Lilac Attack!

by Sophie Bell

“But?” Iris prompted, talking into her star necklace. The ground was rapidly rising up to meet them.

  “But the mayor just announced your arrival,” Candace rushed through the words, “so first, it’s showtime. Iris, you’re clear to fold in your wings. Scarlet, careful not to crash through the boards. Cheri, whoops, wardrobe malfunction: Your skirt’s blowing up. Lock it down! Lock. It. Down,” Candace directed the three Ultra Violets as they landed. “And . . . cue the glitter blasts,” she added, mostly to herself. A quick tap of a vermilion button and showers of shiny confetti squares rained down from the cloudship.

  The crowd let out a cheer as the three girls each dropped into place on the podium beneath the black-and-white latticework of the Gazebra. Darth poked his head out of his papoose to admire it. He’d been black-and-purple since he was a baby, but, knowing that skunks and zebras normally shared the same color palette, he approved of the striped design.

  Just as Darth gazed up at the Gazebra, Cheri glanced up, up, up to the forty-second floor of the HQT, squinting into the sunlight. She wondered if their doctor-moms were watching them through the rock-crystal windows of the FLab above, or if they were preoccupied, as usual, with some top secret scientific experiment.

  Iris didn’t squint. The sun, her favorite star, only seemed to give her more power, and she gladly soaked in its warmth. She knew that she was glowing intensely ultraviolet—way brighter than their searchlight. She couldn’t help it. And this time, she wasn’t trying to hide it. She scanned the throng, past the faces of her classmates, past the citizens of Sync City, searching for just one boy, floating on a hoverboard, a shock of ebony hair falling in his eyes.

  But if he was there, she didn’t see him.

  Scarlet balanced en pointe in her biker booties, standing as straight and tall as she could. Not that she’d admit it, even to herself, but she was searching for a boy in the crowd, too. Not Sebastian, Iris’s crush. A different boy, one in a black suit jacket and shades that covered his navy blue eyes. One with a salt-and-pepper buzzcut and a sprinkling of freckles.

  But she didn’t see him, either.

  Guess that’s no surprise, Scarlet thought, trying to shove Agent Jack Baxter out of her mind. After all, he is a spy! Hiding is practically his job description.

  If there was a boy in that crowd for Cheri, she hadn’t met him yet.

  Each Ultra Violet shook off her thoughts as she shook out her hair. A woman was waddling up the podium steps toward them. The girls linked pinkie fingers, and an ultraviolet aura enveloped the threesome.

  “Ooh!” Rosenmary Blumesberry, the newly elected mayor of Sync City, cooed in their faces. “Aren’t you all just as purply as can be!”

  Then she gave Scarlet an impromptu pinch on the nose.

  Scarlet’s steely gray eyes crossed in surprise and she shot up a half-inch higher, her aubergine ponytail swaying with indignation. It took all her self-control not to grab hold of the mayor’s pug nose and tweak back. Hard.

  “Stay cool, Scar,” Candace’s voice crackled in her earpiece. “This new mayor is an unknown quantity; don’t overreact.”

  A squat, square-shaped woman, Mayor Rosenmary Blumesberry had ruddy cheeks and root-beer maroon hair to match. Just the few steps up to the Gazebra had left her sweaty and breathless. Or maybe she was merely excited for the Synchro de Mayo celebrations. Or uncomfortable walking in her pumps—although, with their wide round toes and short stacked heels, they were sensible if not too pretty shoes.

  Her back to the crowd, the mayor pulled a fluffy powderpuff from her breast pocket. And dabbed it smack in the center of her face.

  “That’s better!” she said to the girls with a vigorous sniff, a chalky ring of powder caked across her cheeks. “It’s such an effort to keep dry, especially when the sun is so warm and when—”

  She paused.

  Brushed some stray dust off her shoulders.

  And rippled into giggles.

  “When,” she continued, the crinkles around her eyes now creased with whitish lines of talcum, “you’re standing next to a girl giving off heat waves!” She licked a finger and pretended to poke Iris’s forehead. “Zszt! Caliente!”

  Then, comically clutching her “burnt” hand, Mayor Blumesberry burst into such a titter fit that she doubled over right there on the stage.

