At school, we were all looking at our yearbooks. Bree was sitting on the bench with Owen looking at her yearbook. Adam was looking at his yearbook with Leo while I was looking at mine with Kyle. Chase walked over to us and almost knocked me over as he held out his yearbook to us. "Did you guys see the yearbook? Everybody but me got a most likely to...even Leo!" Chase exclaimed.
"What? Let me see that." Leo says, taking Chase's yearbook. "Most likely never to get a most likely. I'm on the board!"
"Well, that proves it. I'm completely invisible at this school." Chase says.
"Chase, that's not true. If you were invisible, I couldn't do this." Adam says. He punches Chase. He walks away as Leo gives Chase his yearbook back.
"Chase, just because you weren't nominated doesn't mean you're invisible," I say.
"Oh, really? Yeah? What's this?" Chase holds out his yearbook and we see an empty box with a question mark and Chase's name is misspelled. "Chip Davenport. I'm a misnamed question mark!" Chase says. Chase slams his yearbook shut and Kyle and I just shrug our shoulders.
"Listen up, snot-buckets!" Perry says as she enters the hallway. "Don't forget to sign up for the annual Mission Creek High talent show. Auditions are after school and will be judged by moi. Chances are that if I don't like you, you won't get through, and I don't like any of you, so good luck."
"Talent shows are wrong!" Owen says as he walks over to Perry. "There are no winners or losers in creative expression."
"Stick a paintbrush in it, emo sabe!" Perry says. She walks inside the cafeteria.
"I refuse to stand by while that woman crushes the artistic souls of our student body," Owen says. "I'm gonna go sketch my feelings!"
"He is so tortured." Bree sighs. "Isn't it great?" She walks away from us.
"This talent show is the perfect opportunity for me to build my fan base," Leo says.
"Leo, you don't have a fan base," I say.
"I know. That's why I have to build one." Leo says. "With magic!" He waves his hands in front of our faces.
"Well, that is what it would take," Chase says.
"No. I got a magic kit and I've been practicing, specifically for the competition." Leo says.
"A magic kit? Isn't that kind of lame?" Chase asks.
"There is nothing lame about buying something off the internet to make friends," Leo says.
"I love magic shows. Show me what you got, Leo." Kyle says.
"Sure thing, Kyle," Leo says. He holds out a deck of cards. He pulls out a card and shows it to Kyle. "Okay, this is your card. Mm-hmm...hey, what's that sticking out of your shirt?" Leo reaches to pull something out of Kyle's shirt and he holds out the card he showed him. "Bam!" Leo turns to Chase. "See? Magic."
"That's awesome, Leo," Kyle says. "I've always been fascinated with stuff like that and wanted to practice it myself but I've always been too busy focusing on football."
"Well, there was that one time you tried doing this trick with milk and a newspaper but it went all over my new $80 sneakers," I say.
"I said I was sorry," Kyle says.
"Yeah, tell it to my sneakers," I say. Kyle and I walk away.
"You know what my problem is? All of my talents are bionic, and I can't reveal them at school." Chase says.
"Aw. Bionic people problems." Leo says. He tries to walk away but Chase stops him.
"Hey...give me those cards. Come on, gimme." Leo hands Chase the cards and Chase walks over to two girls. "Hello, ladies. Pick a card, any card." Leo rolls his eyes as one of the girls picks a card. "Put it back in." The girl puts the card back in the deck and Chase pulls out a card. "Is this your card?" The girl shakes her head and Chase tosses the card aside. He pulls out another one. "This one?" The girl shakes her head again and Chase keeps pulling out different cards. "This one? This one? This one?"
"Boom," Leo says, pulling out the card the girl picked. The girl looked at the card Leo was holding and saw it was her card. "Magic." He threw the card on the ground and walked away from them.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
At the audition, a curly-haired kid was gurgling twinkle twinkle little star with water while Perry and the students watched in disgust. Perry presses a buzzer. "Next!" The boy tries to spit the water in his cup. "Don't you spit that out! You swallow that disgusting performance!" The kid swallows the water and walks off stage. Leo walks up to the stage, holding three silver rings in his hand.
"Aha!" Leo says.
"Ugh! Dooley. Next!" Perry says. She presses a buzzer.
"Come on, give me a chance!" Leo says.
"Ah, fine. Just get it over with." Perry groaned.
