The night was calm, giving away no hint of misdeeds or wrongdoings. The sales of the day hadn't been too good, but that didn't stop the store owner from having a smile on his face as he readied himself to cut out for the night. The night had been calm at least, the perfect atmosphere in which to just relax and take a break.
No sooner did he turn to leave than the front door of the store exploded inward, slamming into the ground amid the shattered glass that had once been its window. "Hey, what the heck!?" The store manager stared in shock at the door that had just missed hitting him by inches.
Three tiny figured stepped through the door, with huge head and broad grins on their faces. "Knock knock." The red one in the middle said darkly. "Still open? Good."
"Now hold on, you can't just break in here, no matter what kind of freaks you are." The store manager replied angrily. "I'm calling the police if you don't leave."
"A threat..." The three boys busted up laughing, then turned their eerily large eyes on him. A shiver ran down the store manager's spine as he took a few steps back. "We don't respond well to threats." Without warning the three figures lurched forward amid flashes of red, green, and blue light.
Beverly Hills, the land of sunshine, money and promises. A girl's dream home... except of course during those few occasions when rainstorms decided to crop of and wash all those dreams down the drain. That's exactly what it felt like to Clover as she sat at her bedroom window and stared out at the gloomy gray rainfall. She didn't even have Sam and Alex there to alleviate the boredom.
"Clover, we're still best friends, but we all need time alone sometimes. Time to just kick back without any distractions, think, and relax." Sam had told her after school that morning. Clover had agreed, but really she would have rather gone shopping with them. What could possibly be more relaxing than that?
One hand grabbed the phone off the windowsill where she'd put it several minutes ago and dialed. She waited for several minutes until the answering machine came on. "No, Clover, I am not ready to go to the mall or something. Now please, it's hard to relax with you calling every five seconds." Sam's irritated voice came back. "Anyone else, talk after the tone."
Clover grumbled and hung up, throwing the phone over her shoulder. It landed on the bed with a soft thud. She stood up and marched to her bathroom, turning on the shower before beginning to peel her clothes off. If Sam and Alex wouldn't respond to her today, she had might as well prepare for tomorrow. Maybe they would be feeling better then.
Clover stepped into the shower and started rinsing herself off. The mugginess of the rain had been destroying her skin since they'd left school, especially since she'd forgotten her umbrella that morning. The cleansing shower water felt fantastic.
She was actually starting to feel better when she grabbed the specially formulated shampoo and poured some into her open palm. She rubbed it into her hair, sending bubbles raining down to the shower floor. Suddenly she heard a soft click underneath her and she froze where she was.
"No... he wouldn't..." Clover looked down slowly. The drain's grate had slid open, and suddenly the rest of the floor followed suit. Clover screamed as she plummeted down the tube to slam into the cold steel of Jerry's office, the water from the shower still raining on her as she laid face down on the floor. She could hear a pair of barely contained laughs from her side.
"Jerry, if you don't tell us that world is ending in five seconds, I am so going to kill you for this." Clover growled darkly.
"Relax Clover, everything I call you for is a potentially world-altering emergency." Jerry grabbed a towel off of his desk and threw it at her. She snatched it out of the air and wrapped it around herself before pushing herself to a sitting position. She still had soap in her hair and was sopping wet though, totally miserable. And a glance at Sam and Alex showed that they were now more focused on Jerry... best friends indeed.
"Now, down to business." Jerry snapped his fingers and a large screen opened behind him, displayed a map of the USA. "There have been a series of strange robberies, fifteen to be exact. Including one at the first national bank." Fifteen lights lit up on the map, spread out all over the country.
"Robberies!?" Clover growled angrily. "You called us here for some petty thieves!? I thought we were spies, not police officers!"
"Yeah Jerr, this is kind of out of our jurisdiction isn't it?" Sam asked.
"Normally yes. But these robberies all happened within one night, and from reports, by the same three perpetrators." Jerry replied.
"They must have one killer car." Alex commented.
"How do you know they're the same perpetrators?" Sam asked.
