It was a dark and stormy night. Actually, it was a cool
breezy late-spring afternoon, but that just sounded so cool to write.
Hi, I'm Selenia. A blue Ixi, and a rather cute
one at that, in case you were curious. But I'm sure you weren't, so on with
my tale.
My brothers and sister, all of us a very colourfully
diverse clan of Ixis, were headed to the tip of the enormous craggy mountain
in the heart of Mystery Island, where Gabriel was convinced a hidden super-secret
laboratory was located.
"You KNOW those stories about some scientist
gone berserk is a total urban legend, correct?" Rowen complained to Gabriel.
She swatted her fluffy green tail at a small army of mosquitoes that seemed
ready to chow down on her flank at any moment.
"Say what you will, oh ye of little faith, but
when we find the guy, and he gives ME superpowers with his ray and turns YOU
into a Spyder, I'm just going to laugh and laugh."
I spun to face the bickering pair, and half-jokingly
leveled my horns at their faces, snorting to let them know I'd charge them if
they didn't shut up. I've never been the largest or the strongest of the family,
but they all knew I was the hot-tempered one. They fell silent after exchanging
death stares once more.
Sirius snickered. "You three are a riot. Can
we keep moving, please? I'm starved."
Simultaneously, Rowan and I kicked small clouds
of dust right in his arrogant yellow face. The eldest of the family, Sirius
always had to have the last word. But as the most intelligent sibling, getting
the best of him was seldom a difficult task for me. One witty one-liner or even
a simple thwack upside his fuzzy head usually did the trick.
Sirius yowled in protest, batted the dust away
from his eyes, and stomped ahead rather childishly. He stopped abruptly when
he spotted a grub writhing its way across the path, and he promptly attempted
to capture it. Rowen groaned in disgust when he caught the slimy little thing
and swallowed it whole. She decided not to comment, however, and the trek continued.
As we came across a triple fork in the road about
an hour later, I paused for perhaps the fifth time in the last twenty minutes
to check the map. Crudely taped together by Gabriel and probably decades old,
it was pretty difficult to read. Nevertheless, the primitively drawn triple
fork was there, and the west path was marked as the correct one. I gestured
to this path and we continued along it, all of us trying to ignore Sirius' protests
as he realised that the central path had been lined with merryberry bushes and
we'd skipped it.
After about half a day of exhausting, noisy,
clumsy travel, we reached the mountain. It looked completely insurmountable,
with its sheer faces and dangerous crags. I was only mildly relieved when Gabriel
reminded us that the laboratory was supposedly hidden only about halfway up.
Gabriel trotted left and right, looking for some
sort of path. Naturally, with my luck, there wasn't one.
"All right, I guess we climb, then!" Gabriel
chirped with irritating perkiness. He gracefully hopped from boulder to boulder
until he was ten or eleven feet above us.
"What are you waiting for? Come on!" He shouted,
and with that, he was off. The rest of us exchanged a look and a groan of weariness,
and plodded along after him.
It took nearly an hour just to catch up with
him-he was so eager! When we finally did, he was standing motionless, staring
at a deep crack between two boulders.
"It's here..." he whispered dramatically. "...I
can feel it!"
I sighed and yanked out the map with my teeth,
ready to show him he was wrong and we still had a great deal of climbing to
do. To my astonishment, there was a small crimson X marked on the map, precisely
where we were standing! Indeed, every poorly drawn landmark fit precisely; this
was the spot. How strange... I would have sworn earlier that the mark had been
much higher up. But no matter.
I glanced up to see Sirius and Gabriel eagerly
attempting to shove the two boulders apart, but to no avail. Rowen and I exchanged
a knowing smirk: boys were so weak. We joined the two males and, with great
effort, soon got the boulders separated just enough that one of us at a time
could just squeeze through the gap into the cave.
I was the last to enter, by choice. I'm not exactly
big on bravado, and it showed. I gasped when I saw the surprisingly well-lit
interior of the cave: it wasn't a cave! It looked like some sort of hospital
or laboratory. Though dingy and musty, everything had that sterile white look
of doctor's offices. There were only a few bare light bulbs on the ceiling to
guide us down the eerily blank corridor; good thing Ixi eyes see well in darkness.
Yet again, I found myself far behind my brothers, who were charging full-speed
down the hallway.
I charged after them, panting. They barged straight
through a double-doorway, not bothering to open it like a civilised Neopet would.
The left door caught me hard in the shoulder as it slammed shut behind them.
Grunting in pain, I slowed my pace to a swift walk. This was apparently unnecessary,
as we all stopped mere moments later and simply stared in awe. We'd found our
way into an enormous laboratory. Bottles of viscous oddly-coloured liquids lined
the dusty white shelves, and rusty steel gadgets that reminded me of old horror
films were scattered atop the linoleum countertops. All of this meant nothing,
however, compared with the monstrous machine in the centre of the room, and
the strange little old Acara seated in front of it, grinning insanely.
