THE ADVENTURES OF TEE BONE MAN
PHASE TWO: THE MULTIVERSE SAGA
Chapter Twenty-Four: Tee Bone Man and Superdekes Go Back to School (Part One)
With nervous jitters, Tee Bone Man and Superdekes sat in the classroom, atop chairs that seemed a little small for their superhero frames. They were fully suited up, but otherwise unarmed for the children. This was only a fifth grade class, which made them a little extra cautious….maybe even more than when saving the world from monsters and villains. Their skin glistened with tense, cold sweat.
“Settle down, kids!” screamed Mrs. Powers, the stern-faced prune of a teacher, as she stormed into the class. Not the most pleasant teacher our heroes have encountered, Powers had a tense aura. Ancient as the Earth itself, her black hair was tied tight into a 1960s beehive like she forgot what decade this was. The class went suddenly silent upon her bellow, and Tee Bone Man loosened his collar at the cape. A little warm in here? Someone should check the air conditioning. His cape was tight. His new cape. The old one was burned by a dragon about two months ago in the Battle of Kitchener. Now, he and Superdekes were summoned here to speak in a class by Principal Rockefeller, but Mrs. Powers clearly wanted nothing to do with the pair.
“Was the Van Halen mask really necessary?” she whispered to Tee Bone Man. “This is a fifth grade class, gentlemen. Do you want these kids looking up David Lee Roth’s derriere on the internet?”
Tee Bone blinked. “You know David Lee Roth?” he asked with eyes wide.
“Oh please,” she huffed, shaking her head in displeasure. “Do you think I’m new? Go!” she waved her hand as she gestured to the front of the classroom. Deke and Tee hurried to the blackboard. Deke wrote their names in white chalk while Tee Bone spoke.
“Might as well Jump,” said Tee to himself. Here we go! “Hi kids!”
The class fidgeted, many with head in hands, trying not too hard to pay attention. Tough crowd, noted Tee Bone. He took a deep breath. “I’m Tee Bone Man, and this is my pal Superdekes! We’re superheroes! We’ve been invited here today by your principal to teach you all about right and wrong, good and evil, and some pretty crazy adventures we’ve had!”
This was patently false. The real reason they were sweating in that classroom was in repayment for the chaos caused by their New Year’s Eve concert last month. The concert threw the city of Thunder Bay into disarray for three solid days, and a reckoning was had in the halls of the Mayor’s Office. This school appearance was part of the ongoing reparations that Tee and Deke owed from that night. The concert might have blown minds, but the fallout in the days after blew chunks. Tee Bone and Superdekes were the scapegoats.
[FURTHER READING: Tee Bone Man Chapter Twenty-Three: Rockin’ New Year’s Eve]
Tee Bone Man cleared his throat. Time for penance.
“We’d like to tell you all about our adventures, and maybe you’ll learn a thing or two in the process. Are ya ready?” Tee Bone pumped his fist in excitement. One kid responded with a snore, another a fart.
“SCOTTIE!” scolded Mrs. Powers.
“OK! Deke…why don’t you start?” said Tee
Deke looked startled a moment and then snapped to attention. “Uh, sure! Why don’t we start with our origin story?”
Tee Bone nodded. “Always good to start from the start,” he encouraged.
“Great!” said Superdekes as he clapped and rubbed his hands. “So, kids, Tee Bone Man over here got his amazing super powers by falling into a vat of radioactive Scotch. Do you kids know what Scotch is?”
Mrs. Powers’ jaw dropped. Deke turned his head in a start, and changed his line of questioning.
“I mean, do you kids know what radioactivity is?” The kids stared blankly. “Well, I mean…” This was not going well! He smacked his head. Tee Bone gestured and whispered “Say something!” Deke had an idea. Changing his line of questioning, he grabbed their attention.
“I mean, have any of you kids ever eaten a lot of candy all at once?”
Suddenly the class perked up. A few children raised their hands excitedly.
“Did you feel different after eating all that candy?” he asked.
“I got a tummy ache!” screamed one kid. Another one shouted, “I ran around and around and around until my mom told me to stop and then I couldn’t sleep!”
