It was a morbidly hot summer day, and the Spluts lay in a corner draped over an air-conditioning vent. Alexis lay in a sunny window, tail twitching, watching them with a somewhat annoyed air. "Just out of curiosity," he asked, "do any of you ever intend to move again?"
Someone moaned. Someone else muttered something about intravenous Coke feedings. Alexis let out an impatient sigh. "We’re wasting time. You brats need to be training. There’s no way you could ever beat the enemy in this shape."
Kitty cried. "Are you calling me fat?" Puddin shoved a pillow over her face in a futile effort to prevent the inevitable fifteen-minute analysis of her diet and how it was affected by the environment, stress level, humidity, and other factors beyond her control. When Kitty was done ranting into the feathers, she rolled over and stared at the ceiling. "I don’t want to train."
"What do you want to do?" Punkin asked, buffing a toenail.
"I want to..."
She never got a chance to finish, for just then her little sister rolled into the room, bouncing on a large dragon balloon. "Kiiiiitty," she whined. "I’m huuuuungry."
"Tough snot, gerbil," Kitty said, and resumed counting bumps in the plaster.
"I’m going to tell mom you said snot."
"So tell her."
"I’m going to tell mom you won’t feed me."
"You are fourteen years old and only mildly mentally retarded. Feed yourself."
"I’m going to tell mom you said retarded."
"Aleeeeexis!"
The lizard smirked at her.
Kitty threw Puddin at the Brat, who ducked and ran. "I’m going to tell mom you’re throwing your friends again."
"No you’re not, because I’m not going to tell her where I hid your body!"
Luckily, another major crisis was diverted by the sound of tinkling bells floating in through the window. The Spluts stopped to listen. "Is it..."
"I hear it too!"
"The meaning of life!"
"It’s Mr. Ice Cream Man!"
The three Spluts and the Brat rushed out the door, digging through their pockets for change as they tripped over each other and fell down the stairs just in time to see the pale pink truck drive past the house. Puddin let out a death scream, and they chased it around the block at light speed. "Maybe they’re in better condition than I thought," Alexis mused to himself as he followed at a more leisurely pace. "The proper motivation..."
The truck slowed for a stop sign, and Kitty made a lunge for the bumper. The driver looked in his mirror and noticed his stalkers. "Well there you are!" he exclaimed. "When I didn’t see you waiting on the street corner with the tents, I thought you must be sick in bed or on vacation or something."
"I want one of everything with extra chocolate," Kitty panted, and passed out.
She woke up a few minutes later to the gentle sound of slushies being stirred by her ear. Mr. Ice Cream Man looked down at her worriedly. "Are you all right?" She made a face and slowly looked around. Puddin and Punkin were madly devouring pink star ice cream bars and gooey drippy nameless confections tattooed with warning labels from the American Dermatology Administration.
"Don’t worry, guys, I’m all right," she said, and fell back into a pile of popsicle sticks.
"Oh dear," Mr. Ice Cream Man sighed. "I thought this wasn’t going to happen anymore after I talked to her mother."
"She took her last pill yesterday," the Brat announced through a mouthful of sugar cone. Kitty bit her thumb in the kid’s general direction and looked for Alexis.
"Lexi," she whined, "I wanna go home."
The two other Spluts, the Brat, Mr. Ice Cream Man, and Alexis stared at her. Their mouths dropped open. "You don’t want ice cream?"
"Wanna go home." She caught Alexis up on her shoulder and started walking. Puddin and Punkin stared after her, licked their fingers, and followed. The Brat remained, shoveling whipped cream into her mouth. Mr. Ice Cream Man watched them for a minute, then suddenly gasped in pain and leaned against the Brat, who bit his ankle. As he cleaned up the blood, the Brat wondered apathetically why his eyes had turned red and a strange red mist was gathering about his head. She decided he’d been having a few drinks with the mailman again and caught the postal worker thing, so she grabbed a few pudding pops and got up to go.
"Wait a minute, little Brat dear, I have something for you," Mr. Ice Cream Man called after her.
She looked at him suspiciously. "Last time Kitty said that, I had to clean up where the cat puked."
His eyes flashed red. The Brat looked at him with interest. "Do that again."
"Do what again?"
"That demonic thing with your eyes like you’re possessed by evil or something."
Mr. Ice Cream Man cackled darkly.
"Oh cool." The Brat gazed at him lovingly. "Will you be my new daddy?"
"Uh, sure, kid. As, um, a new daddy present, have this special black Mystery Flavor Popsicle. I promise it won’t turn you into a slack-eyed, drooling living corpse out to kill your sister or anything."
"Can’t become what I already am," the Brat grinned, and wandered along home, throwing rocks at cars. The red mist flowed out of Mr. Ice Cream Man’s ears and into the popsicle, leaving his body slumped over a small fire hydrant. The Brat didn’t notice, as she had finally succeeded in cracking a windshield. She took a huge bite in celebration, and suddenly decided to head for home.
Kitty sat behind a chair, head stuck through the railings overlooking the stairs.
"What’s with her?" Puddin asked Punkin.
"I don’t know. How much sugar has she had today?"
"I saw her eat a box of donut holes at breakfast."
"Oooh. She needs a fix."
"Maybe she needs her spleen looked at again."
"They said that was a relatively rare thing. They don’t rupture that often, I don’t think."