"Velcome!" the white-bearded Acara cackled. "You
vish to try the ray, yes?"
I stared up at the silver behemoth of a machine,
very ready to tell him thanks but no thanks and high-tail it back to where life
was normal. No such luck; Sirius stepped cockily forward.
"I want to try this thing! Do your worst!" he
crowed, an excited glow in his voice. I moaned quietly in fear and frustration,
and to my shock, I heard Gabriel do the same. Huh...apparently the kid wasn't
so brave anymore. I wanted to kick his face in; it was his fault we were here
at all!
The strange little scientist laughed wildly at
Sirius' boldness.
"Very well then! Step up to my little baby here
and we shall see what it does to you!"
"We shall...see? Don't you know what it does?"
Sirius' voice had suddenly lost its delighted tone. Gee, wonder why.
"Hmmmm....NOPE!! But we'll find out, won't we?
Hehehehehe!"
Sirius twitched in fear and turned to run. Too
late; a blinding yellow flash caught him directly between the shoulders. He
yowled and fell, writhing in either pain or simple muscle reactions. A bolt
of blackness shot through his body, singing every hair it touched to a deep
grayish black hue. There was a crackle of electricity, and then all was still.
Sirius climbed shakily to his feet, and gasped
as he discovered that he'd taken on a deep shadowy colour all over his body.
It honestly looked fabulous, in my opinion. But what really seemed to delight
him was the new strength that appeared to pump through his muscles.
"WOW! Can I do that again??" He asked, sounding
like an eager little schoolboy who had just had the thrill ride of his life.
"Hmm. Sorry...too much too fast might kill ya!"
the demented little scientist replied in a singsong tone. "Now then...who's
next??"
Gabriel and I immediately cowered away. Sirius
gave Gabriel a dirty look, galloped around behind him, and shoved him forward
toward the ray.
"Come on, dude, you gotta try that thing! It's
wild!"
Before Gabriel could protest, the mad doctor
had aimed the machine at him and fired. Unlike Sirius, Gabriel's limbs promptly
began twisting hideously, and his fur slowly receded until he was totally bald.
Smooth red scales took its place, his horns vanished, and a very long tail shot
out from between his now-mutated hind legs. His eyes bugged out horribly and
his jaw expanded to accommodate a full set of vicious fangs.
After several painful minutes of gruesome mutation,
the ray's horrible yellow light finally went out. Gabriel stood up shakily on
two legs. We all crowded around to see him, and as we figured out what had happened,
we all shrieked at once. A Krawk! Gabriel had become a fierce red Krawk! Gabriel
grinned a joyful, somewhat evil grin.
"I feel so powerful....." he hissed.
"Good! And now you, young lady?" The freakish
scientist looked directly at me.
"Ah. Thanks. Really. But...no. No way." I turned
to go. He grabbed my shoulder. I screamed and yanked free, hiding behind my
newly reptilian brother.
"No?? Okeday. We'll try YOU!!" He pointed at
Rowen eagerly.
Rowan smiled in anticipation, expecting the marvelous
results her brothers had gotten. She thrust her shoulders back bravely and faced
the ray.
"Okee, here we GO!!" And again, the room was
illuminated in harsh yellow light. Rowen let out a bloodcurdling howl of agony.
Something had gone very wrong.
We all watched on in horror. Rowen was transforming
too fast. Her body swelled out grotesquely and jagged plates burst through her
spine. A Skeith? Yes, that's what she seemed to have become. But her colour...her
healthy green fur was now a sickly yellow set of scales, which slowly darkened
to a putrid brown. Then it flushed to green again, and finally, all the colour
drained from her until she was almost totally transparent. Finally a red shade
flowed back into her and her body started mutating again. She shrunk down much
smaller than her original form had been, and her waist pinched in dangerously
to form two separate sections. Wings burst from her back and her red shade paled
to yellow. Her eyes popped out and finally she went still. It was over. She
looked up. She was a Buzz...and a powerful one at that. But most importantly,
she was okay.
"Wow...that was intense..." she croaked. "I think
I was a guy during a lot of that! That was so creepy!" She tested her wings
a few times, as if figuring out how to use them. She sighed, clearly not particularly
thrilled with her new form. But instead of complaining, she simply whispered,
"Can we go home now?"
All four of us nodded in agreement. Ignoring
the mad scientist's shrieks and cackles, we trotted and flew and crawled out
of the laboratory and back to civilisation, my siblings thrilled with their
new power, but me, just happy to be out of there in one piece.
The End | 
