“Daylight—I’ve missed you so much!” Red said, and turned to the others. “No one look at me for at least twenty minutes. I haven’t seen the sun in weeks! I’m paler than Snow White with a stomach flu!”
“Good to see you, too, Red,” Bob said under his breath.
It wasn’t long before the others from the fairy-tale world joined her. Clawdius ran out from the beam behind Red. Unlike his mother, the wolf was very social. He did an excited lap around the commissary and visited with every human he saw.
Jack and Goldilocks stepped out of the beam next and Jack helped his pregnant wife to the closest seat. They were joined shortly afterward by Robin Hood, the Merry Men, Lester, the Tin Woodman, Peter Pan, the Lost Boys, and Trollbella. Just like the characters from “Starboardia” did when they arrived on Sycamore Drive, the characters from the fairy-tale world and classic literature stared in awe at the wondrous new world around them.
“Welcome to Saint Andrew’s Children’s Hospital!” Charlotte said.
“So this is the Otherworld?” Jack said, and whistled at the sight.
“It’s colorful,” Goldilocks said. She side-eyed the decorations. “They certainly make reading a lifestyle here.”
Before Bob and Charlotte began the complicated task of introducing the new characters to the old characters, Alex and Conner popped out of the beam of light beside them.
“Oh cool, we’re already at the hospital!” Conner said, and cleared his throat. “Ladies, gentlemen, chicken, and Blissworm from my stories, allow me to introduce you to the ladies, gentlemen, goose, and wolf from classic literature and fairy tales.”
The introduction didn’t go as well as the twins had hoped. The characters circled one another like animals meeting in the wild.
“Pirates!” Peter shouted at the Dolly Llama crew.
“Guys, knock it off!” Alex said. “We’re all on the same side here. These people are going to help us defeat the Literary Army.”
“Sorry,” Peter said. “For whatever reason, I’m always inclined to shout ‘Pirates’ whenever I see them—bad habit.”
The Rosary Chicken fearfully laid an egg as soon as she saw Clawdius, and he chased after her. The Blissworm didn’t want to miss out on the fun, so it jumped aboard the wolf and rode him like a cowboy. Lester thought the Blissworm was the most delicious-looking worm he had ever seen, so he chased after the others, forming a bizarre parade of fictional creatures.
“Rule number one,” Conner said. “No one is allowed to eat anyone else!”
The Rosary Chicken clucked with relief. Clawdius and Lester stopped in their tracks and slumped. The Blissworm tugged on Clawdius’s collar—Conner didn’t say the fun had to stop.
It took the fairy-tale characters a few moments to realize that pictures of many of them were painted on the walls throughout the commissary. They walked to their respective murals and stared at the artwork worryingly.
“Look, boys, we’re on the wall!” Peter said, and pointed to a mural of them. “Wait a moment. Is this place a church? Are we gods in this world?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Conner said. “People just like your story here.”
The Tin Woodman found himself in a mural of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz but didn’t recognize the three others he was traveling with down the yellow brick road.
“Who are the people I’m linking arms with?” the Tin Woodman asked.
“That’s Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion,” Alex explained. “You would have met them in Oz if we hadn’t found you first.”
“Did they drop a barn on me as well?” the Tin Woodman asked.
“Um… I don’t remember,” Alex lied.
Robin Hood and the Merry Men gathered around the mural of Robin Hood. The resemblance between the real Merry Men and the painted Merry Men was striking; however, Robin Hood was depicted very effeminately in the painting. He wore bright green tights and had a short curly bob and no facial hair.
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” Robin Hood said. “WHAT IS MY MOTHER DOING IN THIS PAINTING?”
Trollbella stared up in awe at a beautiful mural of Cinderella in a ball gown. She smiled from ear to ear and clutched her hands over her heart.
“Oh my Troblin heavens, it looks just like me!” she said. “There are some very talented painters in the Otherworld.”
