Episode 2: Master Chroma

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The cozy red tomato-ship settled onto the pale grey grass near the dazzling rainbow house, and Emil and Tom stepped out onto the colorless ground. They had barely taken three steps when the bright green door of the house burst open with a bang.

Out stormed a man — a wild-haired, fierce-eyed fellow in a long patchwork robe stitched from a hundred scraps of brilliant color, each square a different shade. His face was twisted in absolute fury, and he came marching toward them, shaking his fists.

"WHO?" he bellowed. "Who dares — who has the nerve — to bring that — that red abomination to my world?!"

Emil blinked, completely taken aback. "Uh... sorry?" he said. "Red... what, now?"

"THAT!" The wild-haired man flung out a trembling finger, pointing past them — straight at the cozy red tomato-ship. "That — that garish, blaring, offensive lump of RED! Polluting the air! Ruining the view! Spoiling my perfect, peaceful, pale world with its vulgar, screaming color!" He pressed the back of his hand to his forehead as if he might faint from the very sight of it. "I can hardly look at it. Take it away! Take it away at once!"

Emil and Tom exchanged a bewildered glance.

"I'm — I'm sorry, who are you?" Emil managed.

The man drew himself up to his full height and swept his patchwork robe around him with a dramatic flourish. "I," he announced grandly, "am Master Chroma. Keeper of this world. Master of all hues. And the one who, at long last, brought order to this chaotic little planet." He sniffed. "Until you came along and parked your hideous red tomato right in the middle of it."

Tom, who had been getting crosser and crosser by the moment, planted himself firmly and crossed his little arms. "Now hold on just a minute," he said hotly. "This world isn't supposed to be pale! Look at it! The trees are white, the rivers are grey, the people are practically see-through and fading away to nothing! You didn't bring 'order' — you stole all the colors! You stole the color from a whole planet!"

Master Chroma's eyes narrowed to slits. "Stole?" he said icily. "Stole? I did no such thing, you impertinent little worm. I preserved them." He lifted his chin. "This world was too bright. Too loud. Too — too chaotic! Colors everywhere, clashing and shouting, reds against greens, blues against oranges, a riot, an absolute madness of color, with no taste and no restraint whatsoever. It hurt my eyes. It offended my soul." He spread his arms toward the colorless valley. "So I gathered it all up. Every last shade. And I gave this world the gift of calm. Of order. Of perfect, peaceful, pristine white. You should be thanking me."

From Emil's earpiece, Tomato's voice muttered dryly, "Yeah. The lovely, peaceful order... of a black-and-white movie. Very restful. Very 'sad museum on a rainy Tuesday.' Truly a gift to all."

Emil tried to reason with the strange magician. "But Master Chroma," he said gently, "the people of this world — they look so sad. So faded. They've lost all their color, and I think they've lost something more than that, too. A world needs its colors. Wouldn't you give them back, if you understood how much they—"

"Never!" snapped Chroma. "The colors are mine now. Safely kept. Properly managed. And I'll thank you to mind your own business and remove that ghastly red eyesore from my valley before nightfall." And with that, he spun on his heel, stomped back to his rainbow house, and slammed the green door behind him.

Emil and Tom returned to the ship, troubled. "He's not going to listen to reason," Emil sighed. "He really believes he's done something good."

But the strangeness of the day was not over yet.

That night, as the two friends sat up in the dim cabin, Tom happened to glance out the window — and froze. "Emil," he hissed. "Look."

Creeping across the pale moonlit grass, hunched and sneaky, came Master Chroma. He was tiptoeing straight toward the tomato-ship, his hands outstretched before him, his lips moving in the words of some muttered spell. His fingertips had begun to glow.

"What's he—" Emil started.

A pulse of energy shot from Chroma's fingers, rippling through the air toward the hull of the ship. And where it touched — the ship's bright, beautiful red paint began to fade. A patch of the cheerful red dulled, drained, paled toward grey, the color visibly draining away like water down a sink.