"Because in most of the incidents it occurred too fast for the security cameras to catch them, but in a few we get clear pictures. And they've been positively identified by all of the victims." Jerry gestured to the screen, and video from a small convenience store began rolling.
The girls watched as an employee walked toward the door, only to have the door suddenly blow inward almost on top of him. Three tiny figured stepped through the now open door. They had small bodies, huge heads, and when they raised their hands they didn't even seem to have any fingers. The camera was kind of fuzzy, so it was difficult to make out more than that. Suddenly the figures seemed to vanish in balls of light right before the camera went dead.
"Whoa, major freakshow." Alex exclaimed.
"Obviously, these things are neither human nor animal. And as you know, genetic experimentation is illegal no matter where it's done." Jerry turned off the monitor and turned toward the girls. "Your mission is to find out who created these things, and bring them to justice. And if you can, contain these things before they go on any more countrywide crime sprees."
"Got it." Sam nodded.
"Now, for your gadgets." Jerry approached his desk, from which a small assortment of gadgets rose. "Scanner Watches. Nightvision Sunglasses. Butterfly Barrette Bombs. Jetpack Backpacks. Hairpick Lockpicks. Liquid Nitrogen Breathspray. Feline Streamline Catsuits, now with stealth capabilities. And a new one, the Tranquilizer Hairbow." He picked up a small bow from the desk, holding it up to show the girls. It was bright red, with frilly white trim.
"Who's your gadget designer? Barbie?" Clover quipped irritably.
"I think it's cute." Alex replied.
"Simply press in the center, and a dart fires out of the tips. It's powerful enough to bring down any normal sized man with one dart." He picked up the gadgets and threw them at the girls, who caught them with ease. "Good luck girls, you're off to the site of the last attack." He pressed a button on the desk and the girls plunged through the floor screaming.
The small shop on the edge of a place called Citiesville had been the last place hit last night. All that was taken was three pretzels, three cold sodas, and three hot-dogs. But from the look of the store, it should have been caught at ground zero of a nuclear blast. The entire building was completely demolished, there wasn't one piece bigger than their fist.
"Wow, petty thieves with a serious attitude." Alex quipped as she kicked at a small piece of the rubble.
"Seriously. I guess theft isn't worth it unless there's at least ten thousand dollars in property damage." Sam stroked her chin thoughtfully before kneeling down to sift through the rubble.
"How could someone do this even if they wanted to?" Alex picked up one of the solid steel beams that had previous held up the roof. "They were supposedly unarmed."
"Jerry said they're not human, and after seeing this I believe him." Sam lifted her arm and tapped her Scanner Watch, which beeped and sent a soft ray of light sweeping over the rubble. "The Scanner Watch should be able to pick up anything out of the ordinary." They waited for a few moments for the scan to finish, until the watch finally beeped.
Sam and Alex gathered around to stare down at the results as Sam read them off. "Human DNA, pig DNA, cockroach DNA, rat DNA..."
"Okay, ewe. Remind me never to shop here... you know, once it's rebuilt." Alex told the others with a wry smirk.
"Whoa. There's a substance here that the watch can't identify." Sam tapped the watch, then pushed herself to her feet and looked back at her companions. "Either this guy was dealing in something more dangerous than hot-dogs or our thieves are some serious pieces of work." She looked down and pulled her compowder open. "I'm going to send this data to Jerry, see what he makes of it."
"While Jerry analyzes this stuff, what should we do?" Alex asked curiously.
"Interview the owner, see what he can tell us about his attackers." Sam replied.
Sam knocked on the door loudly, stepping back to wait with her partners and good friends for the door to open. They waited for several minutes, with Clover tapping her foot impatiently on the ground. Finally the doorknob turned with all the speed of a turtle sliding down a hill and the door slid open a crack, revealing one bloodshot eyeball staring out at them. A chain kept the door from opening any wider.
"Y... yes? What is it?" The man's voice cracked as he spoke, and the eye jerked back and forth between the three girls.
Sam cleared her throat and put on a fake smile. "I'm Sam. These are my colleagues Alex and Clover, from the National Daily News. We'd like to speak to you about the incident at your store last night." The eye stared at her, unblinking, for several more minutes.
