Lilac Attack! Read online

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bell, Sophie.

  Lilac Attack! / written by Sophie Bell ; illustrated by Ethen Beavers.

  pages cm. —(The Ultra Violets ; 3)

  Summary: While sixth-grade superheroes Scarlet, Iris, and Cheri are trying to decide if the formerly evil Opal can be trusted to be an Ultra Violet again, they face a new BeauTek plot, purportedly to beautify Sync City.

  ISBN 978-1-101-60450-2)

  [1. Superheroes—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Good and evil—Fiction. 4. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 5. Science fiction. 6. Humorous stories.] I. Beavers, Ethen, illustrator. II. Title.

  PZ7.B41176Lil 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013047605

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Sweetest Nieve*

  who brings the Sun

  {*that’s how we spell it}

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter i*

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter v*

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter x*

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter xiv*

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter xx*

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter xxvii

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Party On

  {*As in Roman Numeral 1, Not “Me Me Me”}

  “BUT WE JUST HAD A PARTY!”

  With an impish grin, Scarlet Louise Jones pounded her bare feet in pretend protest across the floorboards of Club Very UV, performing an African Agbekor warrior dance. Which was befitting, becausing she was both the dancer and the fighter of the Ultra Violets.

  The who, you ask? No, c’mon, be serious, this is book three! You know—the Ultra Violets! The fierce trio* of friends transformed into supergirls by an epic sliming of purple goo in a skyscraper FLaboratory when they were seven. That’s who!

  (*Okay, technically, they’re a quartet—or at least they ought to be. There’s a fourth supergirl who was touched by the goo, too. But . . . well, it’s complicated. We’ll get to her later. Back to the CVUV scene.)

  Seated at the black marble table, Iris Grace Tyler looked up from the high-tech, top secret, super-sparkly project she’d been concentrating on. “True,” she replied to Scarlet’s statement, running one glowing hand through her long purple ringlets, “but that wasn’t exactly our party. It was Opaline’s.” (Readers, note: That’s her! Opal’s the fourth girl!) Iris then proceeded to doodle an entire safari of animals in the air. To decorate Scarlet’s dance. “We just hijacked it.”

  Iris was the artist of the Ultra Violets, and she’d only just begun to discover the depths of her powers. She knew she could create optical illusions out of thin air. And camouflage herself, and beam rainbows, and blast sunrays so hot they’d burn your marshmallows black in seconds flat. At Opal’s hijacked birthday party a mere weekend ago, Iris had channeled her solar awesomeness to help reboot their entire short-circuited class.

  But this Sunday, with the sixth grade safe and restored to full power, Iris took a break to picture lions and rhinoceroses and giraffes. She blinked her periwinkle eyes for a second or three. And she focused the ultraviolet beams radiating from her fingertips to draw the beasts. Like ancient cave paintings in 3-D, they floated in the air above shorty Scarlet, engoldened by the sunshine streaming through the club’s giant flower-blossom window. As Scarlet jumped and spun, her jet-black ponytail whipped right through the drawings, scattering them like glitterdust.

  R dems reel tygrrs?

  A small skunk with a purple-streaked tail peered suspiciously from his potpourri pillow at Iris’s air-drawings.

  No worries! Cheri Jeanne Henderson put down her bedazzled blowtorch, pushed up her protective goggles, and skated over from the table to pick up the skunk instead. She gave him a calming pet on the head. They’re no more real than my manicure!

  Cheri always had creatively polished nails. Today, she’d painted dark burgundy stripes across a base coat the color of freshly squeezed orange juice, then topped them with black plastic diamonds. The effect was totally tigeriffic. On platform sandal-skates, she wheeled up to the flower window, the Ultra Violets’ mascot in her arms. Darth Odor had been doused by the goo, too, those four years ago in the Fascination Laboratory, aka the FLab. That explained why his stripes were violet, not white. And why he could customize the scent of his spray. (Although, hmmm, that might also have something to do with the time he’d spent caged up in a different lab, the evil Vi-Shush. But . . . well, that’s complicated, too!)

  The moment they’d set eyes upon each other, even before the incident de la goo, Cheri and Darth had bonded. Theirs was a bond deeper than mere words like these! So when one of Cheri’s superpowers turned out to be the ability to telepath with animals, it was an added bonus.

  “I’m still sugar-shocked that everyone saw our superpowers at Opal’s party,” she said, sliding to a stop beside a vanishing water buffalo. Darth reached out to paw through it. “Or at least they saw both of yours.” She pursed her lips to keep from frowning.

