Gecko Gladiator Read online

  “It’s a kind of princess, I think,” Josh said. “Usually in distress. And they seem to wear cone-y things with ribbons on their heads …”

  “You know too much,” muttered Danny, darkly.

  He shuddered and turned to look at the large shop floor. It was festooned in glittering pink, yellow, and purple displays of girly stuff. There were huge TV screens dangling from the ceiling all around the store. Endless commercials with nonstop tinkly music advertised all the girly toys available. Even the Darcy Show was getting in on the act. Mom and Jenny’s favorite talk-show host, wearing her trademark yellow jacket and black sequinned pants, was gushing about her own tiny doll—the Diddly DeeDee—and her own brand of toy microphone. A rack of sparkly yellow My Little Microphones stood to their left, just behind the attack fairies. Danny and Josh stared past it, trying to work out the quickest route to the red door that Petty had mentioned. It was clear they would have to cross all the way to the back of the store.

  “Do we really have to do this?” Danny wailed.

  Josh grabbed his arm again. “Stop freaking out!” he snapped. “Remember! Low profile!”

  But Danny’s fight with the fairies had already attracted attention. At least six girls were now peering at them, giggling in pairs. One small girl and her mother just glanced at them with disdain and then hurried around a corner. Josh dragged Danny along the Diddly DeeDee aisle. Its tall shelves were packed with tiny, pink dolls and a phenomenal amount of clothes and accessories, most of which could fit into a matchbox. “Why do they have to be so yellow and purple and pink?” Danny murmured. “Why are girls so nuts about pink? PINK!”

  “Just don’t look,” Josh advised his brother, as Danny’s eyes started to get fixed. “Now—you see the My Tiny Horsey rotating display? We’ve got to get to the far side of that …”

  “My Tiny Horsey?” whimpered Danny, his eyes going glassy. He’d seen the commercials for My Tiny Horsey on TV. My Tiny Horsey had eyelashes and necklaces and manes and tails of different colors. And you could put special glittery nail polish on its hooves …

  “Snap out of it!” hissed Josh, whacking Danny on the back of the head. “It’s just girls’ toys! Pretend they’re all called DEATHKILL STALLION and they’re black and gray and carrying machine guns and you’ll be OK!”

  Danny did his best. Despite some giggling very close behind him and a definite whiff of glittery hoof polish, he got to the far side of the display alongside Josh. Here they nearly collided with the mother and daughter who had scurried away from them earlier. Both wore identical long, lumpy, dark coats, even though it was quite warm outside. And both of them had identical curly brown hair and gray eyes, which they narrowed suspiciously at Josh and Danny. The girl was not much older than Josh and Danny. But she looked as disapprovingly as her mother as they stalked away, wrapping their coats tightly around them.

  “I thought they were going to start hissing at us for a moment there,” Danny said. “What’s their problem?”

  “Never mind,” breathed Josh, tugging Danny across to the lobby area. “We’ve made it.”

  “Aaaargh!” shrieked Danny. Accidentally, he had snagged a pair of pink and gold fairy wings on his shoulder as he’d run through the dress-up aisle. “GETITOFFMEEE!” he wailed. And Josh, with a weary sigh, removed the wings as if they were a large moth. He ducked back into the aisle and hung them up on the fairy dress-up display. “Take home a Diddly DeeDee today,” urged the Darcy Show presenter from a nearby screen. “She’s just like me … only Diddly Deeee!”

  Josh ran away.

  “Come on—look—there’s the red door,” he said, as soon as he got back. And there it was, tucked out of sight around the corner from the shop floor. Next to it was a blue door with a PRIVATE sign on it. On the red door, there was just one small paper sign taped into place. It read MUTATIO INC.

  “Mutatio?” Danny whispered. “What’s that got to do with Petty Potts?”

  “It’s Latin,” Josh said. “I think it means ‘change’ or …‘switch.’” Josh had picked up quite a bit of Latin because of all the Latin names of wildlife he’d read about.

  He tried the door. It was locked. Of course, he’d known it would be. Why would they need to S.W.I.T.C.H. if they could just walk in? He got out the spray bottle and glanced around. Nobody was anywhere near them. They were tucked out of sight of the main store. Despite all the fuss Danny had made, there was no sign of any member of the staff coming. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s S.W.I.T.C.H.”