"Three solid steel rings. Pass right through each other to become interlocked." Leo says. He interlocks the rings together and the students become impressed with the trick. "Locked solid, right? Hmm?" Leo blows on the rings and they disappear. The students in the room clap.
"Ho, ho, ho! Wow! That wasn't awful!" Perry says. "All right, you're in."
"Yes! For my next trick, I'll leave while I'm ahead." Leo says. He walks off stage. Chase was up next and he stood on the stage.
"What's your talent? Other than having my middle school haircut." Perry says.
"I am the smartest man to ever live," Chase says. Everyone in the room started to groan and roll their eyes. "Break out your online dictionaries, people...I can spell any word."
"I got one for ya: snoozefest." Perry laughs. The students in the room began to boo Chase and throw paper balls at him. "Next!" Perry hits the buzzer.
"No! No! I have another talent!" Chase says. "I can do magic!"
"Oh, no, you can't," Leo says as he sat up in his chair. Chase starts to use his molecular kinesis to make the paper balls float in the air. The students and Perry looked on in amazement. As Perry laughed excitedly, Chase began to shoot the paper balls into the crowd.
"Wow! That was amazing!" Perry says as everyone begins to clap. "Dooley, you're out. Little Dutch boy, you're in!" As everyone starts to leave, Leo walks up to Chase.
"Great job, Chase. Hey, maybe for your next trick you can remove this knife from my back!" Leo says. He walks out of the cafeteria.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"I have to do something to protest Perry's talent show," Owen says as he and Bree sit in the living room. "Something that will take her and the entire establishment down!"
"Are you thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?" Bree says. "Let's...storm the school!"
"Build a sculpture!" Owen says at the same time.
"Of course. A sculpture. We are so in sync." Bree says.
"A sculpture will symbolize how authority suffocates creative expression. We can put it right in front of the entrance to the school where everyone will see it." Owen says. "The question is: what do we make it out of?"
"Uh, ice?" Bree says.
"No," Owen says.
"Clay?" Kyle asks. Kyle, Adam, and I were in the kitchen eating toast.
"Too obvious."
"Plaster?" Bree says.
"Really?"
"How about butter?" I say.
"What did you say?" Owen asks, getting up from the couch.
"Butter," I say. "Everything's better with butter."
"Probably even with your art," Adam says.
"Butter is the perfect substance. Milk is fluid, like creativity, but when you judge creativity, you beat it and churn it until it becomes butter clogging the arteries of expression!" Owen says.
"That was a lot of words," Adam says.
"Adam, Cassie, do you guys want to help me make a sculpture out of butter?" Owen asks.
"Uh, yeah," I say.
Adam drops the toast he was eating. "I have been waiting for someone to ask me that my whole life." Adam, Owen, and I ran out of the house to get some butter.
"Wait, Cass..." Kyle began to say. "We were supposed to go to the arcade!"
"I thought we were gonna...do something together!" Bree says. But it was too late, Owen, Adam, and I were gone.
"I guess someone likes his art more than you," Eddy says.
"Thanks, Eddy," Bree says.
"And by someone, I mean Owen," Eddy says. "And by you, I mean..."
"I get it!" Bree says.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
In the lab, Chase was using his molecular kinesis to build a house of cards. "Oh, yeah! Ooh! Yeah. Who's the man? I'm the man."
"Hey!" Leo shouts as he walks into the lab, making the cards fall. "You abra'd my cadabra. You hocus'd my pocus. You ali'd my kazam."
"I was being booed, and I panicked. What else was I supposed to do?" Chase says.
"Suffer! You were supposed to suffer." Leo says, getting into Chase's face.
"Leo, I finally found a way to look cool by using my bionics, and people think it's magic," Chase says. "How could I not share my amazing gift with the world? You're welcome, world!" He blew kisses and walked onto the elevator. "Magic." Leo looked shocked and pointed to Chase once he left the lab. Eddy appears on the screen.
"Wow! And I thought I was the biggest jerk in the room! He lapped me!" Eddy says.
"You know, if he didn't have his bionics, I would still have my place in the show," Leo says.
"Yeah, if only there was something in the bottom of Davenport's desk drawer that you could use to manipulate his bionics," Eddy says. Leo opened the drawer and pulled out a device. "Bingo! Bionic signal interrupter!"
"So this will interrupt Chase's bionics in the middle of his act?" Leo asks.
"You betcha!" Eddy says. "Oh, and if you flip it over, it will also shave a cat."