Red let out an earsplitting scream when she saw the mural of Little Red Riding Hood. The twins looked between the real Red and the painted Red, but they couldn’t figure out what was so offensive. All they saw was an adorable girl in a red cape running from the Big Bad Wolf.
“Red, what’s the problem?” Alex asked.
“They made me a brunette!” Red yelled.
The twins rolled their eyes. Red turned her back to the room and pouted as she continued soaking up the sun.
“That reminds me,” Conner said. “I need to go back to ‘Galaxy Queen’ and get the Cyborgs.”
He went to his binder of short stories, flipped it open to “Galaxy Queen,” and vanished into the beam of light. As he went, Alex noticed that Goldilocks and Jack were whispering to each other and suspiciously glaring across the room.
“Is everything okay?” Alex asked.
“Alex, are my hormones driving me mad, or do that man and woman look exactly like Jack and me?” Goldilocks asked.
Alex looked at Auburn Sally and Admiral Jacobson on the other side of the room. They were also whispering to each other and shooting peculiar glances at Jack and Goldilocks. Clearly they were having the exact same conversation.
“A lot of Conner’s characters are based on people he knows,” Alex said. “But trust me, it could be a lot worse than the captain and the admiral.”
As soon as she said this, the Cyborg Queen charged out of the “Galaxy Queen” beam of light. She ignored everyone in the commissary and rolled directly to the windows where Red stood. Two large solar panels came out of her metal shoulders and she pointed them toward the sun.
“Daylight, thank goodness,” the Cyborg Queen said. “I haven’t had a solar charge in weeks!”
The Cyborg Queen stretched her solar panels so far, she took up the whole window.
“Excuse me,” Red said. “You’re blocking my light.”
“Who says it’s your light to begin with?” the Cyborg Queen said.
Red was appalled by her rudeness, so she left the window and took a seat by Jack and Goldilocks.
“I don’t know who or what that woman is, but she’s terrible,” Red said.
Goldilocks fought a smile and leaned close to Alex. “I see what you mean,” she said.
Conner and Commander Newters hurried out from the “Galaxy Queen” beam and cleared a large area of the commissary, stacking chairs and tables on top of one another until there was a large open space.
“Conner, what’s that for?” Charlotte asked.
“The Cyborgs,” he said.
Newters removed a small remote from his belt and pointed it at the beam. Twenty mechanized wagons carrying fifty Cyborg soldiers each rolled out of the beam of light. The Cyborgs were deactivated and were stacked on top of one another like folding chairs. Newters steered the wagons into the cleared area and parked them.
“Is that… humane?” Bob said with wide eyes.
“Probably not,” Newters admitted. “But if we keep them deactivated until battle, we’ll save a fortune on our electric bill.”
The characters settled into groups throughout the commissary like high school cliques. The people of each dimension had their own sets of tables and cautiously eyed one another from afar.
“Will they be okay?” Charlotte asked.
“They’ll warm up to each other,” Conner said, and then whistled to get the room’s attention. “Everybody listen up! Alex and I have to head into my next story to recruit more characters. Everyone please be nice to one another while we’re gone. My mom and Bob are in charge unless they’re at work—then Jack and Goldilocks are in charge.”
The
characters from “Starboardia,” “Galaxy Queen,” the Land of Stories, Sherwood Forest, Neverland, and Oz all nodded respectfully, then quickly returned to watching one another apprehensively. Alex and Conner hugged Charlotte and Bob and went to the binder of short stories. Conner flipped it open to his next story and poured three drops of the Portal Potion on the pages.
Conner stepped toward the beam of light that appeared, but Alex stopped him before he entered it.
“Hold on a second,” she said. “You’re supposed to tell me what to expect at the next stop—and don’t spare the details this time. If there are bug guts, I want to be prepared.”
“The next story is called ‘The Ziblings,’” Conner explained. “It’s about four kids with superhuman powers. They all lost their parents at an early age and went to live at the same orphanage. One night, an asteroid carrying cosmic radiation hit their orphanage and affected their DNA, giving them phenomenal abilities. They were adopted by a billionaire astrophysicist named Professor Wallet and taken to his laboratory, where he raised them and trained them to become superheroes.”
