Clinging desperately to the wrong side of the tarted-up, burnished hull of his Alvin-sphere, Van Loan, screaming, careened into the azure loveliness of a cloudless sky.
He did that classic Hollywood sweaty-bolt-upright from bed, gasping : “ ‘Wavium isn’t Cavorite!” “Even while he was in the midst of it the analytical part of his brain was expounding,
‘That only happens in the movies, moron!’
Wandblume, indecorously sprawled next to him on the tousled sheets of the hexagonal Space-Super-King bed, opened one eye cattishly ; purred, “ Tarantino better be directing and writing, or I’m walking.”
Looking only slightly manic, Van Loan grasped one of the many hexagonal pillows strewn about the bed. “How about Hitchcock, darling?” He mock-smothered her with a pillow.
She turned in a melodramatic death worthy of a Full-Stratford Shatner.
*****Lying next to each other, sharing a candy cigarette--neither actually smoked--they had the usually unusual conversation of a Geek couple,
“ So, if it wasn’t for your pseudo-Argyria presumably caused by a combination of high-altitude hypoxia and accidental ‘Wavium exposure, you’d be Professor Challenger instead of Dr. Drakken?”
“Professor Cavor....”
“...is the whiney wuss of Speculative Fiction!” Wandblume interjected. “I prefer my scientists to be more fun, and” She rolled over on top of him, squeezing a winded huff
out of him, and parked her jade eyes inches from his hazels “...hands on!”
Van Loan grinned the grin reserved only for the very happy and slightly crazy. “Shall we field test my fun & hands-on quotients?” She looked as if she was seriously and judiciously considering it. “For Science?” He put on his best 1950s movie Square-Jawed Man of Science face.
“For Science!” She closed the final intervening distance ; stopped his mouth with a buss (Pseudo-Shakespeare alert : Forsooth! Forsooth! Forsooth!). The fourth wall prudishly turned opaque just as the experimentation was beginning.
****
“And to think that I was indifferent to science until I met you!”
“Can I help it if I’m a combination Carl Sagan, Bill Nye, and John Holmes?”
“Why don’t you add a dash of Captain Kangaroo to really scar my brain?”
*****
Wandblume admired the profusion of jade green amongst the otherwise typical gothic colour scheme of the common room. Fifty percent of the rumpus room was green ; fifty
percent was black : it was as if her adopted identity’s uniform had extended slick-like over the surface area of the entire room. It was elegant proof of just how much the people who shared the room were now Shegoth.
At the preassigned time the five doors, each one characteristic of its owner, off of the ruckus room opened to discharge a member of the team.
Dies Irae, as befitting her leadership position, was first. The fragment of room visible behind her operatically strutting form revealed some equally theatrical decor. A giant four-poster bed, designed by the lovechild of Andrew Lloyd Webber & Anne Rice, dominated the room with a Grand Guignol grander. A poster of George Argento Fulci’s all-zombie rendition of Carmen flashed luridly from the reverse side of her iron banded inorganic-oak door before it imperiously banged closed.
Pitchy was next to emerge, gravely skipping. The pink, plastic dungeon door squeaked open on its plastic hinges to reveal an inner effusion of Barbie by way of the Marquis De Sade. Was that a life-sized polymer iron maiden against the back, rosé wall? It certainly looked like one! Surely that wasn’t an equally pink rack on which she slept, was it? There was so much pink that human perceptual capabilities were sorely taxed.
Umbra shambled forth from behind steel shutters that rumbled and screeched into a ceiling recess. Behind her squatted Lovecraft’s Gym. Nightmarish Nautilus machines, frightening free-weights and a solid-steel, dented hulk of either a sensory deprivation tank or a pressure chamber told something of her story before the utilitarian portcullis slammed down behind her mammoth musculature.
Stygia languidly slinked through a red leather studded door behind which lurked the Sanctum sanctorum of the sophisticated Victorian vampiress. A low central pedestal bore a buffed, bronze handled coffin that Dracula would have been proud to call home. The sumptuous faux-marble octagonal mausoleum, decorated with splays of black roses and funerary fabrics, was as welcoming as the approach of the Grim Reaper.
Nocturne Raven, arguably the baseline of the bunch, Gainaxed in from what looked dangerously like a suburban Japanese teenager’s room wherein the most unusual feature was a Sparkle Vampires: Unending Dusk poster.
The entire team arrayed across the various black and green articles of seating paid close attention to the fifteen minutes of Wandblume’s seemingly carefully prepared speech--it was off the cuff but then her superpower was the ability to appear super capable!
****
Tachikoma wagged his tail vigorously as he watched his video feed of the what he thought was a motivational speech. Wandblume/Shego was a Good Girl! The footage, purely fictional, cannily inserted into the transmission by Van Loan showed a glowing sendoff speech as opposed to the actual speech that was a decided statement of control.
****
At a far removed locale, Togusa and Batou kept wary eyes on the perfectly formed slab of black body material. Neither looked particularly happy.
****
The hand bearing starred fingernails held up a hard-copy Priority-traffic “Mikuru, the team is ready for delivery!”
