CHAPTER TEN

JOSEPH MULCH GETS A BIG SURPRISE

Far above a wide expanse of fields, a pink-and-yellow tower streaked through the sky. At the very top, at the entrance to the helter-skelter slide that wound around it, stood a small, frightened rag doll.

‘I’ll go first,’ said Arabella. ‘It was my idea so I should test it.’

‘I think we’re beyond the testing stage,’ said Dan. ‘Good luck, pal.’

Arabella took a box in one hand and a canister of helium in the other. She lowered herself on to the slide and pushed.

FSSHLLLOOOOOOHHHHHH!

It was the fastest slide she had ever experienced. The freezing air rippled her hair and rattled her eyes. Around and around the slide she raced. She plunged a hand into the box, drew out a clump of sticks of bubblegum, crammed them into her mouth and chewed with all her might.

She grimaced. The taste was awful. Hair flavour? What idiot had dreamed that up?

Then she pursed her lips and blew. A bright pink bubble emerged from her mouth. Quickly, she took the bubble and carefully attached it to the nozzle of the helium canister …

FSSHLLLOOOOOOHHHHHH!

Arabella flew off the end of the slide and into mid-air, spinning, spiralling, tumbling towards the ground at high speed …

She pressed the release button next to the canister’s nozzle.

WHHHOOOOOOSSSHHHH!

The pink bubble expanded to the size of a parachute. Instantly, Arabella sensed she was falling at a slower rate.

Soon, she was drifting gently downwards through the air like a flower petal on a summer breeze. She laughed delightedly.

There may have been no balloons in the Bubblegum Tower, but, as the Spy Toys had noticed on their climb up the tower’s central staircase, there was plenty of bubblegum.

Back at the top of the helter-skelter, Dan and the others watched as Arabella descended slowly beneath them on her bubblegum balloon.

‘It works!’ cried Flax. ‘Come on, let’s all do the same. Chloe first.’ He passed the young girl a stick of Neverpop Bubble Gum. ‘Good luck!’

‘Ha!’ cried Chloe, unwrapping the gum. ‘This looks like fun!’ She took a canister of helium and disappeared down the slide with a cry of

‘WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!’

‘Erm, excuse me,’ called a voice from the control room. It was John the unicorn. ‘You chaps will untangle me from this parachute so I can escape, too, won’t you?’

Dan rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, don’t you worry, pal. We’ll save a stick of gum for you. But don’t even think about escaping once you land.’

One by one, they slid down the slide, inflated their pink bubbles of gum and launched themselves into the air: Doctor Potty, Gemma Snowdrop, Flax and Dan.

Finally, it was John the unicorn’s turn. Left alone on the hurtling Bubblegum Tower, he wished there was something he could do to prevent it being destroyed before it hit its target. But he knew it was hopeless. Ah, well. There would be other evil plans, he promised himself. Bigger and better ones. Maybe something involving a giant remote-controlled octopus? That might be good …

Daydreaming, he took his stick of bubblegum and his canister of gas and stepped on to the slide. Whizzing along, he blew a nice big bubble and inflated it with the helium. But as he struggled to attach it to the canister, he accidentally popped the bubble with his horn and it collapsed around him in a soggy pink mess, pinning him to the floor of the slide.

‘Gah!’ he groaned. ‘I hate being a unicorn.’

Drifting down gently, Arabella saw a light glow brightly in the distance. She realised it was the fiery exhaust of the army’s missile thundering its way to the rescue.

Before she knew what was happening, the ground flew up to meet her with a crunching thud and she landed in the middle of a wide grassy field. Dazed, she shook her head and looked up into the sky, shielding her eyes with her hand.

Suddenly, the blazing arrow of the army missile struck the cheerful pink-and-yellow form of the Bubblegum Tower. There was a tremendous, blazing explosion that lit up the sky like a hundred suns.

At the top of a hill on the outskirts of a tiny village called Stipple Hemlock, a tiny boy called Joseph Mulch sat under a tree, cursing his luck. Half an hour ago his little sister, Bethany, had fallen off a seesaw and grazed her knee. To cheer her up, he had given her his last stick of bubblegum, a stick he had been saving for weeks. He was glad Bethany had stopped crying, but he was annoyed about losing his last stick of gum. So he had come here, to the field with the hill and the tree on the edge of the farmland where he lived, which was where he usually went to sulk and ponder the unfairness of life.

He sighed – and then heard a bang.

Looking up through the branches of the tree, he saw a bright flash in the sky. And then – to his immense surprise – it began to rain sticks of bubblegum.

He was even more surprised a moment later when a young girl floated to the ground in front of him on a vast pink bubble.

‘How – how – err – did you do that?’ he stammered at her, scarcely able to believe what he was seeing.

‘We were fighting an evil unicorn that wanted to wipe out the human race,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘But it wasn’t hard. Unicorns are such wusses.’