A silhouette slowly disappeared from the drawn curtains, and the upper floor window vanished amongst the Creepers’ branches.
“Master McFee!” Mannie’s last yelp reverberated all the way into the distant woods. He slipped into delirium and forgot about his duty. His legs became rigid and his tail slowly quivered to a halt and thumped on the ground, as he faded into unconsciousness.
“That’s should keep him still for a while,” Scrapsie clacked, wiping his stinger clean.
“Raticulous, Scraps! Raticulous! I can rely on you,” Rutty screeched, pumping a clenched fist at him. “That’s the dark side that runs deep under your crust! You are a true scorpiola of our underworld, the deadliest stinger in the land!”
Letcho, frustrated at not getting in on the action, started biting his tail, accidently ripping it off. “Not again, Letcho,” Rutty said, calming him by sharpening his nails on the lizzardo’s razor-edged teeth. “Bored are we? How many times do I have to remind you not to play with your tail? Stop worrying. You’re a ruthless gang member, too, the slimiest lizzardo descendent that every slithered.” That made Letcho feel appreciated.
Scrapsie stitched Letcho’s tail back on, but Letcho whipped the scorpiola into the air – all part of their routine. Lizzardos always seem to lose it one way or another.
“We rule,” Rutty said. “Remember that. You can have it all, but you need your weaponry intact,” Scrapsie said. Letcho swatted at him a few more times, because he could.
“Nice stitch work, Scraps, as usual,” Smelka thought. She hid behind a bush and stayed out of it. She had other performance-related worries.
“Full range of motion, back in swing,” Letcho hissed, and kicked back into his lizzardry ways. “Get on!” His spiteful instincts were ingrained in him the way Rutty liked it.
“Faster, Letcho! Slither on my lethal lizzardo,” Rutty shrieked, his tail slicing the dampness like a sword.
Swish, swash! Sludge splattered with each step through the muck. Letcho dipped under the mud’s surface. Smelka and Scrapsie raced up and joined Rutty, who was squealing from the top of Letcho’s horn, “Keep above the sludge, you letch!” The lizzardo drew in his suction cupped feet and resurfaced, gliding on his belly.
Camouflaged by the thickets, they watched the spot where the upper floor window was supposed to appear. It was tricky because it came into focus only when the moon appeared between the clouds, and stayed in place for only a moment. Rutty felt the moment approaching.
“Ratisico! There it is. Let’s go!”
The window wavered over into its spot and snapped into the wall. Soon it was surrounded by twisting vines wrapped in prickly thorns. “Things are going to get hot inside,” Letcho said. In leaps and bounds he crossed the garden, which had an unfamiliar strong odor.
“Pungent!” Smelka said, savoring each whiff. Letcho stopped and they began feasting on bitter-leafed plants, furry-berry bundles and flower-blossom mold. “It’s so putrid even tastier than stale stickbars,” Smelka said.
“Enough! We don’t have time for this extravagance,” Rutty ordered. “Stick to the rubbish and leftovers from the garbage cans in the city at night.” The thought made him salivate. “Such a harvest we have when the lights are dimmed in Kavalon,” he thought.
He spat to show the way, his spittle freezing into pellets in the icy air. Smelka puckered and tried to spit, swaying a little with the effort. Her stomach rumbled, and she felt ready to explode from overeating. She slipped and released a minor stink bomb. “Ooops! Pardon!”
“Easy does it, sweet!” Rutty said. Sweat beads froze on her nose. Smelka tried to catch up to the others, who had already romped up to the trench alongside the castle.
“Wait up! We’re a gang. It was only an itsy-bitsy one,” Smelka said, but her words were muted by the cloud of her stench. “I am raring to let every drop go. I promise to be really bad. I’m the weaponry you’re leaving behind. You’re immune from my bombs anyhow. I think I smell pretty nice. Rutty said get use to it!”
