Drats, Foiled Again!: The Drats Universe, #1

By K.L. Lantz

Robert Gilbrinkle is blind in one eye, which makes dodging punches in his Anti-Hero Maneuvers class especially difficult, but his lack of depth perception is the least of his troubles. Nox Academy's senior project deadline is fast approaching, he's failing three classes, and, naturally, his evil twin Rupert keeps trying to kill him every chance he gets. But the real trouble begins when Robert's pathetic superpower--a very unwicked superwink that fixes anything broken--starts to evolve. The kids at Nox used to laugh and call him "Rob Repairman" but nobody is laughing now. His wink threatens anyone who threatens him. Robert has always known where he stands - on the other side of the hall from Rupert. What haunts him the most is the revelation that maybe he and Rupert aren't as different as he thought. Battling a common enemy brings them closer than either twin can handle, but the lives of their friends are at stake and the thirst for revenge is strong. Maybe even stronger than their disdain for each other. With the playful cartoonish style and broad crossover appeal of Disney's SKY HIGH, and the coming of age heroic drama of Matthew Cody's POWERLESS, Robert's story will resonate with kids from 8 to 14 who love to escape to that comic book world of good vs. evil and often wonder where in the midst of that universe they fit in.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lion Spark Publishing
• Release date: Apr 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781732202818

K.L. Lantz

K.L. Lantz writes stories about superheroes and super villains. She grew up loving Darkwing Duck, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spiderman, Superman, and the Power Rangers and always wished she had super powers of her own. Soon after learning to read, she discovered that reading books about powerful people gave her a taste of their magic, too. Her favorite book as a child was The Girl With The Silver Eyes, and it's what inspired Robert's one gray eye in Drats, Foiled Again! and Bombs Away! K.L. Lantz always wondered what it would be like to live in a world full of super-powered people. Creating Surlyview, the villain town in her Drats Universe series, gave her a playground for these ideas. It's a playground just waiting for readers to jump in and join the fun.

Book preview

The Early Rob Gets the Snarl

THE CLASS BELL RANG out like a fire siren, flashes of red light bouncing off the black slate castle walls. Robert ran along the slippery stone floor, trying to ignore the laughter of his classmates. But it was difficult, as they all seemed to be practicing evil laughter for Wicked Presence 101.

Bu-wah-ha-ha-ha-ha! laughed one skinny boy. His head sported two ringed horns spiraling to sharp points that almost met in the middle but turned outward at the last minute. Robert avoided eye contact.

Another student, chubbier but shorter with an extra set of eyeballs peeking out of her fists, kept getting choked up as she reached the climax of her evil laugh: Mwah-ha-ha-ha-blech-hack!

Robert accidentally made eye contact with her fists, and quickly looked away.

What are you looking at! she barked.

Robert ducked his head under his hoodie. Then he weaved awkwardly between two senior classmen playing hacky sack with a fresh-looking shrunken head.

Two minutes before the start of last period, most of the students just messed around like they couldn’t hear the red alert blaring around them. They also seemed oblivious to the hot stench of Misty Maws’ breath trail. Robert tried to dodge the killer gases, but blind in one eye as he was, his lack of depth perception made running down hallways perilous, especially in the dark.

He ran right through the lethal breath trail instead, swooned and almost fell, but righted himself and ran faster.

He was the only one running to make class on time. But that was to be expected at Nox Academy, whose main building was inscribed with the words, Creating Super Villains Since 3 A.D. Breaking the rules here was not only cool, it was required. And that’s why Robert was close to getting suspended.

He huffed and wheezed, filling his lungs with non-lethal air as he pried open the heavy mahogany door to Room 606. Then he took a seat in his favorite desk at the front so he wouldn’t have to wear his glasses—which weren’t allowed in super villain classes—in order to see the chalkboard. Though he was fully blind in his grey eye, his other eye could see clearly with a little help. Without his glasses, though, he had to strain his good eye and often got headaches.

Countess Bula sharpened her nails against the blackboard as Robert settled in, kicking his toolkit beneath his desk. She looked over her shoulder, down her long nose.

Early again? she shrieked. With little more than a snarl for his trouble, she went back to ignoring him, which is pretty much what all the teachers did with Robert.

