28 Caged

28 Caged It didn't take long for the crowd to start panicking. The natural reaction was to push back against the slowly advancing RAZERs, but it soon became obvious how fruitless that endeavour was. The huge robots just kept moving relentlessly forward. The first citizens to fall into the Rainbow Lake were those who had been standing on the drawbridges to Peanut's right and left. There were a few single fallers at first, each splash like a mini explosion, but after a few seconds, the lake began to resemble a puddle in a thunderstorm. Before long, citizens were pouring in. 'LB, grab my hand!' shouted Peanut as they neared the edge. 'Stay close!'

They went over together, plunging feet-first into the water. Peanut surfaced first and immediately looked around for her sister. A second later, Little-Bit bobbed up. Peanut swam over and grabbed her. 'Are you OK?' asked Peanut. ' Yes,' said Little-Bit. 'I've got my red tag, you know. For swimming one width of the pool. And I'm really good at treading water too.' 'PEANUT! LB!' Leo shouted to his sisters while frantically paddling towards them. Behind him swam Mum and bringing up the rear was Dad, who was swimming on his back and pulling along a frantic-looking Nerys in the crook of his arm. ' Th-th-the robots!' stammered the Welsh woman when she saw the girls. 'Th-they pushed everyone in! I can't even swim!' 'Dad! What's happening?' shouted Peanut. 'I have no idea,' he replied. 'But it's not good!' The banks and bridges were empty of citizens now. Even those who had been on the platform, including Mr and Mrs Markmaker, Doodle, Jonathan Higginbottom and a large number of superheroes, were now in the water. Only the RAZERs remained up on the banks of the Rainbow Lake, still hovering shoulder-to-shoulder and displaying those bright red eyes.

All of a sudden, a large number of hatches in the top of the lake's wall flipped open. They ran along its entire length, from drawbridge to drawbridge. Almost instantly, hundreds of small, spiky metallic objects, that looked a lot like fish, flew out of the hatches. Each one towed a length of thick, steel cable. 'Exocetia!' shouted Peanut. And their eyes are red too!' The brassy-coloured mechanical devices flew like arrows, horizontally and at great speed, across the lake towards the wall opposite where some more little hatches had also opened. With incredible precision, the metal fish darted straight into these hatches, disappearing deep inside. The cables they'd been towing now stretched across the entire width of the Rainbow Lake, running perfectly parallel with each other, creating a cage on top of it.

'Uh-oh!' shouted Dad. 'We're trapped! Unless we swim under the bridges and get out that way...' 'That won't work, Gary,' said Woodhouse, who had just appeared, carving an elegant backstroke through the multicoloured water. 'I was just over there and folk were saying that a huge barrier came shooting out of the lake floor. It went right up to the underside of the drawbridge, apparently. I imagine the same thing happened on the other side too. We're totally boxed in!' At that moment, the water in the lake started to drain away. It was like somebody had pulled the plug out of a bath. Less than a minute later, everybody was standing on the lake's bed among the few technicolour puddles that remained. 'I'll be honest,' said Leo, looking down at his wet clothes, 'a pool party was not what I had in mind for my birthday this year.'