The gang crept up to the spot beneath the now-visible window. “Now stay right where you are!” Rutty said. The crescent moon reflected the intensity of Rutty’s fiery eyes. Smelka was smoking hot in her white striped coat, ready for action. She clamped all fours around Letcho’s tail. Rutty climbed into his usual spot on Letcho’s horn. Scrapsie latched on to a scale, his stinger still quivering from subduing Mannie.
Letcho zig-zagged across the barbed coverings, turned and went straight up the side of the castle, his feet making squashing noises against the prickly thorns. Everyone hung on as Letcho slid under the window ledge.
“We all agree, do we not, on how nasty we must be?” Rutty said. He looked around to see if he might be challenged by the Creepers around the castle. “Careful not to get entangled in those snaky sliders that followed us out of the garden.” The vines were slithering up fast around their heels. Rutty clasped the ledge, hoisted himself up, and peered over the window frame.
Letcho’s tail whipped reflexively, slinging Smelka smack into the glass, flattening her. As she slowly slid down, Scrapsie gripped her ear, dangling her by his pincer. One of Letcho’s feet maintained good suction on the underside of the ledge, but he lost his grip when a slider grabbed his tail. Letcho, Scrapsie and Smelka all tumbled, through the tangled vines. It was a long way to the sludge at the side of the swamp. Everyone ended up there except the rat and Letcho’s tail. It was left hanging on a branch.
***
Inside the castle, Lou turned to look at the window from where the noise had come, seeing only his own reflection there. He plastered his face against the glass, nearly dropping the pipe in his mouth. For a brief instant Rutty, locked eyes with him and hastily retreated back into the vines, hoping he had not been seen. He grabbed the sliders that had tried to throw him off and shook them hard. “This is my despicable plot, not yours!”
Lou walked away from the window, perplexed by the sense that something was awry, and tried to dismiss the thought. “Preposterous possibility!” Even so, for a moment he questioned whether he was mistaken. Everything else was unfolding smoothly. He turned back to the window, banged his pipe on it and he yelled, “Who is it?”
No one replied. “Something going wrong would be disastrous, like an unfulfilled dream,” Lou thought. He took a final glance out the window between the Creepers, looking up at the stars. “The Starrings escaped, but random events occur every moment in the universe. Kalapsis is making its way from its previous location far away,” he reassured himself. “It must be on schedule. Everything has all been arranged.”
A breeze blew the window wide open. With a clap of his hands McFee willed the window shut and the curtains closed. “I don’t need the Starrings anyhow,” McFee thought to himself. “They served their purpose and helped bring Maximojo right into my trap.”
Another crash came from outside. “Perhaps it’s another unexpected visitor,” Lou said, silently questioning his decision to be hands-on for this mission. Nothing was what he had expected. Suddenly he felt a tingling in his stomach and felt a premonition that something was going to go wrong right now.
***
Rutty finally let go. Luckily, he landed on Smelka, who broke the fall. The window vanished. “That’s that,” said Rutty. He got up and angled his belt buckle on his hip. “And here’s your tail, Letcho. Don’t leave it behind again.”
Scrapsie readied his pincers to stitch Letcho’s tail on again. “I’ve got another chance to jab away. I knew it. My lucky day!” he thought.
“Everyone get up!” Rutty said. “We’ve got them cornered. There is no escaping now!”
The gang crept around to a place on the other side of the castle they had pinpointed as an alternate staging spot. “Just to make it clear,” Rutty said, “I jumped to make sure you were not left alone near the swamp. Terrible scary things lurk under its surface.” He turned to Smelka. “Grateful, skunklen sweet?”
She was, of course.
Chapter 8
Woofster paced back and forth. Anxious to leave he rubbed his hip. “This side never steers me wrong, when it hurts there’s trouble,” he thought. Glitta flickered furiously, building up her strength. Recharged, she looked out the window and lit up the front step. “Sparkafras!” She flashed Mojo that look. He twisted the sensor on his collar, prepared for anything.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!” A loud pounding was heard at the door. “More visitors?” Woofster said, his tail drooping. Everyone hustled downstairs to see who it was, eager to leave themselves.
