Free SuperZero by Jane De Suza

staring into her eyes and asking all those weird questions doctors ask you, like ‘Can you count backwards?’ Then he stood back and looked around our gang with his ‘sad’ face—you know the one doctors put on when they have to give you bad news, like say, when your tooth is so rotten that they have to pull it out and it’s going to hurt like crazy? Yeah, that sad face. ‘It looks bad, but she is a fighter.’
    ‘I knoooow,’ wailed Head 1, ‘I always told her not to fight.’
    ‘Ahem,’ Dr Last Chance continued, ‘I meant it as a good thing. She’s going to be fighting to stay alive. It’s a strange case, you know, it’s not every day a doctor gets a two-headed patient. Sometimes a one-headed patient with two chins . . .’
    ‘Dr Last Chance!’ the Fly cut in, ‘you are our last chance. Please focus.’
    ‘Fow-cus!’ grunted Masterror.
    ‘Yes, yes, I’m afraid there is only one very rare remedy.’ Dr Last Chance was flipping through a thick leather-bound book of brown, old and crumbling pages.
    ‘Ah, here it is,’ he said, squinting at a page. ‘Single threatened decapitation of one or more of multiple . . . got it! She needs a mere drop of blood.’ He beamed at us happily. ‘But that drop of blood needs to be superhero blood . . . AND it needs to be delivered from the fangs of a vampire.’
    In the silence that followed, everyone turned around to stare at Vamp Iyer.
    ‘Omigosh, no!’ Vamp Iyer shrunk backwards. ‘No, no, no!’
    ‘You’re our last chance,’ said Masterror.
    ‘No, he’s your last chance. He’s Dr Last Chance.’ Vamp Iyer shook his head.
    ‘You’re our only hope,’ said Anna Conda.
    ‘No, no, no.’ Vamp Iyer said desperately, ‘Maybe there’s a Dr Hope? A Dr Only Hope? Why don’t you go check?’
    Vamp Iyer kept shaking his head, his lips trembling and a tear beginning to form in one eye.
    ‘What is it, boy?’ the Fly asked him softly. ‘You come from a family of vampires. You have blood in your veins. Well, we all have blood in our veins. Ahem, I mean, you have sucking blood in your veins. Your people live by sucking blood. You are the only one who can do it. Justpuncture a superhero vein, like a mosquito, and hop over to deliver it to Double Head-Mistress. Come on, Vamp Iyer, make your school proud!’
    Vamp Iyer whispered finally, ‘I can’t. I’ve never sucked a drop of blood in my life. I only drink milk. I’ve not been weaned yet.’
    The silence grew louder, if that’s possible. Vamp Iyer stood in the middle of that room, his head hanging.
    Dr Last Chance looked around irritably. ‘Okay, let’s start with the superhero blood then. You sir, are too puny, it is impossible to take the required drop from you.’ That to the Fly. Then the doctor turned to Masterror. ‘You, sir, are perfect. You can be the blood donor.’
    Masterror backed out. While all of us stood staring at him, he shook his head, panicking. ‘I can’t. I can’t. I am . . . I am . . . verrrrrry . . . errrrrr . . . anaemic . . . sickly . . . frrrrragile. Not me.’
    Our little heroine, Anna Conda, piped up, ‘Take mine. I just need to ask my parents and . . .’
    Dr Last Chance cut in, ‘It’s an emergency. It has to be right now.’
    Blank would undoubtedly have offered but he couldn’t even reappear fully to let his arms, let alone his veins, show.
    I felt so unbearably sad—I was indirectly the cause of all this. And when I feel unbearably sad, I also feel unbearably heroic (stupidly heroic as it turns out). ‘Don’t worry,everybody,’ I said, puffing out my chest, ‘I am here. Vamp Iyer, buddy, don’t be afraid. It’s only me. You can take my blood.’ I held out my arm bravely.
    ‘Ooh SuperZero, you are my hero,’ Anna Conda cooed, and in that instant, I knew that it was all worth it.
    Dr Last Chance cleared his throat. ‘I must warn you that this process is known to be injurious to health. Often the superhero donor could bleed to death.’
    Blank’s mop of