Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Zippy Zipperdale: Moderately Mad Scientist ❯ The Third Experiment ( Chapter 3 )

ZIPPY ZIPPERDALE:
MODERATELY MAD
SCIENTIST--
THE THIRD EXPERIMENT

By Hardcover


Late at night in the long dark hallway leading away from the school library, one Zippy Zipperdale strolled along surrounded by her friends on either side. Specifically, she was with her room mate Lizzy Malaria, and the Farrell Twins Katjia and Nadjia. As had been their general rule ever since Cristobel’s attempted kidnapping and experimentation, no one in the group went anywhere, especially late at night, without a few other to watch their back. The danger was very real, for who knew what demented ideas , or any one of the other students for that matter, might have in mind for an unsuspecting “volunteer” in the glorified insane asylum that Zippy now called her school.

They strolled along, chatting amiably as was their way, when Zippy suddenly noticed something as she passed an intersecting hallway. She stopped, looking into the darkened hall, at the very end.

“Hey, what’s that?” She asked.

The others came over, looking where she had pointed.

“What’s what?” Lizzy asked unemotionally as always.

“I thought I saw something at the end of the hall.” Zippy explained.

Squinting her eyes and peering into the gloom, Lizzy said, “I don’t see anything now.”

“I could have sworn I saw something down there; just for a second.” Zippy insisted.

Both twins got down on all fours and leaned into the hall, sniffing the air, their sensitive nostrils flaring as they searched for an unusual scent. They found nothing.

The four of them continued on their way, but Zippy kept looking back over her shoulder. She was sure she had seen something at the end of that hall, just for a moment: A large man like shadow that scurried down the passageway hunched over like some simian beast, but with wide saucer like eyes that reflected, just for a moment, in the otherwise stark darkness.



The city was quiet in the early afternoon; its large modern skyscrapers towering above it, catching the rays of the sun in their windows so that they seemed to almost sparkle with life. All was quiet and normal as cars moved endlessly along the many freeways and one or two planes flew overhead. The city sprawled out like they often do, separated in several districts, connected by a dizzying grid of roads and highways linking together residential areas, business parks, and industrial districts; and everything else that went to make up a modern metropolis of the world, dominated by its large monolithic buildings that seemed to cut through the sky in their relative immensity to the rest of the city.

The first signs of a disturbance came from the port: something huge and immense came rising out of the water, lurching out of the sea with a violent, penetrative rise that sent waves of disturbed water crashing towards the docks with tsunami like intensity. The water hit the ships that were idling in port with the force of a liquid brick wall, shoving them inland, obliterating the docks into so much kindling and demolishing beach front property and the huge walls of water carried the long cruise ships and commercial tankers over the docks and sent then careening into the buildings beyond with devastating results.

The culprit stood impressively against the skyline: A giant metal monstrosity that dwarfed most of the skyscrapers in an instant. The robot was heavily armored form head to toe, a wicked triangular head set against and wide, squat metallic body, backed by large, thick metal dome that resembled a turtle’s shell. Two arms extended from the shoulders, riddled with various offensive weaponry. At its base, instead two legs, it possessed eight large spider like appendages that each ended in nasty looking spikes.

The robot lurched forward and incredible speed, coming ashore and making mincemeat of the houses in it way. With a loud clank, large missile launchers extended from its shoulders, and the with a screeching sound that almost shattered the ears, the robot sent a cascade of explosive projectiles towards some of the larger structures. In good measure they exploded, quickly loosing their integrity and collapsing to the ground.

Out of its arms, large machine guns appeared, and the robot began violently hosing the other structures with gunfire with devastating, cataclysmic results that were spectacular to behold in their astonishing destructiveness.

I was indeed fortunate that no one actually lived in this city.

That was, of course, because it happened to be the miniature one set up in Miss Gojira’s outdoor classroom. The robot was, of course, gigantic as far as the city was concerned, but was actually smaller then most average height people. The robot in question, designated the Mechagamera Zipbot 005, was being controlled by a very satisfied and proud looking Zippy Zipperdale.

Zippy had good reason to feel a little self congratulatory: It had been over a week since the disaster with the Zipbot 001, and since then Zippy had used knowledge gleaned from the hidden library to excel in her classes. In no short order, she had churned out Zipbots 002-004, each one easily erasing the memory of her grievous first attempt. And now her newest creation stomped its way through the unfortunate miniature city in fine Kaiju Eiga fashion.

