As promised here is the next chapter. And so far, it's my longest.
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Chapter Nine
Fabutopia
Mandy's House- 10:57 PM
All was quiet on this simple Los Angeles neighborhood. There was no sound but the distant traffic and the occasional chirp of a cricket.
The silence made it easier for four certain teen spies to sneak around the back of the house.
Every window for miles was dark, every door locked. But Sean knew that every building had another way in if you could find it.
As he and the girls snuck around the pool in Mandy's backyard, they looked up at a window on the second floor.
"That must be Mandy's room!" Clover exclaimed. "Too bad we can't see what's going on."
"Actually, we can," Sean said, pulling out a purple pair of shades.
"The Heat Sensor 6000 Infrared Motion Detector Sunglasses."
He put them on, allowing him to see the temperature of the room and every object inside it.
At a vanity was a feminine figure making a series of strokes with a hairbrush.
Undoubtedly Mandy.
She got up very suddenly then made her way toward the bed, crawling under the covers and lying perfectly still.
Sean didn't have to hear inside the room to know she was asleep.
"She's out cold!" he informed the girls.
He pocketed the sunglasses.
"Now's our chance to slip inside."
He and Sam activated their bungee belts, the other two following suit.
As the buckles clipped onto the edge of the house, all four spies ascended.
Luckily, the bedroom window was open, allowing them easy access.
Being as quiet as they could, they tiptoed around the room until they reached foot of Mandy's bed.
"She always was a heavy sleeper," Sean commented.
The girls looked at him with narrowed eyes.
"Well, she always did fall asleep whenever I tried to tutor her!"
A strange electronic beeping cut him off though.
Jumping to action, they each hid in a different section of the room.
Sam hid behind Mandy's vanity, Clover underneath a chair, Alex behind a mirror, and Sean behind a TV.
As they peeked out from behind their hiding places, Alex opened her Compowder.
"The Compowder's picking up some sort of signal," Alex reported. "But it doesn't say where it's coming from."
Sean opened his wallet phone. "My wallet phone's doing the same thing."
He looked at the screen, looking at the dot on the map of California which indicated his and the girls' location.
They looked over to Mandy, who was snoring away, peacefully unaware of the four intruders in her room.
To Sean, nothing looked out of the ordinary. Except for a few seconds when he thought he saw her cheek mole blink like a Christmas light.
As they got closer, they had to back away after Mandy fell out of bed.
For a few seconds, they thought their cover was blown as Mandy stood up, fully awake.
Or was she?
She didn't seem... normal. Well, as normal as someone like Mandy could be.
Blowing her bang out of her hair, she was out the bedroom door and down the stairs, walking as if in a trance.
"Okay," Sam said. "That was bizarre even by Mandy's standards!"
"Let's follow her!" Sean suggested.
Using their belts again, they descended down the wall outside the room.
Crawling on their hands and knees, they rolled over the edge of the small wall surrounding the pool and dove into the water.
Surfacing, they looked up to see Mandy still in a haze. She went through the gate separating her backyard from the rest of the streets.
"Come on!" Sam urged, getting out of the water.
Sean repeated her actions, followed by Alex and Clover.
Eventually, they came to the sand dunes near the beach.
"Look!" Clover shouted. "Over there!"
Down below their ledge, there was a swarm of people, their features indiscernible in the dark.
And they were all walking in the same fashion as Mandy, in a zombie-like state.
"Where did all these people come from?" Sam asked.
"And where could they be going at this time of night?" Sean added onto her question.
"Whatever Mandy's up to, she seems to have started a new trend," Clover commented.
They looked ahead to where the crowd was going. Behind a large rock formation on the beach, two strange blue lights floated up into the night sky.
"Whoa!" Sam exclaimed in awe.
But as the lights swooped down toward them, they ducked.
They looked back up to see a very familiar jet.
"It's that crazy ship from before!" Clover alerted the others. "Hit the deck!"
They all dived over the edge of the rock they were crouching below.
"Hold on!" Sam said. "I don't think it's here for us."
And all four ran down to the beach.
They followed the jet and the two lights, which turned out to be floating crystalline structures that served as the jet's only source of illumination.
The jet flew toward the same rock formation that they noticed the lights coming from. The people were swarming in at some sort of alcove that Sean could only guess served as an entrance.
As they climbed the face of the cliff, they had no idea of what to expect at the top.
But a giant landing pad in the center was not one of those things that they expected.
People, from teenagers to young adults stood in a circular fashion around the edges of the rock formation.
Though they were only still for a few moments before they made their way to the center.
"Huh? Sam wondered. as a low rumbling echoed through the night air.
Sean followed his teammates gaze to see what was making the noise.
Before their eyes, a large crystal hovered in the sky above them.
Sean knew it was more likely a spaceship made to look like a diamond, but it still caught his attention.
