The Mixing Ray, or, Fool Me Not

     April 1st was Laura’s favorite day of the year. Maybe because it was an excuse to get even with everyone who insisted on using her full name -- numbers and all -- instead of calling her “Laura”, or “Laura Junior,” or even “Little Laura.” Possibly she learned bad habits from watching examples set by her elders. Perhaps she simply had a cruel sense of humor.

     Each year her pranks grew meaner. Last year, she had convinced her baby sister, Shishanya, to let her borrow her Petpet, Jeff. She then had sent him down the Symol hole and then shouted, “Watch out! The Turmaculus is watching the exit!” Poor Jeff had refused to come out of that hole for hours, no matter how much Shishanya pleaded. (She didn’t speak to Laura for weeks afterwards.)

     Laura always had fun with her pranks, but she wanted to do a big one, one that would really fool a lot of Neopets, not just her immediate friends and family. She had started thinking of ideas in January, but kept coming up empty. Every thought was of the same old boring pranks.

     So she went about her days, always on the lookout for anything she could use for a nasty prank. About halfway through March, she just about gave up and started settling on an old fashioned prank. Water bucket above doorway, fake gum, and so on. The best she’d come up with was giving people Pant Devil Attractors and claiming they increased your fishing skill. She didn’t think many people would fall for it.

     Sulking, Laura made her daily visit to the lab ray. She currently was a Kiko, which she didn’t particularly like, and Faerie painted, which she loved.

     “Amazing,” she thought, “how so many Neopets will spend all their Neopoints buying morphing potions and paint brushes when they could just use the ray! But most Neopets are afraid of getting stuck in a species or even gender they don’t like, so they won’t take the risk. I know patience pays off and if I don’t like something, eventually it’ll change again.”

     The lab ray, almost as though to mock her thoughts, flashed and she felt her muscles go weak.

     “Great,” she whined, “lost strength again. Ah well.”

     As she ambled back home, Laura stopped off at the Mystery Island Trading Post and marveled at the fortunes being gained and lost when the aforementioned items changed hands.

     “Hi!” she called to a red Uni buying a Faerie Paint Brush. “Are you going to be a Faerie, like me?”

     “Uh huh!” the Uni answered. “I’ve been saving forever for this! I wanted it a long time ago but my older brother got to be painted first. Now he’s a Werelupe and I finally get my chance! By the way, I’m Quiquamarin, but you can call me Kiki.”

     “I’m Laura465746 but PLEASE call me Laura. If your owner has so many pets, Kiki, who want to be painted, why didn’t she just get the lab map?”

     “Oh no! It could do all sorts of nasty things, like…”

     Laura had heard it all before. She tuned Kiki out, watching the hustle around her, young Neopets frantically begging vendors to sell their items under priced or vendors attempting to subtly check out their competitors’ prices. At the end of her rant, the babbling Uni said something that caught Laura’s attention.

     “If only there were another way, not so expensive!” Kiki was saying, “Everyone would be so happy. Imagine: every Neopet painted pretty!”

     Hmm... Gears whirled in Laura’s head. This could be the perfect chance.

     “I think,” she started, slowly, “I may have an answer to that problem. I’ve been working on a new, special recipe at the Mixing Pot. I can’t say too much because I’m still perfecting it, but if it works, every neopet will be his or her ideal species and color!”

     “Oh wow!” gasped Kiki. “Please, please PLEASE let me know how! I... I’ll give you a present!” She fished in her purse and offered Laura a healing potion she’d bought earlier that day.

     Laura shook her head. “Not yet. I’m going to start my experiment tomorrow night. Tell all your friends to come to the Cooking Pot in two weeks. I should be finished by then. If it works, I’ll look totally different but you’ll recognize me by my voice. Then I’ll tell you how to make it work!”

     Kiki hugged Laura fiercely before galloping off to tell everyone she knew to stop buying paint brushes and morphing or transmogrification potions.

     Snickering, Laura jogged home, her mind racing the whole time. She would need an accomplice, but whom could she trust? Her little sister, Shishanya, would be perfect, because everyone seemed to find her trustworthy, which was remarkable considering most people are afraid of Hissis, but the problem was she was TOO trustworthy; she would never want to trick people. Although... deciding to gamble on Shishanya’s youngest-child complex, she grabbed the little Hissi out of her playroom.

     “I have a GREAT secret!” she whispered, “I... no, you’re too young. You wouldn’t be able to handle it. I’ll ask an older Neopet.”

     “Oh please tell me!” Shishanya whined, “I’m old enough! Please; I’ll do anything!”