Deke snapped his fingers and pointed at the kid. “That’s right! That’s kind of what happened to Tee Bone Man here. He fell into some radioactive…candy…and next thing I knew, he could fly! It was very dangerous, he could have died! We barely survived, so the lesson here is…don’t eat too much candy, I think! Anyway, that’s why we became a superhero team!” Deke raised his hand to high-five Tee, who hesitated but went for it. The kids were starting to wake up.
[FURTHER READING: Tee Bone Man Chapter Zero: Origins]
“That’s right, Deke!” said Tee Bone, picking up the story. “Any questions?”
One hand went up. A nerdy kid in the back with greasy hair and glasses. Great.
“How doesth it work?” asked the nerd with a lisp. “Like, how do guysth know where people need help?”
Whew! “Great question kid!” exclaimed Tee. “Do any of your moms and dads buy music records?” A couple kids more raised their hands.
“AC/DC!” said a tiny voice from the back. Deke stared in surprise, mouth slightly agape. Powers frowned and crossed her arms.
“Right!” enthused Tee Bone. “Well, Deke here devised a super secret music system that allows us to sense danger before it comes! It works when he plays a record on his special record player! It’s pretty cool! Deke is a wizard with technology, you see. Tell them, Deke!”
Deke looked surprised. “You were doing so well. Keep going,” he pressed. Tee Bone was clearly not eager to upset Mrs. Powers any further, but he continued his story.
“Our first few adventures were pretty easy, kind of like when you’re starting to play a new video game. You kids know what Sasquatches are? Well, our earliest adventures just involved us saving a bunch of tourists from Sasquatches and such. Very exciting. You can actually can smell them for a mile.” Tee Bone pinched his nose for exaggeration. “Pee-eww!” he said to the class’s laughter.
[FURTHER READING: Tee Bone Man Chapter One: A Friend In Need]
A kid wrinkled up his nose and giggled.
“What do they smell like?” asked Scottie, the kid who farted earlier, without raising his hands.
“A little like you…” murmured Deke. The class giggled. All but Scottie of course! Deke picked up the story.
“The problem with fighting Sasquatches is, Tee Bone would always get there first because he can fly, and I can’t. All I have are my gadgets. But check this out.”
Deke sketched a crude drawing of his flying motorcycle on the board.
“I had to figure out a way to fly! I had a motorcycle, which was fast, but Tee can fly anywhere in the world! I had to sit in traffic and wait for the green light! And kids, you be careful every time you cross the street! So, you know what I did? I put some wings on my motorcycle and now it flies! Just goes to show, never give up and follow your imaginations!” Deke drew some flames coming from the bike’s exhaust in red chalk. “Psssshhhhhhhhht!” said Deke as made roaring engine sounds to go with his flames.
Finishing his drawing, Deke looked at Powers before continuing. She wasn’t going to like what happened next. It was a tad…hellish. But these kids have seen worse on YouTube. Deke began the next chapter.
“My flying bike came in handy when we had to go to Australia. Remember a couple of years ago, those earthquakes that hit all over the world? Those were scary, right? Well it was me and Tee Bone who stopped them!”
“TEE BONE AND I,” corrected a stern Mrs. Powers.
“Tee Bone and I, right, and on that note…Tee?” Deke was passing the live hand grenade to his friend now, so to speak!
“OK, yeah! So, I flew to Australia to meet a new ally called Mr. Moustachio! He is very important to our story…don’t forget that name! Anyway, we learned the earthquakes were coming from Hell, and we had to go and literally defeat Satan himself! But we did, because good always wins, right kids? Right?” Powers scowled.
“We saved the world,” emphasized Deke to the class so Powers would stop glaring. “And we didn’t even ask for a reward!”
“We had to fight demons and dragons, kids!” said Tee. Deke raised his arms to the sides and flapped them like dragon wings, and pretended to breath fire for the class. “It was pretty hairy, but thanks to our friend Moustachio, we won that battle and saved the world for the first time! A pretty big deal, and we didn’t even get a parade or an interview on TV!”
“Boo!” said Scottie to this news.
[FURTHER READING: Tee Bone Man Chapter Two: Hell Freezes Over and Three: Hell Ain’t A Bad Place to Be]
“But kids, this is where the story gets a little crazy! Our new friend Moustachio returned home to his house in Australia, which is on the other side of the world. My friend Deke here thinks that Satan cloned Moustachio during that adventure! Do you know what cloning is? It’s like making a copy of a person!”
