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.
A line of bright red explosions flickered across the giant robot’s torso, though they left behind no damage aside from a few scorch marks. The robot replied with its own burst of gunfire, a burst that chewed apart several of the camp’s tents.
The tube folded back into Cam’s arm, and she shook her head. “My weapons aren’t going to be strong enough for this, Nancy!”
Before Nancy could reply, she heard another boom, and then the robot’s chest erupted in flame. Nancy, surprised by the resultant shockwave, fell hard on her back. Judy Moody, however, quickly dragged her out of the mud and set her back on her feet.
“Roar!” Judy shouted, and a black burst of energy shot from her ring, whistled through the air, and struck one of the robot’s legs. It produced another fireball and shock wave, but did no visible damage.
Finally was by Nancy’s side. “That thing’s armor is too thick. Nancy, you’re going to have to fight it hand-to-hand.”
“What?”
Finally growled, and Nancy gasped.
“Your sword!” Finally shouted. “You need your sword! It’s edged with quantum wormhole generators that disrupt space-time and can separate materials at the atomic level!”
“Sword?” Nancy whispered, still stunned from the shock—but then she remembered what she’d done to Ivy’s book. She held up her wand and cried, “Épée de paillettes!” Again, the three-foot translucent blade extended from her wand, glittering like glass in the light of the fires.
Before she could move, however, Bean dropped to the ground in front of her, holding Ivy in her arms. She set Ivy on her feet, cocked her soggy fedora, and shook a fist. “You’re gonna pay, Fancy Nancy! Nobody gets to hurt my friends!”
“You started it!” Nancy shouted back.
“Did not!”
“Did too! You’re working for Pink Vicious!”
“So?” said Bean, again shaking her fist. “That’s none of your beeswax! But you broke my best friend’s book, and I don’t like people who break other people’s stuff!”
“I only broke it because you attacked us!”
“And you!” said Bean, now pointing at Cam. “You’re Cam Jansen! If we defeat Fancy Nancy, you have to play with us! Pink Vicious said so!”
Ivy glanced worriedly at Bean, but then, with a hesitant nod, said, “That’s right.”
Cam, apparently unfazed, crossed her arms. Face blank, she cocked her head for a moment before she said, “I’ll play with you, but only if you stop working for Pink Vicious.”
Bean paused. Her mouth fell open, and rain ran in rivulets from the brim of her hat.
“You stop working for her right now,” Cam added, “and we’ll play a game. Do you like memory games?”
Bean fidgeted and bounced from one foot to the other. She gave a furtive glance to Ivy.
Ivy scowled and held up a torn and tattered sheet of parchment. “I don’t care about working for Pink Vicious or not. But I have to deal with Fancy Nancy! If I’m going to be a witch, I can’t let anybody destroy my magic items! I may have lost most of the book, but I can still do this—!”
Nancy gasped as the page disintegrated, simultaneously releasing a white sphere of light. Nancy and the other kids scattered as the sphere flew toward them, struck a tree, and exploded, sending fragments of shattered wood flying about the camp.
Teethateena stepped out of her ruined tent. She was perfectly dry, as her pink shoes did not sink in the mud, and the rain bounced away from her, leaving her encased in an invisible cone of air. She raised her wand. “Bernice Blue!” she shouted. “And Ivy! Stop what you are doing this instant, or you will never again find money under your pillows when you leave your teeth!”
Bean cowered.
Ivy, however, lifted her nose in the air and said, “We don’t care. We’re bad anyway! We’re bound to be bad! We don’t deserve money from the tooth fairy, and we don’t need it!”
Bean tugged at her sleeve. “Actually, Ivy, I could really use the—”
“We don’t need it,” Ivy said firmly. “We have Pink Vicious now, and she’s going to take over the world, so we’ll have all the money we want! And she’s going to make me into a real witch!”
With that, Ivy stuck out her tongue. All the kids gasped, even Judy and Bean. Sticking out one’s tongue was bad enough in itself, but doing it to an adult—!
“They are bad,” Nancy whispered. “Really, really bad.”
Ivy held up another ripped page of parchment. “These are no good to me anymore,” she screamed. “So you can die by them!”
With that, she fired another ball of light. While the others clumsily scrambled aside, Nancy lithely rolled forward to duck under it. Fortunately, the mud couldn’t stick to her magical clothes.
“She’s destabilizing the magical residue lodged in her grimoire,” Teethateena muttered somewhere behind Nancy’s back. “That’s extremely dangerous—”
Right now, Nancy cared less about Ivy and Bean than about the giant robot, which was still wreaking chaos in the camp and probably killing off the men. More rockets exploded against it, but in vain, as it blasted away with its arm-mounted autocannons. In a few minutes, nothing of the camp would be left.