Upstairs in the living room, Bree, Kyle, and Owen walk in through the front door. "Bree, your brother, sister, and I are so in sync. I can't wait to show you what we've created together." Owen says. Adam reveals a big giant butter sculpture of Principal Perry.
"Da-ta!" Adam says.
"Wow, uh, it looks great!" Kyle says.
"Yeah, I love it," Bree says. "You really, uh...it's almost like a...okay, what is that?"
"It's Principal Perry," Owen says. "She represents everything that's wrong with society. Totalitarianism and triglycerides; Perry and butter."
"I rubbed a pancake on her," Adam says, taking a bite out of his pancake.
"Hey, you know what she needs?" Owen asks.
"Big honkin' glasses!" Adam says.
"Yes! You get me. Come on, guys. Let's go make something." Owen says.
"Wait. He gets you? He's baffled by a tissue box." Bree says.
"How does one know when the other one's gone? It just pops right up." Adam says.
"Cassie, this is great and all but I thought we were going to the arcade later," Kyle says.
"We will. Right after we show everyone at school our sculpture." I say, before running off with Owen and Adam.
"That's it. Eddy, crank up the heat...full blast." Bree says.
"But if I do, it'll melt the butter sculpture, and that would be...awesome!" Eddy says.
"Wait, Bree. Are you sure we should be doing this?" Kyle says. "I'm upset about this as you are but there's another way to go about this."
"What other way is there? You want to go to the arcade. I want to hang out with Owen. This is teaching them a lesson." Bree says.
"I was just thinking maybe we should talk this out instead of..."
"Remember that football jersey you were looking for?" Bree asks.
"Yeah," Kyle says.
"Cassie took it and used her color kit to turn it into a tye-dye shirt," Bree says.
"Fire up the heat," Kyle says, turning to Eddy.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
At school, the talent show had already started, and Perry was on stage. "Okay, next up we have the amazing Chase, the only magician whose magic wand is bigger than he is!" A drumroll and music could be heard in the background as Chase walked onto the stage with a chair. He was wearing a black top hat and a black cape.
"Thank you, thank you, ladies and gentlemen! For my first trick, I will move that chair...with my mind." Chase says. The students jumped in their chairs when a lightning strike was heard in the gym.
"Let's see how amazing Chase is now," Leo says as he pulls out the bionic signal interrupter. When Chase tried to move the chair with his molecular kinesis, nothing happened.
"Bor-ing! Bring out the girl who looks eerily similar to a giraffe!" Perry says.
"I don't know what happened!" Chase says.
"I do: you stink. Get off the stage before you incur the wrath of my rotten tomatoes." Perry says. Everyone in the gym began to boo Chase.
"No, no, no, no! Please! I can do it! I really can." Chase says. He tried to move the chair again, but nothing happened. Everyone began to laugh and point at Chase.
"This is awful!" Perry snickers.
As everyone laughed at him, Chase looked embarrassed when suddenly, his Commando App turned on and he turned into Spike. "Hey!" Spike shouts in a deep voice. "You want to see me move that chair with my head?"
"I hope he's doing an impression, 'cause that voice sounds an awful lot like Spike," Leo says nervously. Spike picks up the chair and breaks it apart with his head.
"Wow!" Perry laughs as she and everyone in the gym began to clap for Spike.
"Yep, that's Spike!" Leo says. Spike started to flex his muscles when Leo and Perry walked onto the stage.
"Well, there's a fine line between entertaining and disturbing, and...I think we've crossed it." Perry says. "So let's take a brief intermission." She walks off the stage. The lights turned on and everyone got up from their chairs.
"Hi, um, Spike, I was wondering if you could chill out and let weak little Chase pop back out before...Principal Perry..."
"I don't want to chill out!" Spike growled at Leo. "I want to rip out someone's spine and use it as a pogo stick!"
"Or...we could picture a nice, tranquil forest filled with leaping gazelles, while you...have a nice cup of soothing tea," Leo says. He grabs a cup of tea from an old lady and hands it to Spike. Spike takes the cup and bites into it. He spits the pieces of glass out of his mouth and onto the floor. "Tasty!" Spike says, handing the cup back to Leo. Chase's Commando App deactivates and Chase returns to normal.
"Leo, what just happened?" Chase asks.
"I...might have disabled your molecularkinesis, but I only did it because you cheated first, so there, we're even," Leo says. "More tea?"
"Leo, you made me nervous and triggered my Commando App," Chase says. "You turned me into Spike!"
