In full black and green Phantom of the Opera regalia, Wandblume, more often than not known as Shego, melodramatically thrashed a Full-On-Dracula-Pipe-Organ-of-Doom. Her mock organeering wasn’t really even close to the Night on Bare Mountain that thundered from the forest of resonating organ pipes but her particular superpower suggested that her method was scarily proper nonetheless! Approaching the climax, a choir of moaning robot-banshees flitted out from amongst the pipes; haunted the music with a wordless choral accompaniment that built, with the music, to a creepily musical full-throated howl. That’s where she ended it : who really wanted to hear the final four minutes of pastoral quietude, anyway?
Shego tossed a half-masked pseudo-askance glance aft. Her gloom (collective noun) of Goths were, with the exception of Pitchy, engrossed. The youngest didn’t go in for ‘long haired’ stuff unless it had first been passed through the Metal filter of her favourite band, Fugue State. She fidgeted, her scythe blade tip carving a kawaii skull into the sham-wood of the chair back facing her.
“ Pitchy needs her Metal supplement, I see. How about a dose of Fugue State?”
Pitchy’s eyes darked-up (Lit-up just isn’t a goth expression.) “Real music? Please!”
Wandblume activated the less traditional synthesizer aspects of the Uber-Wurlitzer ; commenced to ‘play’ the slightly discordant electric guitar pizzicato opening to Mosh-Pit Macabre, Fugue State’s metalized rendition of Camille Saint-Saën’s tone poem, Danse Macabre. Banshees stole away in favour of the frenetic ivory jangling of a skeleton-bot rave. Pitchy’s einheit scythe, Sichel Mond, perked up halfway through carving the Goodbye-Kitty bow on its rather well executed head-bone.
During the performance, Van Loan, wielding a pristine first edition of 1984 in a manner oddly suggestive of a device, skulked about the theatre. He stopped four times : once to admire his girlfriend’s use of his organ ; three times to futz technologically with seemingly mundane portions of the auditorium. Ten minutes later, he ghosted out of the chamber.
“Oh, this is almost as gut as Die Moritat von Mackie Messer (Mack the Knife)!” Sichel Mond’s voice, mechanistic Austrian accented English, sounded suspiciously like a former governor of California.
“Shush!” Pitchy rapped the bumptious scythe’s butt against the auditorium’s sticky floor.
Einheit Sichel Mond apologized in a synthesized Teutonic whisper : “Wie bitte, Chef!”
***
With a properly dark toast of Quarter Cask Laphroaig for the adult and relatively well seasoned teens and Double-Death-by-Dark-Chocolate-Cocoa for Pitchy, Shego wound up the Devil’s Night graduation festivities.
“ It’s been a dark delight, gals! “ She hefted the requisite ornate whiskey glass, solid enough to brain an ox, fired the potent bog juice into her throat. Four others quaffed their own tumblers of complex Scotch. Pitchy sipped her multiplex hot-chocolate daintily.
Over the third Scotch shot, Dies Irae broached the subject that made it the perfect evening for Shego.
“You were always planning to deliver us on Halloween.”
Shego favored her with a knowing Prospero wink while thinking, ‘Plan?’
“Would there be any other way, Irae?”
“Nothing that would be...proper.”
The pause, almost undetectable, would have escaped the slightly alcohol-addled Shego if it hadn’t been punctuated by a shared look of desperation that flashed about the group. She was in the presence of inchoate conspiracy, she abruptly, happily realized. ‘My girls are scheming!’ Then the epiphany pounced.
Shego exercised more willpower than she thought she had as she poured out a fourth round of Scotch, even adding a splash to Pitchy’s cocoa.
“Penny,” Shego’s smiled a slightly crooked smile that juxtaposed very well against the even, reasonable tone of her voice. “when have I ever given a damn about propriety?” She widened the crook of the grin ; passed a neat double to Dies Irae whose real name was Penelope Winterbottom. “Perhaps you have an improper proposal?” She allowed the grin to reach the penultimate tier--any further and she’d achieve maniacal peals of full-blown super-villainess cackling!-- of glee. “I’d love to hear it!”
Wandblume’s inner opportunist, a tiny and very happy meta-gal-Iago, crowed, ‘And I shall call them, Shegoth!
***
The blue border collie, pronounced ‘Tachikoma’ by a large, blue and white metallic dog tag, dutifully watched the fisheye distorted display that was now a complete fiction. It was difficult given the primal sensory data that swirled and roiled from the next room over. Tachikoma buried his snout in his forepaws and chuffed a doggy sigh. A mechanism in the collar translated it into the oddly adorable squeaky, “Everyone’s in a rut but me!”
***The brace of buxom egg chairs considered their luxurious repeater screen view of Sex (transparent), Lies (opaque) & Recordable Media (Who uses video tape these days?).
“Yayoi, do we promote the uplifted quadruped or fire the AWOL assets?”
“Mikuru, why not both?”
An arm emerged from the gloom that obscured all but the superabundant bosom and follicular extremities of the mystifying Yayoi. The attached hand, well manicured with elaborately white starred on midnight blue-backed nails of moderate length, depressed the intercom stud built into the outer swell of her curvaceous throne.
“Promote the Tachikoma attached to Project : Black & Blue to Primary Asset status.”
“Hai, Danna!” The voice, one quaver short of being obsequious, filtered out of a cunningly concealed speaker.
“And...reassign agents Togusa & Batou to...” The hand clicked nails across the spotless white enamel exterior of the pod. “...Monolith duty.”