Raising her power, Nancy took three steps and then leapt, making a grand jete, intent on sailing over Ivy and Bean and landing somewhere behind them. Bean, however, was too quick for her: she jumped, grabbed Nancy’s left ankle, and swung her around, driving her face-first into the mud.
Much less clumsy in her magical form, Nancy rolled onto her back and twisted her legs in the air, snapping herself upright and entering a defensive stance, sword raised. Before she could make a move for Bean, however, Junie B. streaked past her, saturated housecoat flapping open, and aimed a fist for Bean’s face.
Bean blocked it, absorbing the blow with her upper arm, just above the elbow. Then she hooked a foot behind Junie B.’s ankle, slammed an open palm into her chin, and drove her hard into the mud.
Junie B., however, with a half barrel roll, brought one kneed up into the back of Bean’s thigh, forcing her into an awkward crouch. Junie B. followed that up with an elbow to the face. After that, the two of them were rolling back and forth in the mud, an indiscernible tangle of skinny legs and knobby elbows.
A moment later, Junie B. rose out of the glop, straddling Bean and raining punches on her face. Bean reached up and slammed a fist into Junie B.’s chin, and then was on top of her, holding her facedown in a mud puddle.
Nancy paused for a moment, unable to decide whether to help Junie B. or attack the robot. When a fireball erupted into the air from where a tent used to be and fresh screams met her ears, she decided on the robot. She took a deep breath and jumped as high as she could, raising her sword over her head.
As if she were on a rollercoaster, she felt her bladder sink as she shot into the air. She couldn’t believe how high she could jump, and as she sailed over the lowest treetops, she felt a sharp pang of terror.
The robot turned its glowing eye toward her and raised an arm. She held up the sword to deflect, but it did no good: a great metal hand slammed into her.
She couldn’t breathe, and her body filled with indescribable pain. White sparks flashed in her eyes.
Then she was on the ground, flat on her back, as water closed over her face. She gasped, then choked, then coughed. She tried to flail, but the sticky slime held her limbs.
Then something was pulling her upright again. It was Judy Moody, dragging her out of the sucking mud.
The metal fist came down again, so now Judy raised her left hand, clenched her teeth, and squeaked, “Roar!”
A translucent yellow dome, glowing faintly, appeared around them. The metal hand struck it and bounced away.
Judy’s eyes went wide. “I … I did it!” she gasped. “My defensive thingy! It worked! I just got so nervous, and then …!”
She stared down at her ring. Indeed, it glowed a bright amber, the color of honey, the color of the sun at midday—a warm, cozy color.
But then, before Nancy’s eyes, the ring darkened to a deep purple. A moment later, it ignited as if with amaranthine fire, sending out a great, blazing light.
Purple was Nancy’s favorite color. She loved it because it had so many fancy synonyms—mauve, periwinkle, amethyst. And Judy’s ring was now the brightest, cheeriest, most beautiful purple Nancy had ever seen.
Judy jumped up on a log and raised her hands over her head. “Oh yeah! Check me out! I am sick-awesome! I am the best! I got that on-top-of-spaghetti-and-the-world kind of feeling!”
She pointed her ring straight at the robot’s head. Her thin chest heaved for a moment as she took several breaths through triumphantly clenched teeth. Her eyes shone with manic light. “I am girl!” she screamed. “Hear me rooooaaaaar!”
A huge burst of purple fire blasted from her ring, spun through the air in a lavender corkscrew, and struck the robot directly in the face, punching a hole straight through its armor as if it were made of paper. It reeled, windmilling its thick arms. For a moment, its enormous torso was still, hovering at an impossible angle, as if time were suspended. But then it toppled backwards, smashing through several small trees as it tumbled full-length against the ground and sank halfway into the mud. The rain striking its armor rang like hundreds of tiny bells.
Judy swayed on her feet, lowered her arms to her sides, and immediately slipped from the log, falling flat on her face.
“Judy!” Now it was Nancy’s turn to pluck Judy from the mud. She quickly turned her over, and Judy, in her arms, spat out a glob of black goo before she grinned weakly.
“Judy,” Nancy gasped, “that was incredible!”
Judy nodded and coughed before she said, “Huh. I guess it’s my turn to pass out.”
She did exactly that. Her eyes closed, and she went slack in Nancy’s arms.
Nancy did her best to tuck Judy into a slightly drier spot in the lee of the log. Brandishing her sword, she rose to her feet to find Ivy facing her with another dripping piece of parchment in her hands.
They stared at each other silently for almost a minute.
“Enough,” Nancy said at last.
Ivy swallowed hard, but then grit her teeth and pointed at Nancy. In her hand, the page glowed with white fire.
With a snarl, Nancy ran forward and slashed with the sword. She easily sliced the page in two, and its fragments flew away, burning in their magical fire as they went.
