by Sophie Bell
“FYI,” she said in defense of her friend, “contrary to what you may have heard, Scarlet is totally not hopelessly in love with you. And she never was.”
“Really?” Agent Jack finally lifted his head up to look at Cheri. His skin was sallow in the moonlight, his navy blue eyes darkened with dashed hopes. “Not even a little?” Then, with a gag and a burp and a lurch, he leaned over the side of the swan-mobile and threw up.
“Wait,” Agent Sidney interjected, as if Cheri’s words were just sinking in. “This gucky stuff is supposed to zombotomize the city? I thought it was just deodorant!”
All four of them suddenly became aware of a heat wave. From Chrysalis Park, a heavy wind roiled out over the harbor, bringing the water to a kaleidoscopic simmer: exploding purple watermelons here, pulsing yellow powder spores there.
“The Bleau-Fryer!” Cheri cried. “It’s bleau-ing!” Quickly she spun the click wheel on her wings’ control panel, increasing their speed. “As much as I’ve enjoyed our chat, boys—one hundred percent not—I must dash, alas.” She scooted around on her wings to face forward again. “Jack,” she added, feeling sorry for the sickly Black Swan in spite of herself, “you might not be able to stand up to Develon Louder, but the Ultra Violets will. The Bleau-Fryer is a weapon of mass dumbification! I’ve got to finish spiking these spores before they’re heat-activated!”
“I can’t let you do that,” Jack said in a listless tone, shakily aiming his Super Soaker. “I can’t. Let you girls. Plasmatyze the toxin.”
Frowning, Cheri looked back and forth between the wobbly boys in their swan-mobile and the slowly sizzling sludge. Whatever are we going to do with these two? she brooded. We can’t just leave them here as the river starts to boil!
I callz in reinforzmints, Darth stated, swinging his head back and forth, too.
What reinforcements? Cheri repeated, puzzled.
And then she saw them: the trio of pink dolphins, swimming their way.
“Sine, Cosine, and Tangent!” she shouted, oblivious to the Black Swans’ confused stares. “Would you do us a huge favor and—”
With a grand splash, the three dolphins leaped fifteen feet into the air and dove back down, their rosy tails flapping up a froth.
Alreddy tolz dem, Darth reassured her. And sure enough, without Cheri having to say or think a single thing, the three pink dolphins swam underneath the Black Swans’ paddleboat, balanced it on their heads, and tossed the spy boys out of the harbor toward the park.
For those few seconds, the swan-mobile took flight.
Then it came crashing down in the grass very ungracefully and just kept going.
“Hey!” Cheri called after them, remembering too late. “Which one of you wrote the anonymous note?”
Only the dolphins replied, whistling and chittering like Cheri’s question was a joke. She turned to thank Sine, Cosine, and Tangent, but they were already wading out toward the safety of the Statue of SynchroniCity. Cheri watched them leave, their three pink heads in perfect alignment just like synchronized swimmers.
Which was fitting, considering they were in Sync City.
Spy boys out of harm’s way, Cheri made haste. Sneezing more than twice, she emptied the rest of the Whoseewhatsit over the percolating spores, then wished on a star that it was enough. Just in case it wasn’t, she rummaged in her pockets, pulled out her bottle of biodegradable Lilac Attack nail polish, and poured that on top of the gunk, too.
“It was the inspiration for the code name, after all!” she explained to her trusty skunk companion. “Now let’s go see what the other Ultra Violets are up to.”
Blowing It
SEBASTIAN AND IRIS SITTING IN A TREE, K-I-S-S-I DON’T think so. Not yet! Uh-huh to the tree-sitting, but nuh-uh to the face-smooching. Not in the middle of the Lilac Attack! As much as Iris might have wished for a first kiss from Sebastian, as umpteen times as she’d daydreamed about it when she should have been paying attention in history class instead, as studiously as she may have practiced on a pillow, um . . . no. Now was not that moment. She had yet to even allow herself to admit the peck on the forehead had happened, because she didn’t want to lose her focus. Iris’s mind was not on kisses. This was not about boys! She had a mission to see through.