Miss Gojira stood by, bouncing on her feet, clutching her notepad in her hands as she watched with the excitement of a ten year old at a Saturday matinee. She was dressed this time, as Chun Li from the Street Fighter games, which had the peculiar effect of making her look like a middle aged woman trying to recapture her youth, which, to be fair, was probably actually the case.

“This is very impressive, Zippy.” Miss Gojira said as she scribbled on her note pad, “Really some of your best work yet.”

“Thank you, Miss Gojira.” Zippy said politely.

“Why did you go for spider legs rather then two legs or the treads you used earlier?” Her teacher asked her.

“I’ll show you.” Zippy said with an enthusiastic grin.

Turning the robot towards a large cluster of buildings, Zippy guided it forward and in the direction of another one behind them. As it got the cluster, the robot rose up on its legs making them as close together as it could and then easily slipped between the buildings, the bulk of the Zipbot 005 passing above the skyscrapers. It then proceeded to obliterate the target building.

“Oh! Kick ass!” Miss Gojira exclaimed happily, “A plus work Zippy, and thank you for sharing this, I haven’t had this much fun all week.”

Zippy let a broad grin flow across her face, thanks to the knowledge she’d gleaned from those books, she was finally finding her stride. Even starting to enjoy her school.

As class ended and Zippy packed her project away, she spied Lizzy waiting for her at the door. Quickly finishing, Zippy walked over to her friend and they fell in step with each other as they moved down the hall, chatting with each other.

“Have you heard back from your parents?” Lizzy asked her.

Zippy shrugged pulling her book bag up on her shoulder, “Yeah; they talked to a bunch of lawyers, but just like I thought, this contracts completely binding. There’s no record at Coddswhollp of me even applying to them, so it’s really just our word against Madame Petri’s and its team of high end attorneys, so it looks like I’m stuck here.”

She turned to Lizzy and smiled, giving a muscle man pose for effect, “But I don’t care ‘cause now I want to excel here. Now that I’ve found my groove, I’m gonna dominate this place.”

“That’s the right attitude.” Lizzy said, “We should celebrate at The Manhattan Project, you still haven’t been there.”

“What’s the big deal about that place?”

“It’s the only club around, and it caters specifically to Petri’s students. Come on, Zippy, it’s a lot of fun. Us geeks can go wild, too, you know.”

Lizzy’s customary unemotional tone of voice made it difficult for Zippy to picture her “going wild”, but Zippy knew there was a lot more under that cold exterior then most people ever saw.

As they walked a little further, Lizzy piped up, “Look, here comes Kyle Tordenholler.”

Zippy looked up and felt a jolt of electric excitement as she saw Kyle coming their direction through the crowd from the far end of the hall. In a completely automatic motion, Zippy began fixing her hair and straitening her uniform. The ends of Lizzy’s mouth turned up a bit in one of her strange smiles.

“Man, you’ve got it bad for him.” She chortled.

Zippy blushed a little, “Oh, shut up. I do not. I’m just friendly with him.”

“Oh? Okay.” Lizzy said, “You know he’s available, right?”

“Really!” Zippy exclaimed, hope suddenly springing up in her chest.

She saw a thin, sly grin spread across Lizzy’s face: Zippy had fallen right in to her trap.

“Oh, you’ve got it so bad for him.” Lizzy chuckled smiling.

Blushing, Zippy turned away, “Oh, alright: Yes, I’m totally crazy stupid in love with him, so what?”

“So he really is available, I didn’t make that up. He broke up with Kookie Wantabe a month and a half ago and he has not been with anyone else since. Now’s your chance, make your move.”

“You want me to be his rebound girl?”

“He’s way over her, you’ve got a shot. Hell, he likes you fine; he’s always friendly and talkative around you. Come on, bat some eyes, show some leg, and flirt a little for Moreau’s sake. Just because you’re a scientist doesn’t mean you’re not a woman.”

“Argh! I can’t! I mean, I usually can; I’m not inexperienced, I’ve come on to lots of guys before. But something about Kyle shuts me off; I turn into a complete idiot when I’m around him. That’s never happened to me before; I’m usually a perfectly capable little flit and seductress. But it’s different with Kyle; it’s like I get lobotomized every time I talk to him.”

