Broken and Frozen (Unikitty!)

Chapter Four: Sparkle Rocks Rock

As the five friends walked back into town, Unikitty wasn't as talkative with the citizens as she was earlier that morning.

Where did that mysterious dog come from? With their stick of ice for a horn and all the chills in the air, it had to have been somewhere snowy, like the North Pole. That was the first place Unikitty could call to mind, as she'd been there once before to drop off Puppycorn's magical snowman to ensure that he'd live forever. They were possibly a distant relative of hers in some way, though she was pretty sure that plenty of cats and dogs out there looked like her and her brother. And why did they come to the caves? Had they lost something in there? Were they trying to collect some rocks, too? But why were they that deep in the cave, turning them upside down? Were they trying to find the perfect one or something?

What was the deal with the puffy cloud that had appeared out of the blue? It wasn't the weirdest thing she'd ever seen in her life, but why was it there? Was it something that was stuck with them for whatever reason? Was it a magical ability they couldn't yet control? Or did it, maybe, have something to do with how they kept insisting they were doing well, even though the look on their face implied otherwise? It was a personal goal of Unikitty's to be a great friend to others, as it was guaranteed to bring a mountain of joy into their life. Even if it wasn't seasonally appropriate, she kept her eyes out for another small shower of snow.

Before long, the gang was back at the castle, so it looked like she'd have to save all that for later, like Dr. Fox said.

Thanks to the scientist and her outstanding skill with technology, you could enter her high-tech lab from anywhere around the castle, even outside. The gang could stand on a spot on the ground next to a bush, where they could shift one of the flowers disguised as levers. The spot would flip over, and just like that, they'd be underground. As convenient as it was, only the wagon was sent down there; Dr. Fox was in the mood to get to the lab the fun way. That consisted of going to the ball pit room, jumping into open holes in the floor, sliding down a bunch of wiggly, bendy, colorful tube slides, moving down a conveyor belt, dancing in an elevator with her robot helpers, and going down a waterslide through the lab's entrance. The journey made Richard feel a bit woozy.

The lab was tiled with various shades of blue, going from dark to light blue from the ceiling to the floor. It was illuminated by mint green and teal hexagonal lights. Many more robots were busy monitoring, tweaking, polishing, and organizing her machinery and specimens all over the place. They also read over the files on her wall-spanning supercomputer and made sure her jars of weird substances and strange concoctions wouldn't tip over. Her numerous inventions sat on the shelves, the ones on the top and bottom shelves waiting for their chance to be tested. The larger, more complex of them lowly hummed, and cylindrical tanks bubbled with fluid. One robot seemed to be having some trouble cleaning her oven, which she didn't just use for cooking. A short yellow citizen with no arms or legs sat by the wall, staring at the floor like he was bored or in deep thought. The floats for the parade were sitting around in the capacious rocket launch bay, each one shaped like a summery animal. They were all colorless and gray as of now, but that would change once all of their tiny lights were on. Dr. Fox had designed and engineered the floats herself with some help from her friends and their creative vision. She'd fueled the floats themselves up in advance. All that needed to be done now was fuel them up. But how exactly was she going to do that?

Dr. Fox rolled out her chalkboard to explain. "Now, the stones we've collected are composed of sand, pebbles, and decomposed plant remains. But, they're mostly made of stardust that fell from the sky millions of years ago! That's what makes the caves so sparkly. To put on what will universally be considered the raddest laser light show you've ever seen, the shimmer engines will need to be fueled by loads of glitterium. When the stones were forming, the stardust compacted together to create such a material." She motioned to the wagon. "We've collected all the sources of glitterium I need. In fact, it looks like we got enough to last me the year!"

"I'm glad we did. Mining is exhausting," said Richard.

Puppycorn looked toward the floats, the one shaped like a flamingo in particular. "So, where do we put the rocks?"

"They're still hard rocks, Puppycorn. I need to take out the sparkly stuff to make the fuel," Dr. Fox told him.

That procedure began with the gang and three robots dumping all the rocks into a smashing mechanism, where they were crushed down to bits and pieces like on a factory conveyor belt. Next, the tiny pebbles were dropped into a grinder funnel that functioned the way a blender did. One push of a button, and they came out of the bottom a pile of shimmering dust, though the funnel had them all covering their ears. Dr. Fox promised she'd try fixing that for them. Then, the dust went into a filtering device built to extract everything that contained glitterium in it. Because it was so shiny by itself that it was capable of melting out eyeballs, the material would proceed through a tunnel. The last step was to mix it with a cool, thick liquid that she said would power up the engines and prevent them from exploding at the same time, as there was a high chance of them overheating with just the glitterium alone.

The finished fuel was poured into a big, long and deep metal tray once the process was complete. "Done!" she exclaimed. "You can look now."

The two red spots on Unikitty's cheeks turned into hearts. "Oh my goodness! It looks like a batch of slime!"

Puppycorn reached his paw out. "Can I touch it?"

"No. Bad idea," Dr. Fox said, taking him by the paw and putting it at his side.

She went to transfer the fuel to a tank sitting around on the wall to the left of the floats. Several small nozzles were connected to the tank. She opened a rectangular door on each side of the floats and inserted a nozzle into the fuel ports. The third time she did it, she felt someone pick up the tube behind her, turning to see Hawkodile carrying it.

"We made these floats together," he said.

"You're right. I appreciate your help," she said, rubbing the back of her head. Her palms were going damp with sweat, but she could still plug in the next nozzle. The rest of the gang pitched in to help with the remaining floats. Once they were all done, Dr. Fox pressed a large red button on the tank. Little blue icons in the shape of a rock lit up on the floats' heads as the machine buzzed.

Yet another scientific task was completed, and that triggered another release of happy sparkle matter. To Dr. Fox, one of the most fascinating things about a person was that they could pop out various sparkle matter unique to their personality, interests, and emotions. Hers was a mix of beakers, test tubes, flasks, atoms, planets, and lots of other sciencey things. If the summer festival wasn't only a few days away, she would have added a cool unique feature or two to the floats, like anti-gravity servomechanisms on their bases. "Oh, well," she thought. If the festival was a success, she'd have that opportunity next year. Besides, there were many other things stored in that lab that seemed to be calling her name. Down here was where she slept, worked, and spent much of her day overall. It was her home, and it had been for quite a long time.

"It'll be a while before they're full," Dr. Fox then said.

"When are they gonna be?" asked Hawkodile.

She checked the clock and the timer on the front of the tank. The latter said there were about five hours left. "Not until late tonight..."

"In the meantime, why don't we find something fun to do?" Unikitty suggested.

Richard read over some papers lying on the desk of the computer. "I'm just about to tell you something we can do. Yesterday, I bought us tickets to tonight's game of soccer. It's the last one of this season, too."

Puppycorn's ears perked up. He'd shown Richard the schedule for each game more than once, practically begging him to take him out to one. It was mostly so he could get a good look at the nice, chewy soccer ball. "Really? Why didn't you tell us, Rick?"

"Because I waited until we'd finished all our tasks for the day."

"Well, we're done with them now, so let's go!" Unikitty exclaimed, flying toward the exit staircase.