  He sprayed them both. A few seconds later, the red door shot up to the size of a house as he and Danny shrank down to their new shape and size. The crack under the door now looked like the gap you’d find beneath a bench. Easy to get under.

  “Oh-ho-hoho!” marveled Danny, staring at his brother. “That is really cool!”

  There was a metal kick plate at the bottom of the red door. Josh looked at his reflection to see what he had become. “Wow! I’m a gecko!” Josh breathed. He checked the underside of his feet. “A tokay gecko! WOW!”

  He was a magnificent sight. A neat, sleek lizard covered in fabulous fine yellow scales with orange and blue spots. His belly was a pale milk white, and his face was lit up by two dark, glinting, orblike eyes. His snout was rounded, with a wide, smiling mouth. His feet were dainty. Their five toes had squishy pads on them, which made them look like the petals on a flower. Josh knew these “petals” were one of the most amazing things about his new form—he couldn’t wait to find out if they really worked. Turning, he checked out his tail. It was long and leaf-shaped, tapering to a neat point.

  “Oh great,” Danny said, also staring into the metal mirror. “Oh—just great!”

  Danny was much like Josh in shape and size, from his big eyes and petal-shaped toes to his tail.

  But there were two differences.

  He was stripy.

  And he was pink.

  Josh laughed so hard he thought his inner gecko workings might burst. “But, Danny …” he spluttered, between a series of high-pitched chirrups and clicks, “you’re so pretty!”

  Danny smacked Josh in the face with his tail and scurried under the door. On the other side, there was a cliff of concrete. Followed by another cliff of concrete. And then another. A staircase.

  Josh arrived at his side, still shaking with laughter. He opened his mouth to say something, but Danny gave him a fierce stare. “DON’T!” was all he said, and Josh bit down on his next joke. After all Danny’s freaking out about the pink and glittery stuff in the shop, he could have been designed by Princessland.

  Of course, Josh was a very pretty gecko too—but the orange and blue spots weren’t at all girly. Why they’d both S.W.I.T.C.H.ed with such different colors, Josh couldn’t say. Maybe it was just Danny’s inner pinkness coming out.

  “So,” Danny said, pinkly. “What’s going to eat us today?”

  “We’re not in much danger here,” grinned Josh. “Unless Petty’s bought herself a cat. Come on—I’ve got something to show you!” And Josh ran up the step. Literally—up it. He didn’t even have to try to work out how to reach the first ledge and haul himself up. He ran up the smooth concrete without any difficulty at all.

  “Whoa! Let me try!” Danny said, following his brother. He’d been climbing as a lizard before. But that had been up a tree with lots of easy claw-holds to help. This surface was completely flat and smooth. As a sand lizard, he would have struggled—but as a gecko … no problem!

  Ahead of him, Josh wasn’t bothering with the stairs at all—he was just scampering up the wall of the stairwell, heading for the ceiling in a straight line. He was letting out little squeaks and clicks of excitement that echoed off the hard, plastered walls. “You see these?” He lifted one foot and showed off its toes. Underneath each toe was a group of tiny white mushroom-like things. “They’re called setae!” chirruped Josh. “They stick like glue every time we press them against the wall—they’re incredibly strong! But then they just pop off again when we wan
t to carry on. Scientists all over the world have been trying to make something that does what a gecko’s foot does! I was reading about it just last week!”

  Danny caught up with his brother. He’d forgotten his unfortunate color now and was hugely enjoying the climb. “We’re like Spider-Man!” he marveled.

  “Yeah—except that Spider-Man is pretend—and geckos do it for real!” Josh grinned at his brother in delight, revealing a row of small, sharp teeth. “Now watch this!” And he ran right up to the top of the wall and effortlessly flipped his lizardy body upside down before walking jauntily across the ceiling. “Whoooo-hooo! Look at meeee!” he called.

  Danny wasted no time in following him. Walking upside down on the ceiling was amazing … although he and Josh had done it once before. “We did this when we were flies, remember?” he said.