  Iris exchanged looks with the other two Ultra Violets. Cheri shrugged her shoulders, baffled by the mayor’s behavior. Scarlet arched an eyebrow in doubt. This wasn’t exactly the official welcome they’d hoped for.

  The mayor stayed bent over, hugging her sides and quaking with laughter, her big block W of a booty wiggling at the very citizens who had voted it into office.

  From her vantage point in the cloudship, Candace cast a worried eye at the harbor. “Girls, any way to get this back on track?” she asked, just as Scarlet lost patience. Sharply but subtly, she whipped out one leg in a lightning-fast rond de jambe en l’air, spinning the mayor around and punting her forward.

  “Whooo!” Mayor Blumesberry grasped the Gazebra’s podium like she was on an amusement park ride. “Now that’s what they call a swift kick in the pants!”

  “. . . kickinthe pants, kickinthepants, kickinthepants . . .” Picked up by the podium’s microphone, the words broadcast out over the crowd.

  “Ah-tee-hee-hem!” The mayor cleared her throat, and that guttural noise growled through the speakers, too. It was impossible to tell whether the woman was at all embarrassed by her blunders: If she was blushing, the crusts of white powder covered it up.

  “Citizens of SynchroniCity!” That’s how she started, steadying her voice and actually sounding serious at last. “Welcome, on this wonderfully sunny day, to our Synchro de Mayo celebration!”

  The crowd whistled and clapped in good cheer, deciding to forget about the previous pants statement.

  “Today is my first term of the rest of your lives!” That might have sounded like a threat, if she hadn’t said it with such a broad grin. “Our sparkling cosmopolis, SynchroniCity, is a paragon of progress. It leads the way in technological innovation, scientific experimentation, artisanal pickling—the list goes on! That’s to say nothing of our museums and theaters and concert halls, and the incredible artists and actors and musicians whose work fills them. We have so much to be proud of!”

  Again the crowd applauded, though from up on the Gazebra, Cheri noticed that some of their Chronic Prep classmates had already grown bored of the mayor’s speechifying and begun toying with their smartphones instead. Purely by accident her eyes met Albert’s. By accident, purely! He was staring right at her, his bottom lip hanging open just a little. Startled, Cheri looked away again. That boy had caused her so much drama!

  Bettr iz u avoidz hims, Darth thought, reading her mind.

  Absolutely! Cheri agreed. Avoid him like pleated-front khakis!

  “But, fellow citizens, let’s bring it down now,” Mayor Blumesberry was saying. “Because it’s time to get real. To get really, really real.”

  The crowd susurrated at this abrupt change in tone, trading worried whispers. Even the Chronic Prep students looked up from their phone screens again. With a staticky clunk, Mayor Blumesberry lifted the mic out of its stand and walked with it to the edge of the platform. Interference with the speakers caused a piercing screech. Too late, everyone rushed to cover their ears.

  Crouching awkwardly, inching one plump pump forward, then collapsing onto her haunches as she edged out the other, the mayor managed to seat herself on the top step of the Gazebra. She gave the gathering a motherly smile, as if she were reading a story to a circle of kindergartners rather than delivering a speech to an entire city.

  “You’ve heard the rumors,” she said in a hush, holding the microphone so close to her mouth she could taste it. “Of three-eyed fish. Day-Glo vegetables. And, yes, of mutants walking these very streets.”

  Now Mayor Blumes
berry had the crowd’s complete attention. The plaza fell so quiet you could have heard a hair split. Duncan Murdoch, suddenly self-conscious, flipped up the hood of his sweatshirt to hide the stumpy horn buds on his head. There’d been so many mutant sightings in Sync City lately that they could no longer be denied, but no politician had ever spoken publicly about them. Until then.

  As murmurs ran marathons through the throng, Mayor Blumesberry took the opportunity to tug out her powderpuff again and mop her moist brow. Turning to Scarlet, the Ultra Violet standing closest to her, she whispered, “You girls are so hot!” And gave her a sly wink. Granules of white talc stuck to her eyelashes.

  Scarlet wrinkled her nose in response.

  “Citizens of Sync City.” Sniffling into the microphone, the mayor directed her attention back to the onlookers. “There are indeed rumblings of trouble. And yet . . .”

  The crowd leaned forward as one, hanging on the mayor’s every word.

