Snow was the last thing the campers were expecting that morning. Nonetheless, as they woke up one by one, eyes widened at the blanket of frost covering the campground and the white flakes whirling around in the air outside their cabin windows. The grayness of the sky. The chill blowing in from through the doors. The neon-yellow hazmat suits hanging on the cabin coat hooks. Just a typical winter day…
But wait. What was that last part? First of all, it was summer. Second of all, why would they need hazmat suits to go outside? Third of all, IT WAS SUMMER. Flabbergasted, the boys in the boys' cabin huddled around Brick, and the girls in the girls' cabin huddled around Jo, as the two read the note plastered to their cabin doors. Signed from Chris McLean, the notes read:
"Good morning, campers! Your favorite camp counselor here with a very important message. I repeat: it is vital that you follow all three instructions I'm outlining here. I know, I know. Rules. Yuck! But seriously, If you don't follow them, your health could be seriously damaged, blah, blah, blah– I cannot afford another felony charge for child endangerment. It's bad enough that I'm working at this two-bit summer c– Anyways…
"Rule Number One: Wear your lovely hazmat suits! Hazmat: It's short for–"
"Hazardous material," Cameron gasped.
"Hazardous material. Everyone knows that," Jo rolled her eyes.
"–Hazardous material," the note continued. "Although I'm sure some know-it-all already guessed that. These hazmat suits will protect you from the nuclear fallout befalling the camp right now."
At this, the campers panicked. They all knew the island was teeming with toxic waste, but to have waste at nuclear proportions everywhere they stepped? Their cabins might as well have been a bunker for their impending doom.
"Rule Number Two," Brick and Jo, steely-faced as they were, continued. "You read that right. Nuclear fallout. Scientists have always guessed at the conditions that would result from a radioactive explosion, but none of them could actually test it, seeing as their ethical codes prevented them from doing what would definitely be considered an environmental crime and a giant hazard for the wellbeing of others…but alas! I'm no scientist. And ethical? HAHAHAHAHAHA–"
"-Chef Hatchet here," the note continued on the back page. "Chris has devolved into a fit of hysterics. He finds torturing you all hilarious. And to be honest, I do too, a little. But anyways–LISTEN UP, MAGGOTS! The glowing pond of sand in the middle of the forest has been bubbling something fierce these past couple weeks. Seems the summer sun has made it reach its boiling point, and a geyser of toxic sand shot straight up into the clouds. Precipitation was in the forecast for today, but instead of good old acid rain (the air here is still pretty toxic on a good day) we've got nuclear fallout. Or nuclear snow. Whatever keeps you pansies from wetting your pants."
"Too late," Scott snickered, looking at Cameron's onesie.
"Which brings us to Rule Number Two: WEAR YOUR HAZMAT SUITS! I know it's a repeat of Rule Number One, but if you've got a problem with that, you can bring it up with me. Or you can bring it up with the designers of these government-issued hazmat suits you've got hanging on those sorry coat hooks of yours. OR you can bring it up with the judge, who court-ordered these suits to our camp to protect you sissies from an "entirely unforeseen and unprecedented radioactive environmental anomaly". Truth is, we could've warned you tulips weeks ago, but just imagining the looks on your faces…HAHAHAHAHA–"
"–Chris again," The note was almost over. "Looks like Chef has as much of a mean streak as me. Guy's still rolling on the floor laughing! Which brings me to Rule Number Three: Wear your hazmat suits! The contracts you signed at the beginning of the summer to attend Camp Wawanakwa–"
"–Which we didn't even know was a stupid summer camp," Dakota grumbled, dreaming of relaxing by the pool at a star-studded teen-celebrity resort.
"–Stipulated that although Chef and I are responsible for your safety and wellbeing, although we've been looking for loopholes all summer– ahem, we are NOT responsible for nuclear mutations, mutilations, disfigurations, amputations, or decapitations that befall you kids of your own volition. All of that is basically fancy lawyer speak for 'WEAR YOUR HAZMAT SUITS!' That's all. Chef and I will be relaxing in our underground bunker for the day while this blows over. Enjoy your snow day!"