The diamond-like ship opened up near the edge and the jet flew backwards and into it.
As it lowered, he got a better look at it, noting that it had eight mechanical legs below it that made it look like some sort of inorganic octopus.
But as it landed, it seemed more like a spider, almost.
The people below it expressed wonder, but they didn't seem to understand it any more than the four spies did.
"Wow!" Sean said in awe.
At that moment, the bottom of the ship opened up, letting a beam of blue light come down onto the ground below it.
And, more importantly, sucked up everyone within its range.
"Fabulous!" he heard Mandy's voice call out.
Sean turned the girls.
"You know, Alex," he said. "I didn't take you seriously when you thought aliens were involved, but at this point it wouldn't surprise me."
Before any more could be said, Alex gasped.
"Oinky!" she cried.
"What did they do to you?! I gotta save him!"
She ran off toward the light.
"Alex!" the others shouted after her, running in the same direction.
She jumped up, grabbing what she was so desperate to save, the same pig she had back in Peppy's office.
Only it looked somewhat different. Apparently, he had gone through one of the Fabulizer machines.
By the time Alex realized she was in a tractor beam, it was too late to do anything about it.
Clover and Sam grabbed her legs, while Sean held on to Sam's left foot.
So, they were all completely helpless when the hatch they were pulled into closed.
They fell onto a very cold, very shiny floor.
A pair of doors opened, exposing a hallway filled with electronic circuits.
At the end of that hall was what they could only imagine was the ship's seating area.
Every occupant of the ship was in groups of four, resting in comfortable indents in the wall.
Predictably, they all looked the same.
"Fabulous!" they all shouted, flipping their bangs.
"Do you think they know we're here?" Sean asked.
"Just to be safe," Sam responded. "We should try to blend in with the Fabulized people."
"Do we have to?" Clover asked, indignantly. "I mean, what fun is blending in with a crowd when you're totally used to standing out?"
In response, Sean opened his wallet phone, selected a disguise for himself, and activated it. He chose a grey tank top, a pair of khaki shorts and two black shoes.
He also selected one for Sam and Alex, picking a short blue dress, with purple pants and sandals for the former and a yellow top, purple skirt, yellow sneakers and tube socks for the latter.
Then he aimed it at Clover.
"Fine!" she relented.
Sean picked out her disguise, a dark pink short dress.
"It's a good thing I always carry an emergency makeup kit."
She pulled out a small pink box.
"Way to go, Clover," Alex congratulated after she was finished.
"I don't even recognize myself!"
Clover had done her best to replicate the Fabulized look on herself and the others, but the one thing she lacked, unfortunately, was hair dye.
Otherwise, the partially blinding bang, fake dimples, and artificial mole was a good attempt.
Sean looked in a mirror that Clover had provided for him.
"I feel ridiculous," he complained.
"Tell me about it," Clover agreed. "Let's just solve this case as quickly as possible so we can get back to our normal, much hotter selves."
Sean nodded.
They each got in an unoccupied indent in the wall, Sean sitting on the far end beside Alex.
Clover pressed a button, securing the four in.
"Well, I think it's time we call Jerry," Sean advised. "He needs to know what we've found out."
He opened his wallet phone pressing the button that would connect him to his boss, but the screen just displayed static.
Sean groaned in frustration. "He's not answering."
"Forget Jerry!" Clover said, pulling out her Compowder. "Let's send a distress call to Tad! I know he'll save us!"
"Yeah," Sean muttered. "When pigs fly."
"HELP!" the girls screamed into the Compowder, ignoring Sean.
"HELP US!"
Clover hung up.
"I wouldn't get my hopes up," Sean warned them. "Tad's never liked me, and I don't think that's gonna change just because you send him a distress call. If he's even there to hear it."
"So, what's your problem with him anyway?" Sam asked.
"What's my problem?" he repeated. "How about framing me for vandalizing the W.O.O.H.P break room? That's not all. Reprogramming my wallet phone to let out an airhorn noise whenever I get a call, saying that W.O.O.H.P's nuclear reactor is undergoing a meltdown and telling me to get it under control, but it turns out there's nothing wrong with it? The list goes on!"
"So, he's a bully?" Alex asked.
"What do you think? I'd say he's worse than Mandy!"
Clover looked aghast.
"I think you're jealous," she said.
"Jealous? Of him? Why would I be? Because he was picked to be a field agent when we finished training and I get stuck being a teacher?"
Sean put his hands over his mouth, realizing he'd just answered his own question.
"Okay," he admitted. "Point taken. But Tad is not the Prince Charming you think he is, Clover."
If any of what he said got through to her, it was soon forgotten as Clover looked out into the window at their current location: the cold darkness of space.
"Where could they be taking us?!" she asked, panicking. "I mean this is outer space. It's completely barren out here!"
"Completely barren except for that thing!" Alex said, pointing.
