Nikki Powergloves and the Power Council Read online

Chapter Five: Following the purple clouds

  Nikki was worried. Although she was happy that she and Spencer had been able to defeat Jimmy again, she knew it wouldn’t be the last time she saw him. She knew he and Peter would return. It was good to have Spencer on her side, but regardless of how smart her genius best friend was, he was no match for the powers of Jimmy and Peter. She needed more help. Help from a superhero. It was time to contact the others. As she lay in bed, she thought about the last few days.

  Earlier that week, after Jimmy had called her and told her he had recovered his powerboots from where she had hidden them, Nikki had received a text message from a strange girl. The girl said her name was Samantha Powerbelts. She also said there were other kids like Nikki, good kids, kids with superpowers, who would come to help her, but she hadn’t heard from them since. And now she needed their help. She couldn’t wait any longer.

  So she typed a text message back to Samantha. It said:

  Samantha Powerbelts—are you there?

  A moment later, she got a reply:

  Yes, Nikki.

  I need your help, Nikki typed.

  I know, Samantha replied. Follow the purple clouds.

  Nikki didn’t understand what Samantha meant. What purple clouds? Nikki had never seen a purple cloud in her life. Not really. Occasionally at sunset the clouds turned pinkish and purplely, but they weren’t really those colors, it was just an effect caused by the sun.

  What do you mean? Nikki asked.

  For two hours, Nikki lay in bed, unable to sleep, waiting for Samantha to reply, but she never did. Finally, Nikki drifted off to sleep.

  She awoke seven hours later. A thin ray of sun pierced her window and fell on her cheek. The rain had gone, once more giving way to the heat of summer. Nikki gazed out her window at a collection of puffy white clouds bobbing across the sky. White, white, white, purple? When Nikki saw the odd purple cloud amidst the other white ones, she rubbed her eyes, trying to chase the sleep out of them.

  When she pulled her fists away from her face, the purple cloud was still there. She wasn’t dreaming. Nikki opened her window wide open and poked her head out to get a better look. Not only was the cloud really, truly purple—a magnificent hue that shimmered under the reflection of the sun—but it wasn’t unique. Nikki could see a half dozen other purple clouds moving away into the distance, as if they painted a trail for Nikki to follow.

  “Follow the purple clouds,” Nikki murmured. It’s what Samantha had told her to do. She didn’t understand at the time. She had planned to tell Spencer this morning, because maybe it was a code that he would be able to crack. But it wasn’t a code. She was literally supposed to follow clouds that were the color purple. That’s how she would find Samantha Powerbelts. “Amazing,” Nikki said.

  She had to tell Spencer immediately.

  Nikki told her mom she would have breakfast at Spencer’s, and then made her way to his front door. He answered after the first knock. “Hi there, Cheese-Doodle!” he said.

  “Hi, Spence,” Nikki said.

  “Come on in,” he said. “I’ll make you some breakfast.” Spencer’s idea of making breakfast was to pour a bowl of Chocolate Covered Sugar Wheats with some milk. But Nikki didn’t mind. It was a really tasty cereal.

  After crunching a few bites of cereal, Spencer said, “What’s with the purple clouds?”

  Nikki giggled. “I didn’t know if you saw them.”

  “I saw them and was so curious that I did some research on purple clouds and couldn’t find any scientific reason for them being over Cragglyville, so I thought you had to be involved. Have you been playing with your weather gloves?”

  “Nope, guess again.”

  Spencer hummed for two minutes and then said, “I have no clue. Wasabi!”

  Nikki laughed. She wondered what wasabi had to do with purple clouds, but decided not to ask. “I communicated with Samantha Powerbelts over text message last night. She told me to follow the purple clouds, and then today some of the clouds are purple. Weird, huh?”

  “Cool, it’s like the Wizard of Oz,” Spencer said.

  Nikki frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “You know, ‘Follow the yellow brick road’, like the munchkins told Dorothy. Except in our case, it’s follow the purple cloud road. But it’s not really a road. Where do you think it leads?”

  “I dunno. Maybe to Samantha’s house or something.”

  Now it was Spencer who frowned. “Come on, it’s gotta be cooler than that. Maybe it will take us to a secret laboratory under the ocean. Or it could take us to a space ship that will transport us to a colony on Mars.”

  Nikki smiled. Spencer had a very big imagination. “Maybe,” she said. “Do you want to come with me?”

  Spencer grinned from ear to ear. “I was hoping you would ask that. What’s our cover story going to be?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We need to tell our parents something or they might worry and call the cops to look for us.”

  Nikki said, “I hadn’t thought about that. You think it will take more than a day?”

  “Maybe,” Spencer said. “But we should be ready just in case.”

  Nikki nodded. “Okay. How about we pull the old switch trick. I say I’m sleeping over your house, and you say you’re sleeping over mine.”

  “Genius! All systems GO!!” Spencer yelled. Nikki couldn’t help but to laugh at her friend’s crazy antics.

  After finishing their cereal, they changed into their superhero costumes. Nikki wore one light blue flying glove and one purple super-strength glove. They went in the backyard and Spencer clambered onto Nikki’s back. With her super-strength glove on, she was easily able to hold his weight. Nikki leapt into the air and shot upwards, toward the first purple cloud. Spencer yelled, “Rock star!!”

  As they burst through the cloud, misty purple vapors swirled all around them. They emerged on the other side of the cloud and rose above it. Above the clouds, the sun warmed her skin. Nikki paused, hovering in the air to get her bearings. The next purple cloud was about a mile away to the east. She turned toward it and raced off.

  As they flew, they talked, shouting over the rush of the wind, which howled through their hair and clothes. Nikki said, “How do you think she turned the clouds purple?”

  “Must be one of her powers. Seems like a strange power to have, being able to change the color of things. It came in handy here though.”

  They passed the second purple cloud and headed for the third. Nikki gazed into the distance and could see at least a dozen more purple clouds leading her away from Cragglyville. The third and fourth purple clouds came and went. A flock of birds emerged from beneath the clouds, moving in perfect formation in the same direction as they were going. Nikki changed her course and fell into formation behind them.

  “You’re one of the birds!” Spencer yelled.

  Slowly, Nikki flew through the formation, making her way to the front. Eventually, she was leading the birds. They were good sports and played along with it. When she turned, they turned. If she dipped, they dipped. Nikki laughed, having fun playing follow-the-leader with the birds. After a few minutes she decided to leave them behind. She sped up, easily pulling away from them.

  “Sayonara, suckers!” Spencer yelled.

  After an hour, they were still flying and there was no end to the purple clouds in sight. Spencer was getting bored so he started to annoy Nikki by asking, “Are we there yet?” every five minutes.

  “Finally she said, “We’re not there, Spence! I don’t know if we’ll ever be there!”

  They were approaching a massive purple cloud that hung over a large mountain. As they got closer, Nikki noticed that the cloud wasn’t only purple. Although it was purple on the top and around the edges, it had a second layer of red. The third layer was green. There were splotches of other colors too, like yellow and blue and silver.

  When they reached the cloud, Nikki stopped, pausing to survey the air around the
m. To the north, south and east there were only blue skies or white clouds. No purple clouds anywhere. Back west, from where they had come, she could see the trail of purple clouds that led back to Cragglyville.

  “It seems to be the end of the road,” Spencer commented.

  “Where do you think we go now?” Nikki asked.

  “There’s only one way to go,” Spencer said. “Through the multi-colored cloud below us.”