Melisma and Lyddie retreated as the guards circled closer.  The gold-uniformed chief guard had run off after Pox Head, but there were still five more to contend with.  Melisma’s hand shook as she raised her bow.

            “Shoot them!” Lyddie whispered.

            “I don’t have enough arrows,” Melisma mouthed back.

            One of the guards advanced, sword drawn.  “Please put down your weapons and refrain from any sudden moves which might impinge on our hospitality.”

            Melisma retreated, and her legs tripped over Pox Head’s refrigerator.  The guards advanced a step while she stumbled to regain her balance.

            “I think they’ve got us,” she whispered.

            “Nuh-uh,” Lyddie said.  “I’m gonna throw a triangle at them.”

            “What will that do?”

            “Got any better ideas?”  Lyddie raised her shape-sorting ball high as Melisma shook her head.

            The ball was a simple toy: a red half-sphere held tight against a blue half-sphere by a stretch of nylon cord between them.  The only way to get the yellow shapes out from inside was to pull the halves apart and let them fall.  Lyddie clutched the ball in two hands with a serious expression on her face.  “Okay, bad guys,” she whispered.  “Prepare to eat triangle!”

            She pulled the halves gently apart, and a yellow hexagon fell from the ball.  A strange energy rippled outward from the toy, and Melisma found herself suddenly confused and disoriented.  No matter how she tried, she couldn’t keep a steady thought in her head; the sloshing of mud and the tromping of boots pulled her attention away.  She cocked her head and giggled as her eyes fixated on the contrast in color between the white canvas tent walls and the darker dirt around them.  The guards around her staggered, distracted as well.

            A plastic square fell next, and Melisma began to drool.  “Lyddie, stop!” she groaned as she struggled to collect her wits.  At least, that’s what she meant to say.  Instead, a stream of babble burbled from her slackened lips: “La bah guuuuuuuh…”

            Lyddie pulled a little harder, and the four remaining shapes dropped all together to the ground.  A sensation of complete release washed over Melisma.  The muscles in her body all unclenched at once.  Her shoulders loosened.  Her head lolled.  Her fingers uncurled and flopped like strands of spaghetti.  The bow slipped from her grip.  Her legs gave way, collapsing her onto the portable refrigerator.  Her brain relaxed even more, until she forgot where she was.  She felt satisfied, content.  She sat on the fridge and basked.

            After a moment, the fog began to clear.  Melisma blinked and reoriented herself to her surroundings.  Apparently, the ball had affected everyone; sabers and shields lay scattered all around her where the guards had dropped them.  Their owners burbled in the grass or drooped, stupefied, against tent walls.  They reminded her of giant babies.

            Lyddie lay on her back, clutching the now-closed plastic ball in her hands.  She giggled uncontrollably.  “It’s a poop ball!” she squealed.

            Melisma leaned back against the refrigerator and immediately realized what Lyddie meant.  Her eyes widened as something warm and soft shifted beneath her.  The shape-sorting toy had relaxed all her muscles.  She shifted her weight, and the warmth squished flat against her butt.

            “I just pooped my pants!” Lyddie announced joyfully.

            Melisma’s throat constricted in mortification.  She was deeply ashamed.  It was an awful feeling, but also strangely clarifying.

            She stood sadly and retrieved her bow from the ground.  “Come on Lyddie.  Let’s go while everyone’s distracted.  We’re supposed to be escaping, remember?”

            “All the farts…” Lyddie mouthed reverently to herself, repeating the phrase inscribed on the toy.  She clambered happily to her feet.

            Unfortunately, the guards were coming to their senses as well.  “Oh, gross!” one of them yelled as he ran his hand across the seat of his uniform.

            “What the –” another shouted.

            A third guard moved to intercept the girls.  “Where do you think you’re going?”

            Lyddie brandished her ball and shot him a challenging look.  “Get out of my way, or I’ll make you poop again.”

            He lunged at her.

            Lyddie sighed.  “Okay, I guess it’s still poop ‘o’ clock.”  She wrenched the halves of her shape-sorting toy apart.

