Steve Cole Middle Fiction 4

by Steve Cole

  *

  I am also ‘stoked’ (like a furnace!) that my pony Maloney is armed – or, er, legged – with FETLOCK-SHOCKERS. These small battery-powered pads of WC allow him to transmit an electric shock to any who might attack him. And indeed any who might not attack him, if Maloney so takes against him! The choice is his!

  He has also been given a special BAD SADDLE. I do not mean a saddle that is very poor. This is bad in the slang meaning of the word, that it is actually not bad at all but rather good. Apparently, ‘RATHER GOOD SADDLE’ does not sound ‘cool’ enough. Although, since it is made of metal, it actually IS cool. So long as you stay out of direct sunlight.

  In terms of what it does—

  Oh, you will learn for yourselves. The time for battle fast approaches and I must rest. Verily, I am exhausted by this use of words. I am a warrior born, not a scribe! And so I shall take my leave of you. Do not be having the cow about this, man. Noah’s report shall make good reading, I am sure. Not as good as mine, but then – ha! What COULD be, eh? Eh? HA!

  PIGABUNGAAAAAAAAA!

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Super Parade!

  “We’re running out of time!” Jem cried, as the clock ticked towards six o’clock in the evening on our last day.

  I knew it was true, but I didn’t want to believe it. We’d raced and worked our invisible fingers to the invisible bones, but have YOU ever tried making sophisticated armour for four intangible people in just a couple of days?

  Tick, tick, tick went that INCREDIBLY annoying clock on Jem’s mantelpiece. Just under six hours left to go. Every tick was a second closer to disaster.

  When the clock struck midnight – Seerblight would strike, too.

  I’m not saying we were getting bent out of shape with all the tension, but . . .

  I tried to stay calm. I’d been working on Maloney’s Bad Saddle all afternoon, and keeping an ear out for a surprise attack from poultry-geists I felt sure would be coming, since our super-powered pony had raised Mr Butt’s suspicions in the car park. The fact that it hadn’t come wasn’t much of a comfort – as we all knew the attack could come at ANY SECOND! Maloney was out on guard duty, sure . . . But, even if we WEREN’T attacked, we would be the ones doing the attacking! Us! Ourselves! Battling an evil sorcerer, his henchman and who-knew-what-else in his mystical stronghold that was guarded by a ton of giant devil-chickens, in the hope we could foil his plans and get my mum to safety.

  ARRRRGH! STRESSSSSSSSSSS!

  Er, anyway.

  As a result of all that, I wasn’t sure how Jem had been getting on.

  “Okay,” I said, “where are we?”

  “In Milady Jemima’s house!” Sir Guy declared.

  I gritted my teeth. “I mean, where are we in terms of how far we’ve got with all the armour and weapons and stuff.”

  “Well.” Jem sighed. “As our most experienced warriors, I have given priority to Sir Guy and Maloney—”

  “HUZZAH!” Sir Guy bellowed.

  “—so they are quite well covered. I have also engineered many of my own defensive creations.” She cleared her ghostly throat. “But, er, as for you, Noah . . .”

  I sensed this was going to be a big but. “How far have you got?”

  “Well . . .” Jem looked grave.

  “Let us all get into armour, so we may get used to wearing it in readiness for the battle to come.” Sir Guy couldn’t look more delighted, in contrast with my own terrified face. “Into armour, mes amis! You, too, Maloney. Come on, boy. Into armour we go!”

  It was time for the weirdest fashion parade ever.

  First up for inspection was Sir Guy. Jem helped him squeeze into the completed armour, while I eased Maloney into his leg-gear and his Bad Saddle which had one or two extra surprises built in . . .

  “HA!” Sir Guy admired his reflection in a dusty mirror. And actually who could blame him? After so many centuries roaming in his underclothes, this biggest of knights had just over 60% of a new suit of armour tougher than anything he could have dreamed of in his own time – and far-out weapons to match.

  “It is not only my atoms that are excited by this wondrous metal,” he went on. “I look like a superhero! I should call myself . . . WC MAN!”

  “That’s, like, Toilet Man,” I told him. “No one wants to be Toilet Man.”

  “How about War Commander?” Sir Guy held up his Sword of Hellfire and raised his voice. “As in the comiiiiiiiiiiiics of old!”

