Chameleon Chaos (3 page)

Josh shuddered. All of that was pretty bad—but the trousers bit at the end had been worse. Billy Sutter and Jason Bilk had been crying with laughter—the whole class had. He had paid dearly for defending the ant colony. Very dearly.

“Thanks, Danny,” he mumbled. “But the best thing we can do is to forget it. I'll just keep my head down and try not to get noticed for a few days.”

“You're kidding! We've got to get revenge!” spluttered Danny. His spiky blond hair seemed to bristle with fury. “It's a matter of honor!”

“Revenge,” sighed Josh. “Danny—have you noticed the
size
of Billy Sutter and Jason Bilk this term? They're like escapees from one of your computer games! They've got fists like sledgehammers. And they nearly killed you in the summer term, remember? They nearly stamped you to death!”

“Yeah … true …” admitted Danny. “But I was a grasshopper at the time.”

“That's not the point,” Josh said. “They're crazy and dangerous. We need to keep away from them.”

“Yoooo-hooo!” A familiar voiced trilled out through the warm afternoon air. “Jo–osh! Danneee!”

Danny grinned at Josh. “I know what will take your mind off Sutter and Bilk,” he said, as Petty Potts ambled down her front path toward them.

“Aaah, yes.” Josh smiled. “C Phase!”

Petty led them down the side passage into her back garden, which was possibly more overgrown than they'd ever seen it. Over the summer it had filled with weeds, which had grown so high they now had to pick their way through a roughly beaten tunnel Petty had made.

“Don't you ever mow your lawn?” asked Josh as he got hit in the face by a lively thistle.

“What on earth for?” called back Petty. “I don't want any spies being able to see into my garden and my shed. And anyway, Josh, I would have thought you'd approve—my garden is a perfect haven for wildlife.”

This was confirmed by a shriek from Danny as a cricket jumped out of the thicket onto his shoulder. “GETITOFFMEEEE,” he yelped. And Josh turned and collected the minibeast from him. He was well used to Danny's heebie-jeebies about creepy-crawlies. It didn't seem to matter how often Danny had been S.W.I.T.C.H.ed into a creepy-crawly himself. They still freaked him out.

“It's a beauty,” Josh murmured, peering into his cupped hands at the big, bright green cricket. “A Great Green Bush Cricket. They love this kind of tall weedy garden. Look at those legs! Remember how brilliant it felt when we had legs like that?” He let the creature jump back into the weeds, gazing after it with fascination. “You know, when we were grasshoppers that time …?”

Danny was still shuddering and checking his shoulders for other insects when they arrived at the shed door behind Petty. “Forget insects!” He grinned as Petty walked through the very ordinary-looking shed and pulled back a bit of old sheet at the far wall. “We're up to reptiles now!”

Petty turned and smiled at them. One gray eyebrow raised behind her smeary spectacles. She pushed open the secret door behind the sheet. On the other side of it was a set of steps leading down into a passageway with curved, corrugated iron overhead. It had once been a wartime bomb shelter … but now it was a passage to something far more extraordinary—Petty's secret underground laboratory.

They followed her much more eagerly than they might have done a few weeks ago. Petty had a habit of tricking them into helping with her research—a habit which had nearly gotten them killed more times than they could count. But now that they'd discovered the REPTOSWITCH formula and had moved up the food chain a bit, the idea of being S.W.I.T.C.H.ed had become more exciting than scary.

The laboratory was filled with peculiar things. Various sinister-looking liquids in bottles sat on a long workbench. Shelves held books, bottles, and a cage of mice. Odd gadgets were lying around. And a computer glowed in a small booth in one corner. In the middle of the room was a rectangular see-through plastic tent—the main S.W.I.T.C.H.ing zone where Petty could spray her subjects (usually Josh and Danny) but keep out of the spray herself.

“You haven't started packing everything up yet, then?” Danny said.

“I beg your pardon?” replied Petty, going into her booth and punching some keys on the computer.

“You said you were going to move away because you were being spied on, remember?” Danny said. “After you turned us into lizards—after your kitchen window got broken.”