"Yeah, well, now you're back to good ol' nerdy Chase. So let this be a lesson: no one steals from the magic man." Leo says. Chase's Commando App turns on again and Chase becomes Spike.
"What'd you say to me, fruit fly!" Spike growls.
"Hey...look, everybody. Spike's back." Leo says, his voice quavering.
At the house, Adam, Owen, and I gasp when we see that the butter sculpture of Perry has melted. "Butter Perry escaped!" Adam says. "You check the bus station and Cassie and I will check the pancake house!" Bree and Kyle walk into the living room.
"Oh, no. What happened?" Bree says in a mocking innocent tone.
"I don't get it. Butter doesn't melt at room temperature." Owen says.
"And we can't rebuild it in time for the talent show," I say.
"Hmm. Tragic. Oh, well, let's go to the arcade. Come on, Cass." Kyle says, taking my hand.
"Come on, Owen. Let's go see a movie." Bree says, wrapping an arm around his. Before Kyle and Bree could make it out the front door, Eddy pops up on the screen.
"Slow your roll, you two! Check out this movie!" A video of Bree and Kyle shows up on the screen with Bree asking Eddy to turn up the heat so the butter sculpture would melt. The scene changes and it also shows Kyle asking Eddy to fire up the heat. My eyes widened after what I just saw and I looked at Kyle disappointingly.
"Bree, how could you?" Owen says.
"Yeah, Kyle. What the heck?" I say.
"I'm sorry, but you were spending so much time with Adam and Cassie, I just got jealous," Bree says.
"I got a little jealous too. Cass, we were supposed to hang out tonight just the two of us. But then, you decided to run off and build a sculpture." Kyle says.
"So the best thing to do was purposely sabotage us?" I say.
"I'm gonna go sketch my disappointment," Owen says, walking off.
"And I'm gonna go grab my paintball gun," I say, walking upstairs.
"No, Cassie. Wait." Kyle says. "I'm sorry." But it was too late, I didn't hear him say he was sorry and slammed the door.
"When they're done, I'm hanging it up on the fridge," Adam says.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Back at school, Spike was in the hallway and knocked a basketball out of a kid's hands and growled at him. "Goody. I love it when all the easy targets are gathered in one place." Spike says.
"There you are," Leo says. "I hope this signal interrupter works on Spike, too." He tries to disable Chase's Commando App, but nothing is happening. Spike growls even louder and storms over to a girl twirling her baton. He takes the baton and bends it with his bare hands.
"Twirl that, princess!" Spike says, handing her the baton.
"Come on, you piece of junk!" Leo says as he continues to press the button on the device. Spike growls. He does a bunch of flips over to a boy who was practicing his martial arts skills with a bo staff. Spike takes the staff and throws it above Leo's head, just barely missing him. Leo screams. Spike fights the boy and wins the fight by tossing him into a trash can. The boy gives Spike a thumbs up.
"It's like this thing is amplifying Spike's bionic aggression instead of interrupting...oh," Leo says as a look of realization crosses his face. Spike growled loudly and ran over to a water fountain. He pushes a boy aside who was drinking water and Spike rips the top part of the water fountain and aggressively drinks the water that was pouring out.
"Save a cup, save the planet!" Leo says.
Back at the house, Adam was dipping a piece of pancake into the melted butter on the floor when Bree walked over to him. "Owen's not returning my calls and Kyle is upstairs trying to convince Cassie to come out of her paint room," Bree says. "How am I going to make this up to Owen?"
"Look, the damage is done, Bree. Unless you have 28 pounds of delicious popcorn to soak up his butter art." Adam says.
"Yes!" Bree exclaimed.
"You do?" Adam asks.
"No. I mean, what if we build Owen a new protest statue?" Bree says.
"How?" Adam asks.
Bree super speeds out of the room and comes back with two large bags of popcorn. "With 28 pounds of popcorn."
"Sweet!" Adam says.
"But how are we ever gonna pop it all before the talent show ends?" Bree asks.
"Oh, I got this," Adam says. Adam uses his heat vision to pop the popcorn and it falls out of the bag.
"That'll work," Bree says.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Hey, Bree. This better be important." Owen says as he walks up to Bree in the hallway at school. "I was in the middle of doodling my pain away." He shows her a drawing of a frowny face.
"No, Kyle. I said I didn't want to come." I say as Kyle tried to pull me into the school.
