. . . until there was a small cry and a girl suddenly appeared, stumbling as she choked and tried to breathe.
“I don’t need to see you to know you’re coming after me,” Juan-Carlos explained, turning to face the gasping girl. “And my time bombs can hit you whether you’re visible or not.”
“But now you’re right there in plain sight,” Tina said sweetly, stepping up beside the still-woozy Bikini. “Which means you’re easy pickings.” A sudden burst of stench, and Tina smiled as her rival fell over, unconscious.
“No!” Tighty Whitey yelled as he saw his teammates fall. “This can’t be happening! We had you beat last time!”
“Last time we allowed you to dictate the terms of our engagement,” a voice called down from above. Tighty Whitey glanced up to find Walter hovering directly above him. “This time, we control the field.” He held up a brick he’d collected earlier that night on their way to the station. “Bombs away!” Walter declared as he dropped the brick right at Tighty Whitey’s head.
“Ha, is that the best you’ve got?!” the Bottom Brigade’s leader taunted as he sidestepped the falling missile. “You think you’re out of reach up there? Think again!” And he lunged upward, his arms shooting up like airborne streamers, extending farther and farther as his hands groped for the flying Fart Squad member.
“Ah, perhaps more altitude is required,” Walter muttered, trying to fart again for added lift. But it was too late—Tighty Whitey’s hands had found him! They grabbed onto Walter’s sweatshirt and then continued to circle him, wrapping him in extendable arms and dragging him back to the ground.
“Got you!” Tighty Whitey crowed. “Now who’s in control?”
But, much to his surprise, Walter smiled. “As a matter of fact, I am,” he called back while deliberately holding in an impending fart. The trapped gas caused him to expand even more, becoming rounder and more blimplike.
And causing Tighty Whitey’s arms to stretch even farther to cover Walter’s increasing bulk.
“Stop!” Tighty Whitey shouted, struggling to hold on. Sweat had broken out on his face. “Please!”
“I think not,” Walter replied, still expanding. He drifted higher, dragging Tighty Whitey’s hands with him and forcing the Bottom to stretch even more or else get dragged up into the air himself.
Now Tighty Whitey was sweating profusely, and his face was twisted with agony. “Can’t . . . hold . . . on . . . much longer,” he gasped. Then he shuddered, his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed, his arms contracting back down to normal size, now that he was unconscious.
That left only one. Thermal. He and Darren were engaged in a duel, fighting fire with fire. While Thermal’s game was to make his opponent overheat, Darren’s was to release all his heat through his burning farts, which were now scorching Thermal in return. And though he could increase heat in others, Thermal himself apparently wasn’t very good at handling it. After a particularly foul and fiery fart from Darren, Thermal dropped to his knees.
“Please, no more!” he begged. “I give up!”
“Tell us what your grandfather did with the rest of the town’s underwear!” Darren demanded over his shoulder, keeping his butt at the ready in case Thermal was trying to trick him.
But the Bottom didn’t have any fight left. “It’s all still at the factory,” he admitted with a shudder. “Grandpa didn’t need the underwear anymore after giving us our powers, so he kept them just to hurt everybody else.”
“That fiend!” a voice called out. Darren and the others looked around. It was that reporter for the Buttzville Nightly News, Windy McGee, the same one who’d been bad-mouthing the Squad. But now she was glaring at the Bottom Brigade instead. “I heard the whole thing,” she assured the Squad. She gestured to the cameraman standing beside her. “Now I know who’s really to blame for all this! And I have their confession on tape!”
“So you’re going to stop saying mean things about us on TV?” Tina demanded, giving McGee a hard stare.
“Absolutely!” the reporter promised. “I’m going to go on right now and report what happened here, and show everyone how the Fart Squad has saved us—again.”
Darren nodded. “Good. And tell them that the missing underwear is at the old Bottom factory. We’re heading over now.”
“You got it,” McGee said. “I’ll make my live report, then catch up.”
