The Chaos Curse (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #3) - Sayantani DasGupta Page 0,50
her paddle in frustration when she couldn’t return the shot.
“Getting soft from all that scientific grant money, Professor!” K. P. Das taunted, his eyes huge behind his dirty Coke-bottle glasses.
“Lucky shot! Just like your gold medal from the Royal Demonological Institute!” griped Shady Sadie before launching into a wild volley again.
“K. P. Babu and Shady Sadie know each other?” I breathed.
“I suppose knowledge belongs to all,” Lal said. “And scientific progress knows no borders.”
While they might be good at sharing their knowledge, when it came to their Ping-Pong, both scientists were super greedy. In fact, they were ball hogs, jumping for shots that were clearly meant for their doubles partners. But because of this, my bird and tiger friends actually noticed when we walked in.
“Princess!” roared Bunty.
“Prince Lalkamal!” squawked Tuni. “I know someone who’s going to be very happy to see you!”
“Who?” I looked confusedly around.
When the huge tiger moved aside, I realized who else was in the room. He’d been pacing around behind the Ping-Pong table, biting his nails. He stopped pacing as he saw us, a stunned expression on his usually confident face. Wow, it was good to see that face again.
“Brother!” Lal launched himself at Neel, almost like he was still a little kid.
“Kiran, you did it!” Neel was hugging his brother, but his smiles were just for me. “You found him! You saved my little bro!”
“Did you doubt I could?” I scoffed. I was so excited to see Neel that the words came out way harsher than I intended. I tried to soften my tone. “How long have you been here?”
“I just got here with K. P. Babu,” said Neel. “I wanted to go out and look for you right away, but the professor wanted a quick game of table tennis first.”
Wait, what? “So … you decided just to hang out here and let him play instead of looking for me while I was, oh, I don’t know, fighting for my life?”
Neel looked surprised and guilty. “Sadie said she had seen you in your school, and that there had been some kind of a fire drill, and that you were probably still there.”
“It wasn’t just a fire drill. And I seriously could have dealt with some help, you know. I was only battling mythological creatures from multiple different cultures!” When Neel blanched, I sighed. “But hey, at least I was able to rescue Lal.”
Neel turned to his younger brother with a protective glance. “Are you all right? Dude, look at the size of your ankle!” Then he turned back to me. “I’m really, really sorry, Kiran, that I wasn’t there to help you.”
“Sure, whatever. I guess it all worked out in the end.” I had to raise my voice a little to make myself heard over the endless dum-dum-DA-dum of the table tennis game, which was still going on. “But, Neel, what are you doing in this dimension in the first place? Did you get my lizard-gram?”
Neel waved for the scientists to stop playing so that he could respond, but they had such an intense volley going that they still didn’t notice us.
“Take a break, scientists!” Tuni yelled. When neither Sadie nor Professor Das stopped their playing, the bird jumped up and caught the next shot in his mouth. Both players looked at Tuntuni in surprise.
“That is against intergalactic table tennis regulations!” sputtered K. P. Das. “No player on either doubles team may eat the Ping-Pong ball while in play! Your team forfeits the point! It’s my game, set, and match!”
“Wait a minute, don’t be such a stickler!” protested Sadie, who seemed very upset at the possibility of losing. “Those regulations are only applicable on Sundays during an intergalactic apocalypse!”
“We very well might be in the middle of an intergalactic apocalypse!” said K. P. Babu triumphantly.
“Ha ha, the joke’s on you, then!” crowed Sadie. “Because it’s Monday!”
I decided to ignore the bickering players and turned back to Neel, happy to be able to hear myself. “Seriously, what are you doing here?” Then I turned to Tuni. “And how did you and Bunty make it here? I thought for sure you were back on the other side of the wormhole and we’d lost you!”
Since Tuni couldn’t exactly reply with a giant Ping-Pong ball in his beak, he shot it out at me with a ptu sound. I caught the little missive in midair.
“Say, Princess!” squawked my birdie friend. “Why was Cinderella kicked off the soccer team?”
“Tuni, seriously?” Neel was helping his limping brother into a chair, playfully