Scurvy Goonda (17 page)

POP-POP-POP!

With each cut from a butter knife or blow from an ACORN boomerang or spatula or field hockey stick, Presidential Guards exploded into clouds of muck that turned the air purple and splattered the ACORN soldiers, who kept slicing through the detonations and the backup guards slipping and tumbling into the room. ACORN had done this before.

Strangely enough, Ted Merritt wasn’t paying attention to any of it.

“Ted, grab your badminton racket!” said Joelle-Michelle, who was kicking her way through the exploding Presidential Guards—the outsides of her pointe shoes were painted in the VIDGA solution. “We need you,
now!”

But Ted was transfixed by the spot where the Ab-Com Patches were sitting on the belt that rolled a vat filled with the “medical” powder that was stuffed inside them. Ted’s eyes climbed to a glass cylinder that was connected to the vat by a series of pipes and capillaries, but it was what was
inside
that cylinder that made Ted walk toward it.

“Eric?” said Ted.

Ted had never seen Eric the Planda before, but from Adeline’s descriptions and her pictures, he was certain this was Adeline’s friend. The planda was sitting inside the cylinder with his
arms wrapped around his knees. His eyes were half shut, like he was having a difficult time staying awake.

Much of the planda’s fur had fallen out, and the bonsai tree growing out of his head was dead. From head to toe, he was
covered
in green bumps. It seemed the sick creature was being used to contaminate the powder that was then being packed into the Ab-Com Patches.

“Eric! Hey,
Eric!”

The planda’s eyelids fluttered.

“It’s
you
, Eric, isn’t it?” said Ted.

The planda rotated his head toward Ted.

“ERIC!”

Ted leaped up on the conveyor belt and charged toward Eric, shouting, “I’m coming, Eric! I’ll be right there!”

“Nah you ain’t!” said a Presidential Guard who popped up in front of Ted, ferociously swinging a hockey stick at Ted’s head. Instinctively, Ted stepped out of the way and smacked the hockey player with his badminton racket.

“Take
that!”
shouted Ted, and the hockey player exploded into purple muck.

Presidential Guards leaped at him from all sides, and he cut them all down—
POP-POP-POP!
One feathered samurai managed to cut Ted’s T-shirt sleeve, but the samurai burst into sludge a moment later.

Ted sprinted and jumped onto the powder vat, which teetered back and forth under his weight. He gripped the edge of the vat and tried to pull himself up, but a tiny clown grabbed on to his feet and began to pull him down toward a crowd of Presidential Guards.

“Let me go!” yelled Ted.

“No go,” said the wicked clown, climbing up Ted’s legs. “No go a-ro-ro-ro!”

POP!
Brother Dezo’s ukulele smashed into the evil clown, who burst into purple.

“He bad clown!” said Brother Dezo. “He get da haad rub!”

His legs free, Ted climbed to the top of the vat and from there made another leap to the glass cylinder that held Eric. The planda, who was pressed against the glass, looked into Ted’s eyes—he had been through a lot.

“All right, buddy,” said Ted, balancing his weight on one of the pipes leading down to the vat. “Stand back as much as you can. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do this.”

Ted flipped his badminton racket around and smacked the butt of it into the glass cylinder.

Nothing happened.

“Come on!” said Ted. He tried again and again with the racket’s hilt—
wham! wham!
Nothing happened. Eric began pushing on the glass where Ted had struck it.

“I
will
get you out,” said Ted. His brain started to whir, and he began thinking of all the things he could use to free Eric.
If only I had a sledgehammer or a laser or one of those cartoon holes I could stick on the glass
.

Below him, snarling Presidential Guards were climbing up the vat, crawling over each other and getting steadily closer.

Come on, THINK!
Ted told himself. He imagined himself swinging down on a vine from the top of the room to knock the cylinder off its platform, or maybe freezing the glass to make it shatter more easily.

And then all of a sudden the pain came, a white-hot burning sensation in his forearm. At first he thought that he’d been
cut, or splattered with chemicals, but when he looked down at his arm, he saw that his birthmark seemed to glow.

The skin on his forearm, normally a dull brown, had taken on a reddish tint, and the three circles that sat in the middle of the birthmarked skin—usually a triangle of pale dots—were throwing off three burning colors: green, blue, and orange.