“That sounds pretty severe, but the only way you’re going to get past it is by trying.”

“Argh, I always end up sounding like a blundering idiot.”

“I think you mean ‘blithering idiot’.”

“You see? It’s starting already.”

As she saw Kyle making his way and getting closer, Zippy dropped her eyes. She tried to loose herself behind the crowd, hoping maybe he wouldn’t see her and then she wouldn’t end up looking like a grade A moron again.

Her plan was foiled, however, by her best friend: As Kyle started moving forward and was almost at them, Zippy felt two hands on her back and without warning, Lizzy shoved her forward. She stumbled ahead, surprised at the sudden push, and smacked directly into someone’s chest. She looked up and realized that Lizzy had shoved her directly into Kyle.

“Woah!” Kyle said, “Hi, Zippy. Watch your footing there.”

Zippy felt her face flush red again and the icy freezing like feeling in her brain started almost immediately. She was staring up at him, and he looked at her with those spectacular eyes that seemed to draw her in, making her feel like she just wanted to melt into his chest.

“Oh! Hi, Kyle.” She said, and then felt a few moronic giggles pour out of her, “Sorry.”

She realized he was holding her in his arms and she suddenly jumped back, giggling and holding her hands in front of her. Her heart beat in her chest like a jack hammer. Damn, Lizzy: Why’d she have to go and put her on the spot like this? Zippy felt herself tremble a little and tried to control herself. Just be calm, she told herself, you can do this, you can talk to this guy, just be friendly and confident, and just be yourself.

All at once, she realized Kyle was talking to her. She kicked herself; she hadn’t been paying any attention.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” She asked him, feeling sheepish.

“Man, you’re a space cadet today.” Kyle laughed, “I was saying I loved that singing barracuda you did for Mr. Carcharias’ class; that was pretty cool, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard. Where in the world did you get the idea for that?”

That put Zippy on the spot, she couldn’t tell him she’d found the procedure in the hidden library. She strained to come up with a good answer, but his face and those eyes were working their magic on her, and her thoughts seemed to scatter like leaves, replaced with bizarre fantasies about a wedding and a honeymoon involving whipped cream and a stripper pole. She shoved the day dreams aside and tried to answer him.

“Uh . . . well . . . I hate to see good fish wasted.” She sputtered.

She felt like a wrecking ball had landed right on her head as soon as she realized what an incredibly stupid thing she’d just said. She suddenly felt like crawling into a whole somewhere and never coming out; maybe she could lock herself in Eve’s coffin and throw away the key? Her legs felt like rubber under his gaze.

Kyle laughed, “Jesus, you’re weird, Zippy.”

Zippy cast her eyes on the floor, “I know.”

“Well that’s probably why I like you,” Kyle said putting a hand on her shoulder, “See ya.”

And with that, he walked off, leaving a flustered and mortified Zippy standing with her hands balled into fists. She turned and looked at her friend, and found Lizzy with an unusual ear to ear grin on her face.

“Oh man,” Lizzy chortled, “I am going to rib you about that for years.”

“Shut up, Lizzy.” Zippy felt her face turn red.

“Seriously; we’re going to be old ladies in a rest home and I’m gonna lean over and whisper ‘I hate to see good fish wasted’.”

“Shut up.” Zippy repeated.

She sighed and slumped her shoulders, “What the hell made me say that?”

“Well, look on the bright side?” Lizzy suggested.

“What bright side?” Zippy asked.

“He did say he likes you.” Lizzy pointed out.

That didn’t really help. As they walked down the hall, Zippy had reached a new scientific conclusion: Love makes you stupid.

As they continued down the hall, something caught Zippy’s attention: Standing against the wall on the right side was Charity Milquetoast, laughing and talking amiably with Rick Milhouse. It was the first time Zippy had ever really seen her pay any attention to Rick, despite the way he followed her around like an obedient puppy. As she got closer, she noted Charity’s body language and realized with a bit of a surprise that she was flirting with him. Rick looked happier then Zippy had ever seen him, an actual smile on his face instead of his usual dour expression.

