The Ultra Violets Read online

  Then a glint of yellowy-green grabbed her attention.

  “Skeletony?” Scarlet blurted out too loudly, right as Cheri recognized the skeleton, too. Keeping a lookout for banana peels, Scarlet grapevined over to him. Lifted both his bony hands in hers. And wheeled the lab skeleton around on his stand as if they were waltzing. “How ya doin’, old pal?” she said, smiling up into the single citrine gemstone in his left eye socket. “Long time no see!”

  “Scar,” Cheri said, joining her in the corner of the room. “This is no time for dancing! Don’t you think it’s strange that the old skeleton from the FLab is here?”

  “Sister,” Scarlet answered, putting Skeletony’s hands down again and rolling him back to his corner, “I think this whole place is strange.”

  The capuchin monkey hooted again, sticking one paw out of his cage. Scarlet realized he was pointing at a fruit bowl, so she went back up the aisle to give him a second banana. She felt sorry for the little guy. If she were locked up in a cage, she’d probably throw her trash all over the place, too.

  Project Mute! The phrase floated through Cheri’s mind just as she was turning away from Skeletony. She craned her neck, skimming the aisles. There were so many animals! Which one was speaking to her?

  Project Mute! The words came again.

  “Hey,” Cheri said, “one of the animals keeps saying ‘Project Mute,’ but I don’t know which one, and I don’t know what it means.”

  Over here, Cheri my luv! the voice came back. Middle row, centr! Don’t u remember R nite 2gethr?

  Hold on! Cheri thought. Her heart began to pitter-patter. I’m coming! With a quick command to Furi, she switched to roller skate mode and glid (that’s STILL how we’re spelling it!) down the middle aisle. Rolling past the caged animals, she felt like she was in a scary-movie supermarket where the shelves were stacked with bunnies and monkeys and mice. But she clenched her jaw and kept her focus, searching for a familiar furry face.

  It was as if a symphony burst into song when she saw him.

  He was four years older now, though not much bigger than when he was a baby. Running down his back all the way to the tip of his tail, the two streaks that once were white now gleamed a vibrant, almost neon violet against his soft black fur. But even if he hadn’t called to her, even if she hadn’t seen him, Cheri would have recognized the sweet smell of that skunk anywhere.

  “Darth Odor!” she cried with joy. As fast as her fingers could move, she popped the cage open and the skunk scampered out into her waiting arms. “I never forgot that time when we got coated in slime!” she said, squeezing him tight. “Never ever!”

  Darth snuggled into Cheri’s shoulder, making little nyuk nyuk noises. He was so happy to see her, his first love, again. She rocked him in her arms, petting his fur. “And look at your pretty purple stripes! They’re blue-ti-ful,” Cheri baby-talked, kissing the skunk on his snout. “They look just like Iris’s hair! You remember Iris, don’t you?”

  Darth nodded and squeaked. Cheri held open her tote for him to climb in. As he burrowed down into the bag, he sent her the message once more. Project Mute.

  “He keeps telling me ‘Project Mute,’” Cheri said, skating up the rest of the middle aisle to loop around to Iris. “But I don’t know what it means.”

  “I think I do,” Iris said, standing in front of a computer screen set up between the cages. Cheri rolled down the aisle toward her as Scarlet foxtrotted up from the other direction. When all three girls were gathered around the computer, Darth poked his head out of Cheri’s tote bag. Iris gave the little skunk a welcoming pat while Scarlet and Cheri stared at the screen.

  “Ew.”

  “Seriously?”

  “So gross.”

  “I know, right?” Iris said, turning away from Darth and back to the computer screen. On it were images of hideous creatures, part human, part beast. A lady the size of hippopotami, with webbed feet and enormous tusks. A man baring a mouthful of shark teeth. A disgusting fleshy thing with layers of neck fat and pockets of skin under its four eyes.

  “This is like the nastiest Smashface group in history!” Scarlet said. She didn’t know whether to laugh or scream, the photos were so frightening.

  “There was a folder on the desktop labeled PROJECT MUTE,” Iris explained. Her throat felt dry. “So I opened it.” She clicked through more pictures. The mega opossum from the park. A seven-foot mantis in a thin brown trench coat . . .