The unseen lackey’s voice trembled minutely. “Wakatta, Danna!”
“Yayoi, you’re just a big, soft panda.” There was only the slightest tinge of pique in the other’s voice.
“Cute, yet still very dangerous? Thanks, dear!”
Shego tossed a half-masked pseudo-askance glance aft. Her gloom (collective noun) of Goths were, with the exception of Pitchy, engrossed. The youngest didn’t go in for ‘long haired’ stuff unless it had first been passed through the Metal filter of her favourite band, Fugue State. She fidgeted, her scythe blade tip carving a kawaii skull into the sham-wood of the chair back facing her.
“ Pitchy needs her Metal supplement, I see. How about a dose of Fugue State?”
Pitchy’s eyes darked-up (Lit-up just isn’t a goth expression.) “Real music? Please!”
Wandblume activated the less traditional synthesizer aspects of the Uber-Wurlitzer ; commenced to ‘play’ the slightly discordant electric guitar pizzicato opening to Mosh-Pit Macabre, Fugue State’s metalized rendition of Camille Saint-Saën’s tone poem, Danse Macabre. Banshees stole away in favour of the frenetic ivory jangling of a skeleton-bot rave. Pitchy’s einheit scythe, Sichel Mond, perked up halfway through carving the Goodbye-Kitty bow on its rather well executed head-bone.
During the performance, Van Loan, wielding a pristine first edition of 1984 in a manner oddly suggestive of a device, skulked about the theatre. He stopped four times : once to admire his girlfriend’s use of his organ ; three times to futz technologically with seemingly mundane portions of the auditorium. Ten minutes later, he ghosted out of the chamber.
“Oh, this is almost as gut as Die Moritat von Mackie Messer (Mack the Knife)!” Sichel Mond’s voice, mechanistic Austrian accented English, sounded suspiciously like a former governor of California.
“Shush!” Pitchy rapped the bumptious scythe’s butt against the auditorium’s sticky floor.
Einheit Sichel Mond apologized in a synthesized Teutonic whisper : “Wie bitte, Chef!”
***
With a properly dark toast of Quarter Cask Laphroaig for the adult and relatively well seasoned teens and Double-Death-by-Dark-Chocolate-Cocoa for Pitchy, Shego wound up the Devil’s Night graduation festivities.
“ It’s been a dark delight, gals! “ She hefted the requisite ornate whiskey glass, solid enough to brain an ox, fired the potent bog juice into her throat. Four others quaffed their own tumblers of complex Scotch. Pitchy sipped her multiplex hot-chocolate daintily.
Over the third Scotch shot, Dies Irae broached the subject that made it the perfect evening for Shego.
“You were always planning to deliver us on Halloween.”
Shego favored her with a knowing Prospero wink while thinking, ‘Plan?’
“Would there be any other way, Irae?”
“Nothing that would be...proper.”
The pause, almost undetectable, would have escaped the slightly alcohol-addled Shego if it hadn’t been punctuated by a shared look of desperation that flashed about the group. She was in the presence of inchoate conspiracy, she abruptly, happily realized. ‘My girls are scheming!’ Then the epiphany pounced.
Shego exercised more willpower than she thought she had as she poured out a fourth round of Scotch, even adding a splash to Pitchy’s cocoa.
“Penny,” Shego’s smiled a slightly crooked smile that juxtaposed very well against the even, reasonable tone of her voice. “when have I ever given a damn about propriety?” She widened the crook of the grin ; passed a neat double to Dies Irae whose real name was Penelope Winterbottom. “Perhaps you have an improper proposal?” She allowed the grin to reach the penultimate tier--any further and she’d achieve maniacal peals of full-blown super-villainess cackling!-- of glee. “I’d love to hear it!”
Wandblume’s inner opportunist, a tiny and very happy meta-gal-Iago, crowed, ‘And I shall call them, Shegoth!
***
The blue border collie, pronounced ‘Tachikoma’ by a large, blue and white metallic dog tag, dutifully watched the fisheye distorted display that was now a complete fiction. It was difficult given the primal sensory data that swirled and roiled from the next room over. Tachikoma buried his snout in his forepaws and chuffed a doggy sigh. A mechanism in the collar translated it into the oddly adorable squeaky, “Everyone’s in a rut but me!”
***The brace of buxom egg chairs considered their luxurious repeater screen view of Sex (transparent), Lies (opaque) & Recordable Media (Who uses video tape these days?).
“Yayoi, do we promote the uplifted quadruped or fire the AWOL assets?”
“Mikuru, why not both?”
An arm emerged from the gloom that obscured all but the superabundant bosom and follicular extremities of the mystifying Yayoi. The attached hand, well manicured with elaborately white starred on midnight blue-backed nails of moderate length, depressed the intercom stud built into the outer swell of her curvaceous throne.
“Promote the Tachikoma attached to Project : Black & Blue to Primary Asset status.”
“Hai, Danna!” The voice, one quaver short of being obsequious, filtered out of a cunningly concealed speaker.
“And...reassign agents Togusa & Batou to...” The hand clicked nails across the spotless white enamel exterior of the pod. “...Monolith duty.”
The unseen lackey’s voice trembled minutely. “Wakatta, Danna!”
“Yayoi, you’re just a big, soft panda.” There was only the slightest tinge of pique in the other’s voice.
“Cute, yet still very dangerous? Thanks, dear!”