At first, a few more involved teachers at Nox Academy had tried to break Robert of his good habits through punishment. It wasn’t long, however, before they realized that Robert just didn’t learn the way the other kids did.

Nobody knew for sure what had happened to make him so unwicked. Some said it was the sad consequence of having a twin brother as evil as Rupert. Perhaps, they guessed, it was the cosmic scales balancing between good and evil. The less philosophical teachers decided it had been bad parenting that made Robert so obedient and helpful. But his parents would take offense at such a suggestion. They knew they had done everything in their power to teach Robert the ways of Surlyview and villainkind. Try as they might, they could not inspire the wickedness required for greatness.

His dad blamed it on his mom being too hard on him, because every time she chased him from the house with threats of lifelong grounding, Robert had run away to the junkyard. And there, he had discovered books left behind by the townspeople who had lived in his neighborhood during its earlier life as Sunnyview—books like Where the Red Fern Grows, which taught him to care for animals rather than tease them; books like The Chronicles of Narnia, which taught him to be noble and self-sacrificing, and never to betray those he loved; books like Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets that taught him the danger of greedy ambition and the uselessness of fighting the forces of light and love.

At his core, Robert didn't believe in the Villain Creed:

Filthy lucre, glory, pain.

Each has a price, each has a name.

And all must seek them in their way,

money for power, murder for gain.

Robert kicked the back of his heel with his other foot over and over. It hurt a little, but the rhythm was comforting. Sometimes he felt like nothing at Nox Academy had any rhythm or rhyme at all. The chaos made Robert feel like screaming, and though yelling was encouraged, he knew the teachers would be able to tell his anxious scream from the murderous ones of the other students.

He was used to sticking out like a number in alphabet soup. Often he did try to fit into the mold of his family and school, but trying to twist himself to fit their ideal model of a young villain—to be like Rupert—turned his heart into a pretzel and caused him tremendous anxiety.

The flashing red lights stopped. The rest of the kids in his class straggled in, one at a time.

One good thing about Nox Academy was the lack of social cliques. Students weren’t allowed to form alliances until senior project month, right before graduation.

Then, the best super villains teamed up for an epic, destructive project, according to their respective career tracks:

Environmental Waste,

Urban Destruction,

Continuing World Hunger,

War & Division,

or (the most prestigious) Money, Power, & Glory.

Until then, solitude was generally observed by all students. The desks were spaced five feet apart, and discussion or note passing of any kind was forbidden.

Somehow, Robert’s classmates still found ways to ostracize him, even without the teachers’ help.

Class had technically begun, but Countess Bula busily sharpened her fingernails, one side at a time, on the board. Everyone else occupied themselves with whatever they pleased. Robert’s twin brother, Rupert, kept busy with a miniature missile-launcher that had already earned him extra credit in every class. The perfect circle of destruction it caused pleased even the headmaster, known only as The Earl. From what little gossip Robert caught, everyone assumed Rupert would win the coveted Dracula Warfare apprenticeship to be announced this week.

Robert tried not to make eye contact with any of the other students. Any direct eye contact could be taken as a battle challenge, something Robert had been avoiding his entire life. His lack of depth perception from being blind in one eye made things like punches or fiery darts really hard to dodge. And though he was scrappy and capable of staying in a fight in the controlled environment of the gym, something told him a real battle with one of his fellow super villains wouldn’t much improve his quality of life.

He stared at his desk, memorizing the straight, crude lines of the initials etched into the wood: FM. They were his dad’s initials. His dad’s high school days had been glory days, and something about sitting at his dad’s old desk made Robert feel more like he belonged. He always got to classes early so he could get dibs on the desk with FM carved into it and move it to the front if he needed to. He drew strength from those two sharp, pointed letters. With an air of concentration, Robert’s one good eye dug into the F and M. But even though he could only see the old, scarred wood of his desk, he could feel the glare of another pair of eyes on the back of his neck.

Garth was staring him down again.

Gargantuan Garth.

Well, his real name was Garth Taylor, but that didn’t sound scary at all, so his parents had rejoiced when he received his super villain name at the end of last year. His dad, Twisted Taylor, was a human cyclone and best in his class at Urban Destruction. Garth, however, competed with Rupert in War & Division. He couldn’t intimidate Rupert, so he picked on Robert instead.

Robert remained undeclared, and the whole school knew it.