  “. . . there is reason to hope!” she said, struggling to her feet once more. “Some of you Chronic Prepsters may have already witnessed my special guests in action at Tom’s Diner.”

  “Them’s my girls!” came a shout from far back. Iris couldn’t see who’d said it. But she spotted the top of a towering Oreo-striped bouffant.

  “Yes, them’s all of our girls!” Mayor Blumesberry enthused, echoing the sassy heckler. “Three super sixth-graders are here to keep us safe. To protect Sync City from neon broccoli and whatever other problems may come our way. Right after they finish their homework, ah-tee-hee-ha!”

  Gripping pinkies tight, the girls braced themselves for Mayor Blumesberry to lose it in another titter fit. Thankfully she held it together.

  “So fear not!” she called out. “Or fear less! It probably makes sense to fear just a little. Anyhoo, ladies and gentleman, children and pets, but hopefully NO mutants, without further ado, I present to you . . . the Ultra Violets.”

  Two Girls, One Boy

  “AND LIGHTS . . .” CANDACE DIRECTED, MOSTLY TO herself again, tapping an app on her tablet. Suspended from the cloudship but concealed by its vapors, the power flower began to whirl, its vivid violet beam cutting through the crowd like a lighthouse beacon. “And music . . .” Candace pressed another icon, and a throbbing techno soundtrack started to play. “And Scarlet, you’re up.”

  Like Scarlet needed to be told! She broke away from her two best friends to take center stage on the Gazebra. As Iris and Cheri shimmied and clapped behind her—“Go, Scarlet! Go, Scarlet!”—she launched into a hip-hop ballet solo, mixing classic moves with slammin’ swagger with funky chunks of retro disco (to appeal to the senior set) with boot-knocking square dancing (to appeal to the random urban cowboy; Duncan Murdoch, an actual mootant cow boy, got into it, too).

  But this wasn’t just your average awesome dance mashup. Oh swell no. It was ultraviofied. Scarlet didn’t simply perform the steps, she superpowered them, spinning pirouettes at umpteen times the speed of light, shuffling up and down the Gazebra steps so fast that the Jensen twins got dizzy watching and one of them threw up while Prudence Dosgood wondered if Scarlet was possessed.

  The crowd jumped and pumped their fists along with her. They waved their hands in the air like they really did care! Scarlet was so in the moment, so in her flow, she practically forgot that anyone else was there. That anything but the music mattered. Her deep purple ponytail hadn’t touched her shoulders, and her feet had hardly touched the ground, since she’d started dancing.

  As Scarlet grooved, Cheri called out behind her: “The legs were extended at exact ninety degree angles in those cabriole leaps!” And: “That spiraling back flip applied a viostonishing rotational velocity of 989.7 degrees per second!” Her emerald-green eyes glowed with complicated formulas as she supercalculated.

  The audience nodded along—Cheri noticed with dismay that Albert whistled his admiration every time she said a new measurement—but the music was so loud she doubted anyone besides him was listening. People were way more interested in watching breakdancing than hearing a breakdown of it.

  C’est la V, she thought the French for “whatever.” No one ever said math was cool. At least not as cool as crunking, alas.

  Math iz cool! Darth thought right back. 2 cool 4 theez fools.

  Cheri lifted the little skunk out of his papoose to cradle him in her arms. Well, math is the building block of just about everything, she allowed with a small smile. Her powers might not be as blatantly crowd-pleasing as Scarlet’s, but it still felt good to be popular again.

  To wrap up her spectacular dance solo, Scarlet threw down a few feats of superstrength. She swung herself around a post completely horizontal, like a flag. She bounced up onto the peak of the Gazebra’s shingled rooftop, landing in arabesque. Then she bounded down again and—oh wait:

  Traffic jam.

  Out on the street.

  Scarlet paused in her performance, dashed to the sidewalk, and picked up a double-parked Mister Mushee ice-cream truck. The driver of the car that was wedged in next to it honked his horn in thanks as he pulled out.

  She went back to her demonstration, switching Mister Mushee for Mayor Blumesberry, who was light as a powdered donut in comparison. Scarlet propped her up in the palm of one hand. With the other on her hip, she danced the hora. Aloft, Scarlet’s small fingers planted firmly beneath her big butt cheeks, the mayor burst into another titter fit. The loud music swallowed the sound of her laughter, but the crowd could still see her jiggling like a rosy Jell-O mold.

