years even.”

Kid didn’t like hearing this news. He wanted
a tunnel that would easily connect up with Pepper Creek. The creek
itself ran through the heart of Maple Forest and had many
accessible paths to every part of Elmcrest. The tunnel would make a
great exit point as well as a quick getaway. The tunnel would also
connect The Playground to a remote part of the creek, deep within
the tree line of Maple Forest, making it difficult for anyone to
find the entry way. The PCAVs that Roller was working on were
supposed to be the vehicles used to traverse the creek. It was
becoming clear that it would be awhile before either one was in
service to SOCKs.

“Great,” was all that Kid said to Roller.
With obvious disappointment, Kid saw that his comment upset Roller.
Seeing this, Kid tried to mend Roller’s feelings. “You’re doing
your best, I know. It’s just a pain that we are having these
issues. I’ll see what I can do.”

“OK, Kid,” Roller said back to him. “What do
you want to do now?”

“Gather the troops in Main Lab B. We need to
figure out how to help the Thompsons.”

“Sure thing,” Roller said, and he pulled up
his laptop attached to his chair. He sent instant messages to Gears
and to the twins telling them to gather.

Within a few minutes, the boys were seated
around the large conference table in Main Lab B. Kid was the last
one there.

“First things first,” Kid said as he walked
in the room, not wasting any time. “We need to find the culprits
behind the attack. Gears, pull up the intel Samantha provided us on
those two boys.”

“Right away, boss,” Gears said as he started
pounding on his laptop. Kid went over and took his usual seat at
the table. A Security Level 3 folder on Main Server I projected up
on the south wall of the room. Prompted for a password on the
screen, Gears typed in the necessary security word and was granted
access to the folder. From there, Gears pulled up the files on the
two boys that Samantha had created the night before.

“If my hunch is right, these are the boys we
are looking for.” Kid added.

“OK, here we go,” Gears said. He clicked on
one of the files and a photo of the first boy was brought up on the
screen. To the right of that photo was all the intel SOCKs had on
him.

“This is Tommy O’Toole, age eleven. He is a
sixth grader at Byron Middle School. He’s pretty much your average
bully. Tommy has been known for petty crimes around school—stealing
money, lunches, bikes, stuff like that. He’s been arrested once for
vandalizing the school and expelled once for pushing a teacher,”
Gears read.

“Great. We’re gonna have to go to school with
this guy after next year?” Rocket said, a little intimidated. No
one responded, and Gears continued.

“He’s an only child and his parents are
divorced. He chose to live with his dad and he is never around.
Tommy pretty much has free reign,” Gears finished. He minimized the
bio on Tommy and loaded the second boy’s profile.

“Now this guy here is our main problem,”
Gears continued. “Jake Henderson, otherwise known as “Ace.” He’s
the so-called brains of the operation. Jake’s twelve and is still
in sixth grade. He was held back last year for never going to
class. He’s been picked up by the cops countless times for various
crimes, but since he’s a minor, they detain him for a few hours,
try to scare him straight, and send him back on the street. He’s
the one you can bet the curator contacted first and hired. Tommy
was just brought in to help out. Although their rap sheets are
pretty long, this would be the first time they have acted out on
something that wasn’t their school.”

Kid sat back and absorbed the information.
“From what Samantha said, these are our two likely candidates, but
we have no proof. As you know, Samantha’s camera was busted in her
breakout attempt from the museum. And since there was no
surveillance in Spring Road Toys, we don’t even know if these two
jokers had anything to do with this.”

“They must, Kid,” Wedge chimed in. “If Sam
says these are the two guys, then these are the two guys.”

“She thinks these are the two guys. There’s a
difference. And unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of time to track
down every thug,” Kid said, and then paused. “Wedge, Rocket, we
need to find out anything that will pin the break-in on them. And
we need it quickly.”

“We’re on it!” Wedge said in a huff. He
sprang out of his chair like a jack rabbit and was ready to start
his mission. “Where should we start?”

“According to this file,” Gears said,
whacking away on his keyboard, “the sixth graders usually hang out
at the far end of the Jonestown Mall. If you hurry, you should be
able to get there before it closes.”

“Let’s go!” Rocket yelled. The two twins
disappeared into the hallway.

“What do you need me to do, Kid?” Gears asked
with a hopeful look in his eyes.

“Gears, you have the most important job. When
we find out those two boys are indeed the ones who broke into
Spring Road Toys, I need you to somehow find out when they are
meeting with the curator again. I don’t care how you do it, but we
need that information. Without it, we have nothing to go on. Also,
we need some way to catch them all together.”

“Don’t worry, Kid. I’ll think of something,”
Gears said.