Could I get Eric out if I had a cutter made from the hardest diamonds on Earth?

His arm got hotter.

Or if a guy who got into the
Guinness World Records
book for eating glass suddenly showed up?

His birthmark changed colors again, so he closed his eyes. He needed to
think
. He couldn’t allow himself to be distracted.

Then he was hit by a strange thought.

What if I had an opera singer who could hit one of those extremely high-pitched notes?

The sizzling sensation in his arm stopped. Ted opened his eyes and saw that his forearm and hand were completely missing.

Missing, as in they were
gone
. Ted was a one-and-a-half-armed man.

Then he spotted it. His arm was floating down toward the ground, his hand opening and closing the entire time, as if pleased with its newfound freedom. The limb made its way to a hovering position about four feet above the floor, where it stopped and appeared to think for a moment. Though it had no eyes, it seemed to turn and look at Ted.

“Hey, get back on my elbow!” hissed Ted.

His hand didn’t respond. Instead, all at once, the arm started to work in a flurry of activity, as if it were plucking atoms out of the air and rapidly assembling them into a human figure,
working from the ground up. The fingers were a blur and the wrist kept snapping back and forth as it flew through its strange building process.

First a pair of small feet wedged into tiny heels.

Then plump legs attached to a round torso covered in a white dress from which two robust arms sprouted.

Next a thick neck, a couple of chins, and then a round Scandinavian face topped by a pair of thick golden braids.

And finally, the hand rested, clearly exhausted.

And the woman opened her mouth, and …
“LA-LA-LA-LA-LAAAAA!”

The notes rang out above the blaring alarm and the sounds of fighting below, grinding the battle to a halt as
everybody
in the room put hands to ears, or whatever body parts were used for listening.

The glass cylinder started to tremble.

The opera singer pushed her voice up into the next octave.

Eric had curled up into a ball inside the cylinder. Ignoring his stinging eardrums, Ted used his one remaining arm to climb away from the cylinder as the opera singer took a final breath.

“LAAAAAA-LA!”

BOOM!

The cylinder shattered into a blizzard of glass splinters. Ted managed to swing his body underneath the powder vat to get out of the way, but the guards weren’t so fortunate. Glass showered down on them, and when they hit the ground, ACORN attacked them with arrows and clubs and other weaponry.

Hanging underneath the vat, Ted looked at the opera singer, who looked back at him, apparently confused about how she’d gotten here and what she was doing.

“Uh,” explained Ted.

The opera singer winked and walked away. Ted’s hand floated back toward him and nonchalantly reattached itself to his elbow. His birthmark returned to its normal color and the skin cooled to the same temperature as the rest of his body.

Ted dropped down to the conveyor belt and looked up at where the glass cylinder had been moments before. Eric was curled into a ball, unscathed.

ACORN soldiers took advantage of the bedlam to dispatch what was left of the Presidential Guard. Within moments, ACORN stood victorious amid an ocean of purple muck.

“Eric!” yelled Ted, and the planda looked up from his fetal position. Seeing that everything was safe, Eric climbed down, toddled over to Ted, and put his thick arms around him.

“Very nice to see you, Eric,” said Ted.

Ted turned away from the planda to help ACORN fighters with the boxes of antidote, when he suddenly became aware that nobody else in the room was moving.

Everybody was staring at Ted. Dwack and Dr. Narwhal were scratched and breathing hard and covered in purple muck, but alive. Even Vango looked like he’d seen some action—he was trembling and suffering from post-conflict trauma, but his hands were stained purple, and Ted could see that the sharp handles of his paintbrushes were coated in muck.

“Is something wrong?” said Ted.

“Ted,” said Joelle-Michelle, purple stains up and down her ballet tights, “where did that opera singer come from?”

“I, my hand, it built her,” said Ted. “I was thinking of ways to get Eric out of the cylinder—by the way, this is my sister’s friend—and the singer, she was my idea.”

Eric waved a paw at the group.

“Your arm made an opera singer?” said Joelle-Michelle.

“This is all new to me,” said Ted.

Joelle-Michelle nodded. She looked at Ted’s torn shirtsleeve, causing him to reflexively hold his arm against his body. He didn’t want her to see his birthmark, especially after all the weirdness of a few moments ago.

