It was supposed to have been a secretive departure, but as Van Loan had learned very little could be kept from Wandblume’s determined fan base regarding their idol. Black and green uniforms of various qualities--one or two were quite good as were the figures inside them--crowded about the inner airlock bulkhead to squeal, wave and document the event on a dizzying array of devices. Shego took it all with the smooth aplomb of the White Queen as she sashayed her figure-flattering Newman Mark IV plugsuit before the cargo sled bearing a black boxcar sized cargo container enigmatically blazoned in crimson with, ’ CABAL INC.’
“What’s in the cargo pod?” Suki Mashin, the Alpha Female of Aitsu Go, Wandblume’s fan club, called out in the shrill voice of the over-excited enthusiast.
Shego stopped long enough to deliver the oblique response, “My repute, Suki!”
“Is it what you’ve been up to for the last six months?”
Wandblume vanished into the theatrical sterility of the cargo lock. The nuttiest profusion of rotating beacon lights since Aliens strobed crimson light through completely ridiculous snorts of vapor as Shego’s response drifted lazily out of the closing Cameronesque chamber. “It’s what I’ll be up to for the next...” The overly mechanized door slid shut with a cool profusion of mechanized minutiae, cutting off Shego’s pronouncement. Within the airlock, Van Loan, who had been driving the cargo pod, rolled his eyes at his leman’s theatrics. “Troweling it a bit thick, don’t you think, dear?” She laughed at him, not entirely unkindly.
“That’s a compliment coming from you, oh Master of Melodrama!”
A burst of harmless, faintly mint scented dry ice whooshed out the stagy riposte.
Wandblume cocked a gloved hand to an ear. “What’s that? I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome your airlock is!”
“I said, ‘ That’s very Shego of you!’ “ It was almost exactly what he had actually said : the words ‘’ hyperbolic hussy’ had essentially the same meaning, but far from the same intended outcome.
Wandblume dimpled roguishly ; pounced upon her man. “That’s not what you said!” She bussed him with a buss that would have impressed the ‘[dirty old] dean of science fiction writers.’
“We’ll have have to skip town for a while.” She said it with a happy breathiness.
He fondled her resplendent raven cascade of hair. “No kidding! The alternate lair awaits.”
Shego’s smile took a nerd-twist. “The grasping fortress is ready?’
He tucked, more than a bit salaciously, a piece of digital foolscap into her left hip pocket.
“If we’re going to be villains we’re going to need to look the part.”
She welled-up just a bit. “Part of me was expecting that you’d bail when I really got rolling!”
He gave her his best leading-man look. He aimed for Carey Grant : he achieved Jim Carrey. “And loose my one truly irreplaceable treasure? Besides,” he continued taking her teary face in his hands. “I’m far too invested to back out!” He kiss-stopped her verbal counterstroke : she had to make due with a fond cuff upside his blue bean.
A knock from the inside of the container brought them around. Pitchy’s voice, irate, sounded surprisingly clearly through the pod’s space-age materials. “You’re kissing again?! How can you plan anything when all you ever use is your brain-stem?”
Wandblume broke the smooch ; rapped the side of the pod. “You’ll understand when you get your very own boy, or ghoul, Pitchy! Now, be proper, mysterious cargo, please!”
There was one cute little derisive snort ; then nevermore.
****
On the far side of the airlock, within the task-built cargo hold projecting an insect abdomen off of the aft of her svelte powerboat, Envy , Wandblume secured the pod for the flight ; released its contents. The only non plugsuited girl, Pitchy--Wandblume & Van Loan have standards--wore a bulbous pink thing that looked like a JIM suit crossed with the Pink Knight. Everyone else, ahem, adhered to the strict dictates of full-coverage fetishism.
Umbra considered her perfectly delineated topography under the polymer veneer of her steel-grey environmental sheathe. “The Man from Glad is a perv!”
Stygia, flamboyant in her crimson second skin, grinned her keen dental implants. The sharp smile came level with Umbra’s abs. “The perviest!” She, unlike her associate, didn’t sound unhappy about it.
Dies’ suit, by far the most ornamental of the bunch, was a full-on, near body-painted replica of a mid-eighteenth century female Faustian Mephisto. Besides Pitchy’s, her helmet was the only other to carry actual physical ornamentation : the twin projections, honed but not large enough to be ridiculous, really drove the diabolical point home. “We’re in the statement making business, girls.”
Nocturne Raven, arms crossed defensively before her twin declarations, groused : “ I’d feel less naked, naked!” Hers was a sparkly outfit as if she were mid-magical-transformation. The result was rather eye-catching...in an Otaku manner.
Dies Irae marshaled her team eloquently : “We wear our real costumes only when the time is right, girls!”
