by M. D. Cooper
BAMF pushed the door open, about to jump out early, and Vivia called out, “I wouldn’t—” but was interrupted by Kong’s low growl.
BAMF quickly closed the door and slumped in her seat. “I don’t think I like this place.”
THE ROYAL PALACE™
Author’s Note: I could write a whole book about what the team saw that night at The Royal Palace™, and the crazy things they got up to.
Suffice it to say that Stick was enamored with everything, and both Lashes and Vivia had to keep her from eating every apple they came across, the side effects of which were never certain.
BAMF got in fights with several different dwarves on several different occasions, and was ultimately confined to her room, which was guarded by Kong.
They did go off to see The Cat Woman™ and The Bat Man™ lead an army of penguins against the Imperial Forces™, and The Dark Lord™ pinchy-thinged many penguins before The Bat Man™ was able to use his spray.
In the end, good prevailed; though everyone found it confusing that the good guys were in black and the bad guys were in white—except for The Dark Lord™, of course.
Oh, and they all got drunk. Multiple times, thanks to the joys of nano blood cleaners, or Itty Bitty Boozy Scrubbies™ as they were known at The Palace™.
Afterward, Ramsey complained about how they could be back on the road, headed to The Dark Forest™ and everyone got annoyed and went to bed.
OK, onto the next day.
THE FAIRLY GOODMOTHER
The team—except Stick, who was late, as usual—along with their erstwhile companion, Vivia, waited at the far side of The Royal Palace™ for the porter to finish loading their belongings into the stagecoach.
The coach was pulled by a team of six horses, and had a seat high up on the front. Lashes had spoken very nicely to the driver, and he agreed to let BAMF sit up there with him, so long as she let him take the reins when he asked for them and didn’t threaten the horses.
Lashes wasn’t certain how well that would play out, but so far, BAMF had kept her hands to herself. She was probably worried that the flying monkeys and Kong were lurking somewhere nearby.
“Let’s go,” Ramsey said, peering out of the stagecoach. “What’s the holdup?”
“Hey!” The driver called down. “I’ll kindly ask you not to say those words.”
“What words?” Ramsey asked.
“’Hold up’,” the driver replied, shaking his head as though the answer should be obvious.
“Oooooohhh,” Ramsey replied. “I get it.”
“Just waiting for Stick,” Lashes said. “Not sure where she got off to.”
“I’m here,” Stick called out, and Lashes turned her head to see the team’s pilot enter the courtyard. She sauntered toward them wearing a gleaming Cat Woman™ costume. It was the full deal: head to toe black latex, pointed high heeled boots, corset, mask, goggles, pointy-eared hood, clawed gloves, and topped off with a functional tail that swished side to side as Stick sashayed her hips.
“And you told me I couldn’t dress like this here!” Stick said as she reached Lashes and gave a little shimmy. “To think that I went a whole day without being in a corset!”
“The horror,” Lashes said, holding back a sigh.
“And look—they have whips!” Stick gestured to the long, coiled whip at her hip. “If I had my cuffs, I’d be fully equipped.”
“You look great, Stick,” Ramsey called impatiently from the stagecoach’s open door. “Now get your shiny tail in here so we can get going! I haven’t heard from Ronnie all morning. For all we know, whoever is taking people in The Dark Forest™ has him.”
Stick leapt up into the coach and crouched low beside Ramsey, purring and hissing at the same time.
“You’re sending mixed signals there,” Lashes said, she climbed up and batted Stick’s waving tail out of the way.
The two women sat down, and Ramsey hollered out the window that they were ready. The driver called back something that sounded like an affirmative response, and the stagecoach took off like a rocket out of The Royal Palace™’s gates and into the wide plain beyond.
“Huh, maybe he let BAMF drive,” Lashes said.
“Some horses,” Ramsey commented. “We’re up over one hundred kilometers per hour.”
Stick started pawing at Lashes, and she batted the pilot’s hands away. “Careful! Those claws are sharp!” Lashes looked more closely at Stick’s costume and couldn’t see any seams or fastenings. The hood that wrapped around her head was perfectly smooth, like there wasn’t even any hair underneath.
“How did you get into that costume so fast, anyway?” Lashes asked. “You were only gone for a few minutes.”
“Into what?” Stick asked with a coy smile.
“The costume,” Lashes replied.
“What costume?” Stick replied with a question that wasn’t really much of a reply.
“Stick, you’re dressed like The Cat Woman. The Cat Woman costume is what costume.”
“Oh, you mean how I’m The Cat Woman™.”
“Uh…yeah.”
Stick grinned. “It’s not a costume. I am The Cat Woman™.”
“What do you mean?” Ramsey asked with a frown creasing his brow. “The Cat Woman is a fictional character. You’re not fictional…well…mostly.”