“I am quite aware of what I said,” snapped Petty.

“And I meant it … at the time. But everything's been nice and quiet since. So although I am still planning a new, much more secret laboratory, I'm not moving house
just
yet. That—after all—is exactly what they'll
expect
me to do!”

“Who?” Josh asked. “Who will expect you to?”

“Well—the spies, of course!” Petty said, with an exasperated tone. “I've told you—I'm always being watched!”

Josh and Danny exchanged looks. A couple of weeks ago they would have rolled their eyes at each other, but on the day that Petty's window had been broken, it turned out that somebody
was
watching. Only … they were watching
Josh and Danny
. And sending them messages … clues … in marbles!

“Shall we tell her?” muttered Danny.

Josh shook his head. “Not now. Not until after this S.W.I.T.C.H. We don't want her going all weird like she did last time.”

“Now—do you want to go on with this silly conversation? Or do you want to go to C Phase?” Petty asked, emerging from her computer booth with a spray bottle in one hand and a wild look in her eyes. The light from her old PC monitor shone green across one side of her face. She looked like an evil genius on the verge of a dastardly master plan. Then she stoutly farted and muttered “'Scuse me!” It sort of spoiled the effect.

“What's C Phase?” Danny asked, waving his hand rapidly in front of his face. “Crocodile Phase? Is it? Is it crocodile S.W.I.T.C.H.?”

“No, Danny—not yet,” Petty said. “I told you—we need to build up slowly. You were lizards last time, which seemed to be quite successful. Now it's time to move up to … CHAMELEON!”

There was a pause.

“Chameleon?” echoed Danny. “Chameleon?” He looked deeply unimpressed.

Josh was looking much more excited. “Wow! Chameleon! They're … amazing! Weird! Brilliant!”

“What? They never even move!” squawked
Danny. “I've seen them in pet shops. They just sit there on a stick with their eyes going all googly.”

“I don't care,” Josh said. “I still want to be one! They're Little Lions—didn't you know? That's what
chameleon
means—or “Earth Lion”—because some of them have those sort of mane-shaped things around their heads. They're amazing—like dragons.”

“Well, I was like a dragon when I was a sand lizard,” grumped Danny. “But I could run about and climb trees super fast. A chameleon would take about a week to get up my leg.”

“Well, don't bother, then,” Josh said. “I'll do it!”

So Danny stood back and watched as Josh went into the spraying tent. But then he huffed and said he might as well, seeing as Josh was going to, although this was going to be really boring. And he followed his brother in.

“Right—here we go,” Petty said, retreating through the plastic sheeting and holding out the spray in one hand. A second later, a fine, bluish mist fell across Josh and Danny. They stood very still and waited …

And waited. And waited a bit longer.

“Oh dear,” Petty said after a full minute had passed. “Maybe I've sprayed you with something else …”

“That's not a sentence you ever want to hear from an unstable genius,” muttered Danny, feeling distinctly edgy.

Petty examined the spray. Then she took it across to her lab bench and put a drop of it carefully onto a glass slide. She peered at it through her microscope. She checked her formula back in the computer booth and then came out to peer at the slide again. “No—it's definitely correct,” she said. “Although this Serum Which Instigates Total Cellular Hijack doesn't seem to be instigating anything at all this time.”

Josh and Danny, still unchanged, shrugged at her through the plastic.

“Perhaps, as chameleons move so slowly,” pondered Petty, “the whole process of cellular hijack is slow too … although the mice S.W.I.T.C.H.ed soon enough …”

Danny and Josh waited for half an hour. In the end, they went home for dinner.

“It's most upsetting,” Petty said as they headed back out through the shed. “And most disappointing. But I suppose even a genius like me can't expect perfect results every time. Come back tomorrow and we'll try again …”

“Maybe she's losing her touch,” Josh said as they arrived back at their own front garden.

“Or her mind,” added Danny.

“Look,” Josh said, casting a glance around the garden. “She's not the only one who thinks she's being watched these days, is she? I mean … since the marble thing started …”