            The feeling came immediately, but it couldn’t have been more different.  This time, the plastic ball was empty when Lyddie pulled it.  The yellow shapes still lay in the grass where she’d first dropped them.  Now, Melisma felt its emptiness as a primal scream in her gut.

            The ball cried out like an infant in pain.  Melisma’s bones cried along with it.  Everything about the world was suddenly wrong.  Her clothes itched against her skin.  Her stomach churned with hunger.  She was frightened.  She was cold.  The light was way too bright. 

            The same desolation washed over Lyddie.  Her lips quivered and her chin crumpled.  Tears streamed down her suddenly red cheeks.  She vented her misery in an ear-splitting wail.

            Melisma slumped to the grass and wailed along with her sister.  She couldn’t remember when she’d felt so alone and defenseless.  It was terrifying.  Everyone had abandoned her, and there was nothing she could do to change it.

            The guards didn’t last much longer, though a few tried stoically to resist.  They writhed against their uniforms, which suddenly chafed them miserably, and ripped their too-tight helmets from their sweaty heads.  Soon, five peach fuzz Cades sat next to their captives, bawling.

            Lyddie let loose a particularly full-throated wail, and the shape-sorting toy rolled out of her fingers.  Its halves snapped together with a soft ‘click.’

            The world righted itself in an instant.  The pain disappeared.  The terror left.  The hunger, the abandonment, the loss, all gone.  Now, Melisma and Lyddie were just two kids sitting in the dirt in muddy, stained clothes.

            A Cade stumbled awkwardly to his feet.  He retrieved Lyddie’s ball from the ground.  A second Cade confiscated Melisma’s bow.

            “You’re, uh, still under arrest,” he said weakly.

            Melisma sighed, drained and embarrassed.  “Yeah, okay.  Whatever.”  After what they’d just been through, she didn’t have the energy to fight.

            “We can’t approach his majesty like this,” a third guard commented, shifting uncomfortably in his pants.  “We’ll have to detour to the lockers by the Duty-Free depot, to shower and pick up a clean change of clothes.  We can use the tunnel to make up time.”  He slapped two sets of manacles on the girls’ wrists and led them away.

            “I don’t understand,” Lyddie said as they marched.  “I was so sure it was a poop ball.  What happened the second time?”

            “Hurry up!” a Cade snapped.  They picked up their pace and marched in silence.

            After a minute, Melisma stopped in her tracks.  “Lyddie, you played with that ball when you were seven months old,” she said.  “That must be its power: it’s a baby toy!”

***

Vekka-vekka-vekka-vekka-vekka-vekka-vekka-vekka

Vommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

            “What’s that noise?” Doria asked.  She felt the sound more than she heard it – a distant whirring over a low drone.

            “What noise?”  Kaitlyn paused in her tracks.  She listened with her whole upper body, Doria noticed: shoulders tensed, arms raised at the elbows, and fingers splayed in front of her.

Vekka-vekka-vekka-vekka-vekka

Vommmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

            The whirring came from somewhere above and behind them.  It seemed to be closing in.

            “Oh no,” Kaitlyn said.  She grabbed Doria’s arm.  “Just keep walking.”

            Doria stumbled in the mud.  “What’s going on?” she asked.

            “Hopefully nothing,” Kaitlyn replied.  “Keep your head down.  Maybe he won’t see us.”

            “Who?”

VEKKA-VEKKA-VEKKA-VEKKA

VOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

            A helicopter, green, metal, and enormous, hurtled unsteadily through the sky.  It bobbed and lurched as it flew.  Whoever was flying the thing could barely keep it in the air.

            Kaitlyn exhaled slowly as it passed.  “Okay, I think he’s gone,” she said.  “Looks like we dodged a –”

            Something shot out the side of the still-airborne craft.  It was sleek and chrome, with two thick, black tires.  It arced gracefully to the ground, revving its engines the whole way.