"Go away. There was no incident." The door slammed shut suddenly, leaving the girls staring dumbfounded at the door.
"Man, these things totally freaked him out." Alex commented.
"Hmm... maybe one of the other victims would prove more useful." Sam turned to walk away from the small house, with her friends following behind her. Clover had seemed unusually quiet since they'd left Jerry's office. Well, it wasn't Sam's place to pry. Maybe she was still embarrassed from the timing of her WOOHP experience. Sam knew she would be more paranoid about bathing for a while too.
The beeping of her compowder snapped her out of her thoughts. She grabbed it and pulled it open, looking down at it with Alex peering over her shoulder. "Find out anything Jerr?"
"It looks like the substance you sent in is a combination of things. But the primary ingredient seems to be a rare chemical created by an independent professor in Townsville U.S.A. called Chemical-X." Jerry told them as his fingers flew over the keyboard in front of him.
"Independent professor? Sounds like mad scientist material to me." Alex quipped. Sam nodded in agreement, but Clover ignored the conversation altogether.
"I'm sending you his exact address. Be careful spies, his creations are obviously extremely dangerous, and should be approached with caution." Jerry cautioned them.
"We've got it covered Jerr." Sam closed her compowder and looked over at her friends. "It's time we pay the good Professor a little visit and see how he responds."
"Professsooooooor!" Bubbles' scream echoed through the Utonium household as she streaked through the living room toward the kitchen, tailed by her brunette haired sister. "Buttercup burned up my drawing of a kitty cat with bright orange fur and beautiful blue eyes and cute little white polka dots with red paws and..." Bubbles was interrupted by her sister.
"Well she cooked my meat! Now I don't have a punching bag!" Buttercup complained, glaring at her blonde-haired sister.
"I did not cook your meat! You probably did, so you could eat it!" Bubbles retorted.
"Eat it!? I would rather shove it up your-" Buttercup was interrupted by a voice that was gentle, but carried absolute authority over all three girls.
"Now girls, are a few possessions worth this? Bubbles, you have plenty of pictures and can make lots of new, even prettier ones. And Buttercup, there's more meat in the freezer." Professor Utonium stared down at them. Buttercup huffed and crossed her arms over her chest while Bubbles stared up at him in delight.
"You're right... I'll go make another one!" She giggled and streaked up the living room stares to the bedroom. Buttercup growled and turned to float away, but the Professor put a hand on her shoulder.
"Buttercup, what have I told you about starting fights with Bubbles?" He asked. Buttercup ignored him, staring away from him irritably. "One of these days you're going to wind up regretting being so angry with her."
"Yeah whatever." Buttercup retorted irritably.
Professor Utonium sighed and pushed her gently toward the stairs. "Head up to get ready for bed, and tell your sisters to do the same thing." Buttercup silently floated up the stairs, with the professor trudging into the living room to plop down on the couch. No sooner had he settled down than he heard the doorbell.
With a soft sigh he pushed himself up and walked up to the door, pulling it open. He blinked in surprise when he saw three girls staring at him, wearing formal blouses and skirts. The redhead was even wearing a pair of round-rimmed glasses.
The redhead spoke first. "Hello, Professor Utonium? I'm Samantha, with the Science Committee of Ethics. These are my associates, Clover and Alex. If you don't mind, we would like to ask you a few questions."
"Not at all, come on in." Professor Utonium stepped back to let the three girls walk into the living room.
"Whoa, talk about retro." Alex commented appreciatively. The Professor led them to the couch, where they sat down and watched him take a seat in the chair across from them.
"What kind of questions are these?" The Professor asked.
"Just a few survey questions." Sam cleared her throat and took out a small clipboard. "Now, what are you views on cloning?"
"Well I-" The Professor was interrupted by a voice from upstairs.
"Professor! Buttercup's spraying me with toothpaste!" A high-pitched voice squealed angrily.
"I am not!" Another, lower-pitch voice called back.
The Professor flashed the three girls an apologetic smile. "If you'll excuse me, I should put my daughters to bed. I'll just be a moment."