Jo crumpled up the note and threw it at the door.
Brick, unable to disrespect orders from his superiors, handed the note to Scott. Scott crumpled up the note and threw it at Brick's head.
"This is insane!" Zoey frowned.
"You got that right, Red!" Anne Maria agreed. "No way am I risking a chipped nail goin' out in this creepy snow. Wait a minute…"
Looking out the window, Anne Maria noticed the snow's haunting, soft radioactive glow.
"Imagine that in a can of my hairspray," the diva's eyes glittered. She looked at Dakota, equally enamored.
"You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?"
"Shimmering hair!" They cheered, throwing on their hazmat suits and rushing outside.
Jo put on a protective suit too. "While Jersey Shore and Malibu Barbie get themselves killed, I'll be settling a score with Scott and Lightning. They shoved a snake in my lucky sweatpants five nights ago, and I'm still subconsciously scratching my butt every time I go for an evening jog. This seems like the perfect opportunity for revenge." She painted black war streaks under her eyes, and marched out into the nuclear snow, on a mission.
With three girls left in the cabin, Dawn reassured Zoey and Staci about the dangerous weather. She sensed a most "auspicious" foreboding about the freak winter, and an even more "fortunate" aura in the two girls. Relenting, Zoey and Staci put on their hazmat suits: Zoey excited to spend time with her friends on this "snowy" day. She could finally make snow angels that wouldn't be ran over by jeering small-town jocks in torn-up trucks. As for Staci, she could finally finish collecting research data with B. The polar opposites were documenting how often the flora and fauna of the island talked. Usually, the plants and animals made incoherent grunts, roars, and hisses. Still, the mutated rats with glowing green eyes and giant brains would occasionally discuss family history with Staci in perfect English. Those were her favorite. Before they could turn around to thank Dawn, the ghostly girl had disappeared. Sweet, but creepy as always. Never change Dawn, they thought.
At the same time, the campers in the boys' cabin were making their own plans for their "Fallout Friday," named so by Sam after his favorite post-apocalyptic nuclear video games.
Scott and Lightning suited up first. Scott suggested that they should stockpile nuclear snowballs around camp. They needed to be prepared at all times in case of a retaliation prank ambush from Jo. Ever since the two had snuck that snake in her favorite sweatpants, they'd caught the competition junkie throwing silent daggers at them with her vengeful gaze. Lightning was practicing his perfect spiral. The past few weeks, Cameron had tutored Lightning in physics. It was a camp-mandated way for Lightning to avoid summer school, and for Cameron to exercise his pedagogical muscles. Lightning didn't remember much from that scrawny four-eyes, but he did remember the football example when they studied arc length and rotational motion. Hurling a well-calculated snowball at Jo would prove that he was the better baller at camp. Game on.
Meanwhile, Cameron had finally finished hyperventilating in a brown paper bag, courtesy of Mike (who sometimes used it in case Chester fronted and wanted to sit on a park bench and feed seeds to birds, like a proper old man). The Einstein-in-training considered retreating within his bubble for the day. It wasn't confidence regression if you were protecting yourself from the elements after all, especially if those elements could give you nasty chemical burns. Cameron suited up, then hopped into one of his inflatable bubbles, and rolled out the door with B, the two brainiacs eager to collect data with Staci. Mike soon followed, suited up and with three extra sweaters on, desperate to not let Vito front. He planned to make glowing snowmen next to Zoey's nuclear snow angels, and he didn't want his reckless alter ego to destroy them like he did every winter. Keeping a shirt on at all times was a must. First things first, though–he needed to stop by the arts-and-crafts shed.
Brick and Sam then suited up. Sam planned to stay inside and play Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games on his Nintendo DS (the weather had inspired him, you see). Determined to expose his less intense friend to a day of "roughing it in the elements," Brick hoisted Sam, too engrossed in his video game to notice, over his shoulder and walked out.
Both cabins were empty, and the frigid campgrounds soon came alive with campers taking full advantage of their temporary nuclear winter.