“Settle in, team. We’ve got some flying to do.” Shego went forward through the cramped thorax ; activated the cockpit systems. “Good news, kids!” She called back over her shoulder. “We’ve only got forty five million kilometers actual transit distance ! Bad news is that my sneaky elliptical insertion adds another five million kilometers! Total in-flight time, barring ion-storms, space-pirates, and Xenomorphs, is thirteen hours, thirteen minutes, & thirteen seconds starting...” Shego vaulted, Kham-like, into the pilot’s acceleration-couch ; strapped herself in with a fantastic yet completely unnecessary harness to the accompaniment of the stirring, Holst-esque Gunbuster suite. “...Now!” The five members of her crew scrambled into their very own ostentatious cradles as she flipped the dramatically red & yellow striped cage off of the cherry button labelled, ‘LAUNCH!’
On the exterior, a tiny puff of vapor silently propelled the vessel away from the cubical mass of Van Loan’s Venusian satellite laboratory. Inside, the ship shook and throbbed with all of the violence & drama of a space-operatic leap into the Void.
Thirteen hours, thirteen minutes and fifteen seconds later, the sinister svelte sweep of the Envy performed a beautifully executed, if unduly decorous, docking maneuver at the priority docking station, L5 facility.
Shego, resplendently risqué, sashayed aboard the hub-station in the manner of Rock-Star-Royalty. She deigned to flash her priority-rush declaration to the drones of Station-Security Control. “ I know this is going to kill you but this means that you can’t even peek!” She sounded as sorry as a shark chowing-down on fat, delicious fur seal. “You, however,” she said pointing at a cut, Teutonic-Type hunk in security-blacks (Why, with the exception of ST:OS, is Security always garbed in black?) “...may sled the parcel, agent...” She reached out ; grasped his name-tag. “...Hardcastle!”
****
Hardcastle, feeling decidedly like a sexualized man-steak, drove the cargo container in the smug wake of Shego’s hypno-tush as they crossed the threshold into the sanctum sanctorum of The Patrol. At the far end of the vast chamber, twin blast doors soundlessly opened to reveal the twin egg chairs bearing the shadowy portions of busty power-players.
The chair on the left, steepled fingers, starry fingernails and slightly larger bosoms--than the other chair-bound beauty--issued a feminine voice used to the dictates of power. “Wandblume, what’s the purpose of this Cabal container?"
“The purpose?” Shego looked innocent. “Let me show you!” She flung her arms wide ; laughed maniacally ; pressed the control on the side of the pod that was labelled, ‘ CARGO DEPLOYMENT!’
“What’s in the cargo pod?” Suki Mashin, the Alpha Female of Aitsu Go, Wandblume’s fan club, called out in the shrill voice of the over-excited enthusiast.
Shego stopped long enough to deliver the oblique response, “My repute, Suki!”
“Is it what you’ve been up to for the last six months?”
Wandblume vanished into the theatrical sterility of the cargo lock. The nuttiest profusion of rotating beacon lights since Aliens strobed crimson light through completely ridiculous snorts of vapor as Shego’s response drifted lazily out of the closing Cameronesque chamber. “It’s what I’ll be up to for the next...” The overly mechanized door slid shut with a cool profusion of mechanized minutiae, cutting off Shego’s pronouncement. Within the airlock, Van Loan, who had been driving the cargo pod, rolled his eyes at his leman’s theatrics. “Troweling it a bit thick, don’t you think, dear?” She laughed at him, not entirely unkindly.
“That’s a compliment coming from you, oh Master of Melodrama!”
A burst of harmless, faintly mint scented dry ice whooshed out the stagy riposte.
Wandblume cocked a gloved hand to an ear. “What’s that? I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome your airlock is!”
“I said, ‘ That’s very Shego of you!’ “ It was almost exactly what he had actually said : the words ‘’ hyperbolic hussy’ had essentially the same meaning, but far from the same intended outcome.
Wandblume dimpled roguishly ; pounced upon her man. “That’s not what you said!” She bussed him with a buss that would have impressed the ‘[dirty old] dean of science fiction writers.’
“We’ll have have to skip town for a while.” She said it with a happy breathiness.
He fondled her resplendent raven cascade of hair. “No kidding! The alternate lair awaits.”
Shego’s smile took a nerd-twist. “The grasping fortress is ready?’
He tucked, more than a bit salaciously, a piece of digital foolscap into her left hip pocket.
“If we’re going to be villains we’re going to need to look the part.”
She welled-up just a bit. “Part of me was expecting that you’d bail when I really got rolling!”
