A Karma Girl Christmas

A KARMA GIRL CHRISTMAS

CHAPTER ONE

CARMEN COLE

“You want me to babysit a bunch of toys?”

“It’s not just a bunch of toys, Carmen,” Henry Harris said. “They’re the toys for Oodles o’ Stuff’s annual Christmas charity drive—the biggest holiday event in Bigtime. Here, I’ll show you.”

Henry leaned forward and started typing away on one of the computer keyboards surrounding his chair, along with three monitors and twice as many servers. He hit a final button on the keyboard, and a film screen dropped down from the ceiling at the opposite end of the room.

We sat at a round table in an enormous library containing every sort of book, magazine, and encyclopedia one could possibly imagine. Volume after volume filled the floor-to-ceiling shelves, while maps dangled from the walls and globes gleamed in the corners of the room. Thick rugs covered most of the floor, giving only a glimpse here and there of the beautiful hardwood that lay underneath. Just strolling through the library, you’d never realize it was located deep underground—and that it had another function besides being a place to relax with a good book.

A second later, images began to flicker on the film screen. I leaned back in my chair and watched the montage, which had been set to a medley of cheery holiday tunes.

The first image revealed a humongous pile of toys. Dolls, stuffed animals, trains, building blocks, basketballs, jump ropes, art supplies—every conceivable kind of toy flashed by on the screen. The next few showed volunteers putting the toys into boxes, wrapping them, and handing them out to kids. After that, there were shots of the kids tearing into the colorful paper, pulling out the toys, and playing with them. And finally, a little girl hugged a doll to her chest, a huge grin on her tiny face, before the screen went black and the music faded away.

“See? Isn’t it heartwarming?”

Henry beamed at me. The light from the monitors made his dark hair and mocha skin take on a faint silver tint, while his glasses gleamed on his face. The monitor’s glow also brought out the white polka dots in the red bow tie he wore over his green-plaid sweater vest. Just looking at him sitting amid all those keyboards, monitors, and wires, you’d probably peg Henry for the computer geek that he was—but you’d never guess that he was also Hermit, a technological whiz of a superhero.

“You want me to babysit a bunch of toys?” I asked again.

Maybe I was being dense, but usually, things were a little more life and death in the superhero business. And that’s what I was these days—a bona fide superhero. I even had a costume and everything.

By day, I was Carmen Cole, a society reporter for The Exposé, one of the biggest newspapers in Bigtime, New York. By night, I was Karma Girl, the newest member of the Fearless Five, the city’s most powerful and popular superhero team. The Fearless Five, along with the city’s other superheroes, spent their nights fighting crime and foiling the schemes of the many ubervillains that called Bigtime home.

My being a superhero was more than a little ironic, because not too long ago, I’d used my skills as an investigative reporter to expose the real identities of heroes and villains. But getting dropped into a vat of radioactive goo will change a girl’s perspective on a lot of things—and give her superpowers.