Jo was no fool. She knew Tweedledee and Tweedle-dirt would be on their guard today. That meant she had to be on her guard twice as much. Or triple as much. Even quadruple as much. She'd keep multiplying however many steps ahead of the boys she needed to be. She just wanted to win. Perched in a tree overlooking the camp, her hazmat suit was covered in mud, twigs, and leaves–the perfect camouflage. Down below, she saw Scott and Lightning packing snowballs and hiding them under cabin porches and behind bushes. That's right, halfwits, she thought. I'll strike when you least expect it.
A few trees away, Anne Maria and Dakota were filling canisters of hair spray with the glowing snow.
"We're going to look tres chic," said Dakota.
Anne Maria shook up a full can of glow-snow. "Tell me about it!"
When they finished, they strutted into the girls' cabin, ready to flaunt their glittering blonde locks and shiny jet-black poof. Little did they know that a cosmetology catastrophe was awaiting them.
On their way into the cabin, they passed a cross-legged Dawn, meditating on the bottom step of the cabin. They didn't see it, but Dawn grimaced as they walked by. Their aura is surely glowing, she ruminated. And not in a good way.
Behind the cabins, Zoey rolled around in the nuclear snow. First, she made a snow angel. Then, she made a snow devil. Then, she made a snow angel from hell–which was harder than it sounded, especially since she had to use her arms to make the angel wings and devil horns. Standing up and brushing the fallout off her suit, she admired her work. She was so enthralled in her radioactive artistic genius, she didn't notice Mike out of the corner of her eye. When she did, she jumped.
"Stay still!" Mike whispered. Frozen like a statue, a few moments passed before he sighed. "Okay, you can turn around now. Sorry if I spooked you! I just didn't want to spoil the surprise."
Turning around, Zoey stared, breathless at the sight before her eyes. Next to Mike stood a snowman–no, snow woman. She wore a scarf with a carrot nose and a pink flower on her head. Two bunches of red-painted twigs resembled pigtails on the back of the snow woman's head.
Zoey's cheeks turned as red as Snow Zoey's hair.
Mike rubbed his neck. "I had no idea what to build, but then I saw you making those snow angels, so…"
"I love it!" She walked up to her snowy counterpart. Its body glowed with radiation, and though she was wearing a hazmat suit, she still stepped back.
"No offense," she giggled.
Mike then noticed Zoey's snow deities in the ground. Now it was Mike's turn for tomato cheeks when she compared the snow devil's "adorable" horns to the spikes in Mike's hair. And so they lay on the ground, two snow artisans with two pairs of beet-red cheeks.
If only reddened cheeks were the only physical alteration that Anne Maria and Dakota underwent after their hair experiment. But as soon as the two sprayed their hairspray-nuclear-snow concoction onto their hair, the effects were instant. At first, Dakota's blonde hair shimmered and shined, Anne Maria's black hair glittering and glistening.
"Put us on the cover of Seventeen!"
"But we ain't seventeen yet?"
"They'll make an exception. Daddy knows a guy."
Then, the soft radiation glow of their hair intensified, and the girls felt a strange burning on their scalp. The irritation trickled through their faces and crawled down their necks, making its way over their entire body.
"Is it just me…or do you look like an Oompa Loompa, girl?"
"Rude!" Running to the mirror, Dakota peeked at her head, then screamed. Her face was deep-orange, and her hair was turning bright-green and spikier by the second.
"See?"
"If I look like an Oompa Loompa, then you look like a New Jersey Darth Maul!"
"Darth who?!" Now it was Anne Maria's turn to stare and shriek in the mirror at her complexion, a deep-red, and her hair, a balding array of shiny, black horns.
"I-I don't know…Sam kept talking my ear off about this Star Wars Sith Lord stuff…it just seemed like the comparison–"
"Shut up about Darth What's-His-Face! We look jacked up!"
"And I feel…'jacked up.' Yet oddly, taller."
"That's because we are gettin' taller!"
All the freaking out in the world couldn't temper their mutation, however. They grew taller, and oranger, and redder, and spikier, and angrier, and then…
"Eat my dust, suckers!" Jo darted past Lightning and Scott, peppering them with nuclear snowballs.
"Ack! Hey!" Scott pushed Lightning. "You were supposed to be on watch duty!"