(Plus, her usually gorge purple curls were in a state of absolute chaos, chopped up and dreadlocked and whatnot. Sure, she hoped Sebastian would like her just the way she was, but still. In her daydream scenarios, her hair always looked perf.)
Now where were we?
Sitting in a tree!
Sebastian had chauffeured Iris up and out of the construction pit, over to a grove of fluffula trees far enough from the Bleau-Fryer that they wouldn’t be vacuumed into its vortex. Iris had gingerly disembarked onto a sturdy branch, and Sebastian had joined her, balancing his hoverboard on his lap.
“Ouch,” he said, grimacing when he saw the raw skin of her wrist where the MutAnt had bitten her.
“It’s not too bad,” Iris said, although it kind of was. “Except that I need my hands to . . . um . . .” she started to explain.
“To solar-blast the mutants, right?” Sebastian smiled and, right there in the treetop, peeled off first his hoodie, then the plain white T-shirt he was wearing underneath. Iris blushed royal purple exclamation points, but Sebastian was too busy fumbling with his clothes to make eye contact. “Hold this a sec,” he said, tossing her the T-shirt. It felt warm. Iris wondered how it smelled. Before she could sneak a sniff, Sebastian had pulled his hoodie on again and taken the T-shirt back. With both hands, he gripped the collar and ripped the thin fabric at the seams. “It’s old,” he said. “And clean. Clean enough.”
Iris swallowed, all at once aware of how thirsty she was. She could only hope the exclamation marks had faded from her face. Sensing she was supposed to, she held out her arm and watched while Sebastian gently wrapped a strip of the soft cotton around her wound.
“There.” Sebastian knotted the two ends of the bandage together. “It kind of goes with your whole black-mask-purple-Rasta tribal vibe.”
“Oh!” Iris uttered, raising both hands to her cheeks as they flared afresh with exclamation points. She’d completely forgotten she was wearing the face paint. She must have looked like a wild child!
But the cloth around her cut wrist did help dull the pain.
Lilac and yellow explosions erupting like popcorn from the harbor brought her thoughts back to the attack. Blinking up at her Graffiti Boy, her periwinkle blues brimmed with gratitude. “I’ve got to go,” she said.
“I know.” When Sebastian stared back at her with his shining black eyes, Iris doubted she would ever budge from the spot. She reached out and lightly brushed the forelock of hair off his forehead. It fell right into place again. “Can I help?” he asked.
“You already have,” she told him.
Sebastian cocked an eyebrow. “Well . . . I’ll be watching, just in case. Supergirl.”
“Good,” Iris said, her heart swelling like a balloon about to burst. Suddenly, even though her curls had been butchered and her hand had been chewed and her wings had been mangled, even though the Bleau-Fryer was heating up and Chrysalis Park was crawling with gigantic ants in ugly tropical shirts and at any moment toxic zombotomizing fumes could infiltrate the city, even though ALL THAT . . .
. . . Iris finally felt not only determined—she’d been determined all along—but optimistic. Inspired! It was one thing to fight to save Sync City for thousands of nameless citizens (and her mother). It was entirely another to do it for one special boy.
With strength and grace and her good hand, she swung down from the sturdy branch onto the grass. “Be back in a second or three!” she called to Sebastian, raising her bandaged fist in a sort of salute.
He waved double V signs in solidarity.
Then she ran.
• • •
Descending on her fuchsia wings, Cheri caught up to Iris just as she was approaching the brink of the pit.
“Hey!” Iris greeted her with a sweet smile that completely contradicted her battle-scarred appearance. She almost had to laugh at the vision that was Cheri: All ruby waves and glittering lip gloss, her friend may as well have just strolled out of a spa. “You’re looking beauteous, Cher.”
“RiRi, pardon my French, but you’re not,” Cheri blurted out bluntly. “Qu’est-ce qui s’est passée?”
“You mean what happened?” Iris guessed at the translation. “Tell you later.” She could feel the undertow of the Bleau-Fryer’s wind tunnel as she took a step closer to the edge, the suction tugging her frazzled dreadlocks forward. “Did you spike the sludge with the Whoseewhatsit?” she asked, raising her voice to be heard above the howling air current. “Is it primed for the plasmalytic conversion?”