     “Well, okay, but if I’m going to trust you with such a big secret, you’ll have to help me out and swear to keep absolute secrecy,” she urged.

     “I swear! I swear!”

     “Alright,” Laura agreed, filling Shishanya in on the details of her plan.

     ---

     Three days later found Shishanya frantically slithering and fluttering from store to store for materials -- a large cauldron, kindling, some tools, and a lot of lumber. She and Laura then spent hour after hour in their garage digging, drilling, polishing and soldering. Shishanya was exhausted and didn’t really approve of Laura’s idea, but she wanted so badly to be seen as trustworthy by her big sister, so she ignored her weariness and misgivings and kept working.

     As she completed the last steps, draping a fancy curtain around the base of the stand, Laura crawled underneath and prompted her, “Over here! No, more to the left! They would still see: we need this space tighter. Perfect!”

     Shishanya sighed and collapsed in a heap, feeling she could sleep for a week.

     “Hey don’t go to sleep on me now!” Laura scolded, poking the tightly coiled blue ball that was Shishanya. “We still have lots more to do!”

     Groaning, Shishanya glared over her blue scales.

     “I thought,” she hissed, “you said it was ‘perfect.’”

     “Well THIS part is, but we still need ingredients! I won’t have time to get them all, so I need your help.”

     Shishanya groaned.

     “I’m sorry,” Laura said, sighing. “I shouldn’t push you so hard. I keep forgetting you’re just a baby. Maybe I should have asked someone older after all.”

     “Wait! I can do it! I’m not a baby,” Shishanya protested.

     “Alright, if you really feel you can do it, I’ll give you another chance.”

     The two spent the rest of the day darting around the markets, picking up (mostly random) ingredients such as potions, drinks, paints, and anything that would look cool when it melted. Laura took every opportunity to spread the word -- “Tonight’s the night I start! Give me two weeks and Neopia will never be the same again!” -- and Shishanya forced herself to tell people that tonight would be the big night.

     When the two got home, Shishanya sorted the ingredients while Laura practiced slipping into the secret tube in the bottom of the cauldron.

     “The trick is,” she narrated, “slipping in and closing it behind me quick enough that no noticeable liquid drains through with me. Hey speaking of which, I hope you didn’t buy any hazardous liquids.”

     “No. I’m not stupid y’know!”

     “Oh no, I never thought that, Ro.”

     Sometimes Shishanya’s family called her Ro as a nickname. It was a pet name that she associated with deep affection, since only those closest to her called her it. At that particular moment Shishanya did not feel Laura deserved the privilege of using her pet name, and she hissed under her breath in annoyance.

     “It’s just, well, with you being so young, maybe you wouldn’t know better.”

     Sighing, Shishanya silently finished sorting the drinks, potions, and other ingredients, pocketing a half-melted chocolate Negg as a reward for putting up with such a bully of an older sister.

     They filled the cauldron halfway with water and then mixed the magic ingredients first, carefully ensuring that none would interact in any frightening and unpredictable ways. Then came the drinks -- milkshakes, apple juice, soda, sauce, anything and everything went into the pot.

     “Great!” Laura remarked, peering into the murky liquid, “You can hardly see two inches down, not to mention the bottom.”

     Shishanya flicked her tongue towards the mixture, scenting the air above it. “Eww,” she whined, making a face, “it smells terrible! How on Neopia are you going to stand diving into that?”

     “I’ll just have to bear it. Every true work of genius has a cost.”

     Glancing at the clock, Laura realized they had less than an hour before Neopets began to show up to see the big discovery. Laura grabbed the remaining ingredients and hurriedly began chopping them up. Shishanya joined in, chopping the vitamins, paints, and other colorful ingredient into unrecognizable pieces.

     “Wasn’t there also a chocolate Negg?” Laura queried.

     “Um, I think maybe we already chopped it.”

     “Oh. Well everything just looks like a colorful swirl now, so we’re all set!”

     It was just in time too, for at that moment the doorbell rang. Laura darted to the door, Shishanya nervously weaving her way behind her. At the door stood tiny orange Acara, and behind him were more Neopets than either of the girls had ever seen anywhere outside the marketplace.

     “Whoah,” Shishanya gasped.

     “Um,” piped up the little Acara, “is it true? You’re really gonna make a new way to get painted? Like cheap?”