"I was!" Lightning shoved him back. "Wasn't I, Sha and Bam?" He tenderly looked at his biceps and kissed them.
Scott groaned in frustration. He ducked under his makeshift snow fort–some good that had done–and pulled Lightning with him. On the other side of the camp clearing, Jo retreated behind a row of bushes. Neither side knew it, but the middle of the camp had been booby-trapped by the other with everything from family-friendly bear traps, hunting nets attached to pulleys in the trees, and giant-snowball pendulums.
Nose-deep in a notebook, Cameron, in his bubble, rolled alongside B and Staci into the camp clearing as they discussed their findings. So far, no mutant beasts could communicate in human English other than the brain-enlarged rats. The three researchers did come across a flurry of four-winged butterflies which seemed to buzz in each other's ears and fly away, whirring in a way that sounded like laughter. Gossiping insects, perhaps?
On the other side of the clearing, Mike and Zoey, minds drained of wintry creativity and hearts aflutter with…feelings, decided to end their snow-making excursion for the afternoon.
Swinging across the clearing from a vine out of nowhere, Jo grabbed Zoey and Staci's collars and hoisted them behind her hiding bushes.
"What the–," Zoey started before Jo covered her and Staci's mouths.
"This snowball fight," Jo began, "is about more than the pride of victory. It's about revenge. Scott and Lightning got in the middle of my exercise–the main way I perfectly sculpt and shape my Herculean physique! You two are on my side–better than having the other frilly girly girls with me."
"But I was going to explain how my Great Great Uncle Eustace created the recipe for hot chocolate," Staci frowned. "Before him–." Now Jo covered Staci's mouth.
Zoey pushed Jo's hand off her mouth. "Some hot chocolate would be nice. Even if it'd probably be lukewarm and watery. But at least it'd be with someone you lo–like! As a friend!"
Jo slapped Zoey. "Focus, Red! There's no time to flirt with the enemy. Although that'd be a pretty good distraction strategy. Fine, then. Go talk to Mikey over there and keep the boys busy while Staci and I ambush them!"
"Uh, I didn't agree to this!" Zoey was flustered.
"Neither did I!" Staci protested, her voice muffled.
"Too bad! One, two, three, Plan A is a GO!" Jo shoved the girls into the open, just as Lightning and Scott did the same to B and Cameron.
After a few moments of quiet, with nothing but the whirling wind and blizzard of nuclear snow to fill the silence, Mike sighed.
"Mess hall?" He asked.
"Mess hall." Zoey nodded.
The four made their way there, with Lightning, Scott, and Jo protesting their "cowardice" the whole time.
"If you want something done right," Scott grumbled, "you've gotta do it yourself!"
The boys rushed Jo, and Jo rushed the boys.
What happened next can only be described as a result of negligence. Negligence of the very booby traps the three snowball brawlers had set. Lightning collided with Jo, and Jo collided with Scott. Caught in the crosshairs, Zoey collided with Lightning, Mike collided with Zoey, Cameron collided with B, and B collided with Staci. Directly in the center of the campground, a loose pulley was unleashed somewhere in the trees, and right where they stood, a giant net thrust the eight unlucky campers off the ground and hoisted them ten feet in the air. No one knew if it was Scott's trap or Jo's trap that they were caught in–either way, it definitely wasn't Lightning's–but their bickering's sole purpose was to get to the bottom of it. And so, the blame game ensued. Not for long though, as a giant crash from the girls' cabin startled the eight, and they looked in its direction. The roof of the cabin splintered apart, and two giant holes lay where roof shingles should be. In the center of these holes were two monstrous heads. One vaguely looked like Dakota, and the other vaguely looked like Anne Maria. But that couldn't be! Unless…
"HAIR NOT SHINY!" Anne Maria roared.
"DAKOTA MAD! DAKOTA SMASH!" Dakota howled.
Tearing apart the rest of their cabin, the gargantuan, rage-fueled campers stomped into the woods, in search of the perfect hairspray.
The only thing that broke the ensnared kids' stunned silence was B scribbling in his notebook. "Mutant creatures communicating via human language: Mutated Dakota and Anne-Maria," he wrote. It's not perfect English, the stoic genius thought, but it's a start!
