Kingdom Keepers IV: Power Play

Kingdom Keepers IV: Power Play

Chapter 1

“Let’s get lost,” Finn said to the two girls.
DisneyQuest was a maze, a place where it was difficult to know where you were. An electronic funhouse filled with virtual rides, video games, and interactive attractions, the enormous building in Walt Disney World’s Downtown Disney consisted of five floors subdivided into virtual worlds and activities, all interconnected in a way that seemed designed to disorient. Finn Whitman actually was currently lost—he could quite figure out where he was or how to get out of there—but his suggestion to “get lost” stemmed from his spotting Greg “Lousy” Luowski at the other end of the gaming room, over near the Guitar Hero consoles. Luowski was the ninth-grade bully. Roughly the size of a kitchen appliance, the zit-faced, fingernail-chewing Luowski had it out for Finn, and Finn knew enough to stay clear of trouble. At least, avoidable trouble.
Over the past few years, trouble had defined him, had followed him as he and his four friends—now known as the Kingdom Keepers—had gained notoriety for their efforts to save Disney World from the Overtakers, a group of fanatical Disney villain characters within the Parks bent on taking over and “stealing the magic.” Guys like Luowski didn’t appreciate sharing the spotlight with anyone, and at the moment Finn was roughly a million times more popjular than Luowski.
“How about the simulators in CyberSpace Mountain?” Charlene said. Charlene was to beautiful what Mount Everest was to high. A cheerleader and phenomenal athlete, she was the poster child for the Kingdom Keepers. Her Facebook page had more friends than Ashton Kutcher’s—well, not really, but close enough. Boys liked her. Girls liked her. Teachers liked her. Parents liked her. It was enough to make you hate her. But no one could. She was too ridiculously Charlene to ever have an ill thought aimed at her.
Finn considered the suggestions and glanced over to Amanda to get her read. Amanda was a different kind of pretty: mysterious, her looks often changing from slightly Asian to Polynesian or Caribbean. Amanda was not officially one of the five Kingdom Keepers, but she and her “sister,” Jess, had unique qualities and unusual abilities that made them important to the team.
Amanda and Jess had once been part of a group of foster kids called the Fairlies—as in “fairly human.” Kids who could bend spoons just by staring at them, or hear clearly at absurd distances, hold their breath underwater for ten minutes at a time, light fires by concentrating, dream the future, see the past. Kids labeled freaks and weirdos; kids once studied in the military but dismissed to a special home in Baltimore when scientist failed to duplicate or explain what was termed their “controlled phenomena.”

From Ridley Pearson’s Kingdom Keepers IV: Power Play Copyright © 2011 written by Ridley Pearson, illustrated by Tristan Elwell. Reprinted by Permission of Disney•Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group LLC. All Rights Reserved