  “Got it!” cried Sir Guy, unfazed by the shameless commercialism of the interruption. “I shall be the KNIGHT STALKER! For I stalk in the night! Dressed as a knight! Almost. And I shall talk about knights, so the KNIGHT STALKER is also the KNIGHTS TALKER! Ha ha.”

  “You look great,” I told him.

  “I feel moved to sing!” Sir Guy announced.

  “OHHHHHHHH . . .

  Knight Stalker! Knight Stalker!

  He’ll cut ye down,

  be ye skinny or porker!

  This is your NIGHHHHHT—”

  “Not now, Sir Guy!” I begged him. “Hey, check out Maloney . . .”

  “Or,” Sir Guy boomed, “as he shall now be known . . . Horse-o-War!”

  Maloney trotted up. He looked pretty impressive, it had to be said.

  “Wow,” I said, impressed by the full effect. “I never saw a pony in platform shoes before.”

  “They give him a good height advantage.” Jem had ducked behind the lab wall to get into her own outfit. “What do you think of the Fetlock-shockers?”

  I went over to inspect Maloney’s knees – and a massive surge of electric blue energy zapped out of them, almost engulfing me.

  “They’re a little bit sensitive,” Jem called.

  I nodded. “But totally awesome.”

  “Yeigh!” said Maloney. Which was either the opposite of neigh, and so an agreement, or else a horsey take on ‘yay’.

  “And now,” Jem added, “here am I!” The ground shook as the lab wall blew apart in a hail of rubble. Stones bounced off Sir Guy and Maloney – or Knight Stalker and Horse-o-War, if you prefer – and went straight through me.

  I turned to find Jem looking, well. Kind of different.

  “Well, here I am, in my protective shell of fine-strung tungsten carbide with added chemical extras.” Jem shrugged and the fuzzy ball she stood in shook in sympathy. “I haven’t had time to automate my defences. So I’ll have to carry them behind in the wagon.”

  Sir Guy shook his head. “Horse-o-War will carry them for you, er . . . Superiorly-equipped Lady!”

  “Who?” Jem looked appalled. “What kind of a name is that?”

  “A fine name for a super-lady!” Sir Guy insisted. “Or do you prefer Baroness Boom?”

  “No.”

  “She of the WC?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Woman-Woman!”

  “Woman-Woman?”

  “She is twice the woman you were expecting!”

  “No.”

  “Okay, maybe we pass on the super-names.” I looked at Jem hopefully. “When is it my turn?”

  “Er, now!” she said. “I’ve, um, left it on the other side of the wall for you . . .”

  I hurried through the hole in the wall. Secretly, even through my growing terror at the thought of fighting, I’d been kind of excited to see what I would look like in my own suit of armour. Like Sir Guy said, kind of a superhero. A real-life Iron Man!

  Or not. “I . . . don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” I said slowly, “but to be honest, I’m not 100 per cent happy with it.”

  “Nonsense, mon brave!” Sir Guy slapped me on the back, which set my boxes rattling. “Once we have bestowed upon you a good superhero name, you will strike fear into the hearts of your enemies! Such as . . . er . . .”

  Jem bit her lip. “Umm . . .”

  Maloney whickered quietly.

  “Got it!” Sir Guy boomed. “Upright Metal Box Turtle!”

  “What?” I cried. “That’s the worst name ev
er.”

  Jem laughed weakly. “Names aren’t everything. I know it doesn’t look very, er, polished. But it is still a most sturdy suit of armour.”

  “Quite so, milady!” Sir Guy shouted. “And now we dare tarry no longer. There is a damsel to save and a world to rescue – or maybe that is the other way round? A damsel to world and a rescue to . . . No.” He shook his head. “ANYWAY! Let us swiftly test what weapons we can and then . . . LET BATTLE BEGIN!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Battle DOES Begin!

  It’s not easy to sneak a big metal wagon full of fantastic armour and weapons through the middle of town, no matter how invisible you are. And we couldn’t wait for it to be properly dark, or we’d have just three hours or so left before Seerblight hit the big 1000. Who knew how long it took to do battle with an evil sorcerer? But we kind of felt that three hours would be cutting it fine.