"No problem at all." Sam replied. The three girls watched the professor walk up the stairs and disappear into the back of the house. "He doesn't seem like your typical mad scientist bent on taking over the world."
"Maybe he's not mad? He could just be insane, and his creations are sneaking out on their own to take over the world and present it to him as a Father's Day gift." Alex speculated thoughtfully. Clover and Sam stared at her for a moment, then shook their heads.
"Well I don't see anything out of the ordinary. Maybe Jerry was wrong about him being the only person with access to the chemi-" Sam was cut off when a beam of blue light shot through the ceiling above them, slamming into the coffee table with enough force to split it into splinters. The three spies shrieked and leapt to their feet, backing away as a figure very much like the ones from the video pushed itself to its feet.
"You... you... stupid doodoo brain!" the girl streaked into the air with a flash of blue light, vanishing back into the hole from which it had come. The spies exchanged one significant glance, not even having to say that they'd just found the key evidence they wee looking for. This professor was definitely involved somehow. But were these girls the thieves?
Eventually the noises upstairs faded and Professor Utonium descended the stairs again, giving the spies an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry about the interruption. Shall we continue?"
"No thank you sir, I think we're going to have to postpone. It's getting kind of late." Sam stood up, with her friends following suit quickly. "We'll get in touch with you later."
"Alright, I'm available any time." The Professor led them to the door and closed it behind them, leaving them standing outside.
"Okay, we know who it is. Now we have to figure out how to neutralize those girls. They're way too dangerous to deal with head-on." Sam told her friends as they walked away from the house.
"Enough!" Clover screamed suddenly, startling her two friends. They stared at her like she'd gone insane, but Clover just stared at them red-faced. "I'm getting tired of sitting here listening to you two ramble on among yourselves and leaving me out!"
"Um... you're the one who's been quiet this whole time." Alex replied.
"Because I didn't want to BOTHER you! You didn't even care when Jerry decided to sneak me away like some kind of pervert. Right after you decided we needed 'time apart'."
"Clover, can we talk about this later please?" Sam asked irritably. She reached around and pulled her backpack off so she could rummage through it.
"What, do we have something more important to do?" Clover demanded. "More important than our friendship!?"
"Frankly, yes. We have a dangerous force to stop. And to do that, we need information." Sam pulled out her Streamline Feline Catsuit, giving her friends a sly look.
"All right, I've always wanted to try these things on. Black is so my color." Alex pulled her backpack off and pulled out her Catsuit. Clover growled irritably, but pulled her backpack off to seek her own Catsuit. They did have a job to do, she would have to vent her frustration on her friends later, after this was all taken care of.
Clad in their Streamline Feline Catsuits, the three girls crept back up to the Utonium house well into the night. Sam reached up and pulled the Hairpick Lockpick out of her hair, sticking it in the doorknob and carefully pushing the door open. They slipped inside quickly, with Clover shutting the door behind her.
They stood up slowly, looking around cautiously. Oddly enough, there didn't seem to be any security systems. "No laser beams, no killer robots, no guards... I wish all megalomaniacs were like this." Alex quipped softly.
"Come on, look for anything that might give us an edge over those girls, but stay on the bottom floor." Sam whispered. The spies split up, searching through the bottom floor. Alex made her way into the kitchen, while Clover examined everything in the living room. Sam walked through the living room, eventually coming to a door set against the far wall. She pulled it open, revealing a flight of stairs leading down into the darkness.
She slid her nightvision Sunglasses on as she walked down the stairs, looking around. It was almost like walking into a separate building. Beakers, machines, and notes littered the laboratory. Sam reached the bottom of the stairs and walked across the room, examining the various machines and beakers as she passed.
She stopped when she saw a small beaker in front of her, with the word 'Antidote=X' plastered on the front. "Jerry said these things were made with Chemical-X... if this is an antidote to that, maybe it's their weakness." She reached up and took off her Tranquilizer Hairbow, grabbing the beaker from the desk.