"He's stealing our color!" Emil cried, leaping up. "He's draining the ship — just like he drained the whole planet!"

"Quick — move the ship!" Tom shouted.

Emil lunged for the controls, and the cozy ship lurched sideways just in time. A second pulse of color-draining energy crackled through the space where they'd been, fizzling harmlessly into the night. Outside, Master Chroma let out a furious curse, shook his fist at them, and — realizing his sneak attack had failed — gathered his patchwork robe and scurried back to his house, muttering all the way.

Emil checked the hull. One patch of the lovely red had gone pale and grey, but the rest was safe. He let out a breath of relief.

But Tom was no longer frightened. He was angry — and determined. He drew himself up, his little face set with resolve.

"Okay," he declared. "That's it. He drained a whole planet, he made all those poor people sad and grey, and now he's trying to steal the color right off our home! Well — no more. We're going to teach this color-thief a lesson. We're going to get the colors back — every last one — and give them to the people they belong to."

Emil grinned. "Now that," he said, "is a plan I can get behind. But we'll need to be clever. We can't out-magic him. We'll have to out-think him."

So the next morning, the two friends watched and waited until they saw Master Chroma leave his house — off on one of his strolls about the valley, no doubt looking for stray bits of color to snatch. The moment he was out of sight, Emil and Tom crept quietly to the rainbow house and slipped inside.

The inside was as strange as the outside. The walls were lined, top to bottom, with empty picture frames — dozens and dozens of them, each one hanging blank and bare, as if the pictures inside had been drained away to nothing. A single paintbrush hung frozen in the air in the middle of the room, locked in place by some spell, a drop of grey paint hanging eternally from its tip, never falling.

And there, in the very center of the room, was the thing that made both of them gasp.

A giant crystal ball — taller than Emil — resting on an ornate stand. And inside it swirled color. Every color imaginable, churning and glowing and shifting: deep reds and bright blues, sunny yellows and rich greens, purples and oranges and shades that had no name. All the color of an entire world, swirling and trapped inside the great glass sphere, glowing like a captured rainbow.

"That's got to be where he's keeping them," Emil whispered, staring in wonder at the swirling colors. "Every color he stole from the whole planet — they're all in there. Locked inside that crystal ball."

Tom nodded slowly, his eyes reflecting the swirling hues. "We need to break it," he whispered. "If we break the crystal ball, all the colors will be set free, and they'll go rushing back to where they belong — the trees, the rivers, the people, everything." He paused. "But we can't do it with him here. If he catches us, he'll just drain us too, and lock our colors up with the rest. First — we get him far away from the house. We get him out, so he can't stop us."

Emil thought for a moment, then smiled. "And we know exactly how to do that," he said. "Master Chroma can't resist color, can he? He can't stand to see a single stray shade going to waste. So... we give him one."

So they set their trap. As they slipped back outside, Tom took a brightly colored scarf — a beautiful thing, woven in stripes of crimson and gold, one of the few colorful things they had aboard the ship — and "accidentally" let it flutter to the ground near the entrance of the rainbow house, in plain view, where Chroma could not possibly miss it on his return.

Then the two friends ducked behind a pale white bush nearby, and waited.

Before long, Master Chroma came striding back across the grey valley toward his house — and the moment his eyes fell upon the bright scarf lying there, he stopped dead. His whole face changed. His eyes went wide and greedy.

"What's this?" he breathed. "Color! Loose color, just lying about, going to waste! Oh, the carelessness! The wastefulness! It must be gathered at once — it must be preserved!"

And, completely unable to resist, he rushed forward, away from his door, scurrying toward the scarf with his hands outstretched, muttering crossly to himself about "wasted hues" and "criminal carelessness" — drawn away from his house, just as the friends had planned.

Behind the white bush, Emil and Tom grinned at each other and shared a silent high-five.

The trap had worked perfectly. The way was clear. Now all that remained was to slip inside, reach the great swirling crystal ball — and set a whole world's colors free.

To be continued in Episode 3...