“Yes, we think so,” Cher reported, strands of her hair blowing into her lip gloss, as Darth nodded along. “Did you drop the pendant into the ventilation system?”
“Um, I hope so,” Iris answered less certainly. Her mind flashed back to the ping-pong-sized ball of plasma rolling down the green beam of her rainbow. Had it gone into the chute? What if it had gotten stuck somewhere in the machinery instead of dissolving? What if it plum didn’t work?
Darth clambered out of his papoose and up onto Cheri’s shoulder while she checked the stopwatch on her smartphone. “How much time till it’s activated?” she pressed.
“I . . .” Iris faltered, before throwing up her hands in frustration. “Gosh, Cher, I honestly don’t know. It got kind of cray on top of the Bleau-Fryer.”
“Obvi!” Cheri’s green eyes goggled as she gave Iris another once-over, glancing at the bandage on her wrist before returning to her devastated hairdon’t. “As soon as this is done, we are so giving you a comb-out,” she declared.
“We?” Iris repeated.
Dont ezen tri to stops us, Darth said, folding his paws across his chest. Although only Cheri could hear him.
A heinous crunching sound caught their attention. Both girls crouched down low and peered through the long grass into the construction pit. What they saw made their stomachs knot up harder than Iris’s hair.
Opal stood at the front of an endless line of MutAnts marching in place. The nonstop stomps of the hundreds of giant ant feet sent fissures through the dirt floor and dust clouds into the air. Every now and then, jutting out of the sandstorm, a wand of stainless steel glistered in the lights. As if conducting an orchestra, Opal was pointing at the mutants with Candace’s swizzle spork.
For a sickening second or three, Iris, Darth, and Cheri all had the same tainted thoughts:
OMV, Opaline hasn’t changed after all!
Sheez leedin da mootants!
And Scarlet’s somewhere down there with her!
But as they watched for a fourth second longer, their pulse rates began to slow from panicked back to alert. Because as they watched, they realized that Opaline was directing the dancing MutAnts, one by one, up to Scarlet. And Scarlet, swinging a splintered black-and-white Gazebra plank as if it were as light as a wiffle bat, was popping the monsters into the air like high fly-balls. The cyclone of the Bleau-Fryer inhaled each creature into its churning fan blades. Shredded it like lettuce. And spat the gristly bits out of its nozzle.
That could have been me, too. There but for Sebastian and his tricked-out hoverboard . . . Iris shuddered at the thought.
“Yuck,” Cheri muttered beside her, scanning the length of the line. It wound all the way back to an enormous ant mound. Iris followed her gaze, and both girls’ eyes skimmed across the bevy of MutAnt bodies littering the pit. “What a battlefield!” Cheri exclaimed, ick-facing at the carnage. “Do you think Scarlet slayed all of them?”
“Yes,” Iris stated simply.
Groz, Darth thought, peeking at the massacre through his paws.
For a fifth second more, Cheri and Iris observed in admiration as Opaline, with a flourish of the swizzle spork, commanded MutAnt after MutAnt up to Scarlet, who walloped MutAnt after MutAnt to its choppy demise.
“Doesn’t it just warm your heart to see Scarlet and Opal playing nice?” Iris said to Cheri, a twinkle in her eye.
Cheri gave her a mischievous grin. “I’m so glad those two crazy kids worked it out.”
“There’s nothing like a MutAnt apocalypse to bring frenemies together!” Iris agreed, and both girls couldn’t help giggling.
Verby funnee, Darth grumbled, skittering down from Cheri’s shoulder to pace before them in the grass, bud dis be going to take furever!
Iris, although she couldn’t hear Darth’s complaint, had come to the same conclusion at the same time. The same time that the gaps in the ground began to look more like chasms than cracks. The same time that a dusky purple mist started to seep out of the Bleau-Fryer.
“The machinery!” Iris could barely contain her excitement. “It’s overheating!”
“I see the lilac!” Cheri gasped. “The plasma must be melting inside it!”
Just then one of the chasms split off like a run in a stocking right underneath the Bleau-Fryer. With a metallic thunk, it slumped sideways into the breach.
“Scarlet and Opaline have got to get out of there!” Cheri cried, scooping up Darth and scrambling to her feet.