  “Yeah … and that was cool too,” Josh said. “But now we’re doing it with style. We’re not just about to go and vomit all over someone’s cake mix, are we? This time, we’re beautiful!”

  “And we can’t get eaten by a spider,” added Danny, happily.

  “Nope … we eat the spider!” Josh said. “Fancy a snack?” And he ran toward the corner of the stairwell ceiling where a few spindly cellar spiders hung in fine strands of web. As soon as they saw him, they began to swing around wildly. They hoped to put him off them by seeming bigger than they were through the wild, blurry movements. Josh was very tempted to snap one up—his lizard instinct was telling him to have some munchies right here, right now.

  But he was soft-hearted. He remembered how it felt to be a spider about to be eaten. He couldn’t do it. “Come on, Danny,” he said, turning away from the arachnid snack counter. “Let’s go find Petty.”

  “OK,” Danny said. Three legs were poking out of his mouth.

  “You didn’t!”

  “Didn’t what?” asked Danny, innocently, with a gulp.

  “Never mind,” chuckled Josh. He knew Danny would have blocked out all memory of his little snack already. Josh ran back to the wall and down to another door. At the foot of the door, a greenish shaft of light shone through. He headed for it and slipped easily under the crack. Danny arrived beside him a few seconds later.

  They were in a large room under sloping eaves. The loft area, Danny guessed. It was huge at the moment, of course, because they were small lizards. But even as humans, it would be pretty big. Three high windows ran along one side. The slanting windows in the ceiling above would normally let in plenty of light. But they were covered in dark blinds. The room was bathed in the green glow of Petty’s computer monitors sitting on a high bench. Josh and Danny wandered across the wooden floor, staring all around them. The room was clearly a laboratory. One much bigger than the laboratory beneath Petty’s garden shed. Its many shelves and tables were filled with bottles and boxes and Bunsen burners and test tubes and weird gadgets of every kind. A large mouse cage took up one corner. And in the center was a familiar square tent of plastic—the S.W.I.T.C.H.ing chamber.

  “Well,” Petty said, stepping out of the chamber and peering down at them in the dim light. “What do you think?”

  Josh and Danny tried to tell her how impressed they were—but all that came out were those chirruping, clicking, and occasionally grunting noises.

  “Aaah—geckos! The noisiest lizards there are!” Petty said, smiling at them appreciatively. “The only reptiles that can make noises humans can hear, don’t you know? Well—one of you is a pretty boy!” she added. She knelt down and patted Danny on the head. He growled.

  “But I need you to S.W.I.T.C.H. back now so we can talk,” Petty said. And she swiftly squirted them with a bottle of antidote spray.

  “Aa-aaw!” Josh was disappointed. “I wanted to walk across your ceiling!”

  “Plenty of time for that later,” Petty said.

  “How come he got to be all cool with spots and I turned into Barbie Gecko?” snapped Danny, folding his arms with a huff.

  “Well, you’re very much the same—it’s just a skin pigment issue,” Petty said. “Although it does suggest that the formula is a little unstable … again.” She looked slightly concerned.

  “Unstable? That’ll be the third unstable S.W.I.T.C.H. you’ve let us try!” squeaked Danny.

  “The second,” corrected Petty. “I didn’t let you try the TurtleSWITCH, you may recall. You stole it and tried it entirely of your own free will!”

  “But the chameleon one was unstable too,” argued Danny. “And you let us try that even when your mouse ended up half-rodent, half-chameleon!”

  “I don’t know why you fuss so,” Petty said. “You’re always fine in the end. Cutting-edge science can’t be perfectly safe. I am a genius, and I must push the boundaries.”

  “Hmmm,” Danny muttered. “Funny how you always push the boundaries from a safe distance! I’ve never seen you try the S.W.I.T.C.H. out!”

  “I’m much older than you. My bones are far too brittle,” Petty said with a dismissive wave. “Anyway—enough of all this. I wanted you to see my new lab—and here it is!”

  “Why have it over Princessland?” Josh asked. “Are you trying to mess with our minds?”

  “What did you expect? A hollowed-out, extinct volcano? I am now based here because it is the very last place that government spies would think of looking for me,” explained Petty. “And if they see me coming into the store, they’ll think I’ve just come to buy something pretty for a … niece or something.”