Nancy caught a brief glimpse of the absolute terror on Ivy’s face before she flipped the sword in her hand and smacked its pommel into Ivy’s temple with a gruesome yet strangely satisfying crunch. Ivy instantly dropped.
Bean, who by this time was ramming a knee repeatedly into Junie B.’s bloody face, suddenly paused and dropped her woozy victim back into a puddle.
“I’ll kill you!” Bean shrieked, and she ran pell-mell toward Nancy.
Nancy glanced down at the sword in her hands. She could easily thrust it through Bean’s chest or lop the girl’s head off—but she desperately didn’t want to. She hesitated again, rooted to the spot as she frantically wondered how to ward off the attack without killing her attacker.
A white blur landed in front of her and headed straight for Bean—it was Amelia in her sopping housecoat, and in each hand she held a tonfa shaped like a policeman’s baton. She spun these strange weapons in her hands and then rained blows on Bean, who blocked with her bare forearms.
Amelia had an advantage of speed, but she didn’t have the strength to do Bean real damage. When Bean found an opening, she landed the flat of her palm on Amelia’s chest, which sent Amelia reeling backwards, struggling and failing to find her balance until she finally landed hard next to the unconscious Judy.
Bean spun around and faced Nancy, but then she fell to one knee as red, like the blossom of a rose, erupted from her left shoulder. Blood poured down her arm, and she howled like a wounded animal.
Nancy glanced to her right and saw Cam, her jaw set and her eyes glittering dangerously. She held one arm out, and another barrel extended from her forearm, a barrel from which arose a faint wisp of smoke.
With her good arm, Bean dragged Ivy out of the mud and clumsily hugged her to her chest. With tears pouring out of her eyes, she gave Cam a single look—a look overflowing with a mixture of fear, confusion, sadness, and hatred.
Then, in a black flash, she and Ivy disappeared.
With a faint sigh, Cam dropped her arm, and her shoulders slumped.
“Cam!” Nancy shouted. “You shot her!”
Cam looked straight into Nancy’s eyes, and Nancy immediately closed her mouth. Cam’s expression was utterly blank, like the face of a doll, but behind her bright, piercing gaze, there was a new hint—however faint—of feverish ferocity.
It terrified her.
“I’ve been considering the matter we discussed earlier,” Cam said quietly, gesturing toward the ruined camp that surrounded them. “This attack made me realize—this is a war. In war, people die. The goal of war is to kill the other guy before he kills you.”
“No!” Nancy cried. “I hate that kind of thing! We are going to have a happy ending! All of us!”
“You think Ivy and Bean will decide to play nice if you just talk to them, reason with them?” Cam asked. “You think Pinkalicious and Peter will?”
“Yes!”
Cam shook her head. “No. We’ll have to kill them if we’re going to save the world and get my brother and sister back. It’s the only way. If we don’t, they’ll just do this again.”
“No!”
“I won’t sacrifice my siblings for your ideals!” Cam shouted.
Nancy sucked her breath through her teeth. This was the first time she’d heard Cam raise her voice.
After half a minute passed, Nancy ducked her head and clenched her fists around her sword, which slowly, like a melting icicle, shrank back into a wand. “I hate this,” she whispered. “I really, really hate this.”
Teethateena walked to Cam’s side. “Nobody is asking you to like it, Nancy Clancy, but you had better do it. Cam is right: if you are going to save the world, you are going to have to kill. This isn’t one of your children’s books where everyone goes home happy. This is real life, and in real life, people die.”
“No!” Nancy shouted. She stamped a foot, but in the midst of the mud, the gesure was especially pathetic: her foot made a splash, and then it held fast.
She looked around, but all she saw was darkness, grime, fire, and devastation. Amelia was kneeling over Junie B. and trying to stem the flow from her bloody nose. She gave Nancy a quick, embarrassed glance, and then looked away. Their fur hanging limp, Finally and Mouse stood to one side. Both of them stared at Nancy and slowly shook their heads.
Nancy glanced down at the prone form of Judy Moody, who appeared to be sleeping peacefully as rain ran down her cheeks.
Nancy had a team, a team of friends. Only a few minutes before, that team had been united, and they had a plan, however far-fetched. For the first time in this unending nightmare, Nancy had felt the reassurances of friendship, of certainty. She had thought that maybe, just maybe, they could win, and that they would all go home safe and sound and happy, along with JoJo, Stink, Cam’s brother and sister—and even Pinkalicious, Peter, Ivy, and Bean. In the back of her mind, Nancy had begun to plan her outfit for the celebratory tea party that would undoubtedly follow.
But now all of that evaporated, a childish fantasy that had no chance of coming true. Nancy had a team, but she was the only member of that team who believed in happy endings. She was the only one who believed they could go home still children, still innocent, with their hands still clean of blood.
The realization struck her like a cold wind to the face, like a shard of ice through the heart.
Fancy Nancy was alone.