“Why do you hide your arm?” said Joelle-Michelle.

Ted stammered and flushed. “I have a birthmark. I usually keep it covered.”

“May I see it?”

“Kind of a rude question after what I just told you.”

“We French are famous for being spectacularly rude,” said Joelle-Michelle, walking over. Ted wanted to resist, but his brain short-circuited. She smelled like vanilla. He extended his arm.

Joelle-Michelle lightly traced her finger from the bend of Ted’s elbow to the top of his wrist, pausing to look at the three pale circles in the triangle pattern. She stared him in the eye.

“You were born with this?” she said.

“It’s hereditary. My father had one too,” said Ted.

Joelle-Michelle looked sideways at Brother Dezo, who raised an eyebrow. She turned to the rest of the ACORN fighters.

“Compagnons,”
she said. “Gather as many boxes as you can and get outside. Brother Dezo, find a furnace and incinerate the Ab-Com Patches. Our backup should be here by now.”

The room was suddenly a flurry of activity, with boxes of antidote being stacked and then hustled out the exit and mounds of Ab-Com Patches being destroyed. A group of the larger ACORN fighters went to work dislodging the entire tank of antidote, rocking it back and forth on its hinges until it broke
off with a loud
snap
. Grunting and groaning, they heaved the tank out the door.

“Wait,” said Ted to Joelle-Michelle, who had also turned her attention to collecting bottles of antidote. “Why did you ask me about the opera singer and my birthmark? Do you know why my arm popped off?”

Joelle-Michelle paused, and leaned close to Ted’s ear.

“Because you are more important than you could ever imagine,” she whispered.

Scurvy was pacing back and forth. He hadn’t touched the set of red bootee pajamas that Persephone had laid out for him. There was only one bed in the room, and he knew that she wanted to pillow talk and snuggle.

“Cursed bootee pajamas!” said Scurvy. He picked a piece of candied bacon off a silver tray sitting on the nightstand, popped it into his mouth, and felt it plunk down into his belly. Since Persephone had claimed ownership of him, he wasn’t getting that same bacon
thrill
anymore.

“Ya okay in there?” said Scurvy to the closed bathroom door. His plan was to enter the bathroom as soon as Persephone exited and spend the rest of the night in there, thus avoiding snuggling.

“Just freshening up,” lied Persephone. In reality, she was dumping the contents of the plastic bag Bugslush had installed in her empty stomach cavity into the sink.

“Oh, there’s no need fer that,” said Scurvy. “Ya seem plenty fresh.”

Scurvy winced. He’d meant
It’s useless to even try to fix yourself!
But it might have come across as
You’re perfect the way you are!

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” said Persephone through the door.

With that, Persephone stepped out of the bathroom, and Scurvy’s eyes almost started to bleed.

She was still wearing her makeup—smeared lipstick, heavy foundation, false eyelashes over empty sockets—but she had replaced her presidential outfit with a silk nightgown that sagged from her bony shoulders, revealing frail wing bones and twiggy legs. She had doused herself in meat-scented perfume, and while the trick almost worked, Scurvy couldn’t lie to himself: when he looked at Persephone, all he saw was a tattered cockatoo skeleton.

She curtsied.

“Do you like it?” she said.

“Ya look … great?” said Scurvy, lying.

“Kiss me on the forehead,” she ordered, and Scurvy did so. Her skull was hard and cold.

“Now come and join me near the window for tea,” she said. “We have more wedding details to discuss.”

“Yep. Sure thing. I’m just gonna use tha facilities,” said Scurvy. “Be right out.”

“Don’t be long!”

“Course not,” said Scurvy. “Can’t wait tah talk and talk and talk until tha end of time.”

Scurvy winked at Persephone and glided into the bathroom. As soon as he shut the door, he searched the wall for a way
out
. He spotted a window high up—it would have to do. He stood on the toilet, climbed onto the sink, and unlatched the window, which opened with a satisfying
whoosh
.

“Are you okay in there, Scurvy-Burvy?” said Persephone.

“Brushing me chompers,” said Scurvy, leaping from the sink to the window and squirming his way out. He silently cursed his belly—he’d put on more weight than he had realized.