Just pick one! his dad would bellow every day after school. What’s so hard? I knew what I wanted to do the first day of freshman year!

Robert didn’t think this comparison was fair. After all, when you’re born with an appetite to rival a tyrannosaurus, Continuing World Hunger is a no-brainer. Robert couldn’t build weapons of mass (or precise, for that matter) destruction like Rupert could. And he couldn’t eat Mozambique out of hut and home like his dad. He couldn’t even shoot toxic melted plastic from his fingers like his mom (Environmental Waste). His innate talents didn’t fit any of the super villain career paths, so despite his dread of his dad’s everyday lecture, Robert couldn’t decide which career track to pick.

Countess Bula’s nails were as sharp as they were going to get. At least, that’s what she must have decided, because she finally turned to the class and yelled, "Why do we hate good people?" Her tongue waved out of her mouth like she was ejecting the bad taste from saying the g-word.

Everyone answered whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, so it was tough to decipher one answer from the roar of noise that echoed off the stone walls.

So true! the skinny, clawed woman agreed, finally sitting down behind a huge metal desk. As you say, they are hypocrites. They do care way too much about what people think. And they do write horrible poetry. What else?

Another assault of yelling and snarling ensued, but Robert could hear one answer above the rest. A sickeningly high voice from the back of the classroom screeched, They think they’re so special!

Aha! You’ve got it, Countess Bula grinned. You, Violent Violet, have pinpointed the #1 reason why we hate those people. They think they’re so special. Are they special?

No! the class accidentally shouted in unison.

And whose job is it to make that clear?

Each senior yelled his or her super villain name. The names had been assigned at the end of junior year to everyone but Robert. Through some mistake in paperwork, he had been passed over, though Robert felt sure there were darker forces at work. The mistake had never been resolved. It only served to solidify in the minds of everyone at the school, and at home, what a misfit Robert was, the one senior without a villain name.

Even Rupert had one. His was The Detonator. The day Rupert came home with the charcoal-black suitcase inscribed with his new name, their parents threw a party. The takeaway from that super villain party: Never invite Environmental Waste folks and War & Division folks to the same party. The stench was unbelievable. His bathroom still reeked of formaldehyde and body odor, though nearly a year had passed.

Countess Bula beamed at her students—all but Robert. There’s nothing more for me to teach you rats. Go out there and make their lives miserable! Class dismissed, permanently!

Robert sat gawking. They still had half a semester left. If she ended classes now, his grade in Human Disgrace would stand as a D− forever. He did get a few points for accidentally tripping Garth with the shooting wires in his toolkit last month, but it would take more than clumsiness to make up for his failure to kick Glowtox when he was down.

⧫⧫⧫

It had been a Friday, and Robert was just waiting for class to end so he could get back to reading The Spiderwick Chronicles. It was one of the newer-looking books in the junkyard. It still even had its front cover—an image of two twin brothers and an older sister looking into a big, shining book. Robert had stared at their faces for a long time, thinking of how different these twins were from himself and Rupert, who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing matching blue vests. These brothers sat close together looking into the special book Robert had learned was a fantastical field guide. A soft yellow glow rose up from the pages of the magical book on the cover.

He’d taken this ragged, stinky book home and read the first half, but now the plot seemed hopelessly sad and urgent, and he couldn’t wait to get home to find out how it would end. These twins, Simon and Jared, weren’t really anything like Robert and Rupert, except that one of them was seen as very good and one was seen as very bad. Perhaps the one that was very good would prove himself just as capable of getting into trouble, and the one that was very bad might just be redeemable by some heroic deed. Maybe...

Robert had been deep in thought on this very subject when he’d missed his opportunity for extra credit.

Violent Violet got credit for flicking Glowtox’s favorite carved bone pen onto the floor, but as the fluorescent boy crawled past his desk to retrieve it, Robert was still totally spacing out over The Spiderwick Chronicles and missed his chance to humiliate his fellow student. After that lapse in judgment, Countess Bula said she doubted he had an evil bone in his body.

She had obviously given up on him, or she wouldn't have ended the class while he was still failing, without even a word to him about how he could possibly make up the grade.

⧫⧫⧫

Evil laughter echoed around the room and into the hallway as the rest of the class left cheering.

Robert raced to reach the parking lot before Rupert.