            Doria gasped.  “Is that…”

            “A motorcycle.  Yeah.”  Kaitlyn rolled her eyes.

            As the motorcycle descended through the air, its driver pivoted and aimed an oversized gun at the helicopter behind him.  He pulled the trigger and launched a single grenade skyward.

            “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kaitlyn muttered.

            The helicopter exploded.  Streaks of orange fire blossomed across the sky.  At the same instant, the motorcycle’s front tire made contact with the ground, and the machine raced forward.

            Kaitlyn tapped her fingers impatiently.

            The motorcycle cut a clean circle around Kaitlyn and Doria, then pulled to a halt in front of them.  A dark-haired figure in a sharp leather jacket pointed at them from his perch atop the bike.

            “You, there!  Girls!”  He pointed his grenade rifle directly at them.  “Congratulations!  You’ve been liberated!”  He made a slight bow.  “Join my army, and you shall no longer suffer under tyranny!”

            Doria gaped at him.  “Who is this guy?” she whispered to Kaitlyn.

            Kaitlyn sighed.  “Doria,” she said, “meet the Ace of Cades.”

            “That’s Cade?!”  Doria stared in confusion at her brother.  The Ace was chiseled and rugged, but she could see the resemblance now.  His jaw looked firmer than she remembered, with a line of beard stubble that her real brother still lacked.  That, the jacket, leather satchel slung over his shoulder, and the grenade launcher in his hand, made him look almost like a grown-up.

            The Ace thrust out his chest and continued his speech.  “No longer shall you live a slave!  No longer shall you live in fear!  Plus, we have pizza.  Wait… is that Doria?”

            “Cade?  Hey Cade!” Doria called out as she ran towards him.  “We came to find you!  Why are you dressed so weird?”

            “Doria!” the Ace cried.  “You shouldn’t be here!  There are miscreants and tyrants everywhere!”  He revved his throttle.  “Come on, I’ll take you home.  Just as soon as….”  He turned the throttle again and stared down at his bike in frustration.

            The motorcycle had sunk several inches into the mud while they’d been talking.  The Ace gunned the engine a third time.  The bike groaned and splattered mud everywhere.  But it did not move.

            Kaitlyn chased after Doria and grabbed her shoulder.  “We should go,” she said.  “The Ace is a disaster waiting to happen.”

            “But he’s Cade!”  Doria cried, watching her brother struggle with the vehicle.  The Ace rocked backward and forward on the motorcycle, trying to dislodge it from the mud.

            “Exactly, he’s a Cade,” Kaitlyn retorted.  “In fact, he’s one of the most terrible ones.  Trust me, you don’t want to be here when he reloads.”

            “Hey, Doria?” the Ace called.  “Can you, uh, help me pull my bike out, so I can finish rescuing you?”

            Doria eyed her brother sadly.  Though she hated to admit it, she could see Kaitlyn’s point.  The Ace looked like Cade, sort of, but he couldn’t be her actual brother.  And in the two minutes since she’d met him, he’d already blown a helicopter up.  She sighed, then turned and followed Kaitlyn.

            “Wait a second,” the Ace called.  “Who’s that with you, Doria?  Is that a miscreant?”  He pointed his grenade rifle at Kaitlyn.  “Are you a miscreant?  Stop, miscreant!”  The gun clicked uselessly as he pulled the trigger.

            The girls plodded away.  The Ace of Cades shouted behind them.  “Come back here, miscreant!  Just – just let me get some ammo!”  The motorcycle snarled furiously.

            Doria and Kaitlyn trekked deeper into the Man-Groves.  “What’s a miscreant?” Doria asked.

            “An evil-doer,” Kaitlyn replied.

            “Oh.  So why did he think you were one?” 

            The older girl snorted.  “Why do Cades do anything?” she said.  “They’re a plague.”

            The Ace’s voice echoed through the trees behind them.  “Hey, miscreant?  Can you come give me a quick push, so I can fight you properly?”

            “Miscreant?”

           “Doria?”

           “…”

           "Hang on....  Where did I put my jetpack?"