Deep in the forest, Brick dropped Sam off his shoulder.
"I just love the great outdoors." Brick inhaled the musk of a pine tree.
Sitting down with his back against the tree, Sam was enamored in his Game Boy Advance.
Brick cleared his throat. "I said, I just love the great outdoors."
Undeterred from his digital trance, Sam nodded. "Oh, yeah…me too..the overworld levels in Super Mario Bros. are my favorite…"
Fed up, Brick grabbed Sam's handheld console and chucked it onto the top of the pine tree.
"What are you doing?"
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to get you to appreciate the beauty of nature!"
"I was! A Link to the Past has some wicked 32-bit visuals of Hyrule."
"That! That right there!"
"What right there…?" Sam had whipped out a Nintendo 3DS.
"Your video-game addiction!" Brick grabbed this console too and hurled it high into the trees. "We're at a beautiful camp in Muskoka, here to fortify our body and mind with self-discipline and nature, and you can't keep your nose out of a game system for one second."
"Beautiful? I can't walk two seconds to the bathroom without being chased by some giant, razor-toothed squirrel!"
"Mutant creatures aside, if you're not being environmentally enriched, what are you doing here?"
"Trying not to be harassed by a ROTC jerk. This is just like high school…"
Sam and Brick bickered for what felt like hours. It was more like five minutes, but when you're locked in a heated debate with a tech junkie or a junior G.I. Joe (guess who's who), time feels endless. So endless, in fact, that neither boy noticed that Brick had flung Sam's video-game consoles straight into the nest of a family of rat-gulls.
As a mutated animal of Camp Wawanakwa, rat-gulls were the hellish crossbreed of Chef Hatchet's kitchen rats–craftier, feistier, and…bitier than normal rats–and the beach's seagulls–dumber and…squawkier than normal seagulls. The fusion of these callous creatures was a band of nightmare vermin that pestered the campers whenever they tried to ask out a certain someone on the beach (nice try, Mike) or steal one as an exotic designer pet from the mess hall (nice try, Dakota). The best thing to do when encountering a rat-gull was just to swat away at the bird-winged, rat-tailed abominations and hope for the best. Purposely enraging them, though? Put it this away: 48 hours of recovery in the medical tent was a lesson learned for Scott.
So it comes to no surprise that the rat-gulls in their nest felt personally victimized by this handheld-console assault. Finding the guilty party and peppering them with attacks with their beaks and whip-like tails felt like an appropriate punishment. But who was the guilty party? Looking over the edge of their nest, the hive-mind of rat-gulls spotted below two– eugh…humans, making a loud racket with their mouth roars. Targets spotted. The rat-gulls–five of them–leaped out of their nest and soared towards Brick and Sam. They were closing on them, when…
Thump Thump. Two loud booms on the forest floor sent a flurry of birds out of the trees.
ThumpTHumpTHUmpTHUMpTHUMP. The booms got closer. They sounded like…two pairs of footsteps?
THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP. Brick and Sam stopped quarrelling long enough to see Dakota and Anne Maria stomp into view, trampling trees in their path.
"SHINY HAIR!" Dakota roared.
"NOW!" screeched Anne Maria.
They flopped onto the forest clearing, a wide expanse free of enough trees for them to roll around in the nuclear snow and brighten their hair with the glowing fallout.
"Dakota?" Sam gasped. "What happened?"
"SAMMY!" Dakota beamed when she saw him. She grabbed Sam, hoisted him over his shoulder, and trudged to the campground, satisfied with her "shiny" hair.
"ME WANT AUDIENCE!" Anne Maria grabbed a frightened Brick, and did the same. Their hostages in tow, they shoved through entire crowds of trees, knocking them off their stumps.
"FASHION SHOW!" Dakota jumped up and down, uprooting several trees in the process.
"Stay calm, comrade!" Brick held Sam steady, the two of them over the shoulders of their mutant peers.
"How can I?!" Sam yelled.
"I-I know, this is quite abnormal from my usual protocol–"
"This is awesome! We're Pauline and they're Donkey Kong, only instead of them throwing barrels, they're throwing a fashion show!"