Chapter Seven:

The Twins

6:00 pm

Four wheels made out of rubber raced down the
streets of Elmcrest. The small wheels turned quickly as they
screamed down the pavement. Attached to a black skateboard with a
white skull spray painted on the top of it, the wheels whistled in
the air.

Right behind this set of four wheels, another
set came. These were attached to a brown skateboard that was void
of any markings. The deck, however, was damaged in several areas,
and chunks were missing from the tail. This caused the board to
wobble more than the black one.

Ace and Tommy zoomed down Main Street in
Elmcrest. Having no regard for anyone around them, they rode in the
street and up on the sidewalks and grinded on street benches. It
wasn’t until Ace ollied a water fountain in Ben Allis Park that
people started to gawk and take more notice of the two youths.

“Oh, man, that was awesome!” Tommy said to
Ace as the two made their way out of the small park in central
Elmcrest and back onto Main Street. The two zigged and zagged
between a few cars as onlookers shouted out their displeasure to
the kids. The boys rolled on as if they hadn’t heard them.

Ace did a few more ollies over fire hydrants
and park benches, and Tommy made his way down a few rails and over
a small boy’s wagon. The boys reached their destination a few
minutes later.

The two boys stopped their boards in front of
the entrance. Ace popped his board up, grabbed it, and then threw
it in the bushes. Tommy, noticing this, looked questioningly at
Ace.

“What?” said Ace. “It’s not like it’s mine.
We’ll just steal some new ones on the way out.” Tommy shrugged and
threw his board in the same set of bushes. “Let’s get inside,” Ace
finished as the two boys disappeared.

The Jonestown Mall had become the focal point
in downtown Elmcrest. People came from miles around to shop inside
and see the wonderment that Jones created. Every day, the mall saw
thousands of people entering its doors and spending their
hard-earned money on overpriced merchandise.

Businesses flourished inside its lavish
interior, and no one flourished more from the growth and popularity
of the mall than its owner, Phillip Arthur Jones.

Inside the white marble exterior that once
was a courthouse, people flocked by the hundreds to each of the
individual businesses. They shopped for hours, buying more
meaningless items to heighten themselves in the greed-driven
society that had become their small town.

The Jonestown Mall had become a place for
kids to hang out on their own or while their parents shopped. Like
ants to a picnic, the children of Elmcrest, of all ages, came to
cause some mischief.

Wedge and Rocket arrived at the mall’s main
entrance. The two young boys proceeded through the lavish entryway
that was decorated with Jones’s pictures and propaganda supporting
his company, Jones Industries.

Posters promoting Jones Industries with the
letters JI in bold type covered the walls to the boys’ right and
left. Red banners hung from the rafters above them. Twenty feet in
length, the banners swayed back and forth slightly in the wind.
They too had the Jones Industries logo on them.

Wedge and Rocket walked right by it all,
never paying any mind to any of Jones’s decorations.

As they proceeded down the hallway, flying by
stores, Wedge and Rocket kept their eyes open for the two boys
suspected in destroying Spring Road Toys, Ace and Tommy. As if
their heads were on a swivel, the two boys searched the mall.

“They’re here somewhere, Rocket,” Wedge said
as his eyes wandered over all of the stores.

“Everyone hangs out in the courtyard in the
middle of the mall. Let’s go there,” Rocket said.

One of the new additions to the Jonestown
Mall, in its short existence, was a large central atrium. An
oversized courtyard was lit by large skylights and surrounded by
dozens of various plants. In the center was a large oak tree. The
massive tree was real and grew from the floor to the ceiling.

The whole courtyard was littered with benches
for shoppers to catch a moment’s breath before continuing on with
their spending. It turned into a perfect place for groups of kids
to sit around and have a good time.

Wedge and Rocket entered the courtyard and
started to look around the pack of kids, trying to identify their
suspects. Even though it was getting late, the courtyard was still
full of kids.

Representing different age groups, they were
all divided into various circles. They laughed, pointed, and gawked
at shoppers and even ridiculed one another. Wedge and Rocket looked
through the various packs of kids, but they couldn’t find Ace or
Tommy.

“I don’t see them anywhere, do you?” asked
Wedge.

“No, nowhere. We better split up to cover
more ground,” Rocket said.

“Good idea. I’ll radio if I find anything,”
Wedge said. He then proceeded off to the left.

“Channel nine,” said Rocket back to his
brother. He referred to the frequency on their radios.

“No, channel ten,” Wedge said defiantly.
Rocket stood there and looked disbelievingly at his brother.

“Why do you want it to be channel ten? Why
couldn’t you just go along with channel nine?” Rocket said back to
his brother.

“Because. I like ten better. Sounds cooler,”
Wedge said with a big grin.