  “Okay, Scarlet, nailed it!” Candace stated from her aerial observation point. “Superpowers officially public. Iris, you’re up next!”

  Scarlet put the mayor down. Gave a quick curtsy. And spun around. With her back to the crowd and her arms flung wide open, she mega–stage dove off the Gazebra to the ka-swish! of a last glitter blast. The force of her thrust propelled her all the way to the edge of the audience. Buoyed by her classmates, she bodysurfed up to the mosh pit. When finally she dropped onto two feet, she shouted, “Go, Iris!” punching her fist in the air.

  “Go, Iris,” she barely heard the girl beside her say.

  As the mosh pit pushed and pulled with the rhythm, Scarlet whipped her head around to find herself nose-to-nose with Opaline Trudeau.

  The smile left Scarlet’s face, but she didn’t look away. The last time she’d been this close to Opal, the rogue supergirl had pulled her hair. Instinctively, Scarlet now brushed her burgundy-black bangs out of her eyes. Tiny squares of glitter that had nestled in the strands sprinkled down, one landing on her cheek, others clinging to the damp skin of her bare shoulder. For the second time since the Synchro de Mayo festivities started, all the chaos around her seemed to fall away. Scarlet felt as if it were just she and Opaline, standing in a rollicking sea of strangers, trying to find their balance.

  “Hi, Scarlet,” Opal said, her eyes cast downward. She seemed, Scarlet thought, embarrassed. Shy, like she used to be.

  Scarlet didn’t answer right away. She realized she was clenching her fists at her sides.

  “Viomazing dance,” Opal mumbled, bumping into her (purely by accident) as the crowd surged forward like a wave.

  “You’re not planning on electrocuting anyone, are you?” Scarlet snapped. The anger in her own voice took her by surprise.

  “Oh, no!” Opal stammered, shrugging into herself. “I’m off-duty.”

  If that was supposed to be a joke, Scarlet wasn’t laughing.

  “You’d better not be wearing that poison perfume, either!” she warned.

  Opal just shook her head and offered Scarlet a feeble smile. Although her brunette bob was already pinned back with barrettes, she tucked her hair behind her ears anyway.

  Scarlet stared harder. Even in the bright Sunday sun, bathed by the beam of the Ultra Violet searchlight, she could see the electric volts sparking off Opal’s shoulders. Opal cou
ldn’t hold her gaze. As she blinked back and forth at Scarlet, milky white clouds passed across her brown eyes. Scarlet debated threatening her. Telling her to leave the Gazebra ASAP. Sugarsticks, if she so chose, Scarlet could just pick up Opal, who was umpteen times lighter than an ice-cream truck, and pitch her into the river!

  But she didn’t.

  With great power comes great responsibility, Scarlet thought. She’d heard that somewhere before. Suddenly she understood what it meant.

  “I’m watching you,” was what she said instead. “We all are.”

  “Okay!” Opal called after her as Scarlet began to make her way back to the Gazebra’s stage. “Later!”

  Scarlet wasn’t sure how to read Opal’s tone, and she refused to turn around and meet her eyes again. The crowds parted as she passed, clapping along, and soon all the noise washed over her once more. Shaking off the encounter, Scarlet sprung a few feet off the ground every few steps, high-fiving her fans.

  Opal hung back, letting her go.

  But someone else followed close behind, weaving in and out of the crowd in Scarlet’s wake. Camouflaged in an Average Joe disguise of cargo shorts and graphic tee, he nearly blended in with the rest of the Chronic Prep kids—which he wasn’t. And he stood short enough that he easily could have ducked behind some grown-up’s mom jeans if Scarlet had actually bothered to look back—which she didn’t. Even if she had, it would have been hard to recognize his face behind his black sunglasses.

  Though she probably would have spotted his salt-and-pepper hair.

  Fringe Elements

  {*Because the Roman Numeral for 5 Looks a Lot Like V for Violet}

  SPEAKING OF CAMOUFLAGE . . .

  Up on the stage of the Gazebra, Iris’s superpower demonstration was in full swing.

  First she’d painted a rabble of rainbow butterflies using just one pinkie, twirling around as she set each gauzy-winged illusion aflight.