Lizzy whispered in Zippy’s ear, “Wow, I guess Charity isn’t a hopeless Bellophile like we thought.”

And then, Amber Tiffendorf came down the hallway, flanked as usual by Tiffany Debutante and everything suddenly changed: Charity stood up rigidly and made a hasty goodbye to Rick before falling in line like a wind up toy alongside Amber and Tiffany. Rick’s face dropped back into his previous miserable expression, skulking off like he wanted to go shoot himself as the rigors of the Cristobel groupies’ social structure quickly reasserted itself.

As Amber came by in the direction of Zippy and Lizzy, swaggering arrogantly down the hallway like some kind of bizarre mixture of Paris Hilton and Al Capone, Zippy couldn’t resist taking a dig at her, gripping the tube that housed the Noggin Bopper just in case.

“Hi, Amber.” Zippy said politely, tapping the front of her teeth, “I love your new caps.”

Amber’s response was a hard glare. Zippy pulled the small black leather cord she was wearing out of her blouse, revealing the necklace she had fashioned herself out of Amber’s two knocked out teeth. She waved them at the infuriated Amber with a self satisfying grin, her trophies displayed for all to see, and everyone knew how Zippy had gotten them in the first place.

Amber’s response to that would have been censored from most TV shows.

After they’d put some distance between them and her, Zippy looked over at her friend, “I wonder if Amber became an asshole of her own free will or was she born that way?”

“I don’t know the whole story,” Lizzy said, “But she’s been like that ever since her brother died five years ago.”

That sobered Zippy up quickly, “What? I never heard about that?”

“I guess he found his father’s gun as was playing with it,” Lizzy explained, “Shot himself in the head right in front of Amber. She’s been like that ever since.”

Zippy took a deep breath, suddenly feeling a little bit guilty for taunting Amber like that. The guilt vanished as soon as Zippy remembered the kidnapping incident.



In Madame Petri’s sports gymnasium, a game of grav ball was going on. As the players flew across the two sided floor, one above one below in the fluctuating gravity, other students had gathered to watch and to cheer them on. It wasn’t a real game against another school, just a practice game for training, but girls lined up the cheer and wave as Petri’s star player, Flash Driver, darted around in the air, skillfully avoiding the gravity pits as the ball flew from one player to the next.

In the stands, way back behind the swooning girls and enthusiastic boys, sat an unusual figure; watching the game with her hands folding rigidly in her lap: Lizzy Malaria.

Lizzy was no particular fan of grav ball, or any sort of sports enthusiast for that matter. No, she had begun attending the matches because of an interest of a different sort: And his name was Flash. She watched intently as Flash nimbly moved around the court, his lithe and toned body almost cheetah like in his swift sure movements. It seemed like he was born for this game. He was muscular without being huge (unlike the team’s coach, Miss Anvil), and the sweat glistened off his chiseled form without looking gross or unappetizing.

Flash twisted under another player and caught the ball as it was kicked to him. With a quick drop of his legs, he shot down into the gravity pull on the bottom court and sent the ball with a lightening fast toss into the opposing goal. The goalie had almost no time to react. The ball flew in, scoring a point.

In the stands, the students cheered and stood. In her seat, Lizzy did nothing except watch him, a slight intrigued smile creeping across her face, and a slight blush appearing on her pale chalk like cheeks.



Elsewhere in the school, Cristobel Bell cautiously moved down an empty hallway. He looked back and forth to make sure no one was around to see what he was up too. Anger was driving him forward, hatred for those girls that had humiliated him so; girls that should have stayed at home in the kitchen where they belonged. He grimaced: Women trying to be scientists; what a joke. His father had always taught him that women belonged in two places: In the kitchen barefoot and pregnant, or in the bedroom naked and horny.

He was particularly mortified because by some fluke, that Zipperdale woman had soared past him in the scores. Impossible, that little incompetent floozy was not capable of besting him, and he was going be sure that everyone saw that.

He stopped next to the door he sought, looking at the wording on the front: “Death Ray Invention 101–Mr. Ecoli”. Slipping a small lock pick out of his pocket, he quickly and skillfully jimmied the lock open. After once again looking around to make sure he wasn’t being watched, he slipped into the classroom and closed the door behind him.

