Roxy placed a mushroom monster into the dumpster. She closed the lid.
"Yes!" she thought. "I think that was the last one."
Honk! Honk! Roxy looked up. A garbage truck was traveling fast toward a busy intersection. Mushroom monsters were sitting on top, eating garbage. More were running behind it.
"Drive faster, Ernie!" Grover yelled.
"I'm going as fast as I can, Grover!" Ernie yelled back.
The garbage truck raced toward the intersection. The light turned red, but the driver couldn't stop in time.
"Look out!" someone yelled. "A car!"
Ernie turned the wheel just in time. The truck missed the car. But it skidded and started to fall over. Boom! The truck slammed onto its side. Garbage spilled from the container. All the mushroom monsters rushed over to eat the spilled trash.
Roxy flew over and pulled the collectors out of the garbage truck.
"Thank you, Rocket Girl!" Ernie said.
"Those monsters were chasing us!" Grover cried. "We were scared they were going to eat us too!"
"Mushroom monsters won't hurt you," Roxy said. "And I have a plan to send them back home. You're garbage collectors, right?"
"Um, yes," Grover said.
"I'll freeze the monsters," Roxy said. "Then you can help me collect them. All we need to do is put them in those dumpsters."
The men looked nervous, but they nodded.
"We'll do our best, Rocket Girl," Ernie said.
"You can collect the monsters over there," Roxy said, pointing. "I'm going to fly over Metro City and look for more monsters."
Soon Roxy was back with a few more monsters.
The two garbage collectors looked proud.
"Rocket Girl!" Grover said. "We got all of the monsters!"
"They turned to slime," Ernie said.
"Good job!" Roxy said.
She added the rest of the monsters to a dumpster. She picked up the dumpsters and flew to Waxcap Cave. She put the dumpsters inside the cave. Then she rolled a boulder in front of the opening.
"Whew!" Roxy wiped her brow. There were no more mushroom monsters!
Roxy hurried into the classroom with her plant.
"You missed our presentations," Terrell said. "Your bean sprouts must have been, um, super thirsty!"
"Bean sprouts need a lot of water to survive," Roxy said.
Mara smiled. "Miss Apricot said my project was very creative."
"I got a good grade too," Jack said. "Fungus is awesome! Right, Roxy?"
Roxy smiled. "Right, Jack. Fungus is awesome, and so are dark caves!"