  “Mantis Man!” Cheri yelped, clutching Darth close to her. “BeauTek knows about all these freaky monsters?”

  “I think,” Iris said, “BeauTek made all these freaky monsters.”

  Scarlet frowned at the onscreen cavalcade of uglies. “So Mute must stand for—”

  “Mutants!” a voice snarled.

  Iris whipped her violet ringlets around. Cheri quarter-turned on her roller skates. Scarlet couldn’t resist a cancan kick.

  Standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the daylight, stood Opal. Sunglasses on. Shirt buttoned. Arms crossed.

  And she wasn’t alone.

  Mwah Ha Ha!

  “OPAL,” IRIS SAID, HER COLOR SENSE TINGLING, “WHAT are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here?” Opal spat back. “This is my mother’s company. My mother’s lab. What are you doing here? And what are you wearing?” She snorted. “You three look like a bunch of bag ladies.”

  Oh, right. They’d been so distracted by the Victoria’s Shush Petting Zoo of Horrors, Iris had forgotten to change their clothes back to normal.

  “Well, it’s not like I’m going to get all dressed up to have tater tots in a food court with a mutant!” Cheri said defensively. She understood the reason why her outfit resembled acid-yellow shopping bags, but still. She prided herself on being fabulous.

  “Believe me, I know,” Opal said, as a bevy of mutants grumbled and groaned behind her. “You save all your best style tips for Albert.”

  “Oy vey, not this again,” Scarlet muttered, raising one slippered foot, then the other, to her knee in a ballerina passé position.

  “Opal”—even though Cheri was facing a mutant mob, she still managed to blush at the mention of golden-grill Albert, captain of the mathalips—“I tried to tell you yesterday, that was an accident, I—”

  “SILENCE!” Opal commanded with a sweep of her hand. In the shadows the girls could see little electric sparks shooting from her fingertips. She meant for Cheri to shut up, but the murmuring mutants fell quiet, too. Opal smirked beneath her sunglasses. They were like sheep, these mutants. Hideous, deformed, brain-dead sheep.

  “New topic!” Scarlet attempted, ready to get off the boringness that was boys. “Opal, we found Darth Odor! From the FLab, remember?” She shot up en pointe, balancing in her toe shoes, trying to contain her energy in teeny-tiny steps. She was the most graceful shopping bag the mutants had ever seen.

  Darth stuck his little skunk head out of Cheri’s tote bag, but at the sight of electroshocking Opal and her merry band of mutants, he burrowed right back down again.

  “He’s shy,” Cheri babbled. “He probably doesn’t recognize you with the sunglasses and the lightning bolts and all.” Opal was already so steamed about Albert, Cheri didn’t want her to be offended by a skunk, too.

  Opal took a step into the Vi-Shush. She took her sunglasses off, tucking them into the pocket protector. And with her cloudy white eyes, she took one look at Cheri.

  “You can’t kidnap that skunk,” she said coolly.

  The mutants drooled, “Nooooo,” swaying behind her.

  “It’s not kidnapping if you’re rescuing him from experiments in a freaky mall!” Iris shot back, standing in front of Cheri and Darth to protect them.

  The mutants moa
ned, “Ohhhhhhh” when they heard that.

  “It’s none of your business, Purply Miss Perfect!” Opal snapped, her voice rising and her hair lifting with it. “You think you can go around painting smiley faces on everything, like that will make it all better. But it won’t! You can’t save the world with lollipops!”

  “Maybe not!” Iris shouted back, to Scarlet and Cheri’s surprise. Whatever sympathy Iris had felt for Opal the afternoon before was now replaced by righteous anger. “But I’m going to save all these animals!” As she said it, her curls seemed to double in volume, and intense lavender beams began to radiate from her head and hands.

  “You and what army?” Opal sneered, her own hair now completely horizontal and fizzing like live wires. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve got mine.” She hitched her thumb back at the brutes huddled around her.

  “I don’t need an army,” Iris said, rock steady. She swung a gleaming hand out behind her, pinkie up. Cheri and Scarlet linked fingers with her. “I’ve got the ULTRA VIOLETS!”