  Cheri’s real Ultra Violet power—her possibly more practical one—was her beautiful mind. Something about the Heliotropium (official name of the purple goo) had turned her brain into a supercomputer, enabling her to run umpteen calculations and solve all sorts of complicated problems using crazy mathtastic formulas that even college graduates didn’t understand. It should have been supercool to be superbrilliant. And it was. When Cheri clicked into UV mode, her green eyes gleamed with data streams, and her hair beamed magenta pink. But that was still perhaps a tad subtle compared to Scarlet’s power pirouettes or Iris’s triple rainbows. Despite Cheri’s recent straight As in math, she was, on occasion, a trifle disappointed that her superpowers weren’t a little more sparkly. If she wanted to be supersmart, she could always just study more, right? Being a superdancer, or a superartist, somehow, sometimes, seemed superer . . .

  “The whole class saw us—
all three of us, Cher!—in superhero mode,” Iris agreed, powering up her hand again and returning her attention to the shiny top secret project on the table. She aimed her pinkie finger at what could have been a sequin. But wasn’t. “Which is why this is the perfect opportunity for the Ultra Violets to go all the way public. At the Synchro de Mayo Parade!”

  Synchro de Mayo celebrated the founding of SynchroniCity—Sync City, for short—where the girls lived. It was like one big birthday party for all the citizens. And it was happening that very afternoon.

  Scarlet stopped dancing long enough to tug up her ankle boots. “Then I guess it’s adios, anonymity!” she declared, hitching the slipped strap of her tank top back onto her shoulder. “To the Gazebra?”

  At the mention of the place, Cheri broke into giggles. Darth chittered along with her. “Sorry,” she explained, tucking a cherry-red strand of hair behind one ear, “but whenever I hear that word, it just makes me think that if a gazelle and a zebra made a baby, that’s what they’d call it: a gazebra!”

  Darth chittered some more. He did appreciate a good animal joke.

  At that very moment, all three of their smartphones binged, and a neon beam burst through the flower window as if the violet band of a rainbow had broken free from all the other colors. Even in the bright midday sun, the silhouette of a violet blossom filled the opposite wall.

  “The UV signal!” Cheri gasped, skating back toward the table. Scarlet joined her in a single stag leap. Each girl grabbed her phone.

  “‘Weirdness here,’” Iris read aloud the text they’d all received. “That’s all Candace wrote.”

  “Weirdness?” Scarlet gave a little laugh. “It wouldn’t be Sync City without some of that!” The UV spotlight tinted her freckles like flecks on a plum while she tightened her ponytail in preparedness. “Bring it!” she challenged, pumping her fist.

  “Girls”—with a last blast of heat from her pinkie finger, Iris put the finishing touches on what was not a sequin, nor, for that matter, a rhinestone nor pearl nor paillette—“guess it’s time to wing up.”

  Winging It

  Wing up (verb): To strap on wings. Prior to flying.

  GLISTENING IRIDESCENT IN THE PALE PURPLE DAYLIGHT, row upon row upon row upon row of the non-sequins covered the tabletop like clothes strewn from the closet of a cabaret singer. Only when Scarlet reached into the spangles and lifted some up did three odd apparatuses start to take shape. Each had padded shoulder straps, same as you’d see on a backpack. Or a parachute. In the center, each had a small square control panel that contained a GPS tracking device, a solar-powered battery with a chargeable electric backup, and a click wheel to adjust angles and speed. And fanning out from both sides of the straps were hummingbird wings.

  Robotic ones.

  They were made from many delicate layers of circular scales, alternating pieces of wafer-thin vitanium alloy and even thinner, but indestructible, plexi-crystal. (Sequins and paillettes, FYI, are usually just plain old plastic.) Against the black marble of the tabletop, the mechanical wings were almost transparent. But as Iris swung hers on, the crystal discs glinted violet-blue. Scarlet’s set gleamed rhinestone gray out to the tips, where the edges deepened to a rich aubergine nearly as dark as her ponytail. And Cheri’s, opaque baby-pink at the base, flushed bright fuchsia at the edges.

  Scarlet toyed with the controls, her wings flittering to life as she spun the dial. “You’re absolutely positive about this, Cher?” she asked.

  Cheri nodded, securing Darth in the quilted Kevlar papoose she’d custom-stitched to her set. “Yes, I calibrated each pair to be able to support at least thrice our weights. And Candace says the balance of vitanium and plexi-crystal plates makes the wings both superstrong and superflexible.”

  Iris gingerly tapped the last few links she’d just soldered onto the frame with her own heat a few minutes ago. Confident they’d cooled, she buzzed up off the ground, her purple corkscrews bouncing behind her and a big smile on her face. Just like real hummingbird wings, the robotic ones vibrated so fast that they were practically invisible—just a blur of violet-blue. “Cher, these are so genius!” Iris exclaimed. “The most viomazing way to make our official Ultra Violet entrance!”

  “Well, we did each build our own pair by hand. And the color combinations are your design, RiRi,” Cheri said, slightly abashed. “And Scarlet was très good about trying out the prototypes.”

  Scarlet absentmindedly rubbed her elbow, remembering her many crash tests.

  “Yes, but the engineering is all you!” Iris enthused.

