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Chapter Seven

The Chase

Looking out at the clouds rolling by below him, Sean smiled to himself in satisfaction. His time as a field agent was working well for him so far. And the girls had exceeded his and Jerry's expectations. Now if only they could find out what happened to these missing people.

Sean thought back to the discovery they made regarding the Fabulizer machines. To think people would change their look just with the press of a button. What was even more disturbing was that it seemed to be very popular. Knowing some people, for example, Mandy, they'd try it out without thinking twice.

To him, the look wasn't all that attractive. What was the point of looking good if everyone just had the same face?

"So, let me get this straight," Sam said, interrupting his thoughts. "The square of the length of the side opposite the right angle, which we call the hypotenuse, is equal to the sum of the squares of the lengths of the two other sides?"

He looked to the girls. Sam was standing in front of a blackboard, showing her work to their tutor, an older man with glasses.

"Couldn't have said it better myself, Samantha!" he congratulated.

Sean stood up, walking over to her. Clover and Alex sat on the floor in front of them, trying to absorb the information their tutor had relayed, but clearly not as well as Sam did.

Indeed, when they'd first boarded, the first thing Sam had asked was where their tutor was supposed to be, which turned out to be in the cockpit, with the controls set on autopilot. In contrast, Clover and Alex found the most private room in the jet where they each changed out of their spy uniforms. Sam and Sean did follow suit, of course. But Sam's focus was on studying.

As far as he could tell, he didn't much about his teammates, other than the fact that Sam was the smart one, Clover was a boy-crazy shopaholic, and Alex was into sports from what he noticed about her.

"You know," he said at last. "It's funny, we're on the same team and we don't know anything about each other."

Sam, Alex, and Clover looked at each other, nonverbally agreeing he was right.

"What do you wanna know?" Sam asked.

"Well, I know W.O.O.H.P got you transferred here, but what was your life like before you came to Beverly Hills?"

Alex stood up. "Well, my dad's a doctor, but when he was in high school, he played soccer. When I started liking he sports, he encouraged me to try out for the soccer team. But my mom didn't like the idea. She just wanted me to focus on school. But I kinda talked her into it. I just had to pass a chemistry test. So, I was the best player on my team at my old school, and my mom's warmed up to the idea since I brought home that trophy."

Sean nodded, then turned to Sam.

"Not much to say about me," she said. "My parents own a bookstore. Well, actually, a chain of bookstores. I guess because of that, I've always liked reading. When I was a kid, I read everything I could get my hands on, Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley, T.S Elliot, Edgar Allen Poe, you name it."

Then she held her arms closer to her body. "It really helped my grades, you know. But it's kind of hard to make friends when everyone thinks you're trying to be smarter than they are. Not that I was, I just got lucky most of the time. Not that Tara Lockheart cared when she dipped my hair in that paint back in kindergarten. Or drew that horrible picture of me in fifth grade!"

She caught herself. "But anyway, I'm over that now."

Clover was next. She looked at them as if saying, "Do I really have to?"

The pleading looks on her teammates' faces changed her tune.

"Fine," she sighed. "My dad's an ex-Air Force pilot and my mom's a surgeon. And my mom totally wants me to be just like her."

"And you don't?" Sean asked.

Clover looked insulted. "Please, I'm not throwing all of this..." she indicated her designer clothes. "...just to get my hands dirty on someone else's brain! I mean, ew!"

"I get the idea," Sean stated, remembering his own discomfort the few times he visited his mother at work whenever she was working in the trauma unit.

"Wait," Alex said. "So, like, what do you want to do?"

Clover got a dreamy look on her face. "What else? I wanna design like Yves Mont-Blanc!"

"Who?" Sean asked, confused.

Clover's face turned back to disgust. "Hello! He's only the best designer since Coco Chanel!"

She groaned and sat back.

"Boys," she muttered under her breath.

Ignoring the comment, Sean sat down on the floor beside Sam, who looked at him with interest.

"What about you?" she asked.

He looked up at her, surprised.

"What's your story?"

Sean breathed deeply. "Well, it's not much. I've been a W.O.O.H.P agent since middle school."

"What do your parents do?"

"Well, my mom's a nurse. And my dad... I never really knew him. He died before I was born."

The girls gasped at that revelation.