Deke sketched some people on the blackboard for emphasis, all identical to one another.
“Me and De…I mean, Deke and I continued to do our jobs saving the world, while someone was making a copy of our friend!” Tee Bone wiped his brow a moment and took a swig of his water. “We think it was Satan again. He made an evil version of our friend, and named him Shinzon! And now we have him to worry about too. That’s what we think happened anyway, right Deke?”
[FURTHER READING: Tee Bone Man Chapter Eighteen: Shinzon – Origins and Edie Van Heelin’ and the Quest for the Lost Lego]
“That’s my theory, Tee!” said Deke as he picked up the story. “But kids, we were having a pretty good time protecting the world during our first adventures. We got to meet some celebrities. How many of you kids like hockey?” Five or six kids raised their hands. “Anyone like the Boston Bruins?” asked Deke. “Nah, me neither! Hah. Anyway, if you can believe it, once Tee Bone and I had to save the world from a big rat named Brad Marchand, the captain of the Boston Bruins!” A couple kids laughed at word rat. “No, it’s true!” said Deke. “He has a big old rat nose and he’s just a big bad pain in the ass!”
[FURTHER READING: Tee Bone Man Chapter Four: Tee Bone Man and the Rink of…Doom?]
Powers scolded immediate. “DEKE. LANGUAGE.”
“Right, sorry! Keep it warm, rat!” Deke drew a funny caricature of Marchand on the board. The kids laughed at his massive mountain of a nose.
“Umm, anyway, after we took care of Marchand, we started making some new friends! Friends are very important, kids! Always make sure you have your friends’ backs, and pick ones that will always have yours! On our next adventure, we met a strange American billionaire named Snowman! He had lots of rare records and collectables, so you know what he did? He bought an army of snowmen to protect it! And you know what happened when Satan attacked us again? Can you guess?”
Deke sketched a portrait of the Snowman on the blackboard as Tee Bone spoke. Mrs. Powers interrupted.
“Isn’t that Richard Dreyfuss?” she questioned.
“Common mistake,” winked Deke.
“He’s very handsome,” blushed the teacher. “I mean, can you guess what happened next kids?”
A kid raised her hand. “Did the snowmans melt?”
“The snowmans melted!” shouted Tee Bone as he pointed at the girl and pumped his fist.
“But did you stop the bad guys?” asked another child.
“We sure did!” said Tee Bone. “We stopped the Devil and his Knights In Satan’s Service, and the Snowman has been one of our best friends ever since!”
[FURTHER READING: Tee Bone Man Chapter Five: The Super Duper Vault]
There was an awkward pause. Tee Bone Man drew a blank. He scratched his head a moment. “What happened next, Deke? I’m having trouble remembering the next part.”
“You took a vacation. You went to camp,” said Deke.
“Oh that’s right,” said Tee. “Always remember, take some time to play and don’t work too hard! I made a new friend on my vacation, kind of,” said Tee Bone. “You knows know what squirrels are right?”
Just about every kid raised their hands. “There’s one outside right now!” said one as he pointed through a window. “A big black one!”
“That’s him!” said Tee Bone. “That’s my squirrel friend Ripper. I met him when I took a vacation at my camp. Technically, he belongs to Mr. Moustachio, but we’ll tell you more about him later on. First, we had to deal with the realisation that not everybody is on our side. Even superheroes have bullies.”
[FUTHER READING: Tee Bone Man Chapter Six: Tee Bone Goes To Camp]
“That’s right!” said Deke. “Now, kids, this next part of the story is about a big old bully named Billy. We’re going to teach you how to deal with meanies like Billy. Nobody here likes a bully, right?”
“Nooooooo!” came a sea of kid voices.
“Nobody likes a bully!” said Deke. “Well I got a bully named Billy and he’s a big old grouch. Have you kids ever heard of a band called Mr. Big?”
Dead stares.
“Didn’t think so. Well, you know what this bully did? He came around to my house just to mess with me, when Tee Bone was sleeping! Isn’t that mean?” All the kids nodded in agreement. “But I got him, yes I did, all my myself!” said Deke, as he turned to wink at Tee Bone.
“We got him,” said Tee Bone.
“I got him,” corrected Deke. “By myself. Without Tee Bone Man’s help!”
The kids clapped.