As his eyes adjusted, Sean could see just what she was pointing to.
Another gargantuan diamond, this one surrounded by an equally large metal ring which connected itself to the jewel via about two dozen metal chutes. Surrounding the ring, covering the surface were dozens of green holes.
"Fabulous!" the other occupants exclaimed.
The spies looked at the others, a little freaked out.
"Okay," Clover said. "That does not look like a very friendly place!"
"Though you have to give them credit for designing it," Sean admitted. "Looks like NASA has some competition."
"Get ready!" Sam said. "I think we're about to dock!"
"Fabulous!" everyone else repeated.
The four teens closed their eyes, waiting for the moment the ship would dock.
A loud metallic clank announced that their journey was over, as all outside the window was dark until a green light poured into the room.
The light turned white; the windows slid open and the restraints holding the passengers were undone.
Sean and the girls squinted against the blinding light, Alex still holding the pig and following the others.
"No matter what kind of horrible fate lurks behind that door," Clover said, fearfully, as she and the others closed their eyes.
"I just want you guys to know one thing."
"Welcome to Fabutopia," a cool, feminine voice announced.
Sean opened his eyes. He was in a long, futuristic hallway dotted with numerous screens. Each showing a different kind of area meant for recreation.
Restaurants, pools, gyms, an artificial beach. In short, everything he did not expect to find all the way out here.
"The newest frontier in Fabulized living," the voice continued.
Clover let out a small gasp and looked around her in amazement.
"Where all your whims and desires are catered to."
"This place seriously rocks!" Clover shouted, excited.
"Maybe," Sean admitted. "But why is it out here at all?"
The voice just chimed in again.
"Enjoy our full-service spa, sweatless gym, air-conditioned indoor beach, all day nightclub, and gourmet zero-calorie restaurant. Best of all, everything is connected by luxurious red carpet lined catwalks, so you can strut in style from location to location with utter panache."
Soon enough, the hallway gave way to a bridge, which overlooked the same air-conditioned beach the voice mentioned earlier.
It almost reminded Sean of a real beachfront, with docks parking jet skis, numerous lounge chairs decorating the sand, hotels all over the background and a bar that served every kind of beverage imaginable.
It was this bar where the spies decided to sit and analyze the situation.
"So, this mission is about people being transported to a luxury hotel in outer space?" Sam summed up, confused.
"You have to admit it's pretty anticlimactic," Sean said, sipping a low-calorie lemonade he'd ordered.
"Isn't it great?!" Clover asked with glee. "We should've become spies a whole lot sooner."
Sean put his drink down. "Focus on the mission, Clover. This isn't a vacation."
Clover pouted.
He turned away from the bar.
"Nice or not, these people were brought here against their will."
"Guys, look!" Alex shouted. "There's Peppy Wolfman and Rob Heartthrob playing beach volleyball together!"
Indeed, the two celebrities were tossing a seemingly brand-new volleyball over a net, with Rob losing his balance and falling in the sand.
"Fabulous!" he said, in a dreamlike voice.
Clover gasped. "Not Rob too!"
She lowered her head.
"Now we have to find the tasteless creep behind all of this!" she continued, determined.
In the distance, Sean could see small, artificial island being rowed towards the shore. The island had little decoration other than two potted plants behind a marble gazebo. Under the gazebo was a large cake, with at least five layers.
What really caught their attention was the top three layers falling away to reveal a man inside. He was dressed like a king complete with crown, ermine cape, and scepter. His suit appeared to be very expensive underneath the cape. And like practically everyone else on that space station, he had the same platinum-streaked hair, dimples and cheek mole.
"Hello, Fabulites!" he greeted in a very flamboyant voice.
"I think we just did," Sean whispered, responding to Clover's earlier statement.
The man continued. "I am Fabu, your leader and savior!"
By now, his face was on every screen in the vicinity, and presumably the whole resort.
"And this is our fabulous new home, Fabutopia!"
"Wait a second!" Clover gasped with recognition. "I know this goofball!"
"You do?!" Sean asked.
"Yeah, he's from the Top 10 Failed Models of All Time primetime special!"
Sean shrugged. "I'm not following."
In response, Clover pulled out her Compowder, and pulled up a clip from the special in question.
In it, a man, or Fabu as he was apparently called, strutted out onto a stage wearing an outfit that could only be described as 50% feathers, 10% satin, and 90% spandex.
"You're right!" Alex agreed. "Fabu was ranked No.1, on account of his career only lasted only lasted five minutes, literally!"
"Five minutes?" Sean inquired. "What happened?"
But the video answered for him. Fabu inhaled his feathered collar and, apparently allergic to feathers, sneezed the whole outfit off, leaving him in his underwear.
"Never mind," Sean said, snapping Clover's Compowder shut.
They turned back toward the disgraced model, who by this point was at the shore.