“I met a Fairly Goodmother,” Stick said. “She asked me what I wanted to be most, and after seeing The Cat Woman™ and The Bat Man™ take down those Imperial Storm Troops™ last night, I knew exactly what I wanted to be.”
“Oh, those Fairly Goodmothers,” Vivia said from where she was perched atop a lantern, polishing her nails. “No mater how we try, they just rush around giving everyone what they want. The Council keeps trying to get them to dole things out more carefully, but they won’t. There’s no stopping them.”
“The Council?” Lashes asked.
“Yup!” Vivia squeaked. “The Council of Supernatural Beings™. That’s who governs The Disknee World™.”
“I thought you were owned by some ancient corporation from Earth…like, really ancient—from before the Jovians blew the place up.”
“Mr. Ramsey, Disknee has always been governed by the CSB, even before spaceflight. No one has ever owned us.”
“I don’t know about any of that,” Stick said, “but I didn’t put on a costume or anything; the Fairly Goodmother just waved her wand, said ‘Bippity Boppity Boos™’, and I was The Cat Woman™.”
“But there’s no openings or anything…how do you get it off to go pee?” Lashes asked.
Vivia chuckled. “Miss Lashes, it’s magic. You don’t have to worry about stuff like that.”
“What, she can’t take it off?” Lashes asked, eyes wide.
“Well, no. Of course she can’t take it off; your friend Stick currently is The Cat Woman™,” Vivia replied very seriously. “If she took it off, then she wouldn’t be The Cat Woman™; but she is, as you can see, The Cat Woman™. It’s really quite simple.”
“But there is no real Cat Woman,” Ramsey said, then took a larger-than-usual bite from his carrot.
“Sure there is,” Stick said with a grin as she pulled the goggles over her eyes and made clawing actions in the air. “It’s me.”
“I’m hung up on the whole bathroom thing,” Lashes said. “Can she eat?”
Vivia jumped off her lantern and fluttered over to Lashes, hovering close enough to Lashes’ nose that she thought she was going to go cross-eyed. “Miss Lashes. It’s magic. She can do everything she normally would do…even…you know…the good stuff. It will all just magically work.”
Lashes glanced over at Stick, wondering what that really meant. She had to admit that a magical ability to simply become something else certainly would be useful on a lot of jobs.
As he spoke, Stick’s tail slapped Lashes in the face, and she pushed it way. “Seriously, St
ick; do that again, and I’ll pull that thing off.”
“Not my tail!” Stick exclaimed and hugged her new appendage.
Ramsey shrugged.
“I know!” Vivia exclaimed as she flew around Lashes’ head. “I’ll summon one of the Fairly Goodmothers, and they can do you, too!”
“I thought you were disapproving of their flagrant bippity boppitying?” Ramsey asked with a small smile.
“Well,” Vivia said in a very serious tone of voice. “We’re dealing with an unbeliever here. That requires the big guns.”
Suddenly, a short, rotund woman in a pink dress appeared in the carriage. “What? Where? Oh, hello, The Cat Woman™. I see you found your way back to your friends.”
“Yup,” Stick said while twirling her tail around in her hand. “My friend Lashes here doesn’t believe that I really am The Cat Woman™.”
“It’s true,” Vivia added. “Lashes doesn’t believe in magic, or that the CSB governs The Disknee World™.”
“Oh, deary me, deary my,” the Fairly Goodmother said. “Well, that just won’t do! Especially not on such a momentous occasion.”
“Momentous occasion?” Ramsey asked. “What’s that?”
Lashes made serious eyes at the Fairly Goodmother, who blushed and quickly said, “Oh, nothing, nothing at all. Now, Miss Lashes, I believe in keeping with themes. Your friend here has picked a hero from ages past; who would you like to become during your stay here?”
“Uh…” Lashes said as she smoothed her light green skirt nervously. “No one. I’m perfectly happy being me.”
“Nonsense, Miss Lashes. Everyone has a dream, a little fantasy, someone they’d like to be,” the Fairly Goodmother said with a kindly smile.
“Well, there is this one character from a long time ago, I liked her power a lot. Her name was JuJubilee.”
“Wonderful!” the Fairly Goodmother exclaimed and raised her wand. Now say it with me, ‘Bippity Boppity Boooos™’.”
Lashes closed her eyes and said the words along with the Fairly Goodmother, and the felt a tingling begin in the tips of her toes and fingers, and then race across her body.
She held her eyelids shut, worried about what she would see, but when Ramsey chuckled, she cracked one eyelid.
The first thing that Lashes saw was a yellow trench coat, and her heart leapt in her throat. She raised her black-gloved hands to make them emit sparkles, but nothing came out.
“Whaaaa,” she said and looked down at herself. She was wearing a black catsuit with pink accents. “Noooo!” she cried out. “This is the wrong JuJubilee™…she doesn’t have her super powers, she’s a vampire!”