“And that’s what you do with a bully!” exclaimed Deke. “When they come to your house with a teal doubleneck bass guitar looking for trouble, you blast ’em with your nuclear pick-shooter!”
[FURTHER READING: Tee Bone Man Chapter Seven: The Revenge of Common Knowledge]
“It’s a good thing we kept meeting new friends,” said Tee Bone as he continued the story. “Especially since the bullies were growing in number. We needed friends. Deke and I couldn’t do this on our own anymore. Things were happening all over the world, not just here in Thunder Bay. Do you kids know where England is?”
Nobody seemed to know.
“Well it’s a long way away, across the Atlantic Ocean!” said Tee Bone, holding his arms wide to express the massive distance. “And this story goes to show, even people from very far away that talk with difference accents, can be your next friend! Our new friend, Michael the 80s Metal Man, came from a place called Stroud. This time, there was a bad teacher named Mr. Suplee, who was trying to change world history using time travel! Have you kids seen any good time travel movies? Well it works just like the movies, I guess.”
A boy raised his hand. “Like in Avengers Endgame?”
“No, but like virtually every other time travel movie except that one.” Deke took over here for Tee Bone. “There was this evil teacher here in Thunder Bay named Mr. Suplee…”
Mrs. Powers interrupted. “Mr. Suplee? The music teacher?”
“Why, yes…did you know him?” asked Deke.
“He was my first husband!” answered Powers.
“Ah. Well, he was an A-hole, ma’am,” said Tee Bone.
“I agree,” said Powers. “Continue.”
“Hah. Well, Mr. Suplee decided he didn’t like a certain kind of music, and he decided to use time travel to erase heavy metal music from history! And he almost succeeded, didn’t he Tee?” asked Deke
“That’s right,” answered Tee Bone. “If it wasn’t for the Metal Man, and his connections in Rock Heaven, we’d never have solved that crisis. And that means we’d live in a world without Ozzy Osbourne!”
“Ozzy!” shouted a kid in the back with a pumped fist.
[FURTHER READING: Tee Bone Man Chapter Eight: Tee Bone and Deke’s Time Travelling Adventure and Who’s the Mole in Rock and Roll Heaven?]
“That’s right! But you know kids, new friends are great but never forget your old friends either! Soon we met up with El Moustachio again. And guess what! Satan was up to no good! Again!” said Tee Bone, hamming it up for the kids now. He then put on a terrible Australian accent. “We had ta go back ta da land down unda!” Deke quietly whispered to him to cut the accent. Tee grimaced but continued without. “Anyway, it was supposed to be a fun trip looking for records, but we ended up having to save the world again! We found an evil, demonic record called the Infernum!”
“And the music sucked!” chuckled Deke to another frown from Mrs. Powers. “Sorry!” he said this time.
“Anyway, this record we found was the oldest in existence, and capable of summoning a massive army of evil, so needless to say, we had to make sure Satan didn’t get his claws all over it!” explained Tee Bone. The kids were enthralled with their stories. “You can imagine what would happen if we didn’t!”
“We had to fight knights in armor!” said Deke with a sword-like motion of his hands.
“And I broke my guitar!” said Tee Bone with a teardrop-motion. “But we kept fighting anyway!” He and Deke grabbed a couple of the meter-long rulers that Mrs. Power by the black board. “It looked something like this! En garde, Deke!” He had Deke swung sticks in mock combat, until Tee managed a fatal strike.
“Ahh!” said Deke as he pretended to die.
[FURTHER READING: Tee Bone Man Chapter Nine: Castle Communications]
“Did you get a new guitar?” asked one kid. “What colour?” asked another.
“I did! A black one!” answered Tee Bone Man. “Wanna see?”
The class cheered. Tee Bone reached down behind the teacher’s desk and brought up a guitar case. Inside was a gleaming black weapon, the likes of which these kids had never seen before. It gleamed under the cold classroom lights. Tee Bone smiled as he noticed the kids respond to it.
“May I?” he winked to Mrs. Powers.
“Not too loud!” she answered.
Tee Bone smiled. He casually played Van Halen’s “Eruption”, note for note, tap for tap, for the class who gaped in awe at the sound. His hands were a blur. The sound from the tiny practice amp filled the room. If only they had known it was powered by nuclear Scotch! It was warmest tones those kids would ever likely hear in person. Tee Bone shredded the solo until every young mind in the room was blown. After finishing the solo, they clapped in glee. Lives were changed that day, only they wouldn’t know it yet.