  “The Ultra Wha—?” Opal started to say, but as the blinding purple beams from Iris’s hair-halo filled the Vi-Shush, she fumbled to put her sunglasses back on.

  “Mutants!” Opal ordered, the white streak in her hair spitting bolts. “Stop them! Don’t let them take the animals!”

  “Ultra Violets!” Iris ordered right back. “Set the bunnies free!”

  As the mutants skulked into the lab, squinting at Iris’s ultraviolet rays, Cheri and Scarlet exchanged glances.

  “I think she means us!” Cheri stage-whispered.

  “Oh, right. Duh!” With a smack to her head, Scarlet spiraled into action. From the front of the first aisle, she bounced into a modern dance barrel jump, twisting her entire body around in midair. Tumbling down the aisle, she precision-kicked the locks of the cages blam! blam! blam! opening them with her sharply pointed toes. Her black ponytail, glazed a deep purple in Iris’s ultraviolet light, slapped against the tops of the cages as she spun. She moved so fast the mutants thought they were looking at a sideways cyclone.

  “Awesome torque, Scarlet!” Cheri cheered her on. Even though Scarlet still had no idea what that meant.

  “No!” Opal thundered, her voice booming through the lab. She hurled a small lightning bolt at Scarlet but missed the moving target. It exploded into the wall instead. Pointing to an empty canister, Opal called, “Yo, Fleshtacular!” to the mutant who had first brought her the bendy straws. “Monkeys. Barrel. Catch. Now!”

  Fleshtacular bowed obediently, shambling toward the canister.

  “And you, Rubberoni!” Opal ordered a mutant with a spear-shaped squidlike head. “Wrap up the rabbits already!”

  Rubberoni gaggled his moist squid beak in what must have been a “Yes, My Queen” and began suck-suck-suctioning down the aisles with his gummy tentacle limbs.

  • • •

  At first, Cheri tried to count the mutants. But there were too many, and they were too ugly to look at for long. An entire Ickipedia of style Tweeks wouldn’t help these monsters, she thought, back-skating into the center aisle just as a fat spider-toad came ribbitting toward her on eight hairy legs. Pity I forgot to pack my stiletto-lacrosse stick.

  Huh? Darth answered.

  Never mind, she said to the skunk, ducking beneath the tables as another of Opal’s bolts flashed by. I need your help! Out of the corner of her eye, Cheri could see that Scarlet was nearly at the end of her row. Hamsters, guinea pigs, and monkeys skittered to the open pink doors, scrambling over the feet, hooves, and flippers of the lunkish mutants. But there were two more aisles to go.

  “Feeling not so fresh?” Cheri asked aloud.

  Always! The skunk squeaked, poking his nose out of the front end of the tote bag. And poking his tail out the back.

  “Here we go!” Cheri skated down the center aisle, opening cages to the left and right.

  She wasn’t as speedy as superdancer Scarlet. But every time a grabby mutant got so close that Cheri calculated she was within an inch of her life, she’d think, Spritz ’em, Darth-O! And the skunk would stick up his furry butt and shoot a toxic bouquet of rotting brussels sprouts, bathtub mold, and limburger cheese from his tail.

  For the mutants with the aardvark snout and elephant trunk, it was particularly pestiferous.

  “Eau-de-toilet no!” Cheri gasped. She almost could have giggled, but she didn’t dare breathe in any more of the overwhelming stench. “Darth, that is too foul for words!”

  Vi-Shush stink bomb, Darth thought back.

  This lab did that to you? Cheri realized, horrified all over again. They turned you into a deadly perfume? She tried to roll even faster down the aisle, telling each newly freed animal to run for it.

  • • •

  In the last aisle, Iris was opening cages, too. She could hear Opal barking commands at the mutants, and their groans as they got skunk-sprayed. Whenever a new-’n’-loathsome one would stump down her aisle, she’d size it up fast, then paint the first thing that came into her mind.

  The shark-toothed lawyer got a convertible filled with cash.

  The pig-nosed chef got a smorgasbord of cold cuts.