“It might be Mannie,” McFee said. He strode to the door, and opened it. Air rushed in with the darkness. “Hmm. Mannie is not here,” he said, and poked his head out the door. “Mannie! Mannie!” he called.
“Maybe he’s visiting a neighbor?” Meowlen said. “Surely he has a friend or two.”
“If we had a neighbor,” McFee said. “The property extends far beyond the shadows of the forest all the way to the docks.”
McFee heard scratching noises at his feet. He kneeled, and crooked a finger under the chin of Smelka Skunklen, who was now wrapped in tree peelings. “Now what have we here? Such a sweet little thing making all that noise. How disruptive you are to cause all that trouble!
“Look, someone dropped off a little skunklen that looks like it might need some tender care. It must be an orphan, judging by the sorrowful look in its eyes.” He started to lift her up, but when Smelka locked eyes with him she panicked, shed the bark around her, squirmed out of McFee’s grasp and headed towards the pipe from where the gang had emerged a short time before.
“Safety lies below the sewer grate for orphans.” She said repeating one of Rutty’s sayings.
Scrapsie took advantage of the distraction and scurried around the doorframe, stopping inside the foyer, pincers held high.
Letcho caught Smelka before she reached the pipe, spun her over, and shook some sense back into her, his forked tongue swirling. “Remember our pact? It’s me, the lethal letch!” He wrapped her in his tail and lunged passed McFee. Rutty slammed the door shut and whirled around the staircase. McFee slid the bolt.
Letcho flipped Smelka into position while Rutty prepared her for the assault by rattling her nose. Smelka kept her legs crossed until she heard her cue, which she had rehearsed over and over.
“Let it rip, sweet!” Rutty clawed his belt, and watched.
And she did. Horrible stink bombs exploded into the room, funneling into thick smoke and scattering everyone. It spread throughout the study, blackening everything in sight. Glitta’s laser beam could barely cut through the dense cloud. Smelka had only just begun to empty her tank.
Letcho sideswiped Maximojo, who spun around in surprise. Steamy clouds fumed toward him. Glitta came to his defense throwing nuclear projectiles, she cranked it up a notch to counter-blast the noxious fumes, but the sticky gunk dripped all over him anyway. He could barely see through it. Letcho moved in, giving him a mighty swat. Airborne, Maximojo slammed into the portrait above the fireplace. He grabbed hold of the mantel for support, but it crumbled.
“Leave my tail to me! I can do it!” Smelka squealed. “Just watch a skunklen in her prime!” She pulled out a couple of berries she had stashed in her ear and popped them into her mouth. Fully charged again, she fired, unloading one round after another from her seemingly bottomless reservoir.
The gunk that covered Maximojo hardened, encasing him. Glitta emitted gamma rays and the entire shell dissolved into vapors and drifted away. She encircled Letcho with beams. Scrapsie hung tight onto Letcho’s tail, as Letcho, frustrated, chased it out of control. “You can’t lose it now,” Scrapsie said, and pinched it tight to hold it in place.
Whinniston found a hiding place that would finally stay still – a pile of shredded books – but still could not escape the smelly net that was descending on them.
“That’s the Maximojo I know from bedtime stories!” Woofster said. He crouched behind an unstable table. “Look at my hero and his flaming wand go after those tyrants, Meowlen. I’ll just wait here until I can jump the big one from behind. It looks like they’re on top of things.” Whinniston had never seen such smoke, and nervously agreed with Woofster.
“Woofster! Distract the bomber. Whinniston, corner it while I find their rutty leader. I smell a rat,” Maximojo hollered as he sliced through the mushrooming cloud in the study, his paws flying. Smoke hovered above the floor.
Meowlen seemed unconcerned under the stench. She knew all about skunklens, and would know what to do when the time was right. “Now why can’t the room stay still in situations like this?” She said, as ideas on how to redecorate dominated her thoughts.
