by Sophie Bell
“And?” Scarlet asked, suspecting there must have been more to the story.
“And . . .” Cheri hesitated. “You can do better,” was all she eventually said, while Darth reached out and gave her a comforting pat on the head.
Scarlet felt a twinge of disappointment. But if ever there was a time for boy talk, this definitely wasn’t it. She stared down into the construction pit as hundreds of MutAnts spilled out of their colony to clamber up the sides of the biggest, juiciest, sweetest-smelling dessert they’d ever dreamed of.
And got sucked into the deadly guillotine turbines of the Bleau-Fryer.
“Is watermelon pie even a thing?” Scarlet wondered.
“If it isn’t,” Cheri answered, “it should be.”
“We could add it to the list after hot dog cobbler!” Opaline chimed in with a joke. Cheri’s eyes widened and she subtly shook her head as if to stop Opal from saying it, although of course she already had. Scarlet just flinched. Now what have I done wrong? Opal worried, feeling the nervous energy fizz through her. The Black Swans are the bad guys—is it not okay to make fun of them?
“Sorry,” she susurrated, though she wasn’t sure whom to or what for.
Iris’s ultraviolet aura had expanded to include Scarlet and Opaline. The four supergirls stood in silence, watching the kamikaze MutAnts race to their own demise inside the pie-disguised machine as it tilted precariously to one side, huffing and puffing out great gusts of lilac-gray smoke.
“This is it,” Iris said. “Pinkies crossed.”
The purplish vapors were now so thick, they concealed whatever MutAnts remained. Which, from the looks of things, were none. Teetering around on her six-inch heels to the front of the machine, Develon Louder shrieked and cursed for an army that didn’t exist anymore. She was stiletto-deep in their coleslawed remains—a fact she grasped with a furious ick-face of her own just as a burst of lilac fumes finally turned her pristine black suit . . . sooty.
Iris lowered her glowing hand, and gradually the illusion of the giant watermelon pie vanished, replaced once more by the lopsided Bleau-Fryer that had been grinding away all along. Within its machinery, the plasma-filled pendant had melted down to its timed release: A thick, hot, lilac miasma poured from the nozzle out to the harbor, where it blew smack dab into the congealed clot of powder, now primed for plasmalytic conversion by the Whoseewhatsit. As the wall of plasma-infused heat made contact, the sludge coiled into a ball—into a blob—on the surface of the water. A very big, purple-and-yellow blob, its surface boiling and popping with pus. Slowly, like a second moon, it rose above the river. It floated higher than the Statue of SynchroniCity. Higher, even, than the FLab. The girls gazed up at the strange, pulsating mass.
From his spot in the fluffula tree, Sebastian stared at the weird spheroid, too.
From the wreckage of their swan-mobile, Jack and Sid ogled the blinking blob with horror.
Hiking out of the crumbling construction pit in her seriously impractical shoes, Develon Louder was struck speechless, and swearless, at the sight.
“Coverage, anyone?” Cheri offered, opening her pink polka-dot umbrella, which Darth had passed up from the papoose. The four girls huddled under it.
For an instant more, the blob loomed there, far above the harbor, flashing yellow-purple-yellow, yellow-purple-purple, and finally, when the plasmalytic conversion was complete, just purple-purple-purple. Purple!
“It’s like a giant throbbing brain!” Scarlet exclaimed in disgust and delight.
Then, with a sonic boom, it exploded, showering umpteen million lilac scintillas across the entire city. The harmless powder dusted the park’s chess tables and fluffula trees, the tops of Sync City’s skyscrapers, even the Statue of SynchroniCity herself.
Cheri couldn’t resist. Hugging Darth close beneath the canopy of her umbrella, she spun round and round in the lilac sparkle-storm. Scarlet thought she was too tired from mutant–batting practice to join in—until she realized she was already spontaneously performing her own version of the famous dance from the old movie Singin’ in the Rain. Opaline simply smiled. The moment reminded her again of that fateful sleepover, when Scarlet had showered them all with glitter blasts from her Super Soaker. She glanced over at Iris. Neither girl had to say a word. Opaline knew Iris was remembering the same thing.
Iris flung her arm around Opal’s shoulders and gave her a hug with her bandaged hand. “Operation Lilac Attack!” she proclaimed. “Woohoo! We totally rocked it!”