"Yeah, I know, it's sad. The way my mom tells it, they met when she was eighteen. He was older than her by about two years. She'd moved here from San Francisco. She was studying to become a nurse. I don't really know what he was or what he wanted to be. They met at Santa Monica pier. My mom was frustrated because she wanted to win this... I don't know what it was, I think it was a lava lamp. Anyway, she wanted it for her new apartment. To get it, she had to toss three rings onto these bottles, but she kept missing. That's when my dad stepped in. He got the lava lamp for her, and they started seeing more of each other after that.

"And after only five months of knowing he each other, he asked her to marry him. Mom didn't know what to think. She told him she needed some time to think about it. After a month, she made up her mind. She decided she wanted to. But then she found out that he died in a car accident the day before. A week after that, she found out she was pregnant with me."

The girls looked stunned, and in the case of Alex, teary.

"That's so sad," Sam said.

Sean sighed in agreement. "Yeah. My mom doesn't talk about him. She doesn't keep pictures of him. I don't even know his name or where he's buried."

"We're sorry," Sam consoled.

"Don't be," he replied gently. "It was a long time ago."

Before anymore could be said, the jet shook, sending all occupants crashing to the ceiling then back to the floor.

"What was that?!" Alex asked, getting over Sean's heartbreaking story.

"We've just been hit by something!" Clover said.

More turbulence, and the teens fell to the back of the plane.

Getting up, Clover looked out the window.

Beside them, a black fighter jet appeared just above the clouds.

"Whoa!" Clover exclaimed. "Check out that ship! It's like all sorts of mega mod!"

"Try mega Martian!" Alex cried; her hair disarrayed. "I told you aliens had something to do with this!"

"Looks like autopilot time's over, guys!" Sam announced. "We're gonna have to do some defensive driving. And quick!"

"Alright," Sean added. "Does anyone here know how to fly a plane?"

"Well," Alex said in response. "Luckily, I got my permit last week!"

She ran off to the cockpit, the others looking unsure.

"Well," Sean said. "I guess she's better than no one."

At that moment, the jet picked up speed, spinning through the air twice, before doing a nosedive.

In the cabin, the three other spies were hanging on for dear life and Sean was busy trying not to vomit.

Eventually, the jet reached the ocean, flying directly above the water.

Sean, Sam, and Clover joined Alex in the cockpit. Clover pressed a button, sending a small missile at the other jet, which dodged and instead allowed the projectile to hit a hot-air balloon shaped like a Dacshund.

"Clover!" Sean scolded.

"Oopsie," she said, guiltily. "My bad."

"Don't worry!" Alex reassured. "We'll be in striking position in no time!"

She reached for another switch, one that Sean recognized from reading a schematic of the jet.

"Alex, wait!" he warned. "That's the..."

But it was too late. She had already pulled it and the ceiling above her opened up and her seat was launched through it like a rocket.

"...ejector seat," he finished.

"ALEX!" Clover and Sam cried out.

"Don't worry!" Sean reassured them, grabbing his circular jetpack. "I'll get her!"

Quickly remembering the controls, he flew out of the hole in the roof and into the open air.

He looked around, hoping to spot her somewhere.

"Wow!" he heard her say loudly enough for him to hear. "This look is popular! Even aliens are getting it now!"

He looked down and saw her clinging to the nose of the fighter jet that had been chasing them.

The jet did a barrel roll, then another trying to shake her off. Then it rose up into the clouds.

"Alex!" Sean shouted. propelling himself further upward.

"Hang, on! I'm coming!"

The fighter jet did one last barrel roll, sending the girl falling off.

Outstretching his arms, Sean caught her.

"Wow!" she exclaimed. "Thanks, Sean!"

"No prob!" he said, propelling himself and her back to the W.O.O.H.P jet.

As they landed in the cockpit, they were knocked off their feet by what Sean could only guess were lasers rather than bullets.

"Doesn't this guy ever give up?!" Clover asked.

"Apparently, not," Sam said.

"I think I have an idea," Sean offered. "He can chase what he can't see."

He gestured to a button in front of Sam's seat.

"Push that red button, it'll make the jet invisible."

Sam did so, and the only thing left to do was pray that it worked.

After fifteen seconds, the fighter jet flew off.

"Yeah!" Clover celebrated, high fiving Alex.

"We did it!" Sean said, glad to be alive.

"Score one for the good spies!" Alex added.

"Now let's get back to school," Sam said, decloaking the jet.

Putting the plane back on autopilot, Sean went back to the cabin and picked up a parachute.

He knew they weren't any closer to completing the mission, but he and the girls felt more like friends now that they had faced mortal peril together.