“I got this axe…that’s slang for guitar…I got this guitar from a guy named Max. He’s kind of a big deal, you know. He and a mutual friend of ours called the Brainiac helped me get this very special instrument to replace my old red one.”
[FURTHER READING: Tee Bone Man Chapter Fifteen: Status Acoustic – The Really Big Deal]
“Still, it took a while to find the right guitar with the right powers to fight evil!” said Deke. “You had to do without for a while. What happened next in our story?”
“We don’t have to tell these kids about the Iron Maiden concert,” shushed Tee.
“Oh yes we do!” laughed Deke. “Go on!”
Tee Bone harumphed. “OK, so we went to go to see Iron Maiden in Toronto, and I bought some cursed bootleg socks, and they made me go a little crazy. That’s all. Don’t buy bootleg merchandise, is the lesson here, I guess.” Deke was laughing to himself.
“What kindsa stuff did you do when you were crazy?” asked the kid named Scott.
“Nothing, I went to sleep, now let’s move on,” said Tee. Deke was killing himself laughing in the corner. If only these kids knew just how crazy Tee Bone got that night!
[FURTHER READING: Tee Bone Man Chapter Ten: The Case of the Cursed Iron Maiden Socks]
Deke tried to reign himself in. “The important thing is, friends stick together and without his friends, Tee Bone would be on the funny farm right now.” The class laughed.
Tee Bone smiled. “It’s true what’s he’s saying about friends,” he continued. “We had all our friends over for Christmas that year, which was really nice. Brainiac, Moustachio, Mr. Books, Snowman, Metal Man, all of ’em.”
[FURTHER READING: Tee Bone Man Chapter Eleven: A Tee Bone Man Christmas]
“And then we went to space,” teased Deke.
“No way!” gasped one kid. “You went to space?” yelled another child. “I peed myself!” screamed a third.
“Me too kid,” winked Tee. “Almost, anyway. But yes, we went to space. We went to Mars actually.”
“Yeah, that was wild,” said Deke. “We met a new friend named Kevin, but we were there to save the Snowman’s tail, again! From the Martians this time. And yes, there are Martians. I guess that’s probably news. Anyway, we got Snowman and Kevin safely home from Mars, and it was otherwise a fairly uneventful trip, all things considered,” finished Deke, ignoring the carnage they wreaked on that trip, and the uncertainty of a possible loose end regarding a clone of Donald Trump. No need to confuse these kids.
“We flew TIE Fighters and X-Wings, dude. Don’t cheap out on these kids,” chided Tee.
“Wanna see my actual working lightsaber?” asked Deke of the class.
“NO LASER SWORDS IN SCHOOL!” scolded Powers.
[FURTHER READING: Tee Bone Man Chapter Twelve: Lost In Space]
Deke’s heart skipped a beat. “No ma’am; it’s in the car.”
“In the car it stays!” she barked.
“Yes ma’am, in the car in stays,” he agreed. “But kids, I have to tell you, things were starting to get serious. Do you think you can handle the rest?”
“YES!” shouted the kids in unison.
“OK then,” smiled Tee Bone Man just as the bell rang for recess. “We’ll finish when you return!” he shouted as the tidal wave of children ignored him on their way out the door. Our heroes were left in the room, with just Mrs. Powers staring at them. There was an awkward silence.
“Tell me something, boys,” she said sternly.
“Anything, sure,” said Tee Bone nervously.
“Did you give that Suplee character a swift kick in the pants?” she said with a dead serious look.
Tee Bone smiled behind the mask. “Let’s just say he gets three square meals a a day at Canada’s finest maximum security facility.”
There was no reaction on Powers’ face for several seconds. Then her mouth twitched as she struggled to fight back a smile. Her eyes divulged her delight.
“Good,” she simply said, and went to go monitor the kids playing in the school yard.
To be continued tomorrow…
THE ADVENTURES OF TEE BONE MAN: PHASE ONE – THE SQUIRREL SAGA 
THE ADVENTURES OF TEE BONE MAN: PHASE TWO – THE MULTIVERSE SAGA
THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF EDIE VAN HEELIN’
THE WRITER’S ROOM
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