"Sammy, code red! Emergency! Hurry!" Alex's hushed but frantic voice floated down from the top of the stairs. Sam quickly opened the darts inside the hairbow and poured in the Antidote-X, closing it as quickly just before the lights came on. Sam stood up straight and slowly turned around, seeing Professor Utonium staring down at her from the top of the stairs with three little girls floating at his head-level.
"Sam?" He cocked his head to the side, pushing his hands into his pajama pockets. "You were a thief the whole time? That's disappointing..." He sighed. "I thought some young folk had finally taken an interest in science."
"Isn't this the part where you tie me up and tell me your diabolical plan for world domination or revenge or whatever?" Sam asked, keeping the hairbow clutched in her fist. She could see something moving behind Professor Utonium, a soft bending of the little light through the window. Alex or Clover, in their Catsuit's camouflage mode.
"World domination? Revenge?" What are you talking about?" As Sam watched one of the Butterfly Barrette's hit the ground behind the small group of four. It began beeping, drawing their attention back toward it just before it detonated. The blast sent both the Professor and the girls hurtling toward the bottom of the stairs.
Sam raised the Tranquilizer Hairbow and pointed it at the little girls, who were already pulling themselves up. "Oh that's it, you're going down!" The brunette hurled herself at Sam with blinding speed, vanishing in a blur of green light. Sam shrieked and backed away even as she fired several shots. The dart struck home on the girl's shoulder. "Wh... hey!" The little girl's light faded and she fell to the ground, skidding to a stop by Sam's legs.
Sam stepped on the girl to keep her from getting up, looking up to make sure that Clover and Alex had the other two girls pinned. The darts had all struck home, apparently rendering the girls powerless. The Professor pushed himself painfully to his knees, holding his arm. He looked the worst of them all from the blast.
"Professor!" The three little mutants shouted worriedly as he sank back to his knees, grimacing in pain.
"Girls..." He sank to the floor, too injured to move. Alex let go of the blonde mutant to kneel down beside him and roll him to his back. She put her fingers on his neck to check for a pulse, then took off her glove and put it in front of his mouth.
"He'll be fine, but we should get him to a doctor." Alex announced.
"Well... I guess this is a mission complete." For some reason, Sam didn't feel very good about herself as she pulled out her compowder to call Jerry and his cleanup crew to the scene. All three mutants were staring at the Professor like worried children... they certainly didn't look like the vicious attackers from the video. But who else could it have been?
The night was still young, with the moon high above the Earth as Clover, Alex, Sam and Jerry stood outside the Utonium house. The three little mutants stood covered in shackles by the sidewalk. They hadn't even tried to escape, they seemed more interested in watching Professor Utonium's stretcher move across the street to get him to the ambulance they'd called to the scene.
"Well done girls. I believe this is a record time for you." Jerry smiled appreciatively.
"Yeah... but are we sure these are the people responsible for all those robberies?" Sam asked, staring down at the girls. The redhead was staring at the Professor worriedly, while the Brunette looked like she was trying to bust out of her chains and strangle somebody. The blonde was bawling furiously, and quite loudly.
"Even if they're not, genetic engineering is illegal. And there's no doubt that these three aren't natural." Jerry gestured to the three girls. "Until there are further developments, we'll consider the case closed. Go home and get some rest girls." Jerry turned to walk toward his private black WOOHP jet.
Sam sighed and looked back at the small girls. The Professor groaned and opened his eyes from the stretcher, turning his head to look down at the mutants on the ground in front of the sidewalk. His expression shifted from one of pain to one of fear as he was pushed into the ambulance, and the door was shut firmly behind him.
"So... I guess we go home." Alex commented, though she didn't sound any more sure about this than Sam felt. Sam watched one of the big WOOHP agents pick up the three mutants by the chain and pull them into one of the massive WOOHP helicopters.
"Yeah... come on. We have a long day at school tomorrow..." Sam turned away from the scene, wishing to just forget it all. She usually felt good about solving the mission and putting bad guys behind bars... but she didn't feel good at all about this. Something didn't sit right... and she really wanted to find out what it was. Perhaps eventually she would...