“No!” Opaline cried, so loud that Cheri ceased spinning and Scarlet came to a stop in arabesque. “Wait!”
“What is it, Opal?” Scarlet asked, concerned. She’d thought for sure that the worst was over. That she could finally, with her whole heart, trust Opal again. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s just one thing we forgot to do,” Opaline said, her smile going sly as a crocodile’s, her eyes swirling with white. Turning back to the construction pit, she pointed her pinkie. Took aim. And shot out a jagged, high-voltage bolt.
Blazing over the top of the Bleau-Fryer, above the grass, and right through the poster of ice-cream cone options, the lightning struck its target. With a final warped bleat of its eerie melody, the Mister Mushee truck burst into flames. Electric currents rippled down the extension cord and back into the Bleau-Fryer, scorching the circuits and shaking the frame of the giant machine. The tremors made the girls’ teeth rattle as the ground gaped open and BeauTek’s weaponized blow dryer was swallowed up by the sinkhole left behind by the MutAnts’ vacant colony.
“Nice one, Opal.” Scarlet slapped her a high five, just a little too hard (purely by accident). “Popsicle stand blown!”
Sparkle Day
WELL, WASN’T THAT REFRESHING! HAD I MY DRUTHERS (have you yours?), I’d shower in lilac sparkles every single day. Not necessarily ones that had been poisonous perfume in a past life, but then again, beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to combustible purple powder.
Since we’re making wish lists, I also wouldn’t mind my own pair of vitanium-crystalline robotic hummingbird wings, am I right? Perchance in a punky blackberry-gold color combo. Hummingbird wings would make my daily commute past the Statue of SynchroniCity so much more aerodynamic—and frankly, some days I just don’t feel like riding my unicycle. Last—thank you for asking—I’d like a cheeseburger, medium rare, with lettuce, tomato, and pickles, please, but (and this is important) absolutely no onions. None. Nonions! NEVER! *screams unreasonably, shakes fist in fury at nearest onion tree*
I abhor onions.
Yuck, thy name is onions.
Onions, get out my grill.
Just who am I to hold such a grudge against onions, you ask? Why, I’m Sophie Bell, of course: the chick in charge of writing down these crazy Ultra Violet tales. As if you didn’t know by now—I’ve only told you umpteen times before! (Okay, technically two times before, since this is book three. And two does not an umpteen make. I have a tendency to exaggerate. And to digress . . .)
You can bet the Ultra Violets were not eating onions at Tom’s Diner the following Monday morning. Oh swell no! They were eating . . . c’mon, you know what they were eating. Must I susurrate it in your ear? Starts with a P. Rhymes with a “why.” As in “Why is Sophie Bell rambling on about druthers and onions when all we really want to know is what happened after the Lilac Attack?”
Fine, be like that! And pass the ketchup.
• • •
“No. More. Pie.” Scarlet pushed her plate away with a contented groan and slumped down in her seat at the diner, on the verge of a dessert coma. “I’m stuffed!”
“To the gills?” Cheri teased across the table.
“Ugh, no! Please do not remind me!” Scarlet put her hands up to protect her neck, laughing anyway. She’d battled so many MutAnts the night before that she could almost forget about Catfish Face. Once she’d finally
made it to bed, she’d been too exhausted for nightmares. But if she closed her eyes now and concentrated, she could still hear the sickening pop-pop-pop of those slimy whiskers as she’d plucked them out.
Cheri, who’d been busy snapping selfies on her smartphone—and sneakily angling to squeeze that cute busboy, Philippe, into the background—pinched a stray blueberry off Scarlet’s plate and fed it to Darth. As he munched on it, he reviewed their handiwork with pride. In the decontamination showers at the FLab, Iris’s curls had been shampooed, and deep-conditioned, and slowly combed through until they were smooth and shiny and tangle-free again. You’d think that, after being shorn off by the blades of the Bleau-Fryer, her ringlets would have been shorter, or at least raggedy and shaggedy and all uneven in length. But no. They were as long and lush and riotously violet as ever.
Iris’s hair was weird like that. Like it had a mind of its own.