Fabu held up his diamond tipped staff.
"You've all been summoned here by my hood ornament beacon!" he explained. "Which activated the hypnotizing microchips inside your cheek moles!"
Sean thought back to when he saw Mandy's briefly flash. That had to have been to microchip he was talking about.
"I assure you," Fabu went on. "The journey was well worth it! Fabutopia is exactly the type of elite oasis where people who look like us deserve to live!"
"Fabulous!" the crowd proclaimed, as if on cue.
Fabu touched the left side of his face.
"You see, because my awkward childhood appearance kept me out of the In Crowd, I cultivated this perfect in an effort to become a famous model. But no one appreciated me!"
Then his tone turned triumphant.
"Until now! With all of you adopting a Fabulized look, I'm finally vindicated! And I can blow up the Earth and eliminate the non-fabulous!"
Under Fabu's hypnotic spell, everyone cheered. Well, not everyone.
Sean felt his pulse quicken. This guy was crazy.
But Alex voiced what the other spies dared only think.
"Blow up Earth?!" she yelled in surprise. "Are you completely cracked?!"
An unsettling silence came over the crowd, which parted to give Fabu a clear view of the four teens.
Alex, it seemed, realized her mistake.
"I mean," she said nervously as Sean, Sam, and Clover facepalmed.
"What I meant to say was, 'Fabulous!' Blowing up our home planet sounds fabulous!"
The man rowing Fabu around made his way to them, a very big man in orange spandex.
"You are not fabulous!" he growled in a Russian accent. "You are intruder!"
He threw off the white cape he was wearing.
"Then seize her!" Fabu ordered. "Fabutopia is a guest list only venue!"
"Guess disguise time is over girls," Sean said, pressing the button on his wallet phone that canceled the disguises, which also wiped away the overly cosmetic look Clover painted on him.
All four took off running, the Russian man in hot pursuit.
The chase first took them to what appeared to be the spa, numerous people, mostly women wrapped in towels enjoying themselves through either a mineral bath, shiatsu massage, or seaweed wrap.
Alex took the opportunity to swipe some cucumbers off a woman's face and throw at their pursuer, who just blocked them with a towel he swiped from another woman. She got it back, needless to say without even noticing what it had been used for.
"Fabulous!" she exclaimed, not really caring that the front of her towel was covered in cucumber slices.
The four spies left the spa, coming to a circular hallway, where they found their path blocked by another swarm of Fabulized people.
They heard another door open behind them, revealing the same man who had been chasing them.
They ran through another door, this one leading to the gym, with many people either at exercise bikes or lifting weights.
Unfortunately, the gym had no other exits, apparently. The only other feature the spies could see was a large window that took up the entire opposite wall, with a view of the planet below.
They turned around to see their pursuer.
Each took a fighting stance.
Alex let out a karate yell and jumped to his left side.
Sean did the same, jumping behind his back.
The four moved closer, boxing him in.
Sam let out a kick which would probably have hit his face had he not blocked it.
She gave another one, but he dodged it, then did a leg sweep, knocking her off balance.
Sean let out a kick of his own that nearly hit his solar plexus, if not for the man's quick reflexes.
He landed next to Sam, nursing his wounded ego. He normally wasn't so bad at hand-to-hand combat.
Alex did a backflip, eventually wrapping her legs around the man's neck, but he responded by throwing her off, and using her to knock Clover off her feet.
The man threw Alex in the opposite direction, sending her crashing into Sean and Sam.
He laughed, making his way toward a mirror near the entrance.
"Let's get him!" Clover shouted, recovering.
But he pressed a button on the wall next to the mirror, causing it to flip over and allowing him to walk behind it before it could close.
Clover grunted in frustration as she reached it but looked at carefully then tried pushing against it.
Sean, thankfully, found the button that opened the door, allowing them all to rotate inside.
"Huh?!" they all asked.
Inside the room was a seemingly endless row of mirrors. And they all reflected the man who had chased them through Fabutopia before getting the tables turned on him.
Back-to-back, the spies moved carefully through the room. With all these mirrors, he could sneak up on them at any time.
However, every time they seemed to be getting closer to him, the reflection would just move.
Looking at the other three, Sean silently agreed to split up.
He looked at a mirror and thought for a moment he saw his own reflection in addition to the man's.
Suddenly, he found his back to the girls' again as the mirrors began to transform from a maze that would make a carnival funhouse green with envy, to a circle of them from which there was no way out.
Both he and Sam went to a mirror trying to push it loose, but all was in vain as a loud laugh stopped them.
Behind them was their pursuer, looking very pleased with himself.
"Trapped!" he taunted.
He flipped the mirror behind him and left the four teens alone.
"Oh no!" Sam despaired.
Sean sunk to his knees.
He could hardly believe it. His first field mission was a failure.