Inside the classroom were seven constructions all covered in thick plastic tarps: The death rays for the demonstrations later today. Cristobel moved among the projects, checking the tags on each one until he found what his was looking for: The tag that read Zippy Zipperdale and Lizzy Malaria.

He pulled up the tarp and pulled out small pocket tool out of his pocket. Be prepared, it was the Boy Scout motto, and Cristobel had made Eagle Scout, although his father’s donations had probably helped with that a little bit. With sure, rapid movement, Cristobel unscrewed the housing of the device and pulled it off, revealing the inner workings of Zipperdale and Malaria’s invention. He pulled a few more tools out of his pocket.

With a wicked grin, he got to work.



In front of her classroom, Miss Piranha taught and instructed with her customary bubbling over enthusiasm, the kind that made her easily Zippy’s favorite teacher. As usual, she was dressed rather inappropriately for a school teacher: a black and white leather maid’s outfit that hugged her voluptuous figure and displayed large amounts of her cleavage. It used to be a bit of an embarrassing sight to Zippy, but she had since gotten used to it like so much else at this school. In a way, Miss Piranha’s uninhibited attitude was a breath of fresh air; since it was obvious she had not body image issues. Still, it was a bit of sore spot for Zippy, who knew her tiny cleavage would never fit in a dress like that.

The classroom was set up in a rectangular pattern, like most of the others it was lined with dark wood paneling of the old school variety. The students sat at large wide wooden desks that accommodated two at a time. At the front of the class was a raised section, almost like a stage that was fronted by a short wooden railing with a gap in the middle to pass in and out. One the raised section was Miss Piranha’s desk, off to the side and tilted at an angle and all of her other teaching paraphernalia.

Zippy was also fond of this class because she had it with Lizzy, so the two of them could work on projects together. Zippy had quite few classes with Lizzy, and she wondered if putting roommates together in class was something done deliberately at this school, since she knew a lot of other girls who had a several classes with their dorm mates.

It seemed a little strange to look forward to a class called “Experimental Surgery and Body Part Transplantation”, but she often did. And today’s project was actually quite a bit of fun; giving chimpanzees poisonous fangs like cobras, although Zippy failed to see the usefulness of the procedure. As she and Lizzy worked, Miss Piranha walked around, exuberantly explaining the finer points of the operation.

Carefully sliding the poison sack into place behind the teeth, Zippy glanced up and noticed that another student had slipped in quietly and was doing his project in the back. She recognized him after a bit, having not seen him in a while.

She nudged Lizzy, “Hey, look: Jason Artmis is back.”

Lizzy glanced back, “Yeah, you’re right.”

No one had seen or heard from Jason since he’d been “volunteered” for Madam Petri’s experiments weeks ago. As Zippy looked at him, she noticed he was having trouble with his coordination. What had Madam Petri done to him, she wondered? Taking a closer look, she suddenly realized what was wrong, poor Jason now had tentacles instead of arms. No wonder he was having trouble, he had to learn how to hold things all over again. Zippy shuddered, she hoped she’d never let her grades fall and end up like that or worse. She decided to go talk to Jason later and cheer him up a bit, let him know he was still one of the class.

From where she was, Zippy could see that the tentacles seemed to be attached to his shoulders; he had none of his original arms left. They moved fairly fluidly, and she could see multiple suction cups along the bottom half of them. Jason looked miserable and frustrated as he tried to grip a scalpel in on of his long tentacles, finally managing to cut with some degree of accuracy. What sort of experiments had Madame Petri been doing on him?

As she worked, Zippy whispered to Lizzy, “Hey, Lizzy? Why do you think it is that nobody ever sees Madame Petri?”

“All I know is what everyone tells me, pretty much the same thing: She’s doing some important experiments and leaving the daily operations to Mr. Innsmouth.”

“But don’t you think it’s odd that no one sees her? At all? Ever?”

“Very odd. In fact, I bet if you went over there and asked Jason, he’d tell you that he never saw her. I’ve talked to several of her ‘volunteers’ and they all say the same thing: They never saw Madame Petri, just Mr. Innsmouth and a whole lot of Werx.”

“That’s very strange, so we don’t even really know if she’s still alive?”

“I’ve had that thought too. I think something’s going on, something’s being covered up, but I couldn’t tell you what.”

“Something’s always going on here, but this is really starting to look suspicious.”