Alexis was only listening to their conversation halfway. He wondered what was wrong with Kitty. She looked strange, almost as though she were thinking about something. But that was ridiculous. "Splut" and "think" were two relatively contradictory concepts.
Still...she had given up ice cream.
"Where’s the Brat?" Kitty asked out of nowhere.
They stared at her in another shocked silence. "You want to know where she is? Why, do you feel the need to push her under a moving car or something?"
"No, we’re still fighting with the insurance man from last time. That driver was so nasty, it wasn’t like she bottomed it out completely or anything...She should be back by now."
"Don’t worry about it, she’s probably out shooting rubber bands at pigeons or something."
The door opened and the Brat walked in, tracking red footprints on the carpet. "Aaaaah you fungus!" Kitty screamed. "Mom’ll think I got blood on that again!" The Brat turned to stare at her blankly, mouth open slightly, one hand limply holding a black-stained, pointed popsicle stick.
"Um," Puddin said cautiously. "She looks a little...off."
"Yeah," Punkin added. "She’s being too quiet."
Just then, the Brat let out a bloodcurdling scream and cracked into a thousand shining pieces which reformed themselves into a hideous, one-eyed, horned blue demon.
"Does she do that a lot?" Puddin asked Kitty as they ran for the door.
"The screaming part," Kitty coughed. "Lexi?"
"What?" the lizard snarled.
"Is this one of those times we’re supposed to make up?"
"Uh, what makes you ask?" he answered as the Brat-demon made a swipe for his tail with dripping ebony claws.
"I just wondered."
"Do it, Spluts!"
"Perky Princess Power, Make Up!"
"Magic Bondage Euphoria, Transform!"
"Shiny Pleather Hotpants Power!"
The demon stopped dead in its tracks and fell deep into a bout of tearing hysteria. "What, you never seen a fuku before?" Kitty asked, annoyed. The demon responded with a show of fangs. "Um. Lexi?"
"What?"
"What do we do with it now?" The demon snickered.
"Exorcise it and bring back the Brat."
"How?"
"I like the demon better."
"Can I keep it?"
"NO!"
"Pleeeease? It’s cute."
"My mom won’t be able to tell the difference!"
"This isn’t going to deteriorate into another monster-of-the-week series, is it? Because we’re too cute for that."
"Shut up and kill it!" Alexis howled, as the monster grabbed him around the middle.
"With what?"
"We could whine at it, maybe."
"Ooh, Punkie, do the leper thing at it! It might run away."
The demon rolled on the floor laughing and threw Alexis against a wall. "They sent me to get rid of you?" it snorted. "What kind of threat could you possibly present? What are you going to do, giggle me to death?"
"That’s a thought," Puddin mused.
"This sucks," Punkin pouted.
"Uh, Lexi, you okay?"
Alexis moaned in a corner.
"Lexi!" Kitty cried. "That’s it, Mr. Brat-Demon, I’m the only one who gets to make Lexi bleed internally! I can’t forgive it!" She stepped closer to the demon, who blew his nose on his arm and waited expectantly for another good chuckle. "Sailorkitty fights for love, lizards, and lipstick! In boots and Sailor-fuku, the perky Princess will punish you!"
Puddin nudged Punkin. "She watches too much TV."
Kitty flipped backwards and kicked off one of her boots. "Shiny Glass Hooker Heels...Impale!" The boot morphed into a long glass sword, which she threw at the choking demon. It stuck itself cleanly into where the Brat-demon’s heart was, more or less. The demon shrieked, this time in mortal agony instead of laughter, and fell on its back, paralyzed. Kitty grinned smugly and walked barefoot over to its corpse. Alexis and the Spluts watched in silence. She stepped on its chest firmly and pulled the sword out, and a thick red mist filled the room. When they could see again, Kitty was standing over the plain, relatively non-demonic Brat, once again wearing her boots, now slightly pink-tinged. "Next one’s yours, Puddin," she said tiredly, and detransformed.
Two hours later, the Spluts lay back over the air conditioner. They had hosed down the Brat, who was still somewhat sticky from the Magic Popsicle, and had a nice Coke to calm the nerves. "Today sucked," Punkin said.
"Yeah I know." Puddin rolled over and spit out a feather.
"I’m bored," Kitty complained.
"Don’t get too comfortable, Spluts," Alexis announced from where he sat on Kitty’s head. "We’re not done yet."
"I know, I know," Kitty sighed. "We have to find and destroy all the other demons."
Alexis was shocked. "That was almost like a coherent thought."
"Yeah. It’s making my head hurt." She sucked more Coke through an elaborate assembly of straws leading to a gallon bottle in the fridge.
"So let’s rest while we can," Punkin yawned.
"Be on your guard, Spluts. The enemy is too close for comfort. We don’t have a lot of time on our hands to waste. We have to find a way to bring your powers back to their maximum. I don’t think you realize what potential..." He droned on for some minutes. Puddin looked at Punkin. Punkin looked at Kitty. Kitty nodded. They picked him up and carried him back to the Brat’s room. "Um, where are we going?"
"Ooooh," the Brat squealed. "A toy!"
"Have a nice afternoon, Lexi. We’ll come pick you up for supper." They left as the Brat tied a light pink baby bonnet on his head and little pink shoes on his claws.
"Noooooo!"
The Brat giggled and reached for a bottle of prune juice.