  Then again, in my lousy, unfinished, ultra-basic suit of armour, I would feel lucky to last three minutes.

  We knew that people would end up staring at a wagon rolling itself along, so Sir Guy went out and found a scarecrow and impaled it on his sword. Then we brought it back here and got an old cloak on it. All I had to do then was sit invisibly in the metal wagon with Jem on one side and Sir Guy on the other, holding the scarecrow in front of me with the metal end of a pitchfork. We hitched the wagon to Maloney and off to town we went, on a route calculated by Jem to be the quickest and quietest. The overall effect was that of a sinister hooded figure pulling a wagon full of scrap through the gloomiest side streets in town while making horsey clip-clop noises – with a large fork in his back. Perfect!

  Mostly, people just stared or ran away rather than calling the police or something. It was a pretty tense time, though, the whole of Invisible Inc. rolling ever closer to Seerblight’s tower. I felt horribly nervous. Sir Guy was smiling. Jem looked close to tears. I wondered what Maloney was thinking.

  Seerblight’s tower loomed high over the town. I looked up at it and shivered. So much depended on the next few hours.

  At last, we reached that creepy, horrible place. It was eight o’clock.

  Four hours to go.

  I eyed the metal shutters that shielded the ground-floor windows from view, as Maloney pulled up in a quiet side street. It was weird to think that Sir Guy and I had already been inside . . . and horrible to think of the stinky, horrible coops full of poultry-geists on the other side . . .

  “Well! Guess it’s time to put on armour, everyone,” I said. We hadn’t worn it on the way here because people would’ve seen us – and I might have caused a couple of people to die laughing. I willed myself to float down to the pavement. “Come on, then . . .”

  “Hooray!” cheered Sir Guy, grabbing his armour from the back of the cart and racing down the alley to change.

  Jem looked nervous. “Er, Noah? I feel so dismayed that you must wear crude armour with no electronic defences. Why not wear my armour and take all my gadgets, while I wait for you outside?”

  I stared at her. “Are you saying you want to bail on the mission?”

  “I’m a scientist, not a superhero!” Jem sighed, shamefaced. “Unless ‘She of the WC’ refers to the fact that, were I human once again, the toilet would be reeling under the ferocity of my onslaught right now.”

  “Hey!” I blinked. “That was never a toilet joke, was it?”

  “If you can’t beat them, join them.”

  “Listen, Jem. You helped me so much when I joined you. You’ve been amazing, from start to finish.” I placed my hand on her arm. “You tried to help me and Mum, before Mr Butt came to get us. You’ve tried to kit us all out with amazing gadgets and defences . . .”

  “Tried, tried, tried, yes,” Jem snapped. “But never once have I succeeded.”

  “Well, this time we’re all here to work together. Perhaps that’s the way we’ll succeed – and join the real world again.” I nodded to Seerblight’s tower. “Plus, anyway, FYI – I really, really want to wear my own armour after you obviously went to SOOOO much trouble perfecting it for me.”

  “Why, you cheeky scamp! Be glad you have any armour at all!” Jem smiled despite herself, straightened her invisible shoulders. “Well! Statistically, I suppose I should succeed in some venture sooner or later. And this time, if not sooner . . . there will be no later.” She patted my hand. “Forgive my cowardice, Noah. I shall don my armour and try my best, of course.”

  “Of course you shall!” Sir Guy had changed into his own WC armour and was now placing Maloney’s Fetlock-shockers in position. “Before this day is out, a great victory shall be won!”

  “And hopefully not by Seerblight,” I murmured. As Jem got changed, I slipped on my metal boxes. They weren’t exactly snug or sleek, but hey! They were strong and weighed almost nothing at all.

  “We will win no awards for style, I fear . . .” Jem, now looking something like a massive metal hedgehog on a half-ton of caffeine, smiled at me. “But perhaps if we are extraordinarily, ridiculously lucky . . .”

  I nodded. “Because we totally have been up until now.”

  “We shall triumph, mes amis. We must!” Sir Guy fitted the Bad Saddle onto Maloney’s back, then swung himself onto it. “Now! There are ten floors in Seerblight’s tower all together, non? And the lad’s maman says she is being held on the ninth. So that is where we must go.”