     Clearing her throat, Laura stepped out the door, took a deep breath, and put on her best imitation of an announcer voice. “You heard right, ladies and gentlemen! Tonight I will enter a cauldron full of my new, amazing potion. At my own personal risk, I will offer myself up as a test subject to display of this wondrous magic! What the ingredients are, I cannot reveal, but those of you lucky enough to be here today will have the privilege of watching me add the final secret ingredients and bid me farewell -- for, if the unthinkable should happen and the experiment should fail, you may be the last in Neopia to see me alive!”

     A gasp arose from the crowd and an Ixi in the back fainted.

     “Give her some room! Giver her some room!!” A red Blumaroo shouted, hopping in mad circles.

     “Settle down now, ladies and gentlemen,” Laura soothed, fitting comfortably into her new infomercial-salesperson-persona. “It does no one good to panic now. By my estimations, I shall have to remain submersed for eleven days. During that time, the magic of the potion will protect me from harm and sustain my vital functions, so food, water and oxygen will not be an issue. At dawn of the eleventh day, as we welcome the coming Spring and bid farewell to cold March, I will emerge, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, a new Neopet!”

     Wild cheers erupted as the crowd rushed the garage door, pushing and jostling to get a better view. Laura smugly sauntered to the table and lifted a small bowl containing dust and mush of various items. As though on ceremony, she handed the bowl to Shishanya, and then mounted the cauldron’s ladder with all the precision of a professional gymnast or ballerina. Shishanya, barely managing not to roll her eyes, followed and held the bowl ready.

     “As soon as I am submerged,” Laura called to the impatient crowd, “my assistant Shishanya shall scatter the magic ingredient into the potion. When I tested this on a carrot (which subsequently became a radioactive Negg)” -- there was another chorus of “ooh”s and “ah”s from the crowd -- “there was an odd effect, possibly something to do with a distortion of the time/space continuum, but suddenly the liquid condensed, sinking a good five inches! Now, I don’t know if the effect will be more, or less, or none at all with a live creature, but I wanted to warn you so no one is startled. Now, farewell, my good friends! Goodbye, my dear sister!”

     She hugged Shishanya dramatically and leaped into the giant cauldron. Shishanya quickly flicked the bowl into the cauldron, the glitter (which she had added last minute as an afterthought) making the entire scene sparkle and shine so much that Shishanya herself almost believed it was real magic. True to Laura’s cunning prediction, the level dropped suddenly, although only about an inch and a half, since they had spent a great deal of time developing a special rubber airlock tube through which Laura could squeeze as it sealed behind her.

     “Now, ladies and gentlemen,” Shishanya said, in a feeble imitation of Laura’s crowd-pleasing voice, “comes that last and most dangerous step. The rest is just waiting.”

     As she said this, she threw a match into the kindling around the cauldron. Someone screamed and many in the crowd protested.

     “Please be calm!” Shishanya implored, ignoring the tightness in her own stomach. “Remember; she is perfectly safe, protected by the magic of the potion!”

     Despite her assurances, Shishanya was very relieved to hear Laura’s voice, tinny and muffled from the tunnel beneath the garage floor, call out “It’s true! Although the distortion in the time and space field has rendered your voices odd to me, I am in complete comfort, floating in magical bliss, where I shall remain until the eleventh day!”

     A roar of triumph erupted from the crowd, watching in awe as flames licked the sides of the cauldron wherein (they believed) Laura lay nestled in a cocoon of magic.

     The crowd slowly dispersed, a few lingering to ask questions or attempt to peer into the “magic” mixture. Eventually, everyone was gone and Laura crawled out of the tunnel through the rear exit and peaked into the garage.

     “Did they buy it?” She asked.

     Shishanya nodded.

     “Sweet!”

     The next week flashed by for Shishanya, who was kept busy answering questions and refusing requests to reveal the secret ingredients, and dragged very slowly for Laura, who had to keep hidden and never got to talk to anyone. The only time she even left the house was in the middle of the night, carefully, to sneak to use the lab ray.

     Day after day passed as Shishanya sneaked Laura food, books, and toys. Every night Laura tried the lab ray, gaining strength, then agility, then losing a level, then gaining strength only to lose it the next night. On the tenth night she burst into tears.

     “This isn’t going to work, Shishanya,” she sobbed. “All that time and Neopoints spent for nothing! I only have tonight and tomorrow and if I don’t get changed, the whole trick will be ruined!”

     Shishanya comforted Laura, but her heart wasn’t really in it. She’d grown weary of acting as Laura’s public spokesperson and just wanted it to be over, one way or the other.

     That night the ray dropped Laura’s level again (Shishanya muttered something about “karma” when Laura told her) and on the final night, Laura slipped out to the lab ray, jumping at shadows and constantly looking around her to make sure no one could see.