The Fart Squad left the reporter there, along with the Bottom Brigade. Apparently admitting to everything had been too much for Thermal—he had collapsed with his teammates. As the Fart Squad left, the police were coming back in to arrest the Brigade. Apparently word spread fast because none of them gave the costumed quartet a hard time. A few cops even nodded as the kids ran by. One older policeman saluted.
“Nice not being a wanted criminal,” Tina commented as they raced from the train station, toward the old factory.
“Yeah, I’d say we got our rep back—by the seat of our pants,” Juan-Carlos offered. His friends sighed, but Juan-Carlos just grinned. He was back!
“Now let’s go get that underwear,” Darren reminded the others. “And Doctor Bottom.”
CHAPTER TEN
But when the kids reached the factory, Doctor Bottom was ready for them.
“I may not have any powered undies left,” he declared, “but I can still pants you kids!” He lifted what looked like a bazooka made from the same tubing as the power-draining machine. A long tube connected it to one of the bins behind him.
“What’re you gonna do, shoot dirty undies at us?” Juan-Carlos asked with a laugh.
“Something like that,” the old man agreed with a nasty grin. He set the weapon on his narrow shoulder, aimed it at them, and pulled the trigger. A wadded-up ball of underwear shot out and slammed Juan-Carlos in the chest, hard enough to knock him back a step.
“Hey, that hurt!” he yelped, rubbing at his chest. That was going to leave a bruise!
“That’s the idea!” Doctor Bottom said, cackling. He flipped a switch on the weapon. “And now, full auto!”
“Look out!” Darren shouted as a whole stream of wadded-up underwear shot out toward the Squad. He tried turning his flaming farts on the cotton missiles, but only succeeded in lighting them on fire. “Yikes! Sorry!”
There wasn’t time for Walter to float up out of harm’s way, much less grab the rest of them. Instead the kids all dove for cover behind some of the old bins scattered nearby. The barrage didn’t last very long, and a minute later they cautiously stuck their heads out to look around.
The mad doctor had vanished. Only the empty undie-gun remained.
“He’s gone!” Darren said, jumping to his feet. “Darn it!” He kicked one of the bins in frustration.
“Who’s gone?” Windy McGee asked as she stepped into the warehouse. “Doctor Bottom?”
The kids nodded.
“That’s too bad. I really wanted to ask him a few questions. Wow, what is that awful smell?”
“Well, if one of those questions was ‘Where’s our underwear?’ I think we already have an answer,” Darren said, pointing toward where Doctor Bottom had just been standing. There was the same large machine he had used to consolidate the energy from the Squad’s farts and then transfer that power to the Bottom Brigade, and beside it were several rows of large bins, filled with underpants both clean and used.
“Yes!” the reporter declared. She turned to face her cameraman, and started to report about the situation: “This is Windy McGee with breaking news! The heroes known as the Fart Squad have recovered Buttzville’s missing underwear! They . . .”
“We did it, gang!” Darren told the others, exchanging high fives and backslaps with his three friends. “We stopped them and recovered the underwear!”
“I wish we’d been able to nab Doctor Bottom too, though,” Tina said as the four of them snuck away, changed back into their regular clothes, and then returned to watch from the shadows as McGee delivered her report.
“The police may yet apprehend him, now that they
know to look,” Walter commented.
“Yeah,” Juan-Carlos added, “he’s bound to hit rock bottom at this rate!”
The others sighed, and he chuckled. “That was a good one,” Juan-Carlos said to himself. “Wait until I tell Dad!”
It was good, they all agreed, watching the news reporter clear their names and chatting and joking and laughing again. Sure, Doctor Bottom was still out there, and might come after them again, but Juan-Carlos wasn’t too worried. For now he just wanted to enjoy the fact that they’d succeeded. They had their reputation back, and their confidence. And, most important of all, their underwear!
“I can’t wait to get into a clean pair of undies,” Juan-Carlos told the rest of them. “I’m going to leave ‘going commando’ to the soldiers!”
“It’ll be great having underwear again,” Darren agreed. “And people knowing the Fart Squad are heroes is even better.”
And the four of them cheered as they sat and watched more and more grown-ups arrive to help get Buttzville’s underwear back where it belonged. The town’s butts would soon be covered again—thanks to the Fart Squad.