“What do you propose we do about it?”

“Well . . . I wonder if . . .?”

They were interrupted by a gleeful squeal and the sudden feeling of leather clad arms gripping their shoulders. Miss Piranha looked over their sedated chimp with wide eyes and a great big grin. She hugged Zippy and Lizzy tightly, pressing their head against her large breasts, and causing both girls to blush. Zippy often wondered it she did that deliberately or not.

“Oh, that’s fine work, girls, fine work indeed!” She jubilated, “Look at the close uniform stitching, that’s the way to do it. Oh, I knew you two would do well together. I just knew it.”

The two students muttered a ‘thanks’, still blushing. Miss Piranha hugged them again happily mashing their ears to her boobs, before moving to the next pair of victims for her affectionate enthusiasm. Zippy and Lizzy looked at each other, but still reserved a little, and then returned to their work, carefully putting the final stitches in place.

Just before the end of class, Miss Piranha made an announcement, standing up on the front excitedly as she talked a mile a minute the way she did, shuffling back and forth on her high stiletto heeled shoes which often made Zippy wonder how she didn’t break and ankle every time she took a step.

“Alright, my little Frankensteins.” She said gleefully, “Our next big project is going to be a very important assignment, but I think this bunch is up to it. Your next challenge is going to be a full body alteration. You can perform the surgery on anything, or anyone, and you can do whatever alterations you wish, but it has to render your subject considerably different then they were before.

“The alterations can be done in any operating room you choose, but I have to be present to view the procedure. Once complete, you will give a presentation and present you work to the class during normal class hours. Sound good?”

Zippy pursed her lips; that sounded ambitious. She had every confidence that she and Lizzy could pull something like that off, but probably not as much confidence as Miss Piranha was intrusting them with. Right away her mind began turning over possible ways to go about this project, and was relieved to hear how much time they had to do it in. They should be able to come up with something in that time.

The bell rang and they all got up, moving towards the door. As soon as everyone was out, Zippy hung back. Once the class was empty, Zippy approached Miss Piranha who was now seated at her desk.

“Miss Piranha?” Zippy asked her, “I had a question.”

Miss Piranha looked up and smiled, “Of course, Zippy. My door is always open to you.”

“What exactly is Madame Petri working on?”

“Oh, Zippy, I’m the last to know that. All I know is its taking up all of her time, so it must be something really big.”

“When was the last time you actually saw her?”

“Well, I don’t know. I’ve been so involved in the school. I did see her at the announcement of Mr. Innsmouth’s promotion.”

“How long ago was that?”

Miss Piranha sighed and furrowed her brow, “Five years ago.”

“So you haven’t seen her at all in five years?” Zippy raised an eyebrow.

Miss Piranha chuckled, “It’s nice of you to be concerned, but I’m sure she’s fine, Zippy.”

Zippy left the class, her mind working overtime. This was damn peculiar, what was going on with the school’s principle and her experiments? Zippy had a nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach that something was very wrong here, wrong even for this school.



Mr. Ecoli’s classroom for Death Ray Invention was set up a bit like an auditorium, rectangular in shape but with desks on a high stadium rise going up towards the back facing the front of the class, where a wide space for lessons and demonstrations was set up. Due the often rather large size of the projects, the lesson area was large, stretching far back away from the seats, where inventions were stored until being brought forward to use.

The teacher himself was, much like the rest of them, not what you would generally expect from a science teacher: Mr. Ecoli had a completely clean shaven head and wore a thick black goatee on his chin; his deep set eyes making him look something like Ming the Merciless. He dressed up in old worn blue jeans and various sleeveless Harley Davidson T-Shirts that showed off his arms full of tattoos; that is when he wasn’t wearing his long sleeved leather biker jacket. All in all, he looked more Hell’s Angel then mad scientist, but he was one of the world’s authority and death rays.

Zippy stood in front of the class, wrapping up her introduction to her and Lizzy’s new particle dispensing death ray: The Lizip 4.5. The device was slightly cannon shaped, a wide cylindrical main frame closing to a smaller cylinder at the front out of which jutted the ray emitter made of polarized silicon. The housing was mounted between two flat struts that attached to a base set up with several gyros to allow the Lizip to move in any direction.