"I'm unfamiliar with these 'Pauline' and 'Donkey Kong' civilians you're referencing, but a fashion show…I think I understand it now."
"I think I understand you a bit more too. The great outdoors are pretty great…"
"I understand you and your affinity for video games, too, even if a bit shortsighted and disciplinarily flawed."
"Now that our relationship meter's increased by 5 friendship points, how do we get these gals back to normal?"
"I have no idea…although, at the risk of breaching the strict, top-secret military clearance I've been authorized, I spotted Cameron and B engineering a serum of some sort to reverse rapid human mutation in any of us. I found this admirable duty worthy of a Purple Heart, and wanted to shout for the whole world to hear of their noble actions, but they swore me to secrecy. They didn't want Chris or Captain Hatchet finding out about it and ruining it."
"Makes sense. They're a sadistic final boss battle."
"You got that right! …If you're saying what I think you're saying. We've just got to run to the boys' cabin while Dakota and Anne Maria are distracted getting other 'guests,' and then we're home free."
"Coolio! Sounds like a plan."
"Only one thing…"
"What?"
"Could we delay our heroism for a bit? It's our duty to keep our fellow campers safe in this nuclear winter and mutant onslaught by two of our own, but I'd love to see at least one of the designs."
"Oh, right! You're a closeted fashion fiend. Dakota told me the two of you were debating the fashion-forwardness of rhinestones on military combat boots."
"All I'm saying is, it adds some sparkle for soldiers while we put our lives on the line!"
Back at the center of camp, the eight campers, still roped inside the snowball-fight booby trap, spotted Dakota and Anne Maria, carrying Sam and Brick over their shoulders. Thrusting the two boys down into the snow, the two mutant fashionistas roared at the ten non-mutants to stay while they tracked down Dawn. Then, their "fashion show" could begin.
Pretending to lay unconscious, Brick and Sam waited until their beastly buddies had left in search of "Pixie Stick." Then, they popped out of the nuclear snow, alert and on a mission.
Brick and Sam ran up to the eight campers stuck in the net.
"Where's the serum?" Sam asked.
B looked at Brick in surprise. You told?
"I had to!" Brick saluted him, then looked down in shame. "For the fate of Camp Wawanakwa!"
"Boring!" Jo heckled.
"B and I have only perfected two vials." Cameron explained, muffled through his bubble (which took up about 60% of the space in the net). "The vials and two syringes are hidden under my pillow. Head there, stick the vials into the syringe, and inject Dakota and Anne Maria in their carotid artery before it's too late!"
Lightning scoffed. "We don't got time for carrot arteries, doofus! Just stick it in their necks."
"Is your brain the size of a carrot?" Jo asked.
Zoey tried her best to defuse the bickering, but there was only so much her people-pleasing heart could take. Is it really dissociation if you're still semi-conscious of hazmat-suit rubber scratching against your skin?
In the boys' cabin, Brick ruffled through Cameron's pillowcase, looking for the de-mutation vials and syringes.
"Did we really have to low-crawl through the snow to get here?" Sam rubbed his aching chest.
"Got it!" Brick retrieved the bio-engineered equipment.
"Sweet. Let's take these power-ups–or, power-downs–and get our friends back to normal!"
Rushing outside, Brick and Sam halted in their tracks as they saw Anne Maria and Dakota, with Dawn in their grasp. Dawn was playing a flute to calm mutant creatures, but in vain. Grabbing the flute, Dakota stomped on it.
"TOP 40 POP MUSIC ONLY!" she growled.
"Oh, dear," Dawn peeped. Dakota threw her into the net with the other eight trapped campers.
Spotting Brick and Sam, Anne Maria and Dakota hoisted them up from the cabin porch.
"I SAID STAY!" Anne Maria yelled.
"Now!" Cameron squeaked from the net.
Shoving the vials into the syringes, Brick tossed one to Sam. The gamer stabbed the syringe into Dakota's neck. She roared and instantly dropped Sam. The two of them tumbled to the ground.