“Professor Wallet?” Alex asked.
“Yeah, I lost my wallet the day I wrote it and thought it was a good name,” Conner said. “Moving on, we’re going to travel to their city and meet them at the scene of a bank robbery. While they’re saving the bank, we’ll sneak inside the Zibling Mobile, follow them back to their secret laboratory, and ask them to join us.”
“Will they cooperate?” she asked.
“The Ziblings are very competitive siblings,” Conner said. “They never pass up a challenge, especially if there’s an opportunity to outshine each other.”
“Okay,” Alex said with a nod. “Zounds zuper.”
“Leave the jokes to me,” Conner said.
The twins stepped into the beam of light and disappeared from Saint Andrew’s Children’s Hospital.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE ZIBLINGS
Conner’s handwriting wiggled and zoomed through the air as the world of “The Ziblings” was created around him and his sister. The word highway stretched beneath their feet, and Alex and Conner were suddenly standing in the middle of a wide country road. Cars and large trucks honked and swerved to avoid them, and they dashed to the side of the highway to avoid getting hit.
Alex and Conner looked up and saw a large city-limits sign above them. The sign read:
BIG CITY, USA
POPULATION 7,654,321
Once the handwritten words finished constructing the new dimension, the twins saw that the highway led to an enormous city a couple of miles in the distance. It had the tallest and leanest skyscrapers Alex had ever seen; the skyline looked more like a bundle of pencils and pens than a row of buildings.
“Big City, USA?” Alex asked. “You couldn’t come up with anything more original than that?”
“It was supposed to be a placeholder until I came up with a better name, but Big City, USA, grew on me,” Conner said. “Now let’s go to the bank before it gets robbed without us.”
Alex laughed. “Now, that’s something I’ve never heard before,” she said.
The twins walked down the road and entered the busy city. The world of the Ziblings was like a highly exaggerated version of the Otherworld. The buildings were more colorful, the streets were cleaner, and the cars were shinier. Even the people were more extravagant. The men were taller and had broader shoulders and wider jaws. The women had impeccable hair, makeup, and clothes. Even the children were cuter and better behaved. It was like the twins had entered a 1950s cartoon.
Alex and Conner zigzagged through the city streets. They walked down Main Street, made a right on Center Road, and then a left on First Avenue. Alex wasn’t sure which city Conner was emulating for “The Ziblings” setting because Big City, USA, had characteristics of every American city she could think of. There were subway stations like in New York City, bridges like in San Francisco, surrounding Great Lakes like in Chicago, and BIG CITY, USA, was written across a hillside like the Hollywood sign.
They eventually found Big City Bank, in the middle of First Avenue. It was a large white building with thick pillars and a massive dome. It reminded Alex of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC. The twins walked up the front steps and went inside.
The bank had marble floors, golden pillars, and wooden counters. There were high ceilings, tall windows, and lots of elaborate lighting structures. A long line of Big City citizens waited patiently to be helped by one of a dozen bank tellers. There were also desks scattered throughout the bank where bankers helped other citizens open new accounts and apply for loans. No one appeared to have been rejected, because all the applicants had big smiles on their faces as they happily shook the bankers’ hands.
Conner took his sister to the far end of the bank, near a back door. He got down on the floor, lay facedown, and put his hands over his head.
“Are you doing yoga?” Alex asked.
“No, I’m getting ready,” he said. “We’re just in time.”
“For what?”
“The robbery,” he said, as if it were obvious. “It should be starting in five… four… three… two…”
Five armed robbers stormed into the bank. They wore all black and had mouse ears and whiskers attached to their masks. The robbers fired their guns into the air to get everyone’s attention. It was startling even to Alex, and she’d known it was coming.
“Everyone on the ground now!” the largest robber shouted. “Facedown with your hands on your heads! No talking! Don’t make me tell you twice!”