To the side of it sat a small wooden chair, cheaply made and disposable for their demonstration. On the chair sat a small shot glass. The plan was to demonstrate the ray’s versatility, by disintegrating first the shot glass, leaving the chair untouched, and then do the chair itself, without harming the floor.

On her team ups with Lizzy, Zippy always gave the presentation as Lizzy’s zombie like pattern of speech usually didn’t get any of their peers too excited about the project. Zippy was wrapping up her introduction with her usual flourish.

“And so, we have a perfectly versatile death ray that can be adjusted to any amount of attack that you desire, and can take out a target with near surgical precision. I give you, the Lizip 4.5.” Zippy announced.

She walked back to the ray where Lizzy stood and the two of them made their finally adjustments. Swiveling the ray around and pointing it at the shot glass, Lizzy took aim with the video screen on the back, adjusting the controls until the targeting lock selected only the shot glass and nothing else. The flashing back lit read out played across Lizzy’s face giving her a sinister, almost maniacal look. Everyone had put on their dark safety goggles and braced for the demonstration. Lizzy pulled the fire button and a low hum came out of the machine.

They both knew something was wrong right off the bat; the ray was taking too long to fire. The humming grew louder and louder. Lizzy looked at the readouts and her eyes widened with fear, as red lights played across her face replacing the green ones.

“It’s overloading! I can’t stop it!” She cried in uncharacteristic panic.

They both worked the controls frantically as the rest of the class began backing up and taking shelter under their desks. Everything they tried failed, the ray continued to build up and build up. It vibrated in its housing as alarms began to flash across the screen. Every single worst case scenario warning seemed to be appearing in unison.

“Shut it down!” Zippy cried frantically, “Shut it down!”

“It won’t respond!” Lizzy replied, frantically hitting the fail safe buttons, only to find that everything seemed to be unresponsive.

Cries of alarm were coming from the students. The ray was on a build up to a major detonation. The humming was now at a deafening peak, filling the room with its ominous whine. The ray rattled and vibrated, shaking on its struts in exactly a way that it shouldn’t be doing. Zippy had only seconds to avert the disaster. She knew the classroom beneath them was empty at this time, so she did the only thing she could think of. She turned the ray around on its gyros and pointed directly at an empty part of the floor. With a finally screech of ear splitting sound, the Lizip’s emitter glowed a bright light blue color and shot a wide cone of particles into the floor of the classroom.

Zippy and Lizzy both gritted their teeth as their carefully made project demolished part of the classroom.

In a second, the floor had been eaten through by the particle ray, which continued downward into the empty classroom below. It mowed through several desks, reducing them to nothing but floating dust in a split second and continued through the floor of that classroom as well.

The device sputtered and sparked and then there was a loud explosion in the housing and it shut down, filling the room with choking black smoke that belched out of the mainframe of the ray as its insides melted and died, but not before the ray had punched a hole completely through the floor of the classroom underneath.

This, unfortunately, led directly into one of the girl’s shower room. Naked girls screamed in shock and ran for cover as the roof above them disappeared. They ran, sliding on the wet floors and grabbing whatever they could to cover themselves, a virtual smorgasbord of naked skin and blushing faces. Once they were sure they were safe, there were choruses of both embarrassed giggles and plenty of angry cursing.

Zippy looked over the edge of the hole (along with half the guys in class), timidly,

“Sorry.” She apologized lamely.

From out of one of the lockers, Madoka came into view, naked and not bothering to hide herself.

“Little warning next time, Zip.” Madoka called up at her before returning to her locker, unembarrassed as usual.

Rina would be mortified when she found out about that, Zippy thought, but probably not as mortified as she and Lizzy felt right now. She looked down with disheartening failure at the ten foot hole in the floor of the class. The doors burst open and Werx piled in, on their heads the flashing sirens of an emergency unit. Among them was Posey, who quickly ran to Mr. Ecoli for a report.

“Bork?” Posey asked.

“Just the hole, no casualties, unless you wanna count these two’s grades.” He said, glowering at Zippy and Lizzy.

“Blork.” Posey said and went off to get to work.

Zippy felt that familiar feeling of defeat in the pit of her stomach, a feeling she hadn’t had for weeks. Everything seemed to slow down and stop, and the world seemed dark and lonely as she contemplated her catastrophic failure. The Werxs scurried about repairing the hole, and the students clambered out, giving Zippy angry or bemused looks.