Brick began to reach around Anne Maria's neck, but, whether it was from nervous sweat slicking up his fingers, or nuclear snow from Anne Maria's "shiny hairspray", the syringe slipped from his hands.
"Mission abort! This soldier has failed," he dropped his head in shame.
"Not on my watch!"
Sam grabbed the glass syringe from falling. "B button!'
"Up button!" He thrust it back up into the air, where Brick caught it.
"Assist! Eighty points!" Brick smiled, then stopped. This video-game propaganda is indoctrinating me, too! He gulped. But now was the time to focus.
Darth Maria wasn't keen on de-mutating, though. She wriggled around, trying to knock Brick off her like a bug. It's a miracle Brick was able to hang on by one of her black hair-horns, as she whipped her head around in a raucous frenzy. Whirling around the camp trying to throw him off her, Anne Maria didn't notice that she was right next to the net of trapped campers.
"Zis requires a dazzling feat by moi!" Svetlana grabbed onto one of Anne Maria's hair horns, and the others in the net joined in. Ever the skinny legend, Svetlana squeezed through a large hole in the makeshift booby trap, and she somersaulted through the air directly onto the giant Anne Maria mutant's shoulder. Grabbing hold of a hair horn and the net, Svetlana had connected the two heavy things.
"Back and forth, my darlings, back and forth!" The Russian gymnast urged the others to swing the net back and forth.
Slowly but surely, their combined weight with Anne Maria's giant form pulled them free. The net gave way, and all eight campers fell to the floor. Still holding on with Brick's added weight, Svetlana managed to tip Anne Maria. The girl went roaring down onto a snowy bank, where Brick finished the job. Leaping over one of her hair horns, he injected the serum into her neck, and her roaring subsided into snoring.
Looking over at Dakota, Brick spotted her, the orange seeping out of her skin, the green seeping out of her hair, and the height seeping out of her body by the second. Eventually, the same happened to Anne Maria. Both girls were immediately hauled over Jo's shoulder, and, grumbling the whole way, the jockette carried them to the girls' cabin for an immediate hazmat-suit fitting.
"Svetlana! You did it!" Zoey ran over to hug her. Feeling that someone else might enjoy it more, Svetlana gave a dramatic bow before leaving. Mike intercepted Zoey's hug just as she reached him, utterly unaware of why she was doing it but blushing the whole time.
B high-fived Sam and Brick. Much appreciated.
Sheepish, Brick and Sam assured them that it was no worries, that they were just doing their duty, and that any one of them would've done the same (to this, Scott coughed, and got a snowball to the face by Staci).
"Where was that fighting spirit when you were on my side?" Jo asked. She hurled one at Scott again.
"Ow!"
"Sorry, my Great Great Great Grandma Winifred invented fighting spirits, and I needed a few hours to tap into her."
"Tap into this! Sha-yeah!" Lightning threw a snowball at Staci.
Mike laughed. "That segue didn't really make sense."
"Your face doesn't make sense!"
Lightning threw another snowball, this time at Mike, but he ducked and it hit Zoey instead.
"Sha-bam!"
"Hey!"
"Friends," Dawn held her hands up in the middle of the campers. "Violence is never the answ– oof!"
"There's no negotiation in ground combat!" Brick yelled. "Ouch!" A snowball pelted him.
"There're no warnings either, Bricks-for-Brains," said Jo.
And so it continued, a free-for-all snowball fight between all eleven campers. Meanwhile, Anne Maria and Dakota rested in the girls' cabin, having received well wishes from the others and lukewarm, watery hot chocolate (the "chocolate" being sprinkled dirt, courtesy of Scott, sweet as always). They were fully recovered from their mutation, and had nothing to do all day but make fun of the designers who made these hideous hazmat suits. They were so recovered from Cameron and B's highly effective serum that they would have joined the other campers in their snowball fight. But they would've chipped their nails! That would've been the fashion faux pas of the century.
Still, being with their friends who had just saved them from a life of being friendless freakazoids was the least they could do. A snowball fight might actually be kind of fun. Especially if a bit of the glowing snow accidentally got onto their fingernails. "Wintry White" would be such a cute name for a sparkly nail polish…