  “Shame we can’t find a really, really long ladder and climb straight there,” I said. “These ground-floor shutters look pretty tough. They won’t be easy to get past . . .”

  “But at least we shall have the element of surprise,” Sir Guy announced. “Because Maloney and I shall NOT enter through the ground floor. We shall enter through the window on the THIRD floor instead! Ready, Maloney?”

  “YEIGHHHH!” whickered the pony.

  Sir Guy held up the Sword of Hellfire. “Then let us away! LAUNCH THE BOUNCERS”

  And suddenly – BOIINNNNNG!!! – enormous springs popped out from Maloney’s platform hooves – that’s what was packed inside! The knight and his steed went shooting through the air towards the third-floor window. Sir Guy fired his sword and – KANNNNNNNNG-GANNNK-TISSSSH!!! – in a blaze of purple light, the glass shattered.

  Horse and rider had made it inside!

  Straight away, I could hear shouting and thumping and things breaking from up on the third floor. “Is Sir Guy in trouble, d’you think?”

  “Don’t worry.” Jem was busy stuffing her haul of chemist’s equipment into hidden compartments within her grey, metal, swirly armour coating. “To me, it sounds like he’s having fun!”

  I half smiled. “And while Sir Guy and Maloney are distracting Seerblight’s defences up there . . .”

  “It’s time that we broke in at ground level.” Jem looked down at the last remaining jars and beakers in the wagon. “As the youngest, strongest one of us, would you mind pushing this cart up against the wall?”

  “Not a bit.” My hands were thickly coated with WC dust (which still sounds ‘ewwwww’, but you know) so I took hold of the wagon and pushed it up against the great metal shutters.

  Jem lit a match, dropped it inside and . . .

  SHA-BOOOOOOOOM!

  The entire wagon exploded with the force of . . . of . . . of something you’ve never heard of before because it was so epically awesome it somehow transcended your ability to compare things and went straight to the “WHOA, MOMMA!” centre of your brain.

  I was terrified at first: Fire! Shock waves! Smoke! Fatal Catastrophe Central! But soon I realised that although my armoured boxes rocked with the force of the blast, the heat of the flames never reached my invisible skin. And the black smoke belching out from the building never bothered me; it didn’t sting my invisible eyes or catch in my invisible lungs.

  “Whoa, Momma!” I said. “Jem, what did you do?”

  “I lined the wagon with a highly explosive chemical compound – and behold! An entrance has appeared!” She gestured to the thick black smoking wound
in the wall. “I suppose . . . we should go inside?”

  I wanted to agree, but the words had thrown fiery arrows at the back of my throat and they could only stick there in silence. I knew my mum was up in this sinister building somewhere. So were Sir Guy and Maloney, and so were who-knew-how-many horrors, lying in wait to get us.

  But hiding down here wouldn’t help matters.

  Invisible Inc. had to meet this stuff head-on – and deal with it.

  With a yell of “ATTACKKKKKK!”, Jem and I charged through the terrible curtain of smoke and flame and ran inside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Danger and Traps Aplenty on the Ground Floor: Going Up?

  “One thing surprises me!” I shouted at Jem. “Breaking in like that, I’m surprised we didn’t set off any alarms—”

  BLARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! The alarms sounded like souls screaming in torment. And they weren’t the only ones. The noise was deafening, sound waves so intense it was like the air had turned to knives, ripping at my invisible body. I saw my form wobbling out from under my boxy armour, just as Sir Guy’s had billowed like old laundry back at Jem’s house.

  Jem was better protected inside her crazy spiky ball, but still clutched at her ears. “We must turn off that alarm!”

  “No kidding,” I yelled. “It’ll bring every poultry-geist in the building coming here faster than a—”

  “BUUKKKKKKKKK!”

  The sound of a dozen giant killer-chickens added layers of horror to the din as a mob of poultry-geists came crowding towards us through the smoky corridor.

  I would’ve frozen in horror, but my invisible form was too busy spiking and shifting with the noise. But Jem reached beneath her tangled suit of armour, raking at her armpit.

  “Aha! Found the button.” She looked at me. “Here goes.”

  “Here goes what? Our lives?”

  “One of my bright ideas. Hide your eyes!”

  “Uh-oh.” I looked away as Jem pressed the button inside her suit . . .