  Cheri blushed a bit more. “Candace, too,” she said modestly.

  Candace Coddington, sender of the cryptic text message, beamer of the UV signal, was the girls’ erstwhile babysitter and the only witness to the incident de la goo. (Depending, you could say she was responsible for it, ahem!) A teenius herself, Candace had completed high school years ahead of schedule. Now she spent her time taking college classes, assisting the girls’ doctor-moms at the FLab, and acting as a mentor to the Ultra Violets. For fun—not even for extra credit, but just because she was forever curious—she had crafted a satellite drone called the MAUVe: an abbreviation for Miniature Aerial Unmanned Vehicle. Then she’d constructed the eco-friendly prismatic cloudship. And now, along with the girls, she’d created the individual robotic hummingbird wings. The cloudship was great for group travel, but wings allowed them to fly solo.

  Iris whirred back down in the center of Club Very UV, landing softly on the pink shag rug. Scarlet joined her there, making some final adjustments to the straps around her shoulders and waist. With a quick command to Furi, her smartphone, Cheri uploaded her rollerskate wheels back into the platform heels of her sandals, then skipped over to line up behind her two besties.

  “Do you think I need my polka-dot umbrella?” she asked, glancing back over her shoulder to where it sat on the table.

  Already halfway up the spiral wrought-iron staircase, Iris looked out the massive flower window, while Scarlet checked a weather app on her phone. “Nah,” Scarlet said with a shake of her head. “Looks like blue skies,” Iris added. “Purply-blue skies, to me!”

  And with that, the Ultra Violets climbed out onto the rooftop of their secret clubhouse.

  Instantly the winds whipped through their hair and lifted the many scales of their robotic wingspans. As they rippled against one another, the vitanium and plexi-crystal discs chimed the tiniest tinkling sound, hardly detectable above the gusts. The midday sun powered up the packs. First the girls locked in their target location on the GPS trackers. Then they set the vibration speed to the max. Holding hands, they approached the edge of the roof and . . .

  “On the count of three!” Scarlet shouted.

  Not daring to look all the way down, they stepped off the building. And out into thin air.

  Darth had a slight fear of heights (clouds are not a skunk’s natural habitat), so Cheri kept one hand on his papoose as she angled her wings with the other.

  Scarlet, hyper as usual, overshot the takeoff and missed slamming into the opposite skyscraper by thismuch.

  Iris, who was glowing ultraviolet in spite of herself, trailed a slim rainbow behind her as she flew.

  In micro-flashes of violet and blue, of crystal and burgundy, of baby pink and bright fuchsia, the Ultra Violets zipped past the windows and between the buildings of Sync, toward the center of the city.

  Toward the weirdness.

  To the Gazebra.

  Powderful Snuff

  “LOOOOK, UP IN THE SKY!” DUNCAN MURDOCH MOOED, scratching his stubby cow horns in confusion.

  “It’s a bird?” the Jensen twins chirped like a chorus, each pointing a skinny finger and lifting a beaky little nose in the air.

  “Hel-lo, it’s obviously a plane!” know-it-all Abby O’Adams proclaimed, hands on her hips, although obviously it wasn’t.

  “It�
�s not a plague of locusts, is it?” Prudence Dosgood whimpered, lacing her fingers under her chin and thinking of all those scary stories from her Sunday school class.

  “Or a forward pass?” Brad Hochoquatro planted his feet in a wide stance, prepared to intercept it.

  “No,” a girl on the edge of the crowd said quietly, her warm chocolate eyes clouded with wisps of milky white. “It’s—” But before she could finish her sentence, another boy shouted over her.

  “No!” cried Albert Feinstein, captain of the mathletes. He pushed past Brad and Abby and all his other classmates from Chronic Prep. He pushed up his glasses to get a better view. “It’s the Ultra Violets!”

  And that boy should know, since by now the Ultra Violets had saved his sorry khaki-covered butt at least twice.

  But never mind that, because it was the Ultra Violets, wafting down on their glittering iridescent robo-hummingbird wings to the Gazebra at the base of the Highly Questionable Tower, scenically located just alongside the Joan River in Sync City’s bucolic Chrysalis Park.

  Ultra Violets represent, yay!

  As the girls descended, each passed through a dusky lilac beam. From the pilot’s seat in the cloudship that she’d strategically drifted above the harbor, Candace pivoted the UV signal, sweeping the searchlight across the crowd.

  With a twitch of her lashes, Candace focused the infraviolet zoom lens she’d built into her thick black-framed glasses. She consulted the screen of the tablet computer popped into a slot on the dashboard, scrolling down the schedule of events. Then she spoke, straightforward and low. The two-way digital microchips she’d embedded in the temple bars of her eyeglasses picked up her voice.

  “Here’s the deal, girls,” she said. “The weirdness is behind you, at the river’s edge. But . . .” She paused.