The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 8

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Chapter 8: Ivy and Bean

Although Nancy now wore her full magical girl outfit, the other girls had nothing but their housecoats. That apparently didn’t bother Junie B., who was too tough to need shoes and too young to understand modesty, but Judy and Amelia clutched the coats about themselves as the rain quickly saturated the terrycloth.

“Time to find out of this works,” said Cam. She raised a hand into the air, much as Nancy had earlier done—but she didn’t give any miniature speech in French. Instead, to Nancy’s shock, she threw off her housecoat, and a suit of metal, like closefitting armor, unfolded across her wiry body. It looked like glossy black plate trimmed with shiny chrome at its edges, and in the joints were what looked like thick blue fabric. Above her temples appeared little boxes that blinked with LED lights. The outfit wasn’t the kind of thing Nancy especially liked, but she had to admit it was pretty in its own way, and Cam somehow looked noble in it, though it might look silly on someone else.

Cam glanced down at herself and flexed her hands in her shiny black gauntlets. “Looks like the nanoprobes finished building my exoskeleton,” she said. “That’s a relief.”

With that, she raised her right hand and pointed it at the robot. A long tube unfolded from the vambrace on her forearm and flashed rhythmically, making the staccato thud thud thud of an automatic gun. A small opening appeared in her wrist and ejected spent shell casings.

Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 8”

The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 7

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Chapter 7: Ill-Met by Moonlight

Now began another hard march through the forest in pouring rain. After the kids struggled back into their wet clothes, they trudged, often through ankle-deep mud, into the inky darkness. Rain poured in miniature waterfalls down the broad leaves of the forest’s understory. Men marched with them, men on every side in saturated green fatigues, each with an AK-47 in his arms, each snarling in French too quickly for Nancy to follow. Lightning flashed overhead, and thunder roared like the end of the world. Now and then, one of the girls stumbled, and then she got a cold gun barrel against her back—or else a buttstock made a sharp, wet thwack as it stung her shoulders. Twice, Junie B. flexed her raw, burned hands and looked ready to start something. Both times, Cam calmly laid a hand on her arm.

Judy cradled Mouse and tried in vain to shelter the cat from the rain. Droplets hung off the ends of Mouse’s whiskers. The cat’s fur was matted, and her eyes were half-lidded with misery. Finally, too big to carry, padded alongside Amelia, who had to pull the dog out whenever she unwittingly plunged into one of the deep pools that marked the dark, uneven ground.

The thunder made Nancy jump. Whenever she did so, she compulsively clutched Judy’s sleeve, which only made her more irritated and embarrassed. And she wasn’t the only one in an ugly temper: she could see that Judy’s ring was pitch black, darker even than the night that surrounded them.

It was obvious that she, Judy Moody, was in a mood. Not a good mood. A bad mood. A mad-face mood. A forced-to-march-through-the-jungle-at-gunpoint-in-a-thunderstorm mood. Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 7”

The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 5

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Chapter 5: Light out of Darkness

High above the Earth, Pink Vicious sat upon her great pink throne. Over her head was a huge skylight above which the planet, enormous and perfectly still, hung perpetually as it shifted through its daily phases of light and shadow. A black strip glossy with sunlight, like an enormous ribbon, stretched up toward the Earth and disappeared in the distance.

Pink Vicious did indeed have a space station situated at geostationary orbit, but that was not where she kept her headquarters: her headquarters were at the space elevator’s far end, in the counterweight, where the g-force was the same as on the surface of the Earth. It gave her a small thrill to know that nothing anchored her except that thin expanse of ribbon, and that if it ever broke, she would go hurtling into the outer darkness.

She had a full day ahead of her. The first order of business was to torture a prisoner. After that came snack time. Then nap time. Then time to develop her plans for world conquest. Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 5”

The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 4

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Chapter 4: Fire in the Hole

Soon, they were all seated around the table, all except Cam, who once again sat apart from the others at a computer bank. She no longer needed an awkward headset: now she talked to the computer simply by using her mind.

“How are you doing, Cam?” Mouse asked as she lapped her tea.

“Good,” Cam said as she sat with her eyes closed and her fingers to her temples. “I’ve memorized about a gigabyte from your database.”

“Stop there for today,” said Finally as she scratched herself. “If you take too much at once, you can damage your brain. You need to sleep a good eight hours before you do that again.”

Cam nodded once and joined the others at the table, dropping heavily into a chair. She snatched up a large stack of Mouse’s toast and heaped butter onto the first slice. “I am starving.”