     She stood in front of the ray for a good quarter hour, knowing that procrastinating wouldn’t stop the ray from not turning her into another species, but terrified to use up her last chance and have nothing happen.

     “I guess I have no choice but to try,” she mumbled to herself, leaping in front of the ray. Her skin tingled and went numb. She toppled to the ground, writhing under the intensity of the ray. Suddenly the world twisted and she felt her body contort. Panting from exertion, she galloped (“galloped?” she thought) to a mirror and took herself in. She had gained a lot of height, and had to arch her neck downward to see her green fur untidily sticking up on a long-eared quadruped body: an Ogrin.

     “YES!” she shrieked, and then bolted when someone outside cried, “Who’s there?”

     Back home, she crawled into the other end of the tunnel and squeezed back toward the cauldron. The fire had long since burned out and so the cauldron wasn’t even remotely warm, but still Laura didn’t dare pushing through the rubber airlock until the crowd had appeared and was ready, because she would have to hold her breath under that vile (now thicker with evaporation) goo until the moment she leaped out.

     Finally, the first rays of sunlight began to turn the night sky into a dull grey: it was time. She inched to the airlock, her new green legs cramped and awkward in the small tunnel. “Why didn’t I think of this when I built it?” She mentally scolded herself. She had been much smaller when she built the escape tunnel and could barely fit through it now.

     “Behold,” Shishanya called, “The power of the sun activates the final step of the spell! The time has come!”

     Taking a deep breath, Laura shoved with all her might against the rubber seal, which opened around her, the mixture of old boiled liquid oozing through the opening she had made. She gagged from the smell and pushed against the rear of the tunnel, grunting with the effort. Nothing.

     “Um, the time... has come?” Shishanya repeated.

     Panicked, Laura kicked violently against the rear tunnel, the liquid continuously glopping down into the tunnel around her, backing up and filling in her air space.

     “What’s that clanging sound?” she heard someone ask.

     “Um, that’s, um, the spell kicking in. It must be part of the effect. Stand back or, um, there could be... side effects?”

     “I don’t think so. It sounds like it’s coming from UNDER the cauldron.”

     “Help!” Laura coughed between mouthfuls of horrible, horrible potion.

     “Hello? Is that Miss Laura? Are you in there?”

     “Help!!” she cried again, choking.

     Muffled through the mixture surrounding her, Laura heard a hysterical whimpering that sounded like Shishanya, which quickly was replaced with a sudden, deafening clang. Again and again it rang out, the world shaking each time. After what seemed like years, the cauldron ripped away from its mount on the ground, liquid spilled -- or, rather, glopped -- out onto the ground and, most importantly, away from Laura’s breathing passages.

     Coughing violently, Laura looked around at the crowd. The closest were some of the largest neopets, Elephantes, Krawks, Unis, Skeiths, who had collectively slammed against the cauldron using rocks, some hammers from the workbench, and even their bodies, until it had split and toppled. They first stared in surprise, then confusion, and then in anger.

     “Um,” Laura timidly said, after regaining her breath, “April Fools?”

     The crowd went dead silent. Eventually someone glared pointedly and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

     They all left and Laura felt very relieved to be spared their collective wrath, until it occurred to her that she still was jammed in the rubber airlock and couldn’t pry herself loose to move either out or back into the tunnel.

     “Hey, Ro, little help here?”

     “Forget it!” the little Hissi cried, “You scared me to death. I thought I’d lose you! You can just sit there ‘til you lose enough weight to squeeze out yourself!”

     Shishanya stormed out of the room, which would have had more of an effect had she been able to stomp instead of slither. Laura struggled alone for a while, but eventually Shishanya gave in to her merciful instincts and brought her eldest sibling, Eloroth, to help get Laura out.

     “I hope you learned a lesson from this!” Eloroth scolded as she and Shishanya pried lose the bars surrounding the seal. “Pranks are cruel enough when there isn’t danger involved. You could’ve gotten really hurt!”

     “I know,” Laura agreed. “I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I got you involved in this, Shishanya. I won’t ever play April Fools again!”

     Shishanya piped in, “You might want to leave town next year, though; I bet a lot of people will want to play a prank on YOU next year.”

     Groaning, Laura stumbled toward the shower.

     “One thing good came of this,” Eloroth added.

     “What?”

     “At least with everyone mad at you, no one will be around to smell that horrible odor.”

     Laura sighed and wondered if she would ever find milkshakes appealing again.

The End