The citizens screamed and did what they were told. Alex joined her brother on the floor and copied his pose. The robbers threw big duffel bags on the wooden counters and pointed their guns at the tellers.
“Empty the safe!” the largest robber shouted. “And don’t you dare try any funny business or I’ll blow you all to the sky!”
The trembling tellers did what the robbers demanded. They opened the gigantic safe in the back of the bank and began filling the duffel bags with stacks of cash and bars of gold.
“What’s up with the ears and whiskers on their masks?” Alex whispered to her brother.
“It’s part of their gimmick,” he said. “These guys are called the Rat Pack—they’re the most infamous bank robbers in Big City, USA. The tallest one’s name is Frank, he’s the leader, and then there are his henchmen: Sammy, Dean, Joey, and Peter.”
“Just like the Rat Pack from the sixties!” Alex said.
Conner scrunched his forehead. “Dang it!” he said. “I thought I made it up—I must have heard about them from someone.”
“You two! I said no talking!” Frank yelled, pointing his gun at the twins.
Alex and Conner went silent. The Rat Pack walked around the bank and patrolled their hostages. They nudged the terrified citizens with their feet and laughed wildly as the hostages cowered and squirmed. After a few minutes of lying uncomfortably on the floor and watching the robbers torment the men and women, Alex was very eager to see the Ziblings come to the rescue. It was taking all her self-control not to transform the Rat Pack into actual rodents.
Conner tapped his sister and gestured to one of the windows. Alex looked up and saw the silhouette of a man wearing a cape. He stood heroically with his hands on his hips. Alex was so excited to see a real superhero that her stomach filled with butterflies, but the feeling quickly subsided. It took a moment for the superhero to enter the bank, not because he was conducting a plan, but because he couldn’t open the window.
Finally, with a strong tug, the hero managed to pry it open. He crawled through the small opening, but then he stepped on his cape and slipped off the windowsill. He crashed onto the floor behind a desk with a very loud thump. Everyone in the bank heard the crash and jerked their head toward it. The Rat Pack clutched their guns tighter and slowly approached the desk. The hostages waited on pins and needles, hoping it was someone who had come to their rescue.
The superhero j
umped out from behind the desk and struck the same heroic pose he had held in the window. After a closer look, Alex was surprised to see he was actually an adorable boy no more than twelve years old. He wore a sky-blue suit and a dark blue mask, with matching gloves, boots, and cape. He had messy dark hair, plump cheeks, and green eyes.
Upon seeing him, the robbers snickered and the hostages lost all hope. Apparently no one had much faith in the hero’s capability.
“Don’t worry, boys, it’s just Bolt.” Frank laughed. “The Ziblings have sent the runt of the litter!”
Bolt shifted uncomfortably at the blatant disrespect.
“Hello, Rat Pack,” the boy said in a tone obviously deeper than his real voice. “I see you’ve escaped prison and gone right back to your old tricks. I guess you can take the rats out of the garbage, but you can’t take the garbage out of the rats!”
“‘But you can’t take the garbage out of the rats,’” Frank mocked him. “You really need to work on your playful jargon if you want to be taken seriously.”
“And you need to work on following the law,” Bolt said. “Good thing there are people like me to put you back in your place!”
Frank turned to his henchmen. “Get him,” he said. “But don’t waste your bullets—he isn’t worth it.”
The boy’s face turned bright red. “Oh, yes I am!” he argued. “I’m worth all the bullets you got!”
Bolt became angry and his superpowers were activated. His body was covered in static electricity, his messy hair rose above his head, and tiny electric waves buzzed around his fingertips. Bolt somersaulted toward Frank, and with the lightest touch of his index finger, he zapped the robber on the leg.
“Ouch,” Frank said. “That almost hurt a little.”
The boy cartwheeled to Sammy and Dean and shocked them on the arms. He dived to the other side of the bank and zapped Joey on the nose and Peter on the ear. Bolt was very proud of himself, but his efforts did little to wound the Rat Pack. They just looked more irritated than before.