“Indeed, Yayoi! Send the acknowledgment code ; and prepare to receive our retirement package!”
He did that classic Hollywood sweaty-bolt-upright from bed, gasping : “ ‘Wavium isn’t Cavorite!” “Even while he was in the midst of it the analytical part of his brain was expounding,
‘That only happens in the movies, moron!’
Wandblume, indecorously sprawled next to him on the tousled sheets of the hexagonal Space-Super-King bed, opened one eye cattishly ; purred, “ Tarantino better be directing and writing, or I’m walking.”
Looking only slightly manic, Van Loan grasped one of the many hexagonal pillows strewn about the bed. “How about Hitchcock, darling?” He mock-smothered her with a pillow.
She turned in a melodramatic death worthy of a Full-Stratford Shatner.
*****Lying next to each other, sharing a candy cigarette--neither actually smoked--they had the usually unusual conversation of a Geek couple,
“ So, if it wasn’t for your pseudo-Argyria presumably caused by a combination of high-altitude hypoxia and accidental ‘Wavium exposure, you’d be Professor Challenger instead of Dr. Drakken?”
“Professor Cavor....”
“...is the whiney wuss of Speculative Fiction!” Wandblume interjected. “I prefer my scientists to be more fun, and” She rolled over on top of him, squeezing a winded huff
out of him, and parked her jade eyes inches from his hazels “...hands on!”
Van Loan grinned the grin reserved only for the very happy and slightly crazy. “Shall we field test my fun & hands-on quotients?” She looked as if she was seriously and judiciously considering it. “For Science?” He put on his best 1950s movie Square-Jawed Man of Science face.
“For Science!” She closed the final intervening distance ; stopped his mouth with a buss (Pseudo-Shakespeare alert : Forsooth! Forsooth! Forsooth!). The fourth wall prudishly turned opaque just as the experimentation was beginning.
****
“And to think that I was indifferent to science until I met you!”
“Can I help it if I’m a combination Carl Sagan, Bill Nye, and John Holmes?”
“Why don’t you add a dash of Captain Kangaroo to really scar my brain?”
*****
Wandblume admired the profusion of jade green amongst the otherwise typical gothic colour scheme of the common room. Fifty percent of the rumpus room was green ; fifty
percent was black : it was as if her adopted identity’s uniform had extended slick-like over the surface area of the entire room. It was elegant proof of just how much the people who shared the room were now Shegoth.
At the preassigned time the five doors, each one characteristic of its owner, off of the ruckus room opened to discharge a member of the team.
Dies Irae, as befitting her leadership position, was first. The fragment of room visible behind her operatically strutting form revealed some equally theatrical decor. A giant four-poster bed, designed by the lovechild of Andrew Lloyd Webber & Anne Rice, dominated the room with a Grand Guignol grander. A poster of George Argento Fulci’s all-zombie rendition of Carmen flashed luridly from the reverse side of her iron banded inorganic-oak door before it imperiously banged closed.
Pitchy was next to emerge, gravely skipping. The pink, plastic dungeon door squeaked open on its plastic hinges to reveal an inner effusion of Barbie by way of the Marquis De Sade. Was that a life-sized polymer iron maiden against the back, rosé wall? It certainly looked like one! Surely that wasn’t an equally pink rack on which she slept, was it? There was so much pink that human perceptual capabilities were sorely taxed.
Umbra shambled forth from behind steel shutters that rumbled and screeched into a ceiling recess. Behind her squatted Lovecraft’s Gym. Nightmarish Nautilus machines, frightening free-weights and a solid-steel, dented hulk of either a sensory deprivation tank or a pressure chamber told something of her story before the utilitarian portcullis slammed down behind her mammoth musculature.
Stygia languidly slinked through a red leather studded door behind which lurked the Sanctum sanctorum of the sophisticated Victorian vampiress. A low central pedestal bore a buffed, bronze handled coffin that Dracula would have been proud to call home. The sumptuous faux-marble octagonal mausoleum, decorated with splays of black roses and funerary fabrics, was as welcoming as the approach of the Grim Reaper.
Nocturne Raven, arguably the baseline of the bunch, Gainaxed in from what looked dangerously like a suburban Japanese teenager’s room wherein the most unusual feature was a Sparkle Vampires: Unending Dusk poster.
The entire team arrayed across the various black and green articles of seating paid close attention to the fifteen minutes of Wandblume’s seemingly carefully prepared speech--it was off the cuff but then her superpower was the ability to appear super capable!
****
Tachikoma wagged his tail vigorously as he watched his video feed of the what he thought was a motivational speech. Wandblume/Shego was a Good Girl! The footage, purely fictional, cannily inserted into the transmission by Van Loan showed a glowing sendoff speech as opposed to the actual speech that was a decided statement of control.
****
At a far removed locale, Togusa and Batou kept wary eyes on the perfectly formed slab of black body material. Neither looked particularly happy.
****
The hand bearing starred fingernails held up a hard-copy Priority-traffic “Mikuru, the team is ready for delivery!”
“Indeed, Yayoi! Send the acknowledgment code ; and prepare to receive our retirement package!”