Iris tucked one of the springy corkscrews behind her ear and, with a brand-new swizzle spork, speared a raspberry from the fruit tart in the center of the table, then dipped it in her bowl of lavender-latte gelato. “Mmm,” she sighed as she swallowed the spoonful, smiling at her friends with her clear blue, non-black-lined eyes. All traces of warpaint had been washed off at the FLab, too.
“There’s that grin!” Candace commented. “We’ve missed it, Iris.”
Iris rolled those clear blue, non-black-lined eyes, but she couldn’t stop smiling. “Sorry, UVs,” she apologized, two small purple hearts blushing on the apples of her cheeks. “I guess I went a little drama queen there, with the makeup mask and stuff. I just . . .” She trailed off, glancing down at her wrist, which was now wrapped with gauze like a proper bandage. The strip of Sebastian’s ripped T-shirt was stashed inside her messenger bag. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever wash that. Eventually, she thought, she’d add it to her scrapbook, right beside the fragments of the heart-shaped balloon from her and his first date—because it had been a date, she’d decided, even if boys didn’t like to call it that.
“It’s so romantic how Sebastian swooped in on his hoverboard,” Opal said, sighing next and stirring her swizzle spork in a figure eight around the scoops of chocolate and peach melba in her bowl. She wondered how Albert could ever come to her aid. With the Pythagorean theorem?
“Romantic!” Scarlet scoffed, shoving aside her disappointment about Jack once more. “I’d call it kick-butt! Like in the Battle of Yavin when Han Solo and Chewbacca zoom in on the Millennium Falcon to blast away the Imperial TIE fighters so that Luke Skywalker is clear to shoot his proton torpedoes and blow up the Death Star! Though it’s not exactly the same, because Iris had already dropped the plasma pendant before Sebastian showed up and . . .”
Now she trailed off as she realized that Iris, Cheri, and Opal were all staring back at her blankly.
“Seriously?” Scarlet said. Getting a second wind, she lifted her bowl of melted butterbeer sorbet with both hands and sipped right from the dish. “Not even you, Darth Odor?” she implored their skunk mascot. “Help me out here, little buddy. You’re my only hope!”
I haz no idee whaz sheez talkin bout! Darth telepathically whispered to Cheri.
“You guys have got to see Star Wars Episode Four!” Scarlet declared, smacking the table in frustration. Their clattering bowls sloshed droplets of ice cream all over the place. “For real! It’s a classic!”
Sensing an opportunity, Cheri announced, “Oh, would you just LOOK at that MESS!” loud enough for the entire diner to hear. “A veritable spill of ice cream! Howsoever will we CLEAN IT UP?”
Iris and Opal burst into giggles at Cheri’s blatant flirtation—Scarlet was still scowling over their Star Wars cluelessness—but the dashing Philippe was nowhere to be seen.
“Alas,” Cheri sighed in turn, just as the 3-D TV screens hanging from the ceiling all fzzzzzt’d with the official Sync City seal.
“Uh-oh,” Iris said, shifting in her seat. Typically the TVs just played vintage cartoons with the sound off. Candace twisted around to look up at the nearest screen, too. The gaping face of Mayor Blumesberry goggled out at the customers from all four corners of the diner’s front room.
“She looks like a gargoyle,” remarked Iris.
“A goofy one,” Opal agreed. She broke off a piece of the pie’s chocolate-chip cookie crust and held it out to Darth, but the skittish little skunk ducked back down to the safety of his bag on the bench.
“Don’t fret, Opal, he’ll come around,” Cheri said quietly, petting Darth’s head beneath the table. “He just needs some more time.”
Opal nodded, leaving the piece of pie crust as a peace offering on Cheri’s plate. A hush fell over the diner’s sparse late morning crowd. The mayor had begun to speak.
“Citizens of Sync City,” she said in that same confidential, story-time tone she’d used at Synchro de Mayo. “I’ve called this emergency press conference to inform you of a terribly smelly terrorist threat . . .”
The mayor let the words hang in the air as all the customers in the diner susurrated with concern—some downing big gulps from their coffee cups, some pausing mid–syrup pour on their pancakes, some letting their frittatas go cold. Only the sassy waitress seemed nonplussed, chawing her gum per usual and not even bothering to look at any of the mayor’s four faces.