"Bree and I want to show you something. It'll only be for a second." Kyle says. He manages to get me into the hallway and has me stand next to Owen.
"I know you guys are mad, but hopefully this gigantic waste of popcorn makes it up to you," Bree says. She reveals the popcorn that was in the shape of Perry and sees Adam eating some of the popcorn. "Adam! Stop licking Principal Perry!"
"I can't help it! She's salty." Adam says.
"Cass, Owen, we're really sorry we melted your butter sculpture," Kyle says.
"Her eyes!" Owen says. "They're so beautiful! It's like they're staring deep into my soul."
"They're cookies," Adam says, taking one of the cookies off the sculpture and eating it.
"Guys, this is awesome! I can't believe you did this!" I say.
"I was so upset. But...this gesture is making my heart melt like..."
"Butter?" Adam says.
"No!" Owen and Bree say at the same time.
Spike runs into the hallway with a broken basketball hoop and uses it to shove two guys against the lockers. "That's what I call a slam punk!"
"Nice Spike. Good Spike, sit! Spike, sit!" Leo says. Spike growls and runs off.
"Oh, hey. Did I mention Spike's back?" Leo says, turning to us. Leo ran off to go after Spike when Perry walked into the hallway.
"I smell butter!" Perry turns around and sees the popcorn sculpture Adam and Bree made. "Who is responsible for this?"
"I am!" Owen says.
"I love it!" Perry says. "The talent show is over! We have a winner!"
"No!" Owen says.
Spike runs back into the hallway and destroys the popcorn sculpture. "No!" Perry shouts. "How dare you destroy the Mona Lisa that was my popcorn bust?!"
"What are you gonna do about it, shoulder pads?" Spike says as he walks over to Perry.
"Easy, Butch. Your mouth is writin' a check that you can't cash." Perry says.
"Oh, yeah? Well, Santa called...he wants to know if you'll be making toys this year!" Spike says.
"Why bother makin' a dolly when I have my own right here?" Perry says in a baby voice.
"Ooh! That's a funny joke. Where'd you get it from, your cat's litter box?" Spike says.
"Nobody talks about my cats! You're goin' down!" Perry says. "Back when I was in the Tijuana ladies' wrestling league, they called me La Rosa Bonita! And watch out, because I have...thorns!" Perry pulls out a wrestling mask out of her pocket and puts it on.
"All right, kitty cat! Ready to tango?" Spike says.
"Must...protect...my...students!" Perry says. "Prepare to be subdued!" The two begin to fight. Perry flips Spike but Spike flipped her shortly after. Spike went to swing at Perry but she grabbed him. She threw him against the wall and when Spike charged over to Perry, she got out of the way, making him crash to the ground. We all winced at the impact he made on the ground. Spike quickly got up and went to charge at Perry again, but she flipped him over. Leo walked over to us as we all started eating popcorn from the ground.
"Get him, Perry!" Adam says.
Spike spins Perry around and throws her against the wall. He charges toward her and Perry lifts him onto her shoulders. After spinning him around for a few seconds, Perry throws Spike to the ground, making all of us wince at the impact. After body-slamming Spike, we start to clap and cheer for Perry. When Spike gets up from the ground, Chase's commando app disengages and Chase returns to normal.
Chase's eyes widen in horror when Perry jumps off the bench and falls on top of him. She hit him repeatedly as I continued to eat my popcorn. "La Rosa Bonita!" Perry shouts.
"Why am I being smothered by a female Mexican wrestler in a pantsuit?!" Chase asks.
"I'll fill ya in later," Leo says.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
At school, the next day, Leo, Chase, and I were sitting at a table eating our lunch when two boys in the cafeteria were making fun of Chase as they walked past our lunch table. "Ha, ha," Chase says sarcastically.
"Well, Chase, you finally got what you wanted. You are no longer invisible at this school. You'll forever be known as the kid who got pinned by Principal Perry." Leo says.
"Thank you, Leo," Chase says.
"Pinned like the butterfly on the science teacher's wall," I say.
"Gotcha, Leo," Chase says.
"Ya know, if being pinned was a talent, you would have won," Leo says. Chase bangs his hands on the table and growls at Leo, making him scream like a girl and run out of the cafeteria. "Spike! Spike!" Leo shouted, making Chase and me laugh.
"He totally fell for it!" I laughed.
"That little trick is gonna come in handy," Chase says.
We gave each other a high five and took Leo's sandwich.