  The pelican-beaked dental hygienist got a teething baby.

  But when the mutants reached out to grasp the illusion, Iris would erase it in a burst of light and blast them at close range with ultraviolet rays. The kind that burn the skin. Barbecued monsters came crashing to the floor. As she got to the end of her aisle, a small mountain of beasts had piled up.

  She looked at the heap with some satisfaction. And felt a sharp claw on her shoulder.

  Ticka ticka ticka . . .

  Iris swallowed hard. She could feel spindly tarsal blades puncturing her skin. Clawing at her hair. She could hear the scissoring mandibles twitching right next to her ear. She struggled to twist and face Mantis Man, raising her free hand and aiming her UV beams at his bulbous insect eye. Its hundreds of lenses burned away before her like a melting disco ball, but still the snickering mandibles sliced closer.

  “Didn’t I kick your butt once already?” Scarlet shouted. “Back for more?”

  When Mantis Man was completely crunched, the three girls huddled in the back of the Vi-Shush, near Skeletony.

  “Violets!” Iris cried just as whomp! Scarlet brought the funk, stomping la cucaracha on the mutant like the bug he was. Cheri ran up to join them, turning her tote bag around so that Darth could unleash his putrid perfume.

  “Thanks, guys,” Iris said, powering down her UV rays to rub her shoulder.

  “Urgh, that is rank!” Scarlet blurted, pinching her nose and trying to scrape mantis guts off her wrecked ballet slippers. “And I thought I brought the funk!”

  Sorry, thought Darth.

  “Sorry,” said Cheri. “It’s Darth. I guess his natural stink wasn’t funky enough. He told me they’d been developing him as a chemical weapon.”

  “OMV,” Iris said. She spun around and shot a UV beam at the squidhead mutant, who raised his fried calamari tentacles and dropped ten rabbits. They hopped along to the exit. “Did we free all the animals?”

  Cheri looked back up the aisles and over the monster mountain. “I think so.” Just as she said it, another mutant smashed like a hairy car through the pink doorway and came pummeling toward them.

  Cheri screamed as Scarlet dropped into a squat. “Not you again, too!” she bellowed before she started Nutcracker-kicking the opossumani in its mushroomy nose once more. For good measure, Iris aimed a pinkie finger and lasered an ultraviolet line down the top of its snout, then cooked the curly ends off its handlebar mustache. They fell to the floor like ashes from a matchstick.

  “Mreeeeep!” the opossumani squealed. Covering its smoldering nose with its yellow nails, it waddled back out of the Vi-Shush with
its hairless tail between its legs. Iris gave that a UV blast, too.

  “Burn!” Scarlet called after it, punching the air.

  Cheri looked down at her hands. “I really should have given myself a manicure last night,” she said, shaking her head at her cracked pink polish. “A yellow like that mutant’s would have matched this bag outfit.”

  Tucking a purple tendril behind one ear, Iris gave her a small smile. “Cher,” she said, “we just battled a lab full of freaks. You probably would have chipped them anyway.”

  Cheri rubbed Darth behind his ears. “True,” she said. “Our city may be crawling with mutants. And our bestie has crossed over to the Dark Side. But that’s no excuse not to look chic.”

  U don’t know the power of the Dark Side! Darth told her.

  “And I don’t want to!” Cheri exclaimed.

  “You don’t want to what?” Scarlet asked. Cheri seemed to be arguing with herself, and Scarlet found it confusing.

  “Girls, focus,” Iris said. “Looks like we smoked or stanked or danced away the mutants. But where’s the big bad O?”

  That’s when the storm started.

  Opal stood at the front of the lab, a black cloud swirling above her.

  “Scarlet, Cheri,” Iris said in a low voice. “Head for the exits. Make sure all the animals escaped.”

  “But—!” Scarlet protested.

  Iris faced her with shining eyes. “Please,” she said. “Just go. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Be careful, RiRi,” Cheri whispered. And with a worried frown, she dashed between the raindrops on her roller skates, holding Darth close. Scarlet leaped onto the base of Skeletony’s stand and pushed off, too, riding the lab skeleton like a scooter.