He gave her his best leading-man look. He aimed for Carey Grant : he achieved Jim Carrey. “And loose my one truly irreplaceable treasure? Besides,” he continued taking her teary face in his hands. “I’m far too invested to back out!” He kiss-stopped her verbal counterstroke : she had to make due with a fond cuff upside his blue bean.
A knock from the inside of the container brought them around. Pitchy’s voice, irate, sounded surprisingly clearly through the pod’s space-age materials. “You’re kissing again?! How can you plan anything when all you ever use is your brain-stem?”
Wandblume broke the smooch ; rapped the side of the pod. “You’ll understand when you get your very own boy, or ghoul, Pitchy! Now, be proper, mysterious cargo, please!”
There was one cute little derisive snort ; then nevermore.
****
On the far side of the airlock, within the task-built cargo hold projecting an insect abdomen off of the aft of her svelte powerboat, Envy , Wandblume secured the pod for the flight ; released its contents. The only non plugsuited girl, Pitchy--Wandblume & Van Loan have standards--wore a bulbous pink thing that looked like a JIM suit crossed with the Pink Knight. Everyone else, ahem, adhered to the strict dictates of full-coverage fetishism.
Umbra considered her perfectly delineated topography under the polymer veneer of her steel-grey environmental sheathe. “The Man from Glad is a perv!”
Stygia, flamboyant in her crimson second skin, grinned her keen dental implants. The sharp smile came level with Umbra’s abs. “The perviest!” She, unlike her associate, didn’t sound unhappy about it.
Dies’ suit, by far the most ornamental of the bunch, was a full-on, near body-painted replica of a mid-eighteenth century female Faustian Mephisto. Besides Pitchy’s, her helmet was the only other to carry actual physical ornamentation : the twin projections, honed but not large enough to be ridiculous, really drove the diabolical point home. “We’re in the statement making business, girls.”
Nocturne Raven, arms crossed defensively before her twin declarations, groused : “ I’d feel less naked, naked!” Hers was a sparkly outfit as if she were mid-magical-transformation. The result was rather eye-catching...in an Otaku manner.
Dies Irae marshaled her team eloquently : “We wear our real costumes only when the time is right, girls!”
“Settle in, team. We’ve got some flying to do.” Shego went forward through the cramped thorax ; activated the cockpit systems. “Good news, kids!” She called back over her shoulder. “We’ve only got forty five million kilometers actual transit distance ! Bad news is that my sneaky elliptical insertion adds another five million kilometers! Total in-flight time, barring ion-storms, space-pirates, and Xenomorphs, is thirteen hours, thirteen minutes, & thirteen seconds starting...” Shego vaulted, Kham-like, into the pilot’s acceleration-couch ; strapped herself in with a fantastic yet completely unnecessary harness to the accompaniment of the stirring, Holst-esque Gunbuster suite. “...Now!” The five members of her crew scrambled into their very own ostentatious cradles as she flipped the dramatically red & yellow striped cage off of the cherry button labelled, ‘LAUNCH!’
On the exterior, a tiny puff of vapor silently propelled the vessel away from the cubical mass of Van Loan’s Venusian satellite laboratory. Inside, the ship shook and throbbed with all of the violence & drama of a space-operatic leap into the Void.
Thirteen hours, thirteen minutes and fifteen seconds later, the sinister svelte sweep of the Envy performed a beautifully executed, if unduly decorous, docking maneuver at the priority docking station, L5 facility.
Shego, resplendently risqué, sashayed aboard the hub-station in the manner of Rock-Star-Royalty. She deigned to flash her priority-rush declaration to the drones of Station-Security Control. “ I know this is going to kill you but this means that you can’t even peek!” She sounded as sorry as a shark chowing-down on fat, delicious fur seal. “You, however,” she said pointing at a cut, Teutonic-Type hunk in security-blacks (Why, with the exception of ST:OS, is Security always garbed in black?) “...may sled the parcel, agent...” She reached out ; grasped his name-tag. “...Hardcastle!”
****
Hardcastle, feeling decidedly like a sexualized man-steak, drove the cargo container in the smug wake of Shego’s hypno-tush as they crossed the threshold into the sanctum sanctorum of The Patrol. At the far end of the vast chamber, twin blast doors soundlessly opened to reveal the twin egg chairs bearing the shadowy portions of busty power-players.
The chair on the left, steepled fingers, starry fingernails and slightly larger bosoms--than the other chair-bound beauty--issued a feminine voice used to the dictates of power. “Wandblume, what’s the purpose of this Cabal container?"
“The purpose?” Shego looked innocent. “Let me show you!” She flung her arms wide ; laughed maniacally ; pressed the control on the side of the pod that was labelled, ‘ CARGO DEPLOYMENT!’