Excerpt from Fart Squad #6: Blast from the Past
Read a Sneak Peek of Book Six, Fart Squad: Blast from the Past!
“Wakey, wakey, Mr. Stonkadopolis,” a voice whispered.
Darren Stonkadopolis could hardly open his eyes. “Who’s that?” he mumbled, before reaching down his pants to scratch himself. He scratched and scratched and furiously scratched some more, but instead of calming the raging itch in his butt, he only made things worse.
“It is I, Harold Buttz, Senior. Owner of the Buttz Factory, Buttz Industries, Buttz Bakery, Buttz Office Supply, Buttz Savings and Loan, and two-thirds of everything else in Buttzville. Now WAKE UP, son! We’ve no time to waste!”
Darren’s eyes popped wide open. “Whoa!” he shouted, realizing Harold Buttz’s face was hovering only an inch from his own. There was just enough light to make out his super-thick sideburns and black fedora hat, with a long turquoise peacock feather sticking out from the side.
Where am I? Darren wondered. And what’s Harold Buttz, the richest man in all of Buttzville, doing here?
Darren quickly got up from the cot he’d been lying on. Now he could see that the rest of the Squad was asleep in the cots next to his. But how did they all get there in the first place?
“I must apologize for my men’s slightly aggressive tactics,” Mr. Buttz said.
With that, the nightmarish details of the last twelve hours all came flooding back to Darren. The army of scary-looking men in black suits and sunglasses sneaking up on them. The frenzied, fart-powered retaliation. And finally, a stabbing feeling that came from behind and then: darkness.
“Slightly?” Darren squawked. “They took us down with tranquilizer darts!”
“Well, that’s why I’m apologizing!” Buttz barked. “But I had to ensure your arrival by any means necessary. I need you and your friends to complete the most important mission in the history of Buttzville.”
“Mission?” Darren was still a little woozy. “What kind of mission? And how do you know who I am, anyway?”
“How do I know?” Mr. Buttz snorted. “I’m Harold R. Buttz, son. I know everything.”
“Dude . . .” Juan-Carlos Finkelstein sat up drowsily in his cot. “Where are we?” Normally, he would have chimed in with a bad joke, but he was focused on relieving his own raging itch by dragging himself across the floor in a seated position, like a Chihuahua that had just eaten chili.
“I, too, am baffled by this dim and unfamiliar location,” Walter Turnip, the heaviest and most well-spoken Fart Squad member, added as he raked his behind with the fork he kept with him at all times in case of unexpected food opportunities.
“This is all so inappropriate.” Tina Heiney sighed. She may have looked like an adorable little princess, but the stink of her silent-but-deadly farts was lethal.
“Linda!” Mr. Buttz shouted into the darkness. “Our young heroes are finally awake. Lights on!”
A loud ker-chunk echoed overhead, as blinding floodlights suddenly whirred to life.
Shielding his eyes from the bright lights, Darren looked around, and his mind was officially blown.
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About the Author and Illustrator
SEAMUS PILGER is an award-winning fartologist and a burrito enthusiast. He first became interested in superfartabilities while studying the alternate forms of propulsion for space travel. While intergalactic gastroenterological propulsion failed, Seamus has made many discoveries in the fermentation of foods in humans. Seamus is a graduate of FRT. He is a lifelong vegetarian and lives on a bean farm in Minnesota.
STEPHEN GILPIN is the award-winning illustrator of dozens of children’s books and has worked for tons of awesome clients. He lives and works with his wife, Angie, in Hiawatha, Kansas.
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Credits
Cover art © 2016 by Full Fathom Five, LLC
Design by Victor Joseph Ochoa
Copyright
FART SQUAD #5: UNDERPANTSED! Copyright © 2016 by Full Fathom Five, LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016942118
ISBN 978-0-06-236635-1 (trade bdg.)—ISBN 978-0-06-229053-3 (pbk.)
EPub Edition © September 2016 ISBN 9780062290540
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FIRST EDITION
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