  Josh and Danny stared at Petty. They could not imagine her ever buying something from Princessland.

  Petty held up a glittery pink bag carrying the store’s name. “See!” she said. “I always carry one of these out with me when I go.”

  “What’s in it?” Josh asked.

  “Wadded-up tissues, dried calamine lotion, and chicken pox scabs mostly,” Petty said, peering into the bag.

  There was a short silence and then a further pause while Josh and Danny massaged the rigid masks of horror off their faces.

  “Come on, come on—over here!” Petty said. She led them to a corner of the room. There, in a pool of white light from a desk lamp, lay a microscope and several jars and boxes. “I’ve been studying the marbles. You’re right—all three of them contain code for MAMMALSWITCH. I recognize my own brilliant work! I must have made the formula … maybe years ago while I was still working for the government. And there are six marbles, the same way there were six BUGSWITCH cubes and six REPTOSWITCH cubes.”

  “How do you know there are six?” Josh asked.

  “Because when I was clearing out the shelves of my old lab, I found this,” Petty said. She held up a small box covered in blue velvet. It looked much like the square red and green velvet boxes containing the BUG and REPTILESWITCH cubes—but this box was round. Inside there was a ripple of some silky blue material across six round dents. In three of these, Petty had pressed the first three marbles—red, green, and blue. But the other three dents were empty.

  “So … did you hide the marbles the same way you hid the REPTOSWITCH cubes?” Danny asked. “In case Victor Crouch double-crossed you and came looking for them?”

  “I don’t know,” sighed Petty. “Obviously that bit of memory is burnt out, or I would have thought to ask you to look for these when I asked you to look for the REPTOSWITCH cubes in the summer. And anyway … if I did hide them, somebody else has clearly found them. Or more likely, stolen them.”

  “Who?” Josh asked. “Victor Crouch again?”

  Petty reached behind her and took down a wooden frame. In it, much to their amazement, was a photo of Victor Crouch. He was wearing a black hat and waving cheerily at the photographer, the one spiky black fingernail on his little finger pointing up into the air. Had he possessed any, his eyebrows would have been raised. But as peculiar as Petty’s old nemesis looked, it was something else that made them gasp—he had his arm around none other than Petty Potts.

  “Yes,” sighed Petty. “This was when we were friends … o
r so I thought.”

  The Petty in the photo looked about ten years younger. Her hair was darker, and she had one or two fewer chins—and those chins were definitely less whiskery. Someone else’s hand was tucked through the crook of Petty’s left arm, but they were cropped out of the picture.

  “This was taken while we were working together in the secret government laboratories,” remembered Petty. “Little did I know that only a year or so later, he would have framed me in a very different way! And lost me my job and tried to steal all my genius work! I also found this while clearing out the old lab. I keep it to remind me never to trust anyone! You hear me, boys?” Her voice became shrill as she started bashing the picture against the wall. “Never trust ANYONE! NEVER, NEVER, NEVER!!!” There was a tinkle of broken glass.

  “O … K,” Josh said, stepping away. “So … no other ideas about who the Mystery Marble Sender is?”

  “Nope,” snapped Petty. “Were there postmarks on any of the letters?”

  “Only on one parcel,” Danny said. “All the others were hand delivered—apart from one which came on a parachute. The parcel had a London postmark. It was a set of books Josh had won in a wildlife competition with Chatz TV. A clue was tucked in with it.”

  “London … hmmm. Well, that’s not much help,” grunted Petty. She slapped the broken picture frame facedown on her workbench. “No idea at all! And even LESS idea why this Mystery Marble Sender is sending them to YOU two. Go on—go on home now and see if there have been any more clues! Keep watch! Never rest! Watch from behind your curtains at ALL TIMES! If you watch all the time, sooner or later the Mystery Marble Sender will slip up and you’ll SEE him!”

  “Fine,” Danny said, grabbing Josh’s arm. “We’ll go now.”

  He and Josh left Petty shouting at the broken picture frame and let themselves out. The door at the foot of the stairs had a deadlock that they could open from the inside, so they got back out into the lobby and then left it to fall shut behind them. The only way back in would be if Petty opened it—or if they S.W.I.T.C.H.ed again.