Iris straightened up, too. Her pale blue eyes met Cheri’s vibrant green ones. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Iris asked, an ultraviolet aura emanating out of her and enveloping both of them.
Cheri nodded briskly. “Darth,” she said to the little skunk, “do you have any scents of the watermelon variety?”
Standing side by side on the rim of the construction pit, Iris and Cheri linked pinkie fingers. Iris aimed her free hand at the Bleau-Fryer just as Cheri lifted Darth like she was the Statue of SynchroniCity and he was her furry orb. Using all her powers of illusion, Iris proceeded to disguise the ginormous Bleau-Fryer. From a dull gray, she turned the grid a golden brown, adding the sheen of a buttery glaze around the edges. In the vents in between, the sharp silver blades of the churning turbines took on a rosy tone, glistening with juice. Gone was the hulking machinery. In its place stood a massive, slightly askew, watermelon pie. As Darth began to spritz out the fruit’s sugary scent, Cheri did the math, her vision filling with formulas, her hair glowing magenta pink.
“Curve your tail at a convex angle and rotate it on the horizontal, Darth!” she urged. “That’s the optimal way to harness the wind resistance and maximize lift!”
Whaz?! Darth spluttered back, confused. Whaz doz dat eben meen?!
“Um . . .” Cheri searched for a clearer way to explain. “Just make your tail like a tiny windmill, okay?”
Dis I can dooz, Darth replied, shaping his tail into a purple-striped paddle and twirling it in circles to push his watermelon perfume down into the pit.
Picking up the fragrance of their favorite picnic fruit, the MutAnts started to spaz and twitch. Opal swept the swizzle spork and shouted out commands, but she could tell she was losing control of them. The air smelled sickly sweet. Purplish smoke was steaming out of the Bleau-Fryer. She looked over to Scarlet just as the superstrong Ultra Violet bunted a storming MutAnt off to the side. Scarlet looked back at her just as helplessly. The MutAnts were rioting: breaking conga formation and stampeding toward the irresistible watermelon pie.
“Scarlet! Opaline!” they heard the calls of Iris and Cheri. “Never mind the ants! Just get out of there!”
Right then the mob of onrushing MutAnts overtook Opal, tackling her to the ground. She covered her head with her hands as umpteen sticky insect legs trampled on top of her.
At least I’ll die a hero? she tried to console herself. While MutAnt after MutAnt stamped across her back, her short life flashed before her eyes. She remembered the time she played a baked potato i
n the Thanksgiving play. The night she got slimed with the purple goo in the FLab. The BFF ritual at Scarlet’s sleepover. The chess date with Albert Feinstein.
Silly old Albert, she recalled fondly. He seemed as good a memory as any to be her last.
In a fog of smoke and dust, Opal felt herself rising above the rabble of MutAnts. She could see them below her, swarming on all sixes toward what looked like a ginormous pie. Oh good, she realized with bittersweet relief. I’m going up. My apology tour must have worked after all! But as the air cleared, she wasn’t welcomed by a host of angels and pair of pearly gates. On the contrary, a very unheavenly holler snapped her back to her senses.
“Veronimo!” Scarlet shouted, skyrocketing out of the pit with a jazzy calypso leap. “Get ready to drop and roll, Opal!” And no sooner had Opal understood that Scarlet had carried her out than Scarlet lobbed her like a bowling ball onto the lawn.
“Zowie!” Opal yelped as she hit the grass and tumbled under the archway of Iris’s and Cheri’s linked pinkies. “And owie!”
Scarlet landed with a thud in front of her, all her superpowered momentum making her stumble forward several paces before she could slow down.
Opal shakily got to her feet, tugged up her knee socks, and stood beside Iris.
Scarlet trudged up behind them and stood beside Cheri.
“What’s up?” she said nonchalantly, flicking pieces of ant from her aubergine ponytail.
“I saw Jack,” Cheri confided in a low voice.
“Really?” Scarlet’s heartbeat speeded up again. Even with all the craziness going down, her curiosity got the best of her. “Did you kick his butt like on the pie chart?”
“Pretty much,” Cheri mumbled.