Smelka was woozy. For a moment she dreamed she had drifted onto a cloud that would take her to new beginnings, far away from the gang and smoke-outs. She climbed up on the winged-back chair, imagining she had wings like Glitta, and attempted to soar into the skies. She landed on her face.
Standing in the far corner, McFee relished the sight of fighting. He noticed the chair where Lou and his pipe had been was now empty. “Rutty that space dog must be destroyed and capture the rest!” He signaled the rat with a clap of his hands. Rutty stopped and thought he heard someone calling his name giving him instructions. “Impossible! I’m hearing things. No one ever dares to tell this Rutty rodent what to do. But it is a good idea. Ratisico!” He spat.
“Enough!” Rutty ordered, and grabbed Smelka by the ear and shook her until she got a grip. She realized her gang was depending upon her, and wobbled behind Rutty as he advanced on Maximojo.
“I am a reliable skunklen, a loaded shooter,” she said. “Wait for me. I have a few more rounds to go!”
Rutty quickened his steps, closing in. “Now you are mine, Maximojo!” He slicked back his ears, pulled himself up to his full height, and grabbed his sword-like tail tucked into his belt.“Do your friends really believe they can hide in this study? No one can hide from us. We have been waiting for you.” Rutty warned.
“Waiting? How did you know we were here?” Maximojo hollered. “Your gang will regret every stink bomb. No one tricks the cosmic duo. You can’t escape the Mojo Effect. It will sneak up on you when you least expect it. You’ll see you rat!” Maximojo swung at Rutty, who screeched, darting around in the fumes.
Letcho, having slapped himself out of frustration, grabbed Smelka and flipped her onto her head. “Bottoms up!” he commanded. More fumes exploded into the room. Paws flew.
“Watch out, Mojo,” Glitta warned from above. She aimed her beamer at the skunklen to disarm it, as Maximojo was thrown to the ground.
Glitta spread her wings and flashed some lightning to disperse the smoke. Then she aimed at the crystal-dome ceiling, shattering it and drawing in the night air to diffuse the smell. The stars looked on in wonder alongside the moon, but the ceiling promptly repaired itself. With no outlet, the clouds of smoke settled again over the team.
“Give it to that rat and his gang. Wham!” Woofster watched closely and started edging closer to the rat. “I think Maximojo needs help, and it’s my chance to be a hero!” he thought, and looked around to see if anyone else was going to jump into battle. Meowlen caught his stare, and she rolled up her sleeves, as Letcho got a grip on Maximojo’s leg. “Looks like this is my cue,” she said.
Meowlen jumped up to the windowsill, and raised her sword, ready to pounce on the lizzardo. Thinking that she needed help, Whinniston began to trot over, but spun out on slime, knocking her off the sill and landing right on top of her. “Whinny get off me! You’ve foiled my plan of attack,” she said.
“Er ... thought you needed some help holding that sword,” he said, embarrassed, and skidded on slime puddles. “It’s these fancy shoes!” He rolled off, muzzled her helmet up,
and looked in her eyes. “We can try that maneuver again over there on my shoulders. What do you say?”
Meowlen put on her war decorations. She had plenty of them, having been a galactic warrior in another lifetime. She knew where this scuffle was going. This was no party. Standing tall in shining armor and spiked heels, she began her march towards Smelka. “That’s one tough skunklen … come to Meowlen!” When she reached Smelka, she kicked her over the chair. Smelka exploded a huge gaseous blast midair. She was now empty.
“Victory! One Down!” Meowlen stated matter-of-factly, as wooziness began descending on the Mojo Team.
The scorpiola scrambled onto Maximojo, latching onto his fancy collar. Maximojo’s sensor threw him back with a shock. “That hurt!” Scrapsie said, scrambling back up, pincers flying. Smelka saw the cat coming closer and crawled behind a pile of books.
Maximojo and the Wand of Light Page 8