“Zippy, look at this.” Lizzy said.

She had opened the housing of the ray and was looking inside. Zippy leaned over and took a look along with her, looking at the burned out guts of their creation. Squinting her eyes, she saw it right away.

“No way did we do that.” Zippy said.

“No, we did not.” Lizzy agreed.

Zippy’s face hardened. Their class project had been sabotaged.



Late in the night, deep under the school, in the large aquarium wing, Zippy and Lizzy sat outside Megan’s tank, contemplating the incident with their project. Zippy sat cross legged with her back against the glass, Jetson sitting happily in her lap, moving his tentacles contentedly while Zippy affectionately stroked his cone. Lizzy sat next to her, her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her shins, resting her head lazily on her knees. The water from the tanks cast shimmering glows across the room, moving slowly with the soothing motion of liquid.

Inside the tank behind them, the giant sixty foot megalodon Megan floated behind the glass, listening sympathetically as the two girls talked about the disaster, her massive triangular head filling the window. Her mate, Morgan was somewhere down below swimming around.

The twins Katjia and Nadjia were also there, running around chasing each other playfully on all fours, yipping and barking happily at each other like the half wild girls they were.

Lizzy took a deep breath and spoke, “Okay, we know that we were sabotaged. Do we have any suspects?”

“Two people come to mind: Cristobel and Amber.” Zippy replied, “It could have been either one of them.”

Jetson piped up, “Amber was working on a project for Miss Gojira all day, it couldn’t have been her.”

“How did you know that?” Lizzy asked him.

“Zippy’s enemy is my enemy,” Jetson asserted, “I hear things and listen.”

“’Know your enemy’, huh?” Zippy smiled, “That’s very helpful, thanks.”

She gave Jetson a kiss on his cone, and his body shade reddened a little.

“So it was , then.” Lizzy said, “So what do we do? How do we get back at him?”

Megan spoke through the speakers above her tank, “You know, if you really want to hit him where it hurts, you should eat his young.”

As usual, Megan’s advice was worthless. Zippy shoved the horrific images she got in her head of herself and Lizzy engaging in cannibalistic infanticide, and analyzed the problem.

“Maybe revenge shouldn’t be the first thing on our minds,” She suggested, “With that failing grade, I think our primary concern should be keep ourselves out of Madame Petri’s laboratory. Instead of worrying about the failure of this project, we should be thinking of the next one.”

A shadow passed over the glass as the fifty foot form of Morgan swam past the window, stopping for a second to be cordial. The male shark had very little interest in girl talk, just like most human males, but still looked at the girls as his friends much the same way his mate did.

A low male voice flowed out of the speakers, “Why hello, ladies.”

“Hi, Morgan.” Zippy looked up.

“Good evening, Morgan.” Jetson piped up from Zippy’s lap.

Megan explained, “They were sabotaged by one of the other students.”

“Oh, that’s unfortunate. Perhaps you should bite off his flippers?” Morgan suggested.

“I already told them that, honey.” Megan said to him, “This didn’t like that idea much.”

“Well, just remember,” Moran said sagely, “It doesn’t matter what happens, as long as you’re still swimming when it’s over.”

And with that, he swam off back into the depths of the tank, leaving Megan to talk to the girls alone, like he always did.

“Am I crazy, or was that advice not half bad?” Zippy whispered to Lizzy so Megan wouldn’t hear.”

There was sharp yelp from down the hall, and Nadjia cried, “Ow! Katjia! You bit my butt!”

“Sorry; instinct.” Katjia apologized.

Lizzy looked back at her roommate, “Okay, so, we focus on the next big project. That had better be Miss Piranha’s complete body modification assignment. We’ve got plenty of time before it’s due. So, what’s the plan of action?”

Zippy rubbed her chin thoughtfully, “I think it’s time for another trip to the library.”



Why hello to you all. My name is Rina Matsura, and it’s very nice to meet you. In the next chapter, Zippy and Lizzy get to work on a most astonishing project while also getting some really satisfying revenge that will change everything considerably in the next chapter of Zippy Zipperdale: Moderately Mad Scientist “The Fourth Experiment”.
EurekaI’ve got it!