Finally nodded and smiled. “Your brain is going to consume a lot of calories now. All of you will require a lot of calories. So eat up.” She inclined her head toward the computers. “Speaking of which, the matter transmutation system has a large recipe database, so order anything you like.”

Judy Moody lifted an eyebrow. “Really? Anything? Then I want a bowl of Mood Flakes.” Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 4”

The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 3

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Chapter 3: Train Wreck

In the dark, nine-year-old Nancy Clancy awoke with a start, sat bolt upright, and instantly smacked her head on something hard. With a stifled groan, she fell back down onto a thin but soft mattress.

This was the third time since the living nightmare began that she’d awakened in a strange place. It was becoming a habit.

Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the dim light. She lay in a tiny compartment only a little longer than she was tall, and the ceiling was only a couple of feet overhead. A low, droning hum came from below the floor, and the room vibrated ever so slightly. Her ruined dress was gone, and in its place, she wore a baggy set of pajamas decorated with images of bowling balls and pins.

Someone next to her snored, flopped over, and threw an arm across her chest.

She yelped, sat up, and slammed her head into the ceiling again. Squeezing her eyes shut and sucking her breath between her teeth, she rubbed her forehead.

The sleeping figure snorted once, sat up herself, and likewise banged her head.

“Yowch!” she shouted.

It was Judy Moody’s voice. Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 3”

Author’s Notes on ‘The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers’

I just can’t keep away from fan fiction, I guess.

One of my current jobs puts me in close proximity to a lot of children’s literature, and because I’m busy working two jobs and finishing a degree, I don’t have a lot of time for recreational reading, so it’s a lot easier for me to pick up a chapterbook, which any adult can read in half an hour or less, than to read something more involved. For those of you not in the know, a chapterbook is an illustrated novelette for kids who have graduated from picture books but aren’t quite ready to go full novel.

Never go full novel.

Thus, I have been exploring kid lit. For whatever reason, a lot of books for transitional readers are basically character studies of young girls, some of them surprisingly skillful in execution. Naturally, my first thought on reading these stories is that some of these characters would make great magical girls. Continue reading “Author’s Notes on ‘The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers’”

The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 2

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Chapter 2: Nancy’s Power

Nancy once again awoke on a cold table, but this time, her head didn’t hurt. Surprisingly, nothing hurt, and her body was relaxed: She was calm—perhaps because she was emotionally spent.

She raised her head, half expecting to see Judy looming over her again. Instead, she saw Judy, eyes closed, lying on another table nearby. Her arms were by her side, and the mood ring on her left index finger had changed: The silver setting no longer looked like plastic but instead glinted like real metal, and its stone was a peaceful sea-green. It glowed faintly, throbbing like a heartbeat.

Nancy blinked, sat up, and touched her face. The puffiness around her eyes was gone. She swallowed. Her throat wasn’t dry. She felt as if she had just awoken from a full night of deep sleep.

Her dress, however, was ruined and hung open in tatters.

She gingerly touched her right hip, where Judy had stabbed her with the needle. She felt a small, tender bruise. That was the only thing that hurt.
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The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 1

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Chapter 1: Fancy and Moody

When nine-year-old Nancy Clancy stepped out the door to visit a neighbor on a Friday afternoon, she wasn’t expecting to be attacked by a giant robot.

Nancy had just come home from third grade, but after dropping off her schoolbooks on the dining room table, she headed out again to see Mrs. DeVine, who had invited her for tea. Mrs. DeVine was a severe-looking but kindly old matron who lived in the fanciest house in the neighborhood: She had a front gate of cast iron entwined with roses, and a yard full of flowers. Her house brimmed with the most interesting things: brocaded drapes that hung to the floor, cushions of silk, divans nestled in bay windows, cabinets loaded with eggshell china, paintings of dignified but mysterious gentlemen, and elegant porcelain dolls too delicate to touch.

Many children might be afraid of a house so full of breakables—or intimidated by Mrs. DeVine herself, who stood tall and straight and dignified, with a severe, downturned mouth and a head piled high with white hair. For as long as she could remember, however, Nancy had been taken with Mrs. DeVine and fascinated with her ornate and treasure-filled home; the other houses up and down the street were all white and boxy and nearly indistinguishable, and all had neatly trimmed but unadorned yards. Only Mrs. DeVine’s house stood out—beautiful and old-fashioned—and Nancy loved it.

Nancy loved everything fancy. She always had, and she was determined that she always would. Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 1”