“A threat,” Mayor Blumesberry continued, “that’s been thwarted. No worries, my peeps!” Then she split into her distinctive giggle, “ah-tee-hee-ha”s cackling from all corners of the room.
“Anyhoo,” she exhaled, blotting tears from her eyes with her giant powderpuff, “late last night it was brought to my attention that Projekt BeauTekification was actually—wait for it—a clandestine operation to poison the city!”
“Uh, a clandestine operation that you knew about all along,” Scarlet snarked.
“Yes,” the mayor went on, “apparently BeauTek Industries had planned to enslave the entire population by unleashing a toxic cloud off the Joan River.” She winked in quadruplicate. “Can I get what what? You can’t make this stuff ah-tee-hee up! But thanks to the diligence of my special security forces, I’ve put your taxes to work to save the day.”
“Huh?!” the girls spluttered to each other. “WTV!” If Iris hadn’t grabbed Scarlet’s raised hand, she would have slapped the table a second time, even harder. Candace just frowned.
While the mayor nattered on, the 3-D images switched to footage of Develon Louder being hauled away in handcuffs from the site of the sinkhole. In her dingy pantsuit, deprived of the shield of her couture black Burkant bag, she looked like a frail ghost of her fearsome self. Gone was the hard yellow construction helmet. Her silver topknot had slipped to one side, and her face seemed to have sagged down a bit with it, as if the tight chignon had been holding it up. She ranted toward the cameras, squinting when they flashed, but it was difficult to hear what she was saying over the mayor’s official statement. The girls only caught snippets of her defense: “. . . in on it, too!” And “. . . purse costs more than you’ll make in a year!” And “. . . blame my son!”
Scarlet’s ears perked up. “What did she say about her son?” she asked. The other girls shushed her so that they could listen.
The video showed no sign of the Bleau-Fryer. Or of the hundreds of MutAnts Scarlet had slain. Every last trace of evidence had disappeared down the massive sinkhole. Except . . .
“How is Mayor Blumesberry going to explain the lilac?” Iris murmured. “It’s everywhere.”
True that. Like a powdered jelly doughnut (to depart, for a moment, from our recurring pie leitmotif), Sync City was absolutely covered in glittering lilac dust, glinting in the morning sun, fresher than new-fallen snow. Sanitation workers out in the street were sweeping it up by the truckful. School had been canceled for the day. The powder was too dry and flyaway to be molded into balls or igloos, but all throughout Chrysalis Park, kids sledded down hills of the stuff, or flo
pped on their backs to make sparkle angels in the grass.
The 3-D TVs returned to the live feed of the press conference, where a reporter was challenging Mayor Blumesberry’s version of the events.
“Ms. Mayor,” the journalist said, “there are widespread accounts that it was actually the Ultra Violets who stopped this allegedly terribly smelly terrorist threat. Several eyewitnesses describe a throbbing purple blob rising above the Joan River at midnight—and exploding! And that’s why lilac sparkles are blanketing Sync City this bizarre Monday!”
Mayor Blumesberry gave one of her patented giggles, though Iris thought she detected more nervousness than usual running through it. “We all know little girls love their sparkles!” The mayor dismissed the reporter with a wave of her powderpuff. “But . . . no comment.”
“Excuse me? ‘Little girls love their sparkles’?” Cheri repeated with disdain while she freshened up her glittery lip gloss. “How condescending!”
“I’d like to sparkle her,” Scarlet hissed, aware that the other customers were stealing looks at them. “Right upside the head!” She began vogueing her arms in elaborate maneuvers, imagining a fierce new dance she just might call the Sparkle Smack.
As the Q&A session continued, with the mayor “no commenting” on every question about either the Ultra Violets or the mysterious lilac sparkles, the girls turned back to their celebration brunch. The mixed-berry pie was mostly gone. What remained of their sorbets and ice creams had liquefied in the bottoms of their bowls. Iris hoped the sassy waitress would swing by soon: She was craving a real latte, and not just the gelato kind.
“Develon Louder may be off to prison,” Candace said, peering at the TVs through her thick black glasses. “But it’s pretty clear we have a new nemesis on our hands. The mayor’s alibi for last night is airtight: She hosted a midnight screening of the new Wonder Woman movie! Tons of people saw her—not at the harbor.”