“And apparently a copycat,” Stick said with a frown. “At least your suit’s not super shiny like mine. But you even have goggles!”
“Stick, nearly all superheroes wear catsuits. It’s the uniform,” Lashes said, waving a hand to dismiss Stick, only to have her fingers pawed at. She sighed and stared into the Fairly Goodmother’s eyes. “Please, this isn’t right. These teeth are nuts,” Lashes said. “I think I’m going to accidentally bite myself. Can you undo this? I don’t want to be Vampire JuJubilee™, I want to be young JuJubilee™, who can do sparkles with her hands! Change me into her!”
“Oh, no-no no no no no-no no. No,” the Fairly Goodmother said in a singsong voice. “I can’t turn you back, you haven’t learned your Important Lesson™ yet.”
“I what?” Lashes asked. “Turn me back now!”
“Tut tut,” Vivia said fluttering close to Lashes’ face. “Don’t make me bop you. You’ve been so well behaved so far, if this is what the Fairly Goodmother turned you into, then it’s your most secret desire.”
“Well,” the Fairly Goodmother corrected. “It’s her most secret superhero desire from the selection we have licenses for.”
Vivia grinned. “Close enough.”
The Fairly Goodmother turned to the colonel. “What about you, Mr. Ramsey? Is there a super hero you’d like to be? I’m in a giving mood today.”
“Uh, no…I’m a believer. I believe in the magic,” Ramsey said hastily.
“Oh, nonsense, Mr. Ramsey. I can tell you’re thinking of something. The magic will work anyway…”
“Please, no…really…”
“Bippity Boppity Boooos™!” the Fairly Goodmother called out. There was a flash of light. When everyone could see clearly once more, Ramsey still sat as he was, without any visible change.
“Heh,” he said with a broad grin around his carrot. “I knew it would work.”
“But he looks exactly the same,” Stick said.
“I don’t know,” the Fairly Goodmother said, while peering closely at Ramsey. “It did work…apparently he’s his own favorite superhero. And since he is him, the magic didn’t have a licensing issue.”
“I love it when the magic comes together,” Ramsey said, still grinning as he chewed on his now-golden carrot.
THE DARK FOREST™
“End of the road, folks,” the driver called down as the stagecoach slowed at the edge of a dark, brooding forest.
The coach pulled off the road into a wide gravel lot with only two other coaches and a number of horses tied up. When the coach rolled to a halt, Lashes stepped out into the bright, late morning light.
“Aghhh… that’s really bright,” she hissed while pulling her goggles over her eyes, and turned up her coat’s high collar. It felt like her skin was going to start smoking any moment.
BAMF leapt down from the driver’s seat and landed beside her. “What’s wrong with you, Lashes? What’s with the rain coat?”
Stick slinked out of the coach and pawed at BAMF’s arm. “Her? She’s a vampire, now.”
“A what?! Shit, Stick, you fool; why are you a cat?” BAMF said as she looked between the two women.
“Language, language,” Vivia said as she fluttered out of the stagecoach.
“A Fairly Goodmother did this to them,” Ramsey said with a broad grin as he jumped down from the stagecoach. “Lashes didn’t believe in magic, so that’s what happened to her.”
BAMF scowled at Stick. “If you flick your tail at me one more time, I’m going to rip it off and let Lashes drink the blood out of it…or whatever is in your pretend magical tail.”
“Stop it,” Lashes whined. “Don’t talk about blood, kay?”
BAMF’s eyes widened. “She safe?” the big woman asked Ramsey.
“Probably,” Ramsey replied. “This is a family place, right?”
“Don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Vivia said as she flittered around the group. “Although…sometimes the Fairly Goodmothers’ magic can go a bit sideways. They are called ‘Fairly Goodmothers’, after all. But if Vampire JuJubilee™-Lashes gets out of hand, I’ll bop her down to my size, and then the worst thing she can do is scratch your ankles.”
BAMF’s look darkened. “Won’t that turn me into a vampire, too?”
Vivia paused, a tiny hand on her lips as she considered it. “Hmm… probably. But don’t worry; once she learns whatever lesson she’s supposed to, she’ll revert back to her normal self, and so will anyone she’s bitten or scratched.”
“Huh…the brochure sure didn’t mention this sort of thing,” Ramsey said.
“You’re telling me,” Lashes said while giving Vivia a searing glower.
“What about her?” BAMF asked, jerking her thumb at Stick, who was currently licking the back of her hand and running it over her ears.
“What about ‘what about her’?” Vivia asked.
“When does she turn back?” BAMF said, giving the pixie a menacing glower.
Vivia was unfazed by BAMF’s disgruntled expression. “Who knows? She didn’t get turned into The Cat Woman™ because she needed a lesson. She is The Cat Woman™.”
BAMF looke
d Stick over. “How does she get out of the costume?”
“She doesn’t,” Lashes sighed.
“Really?” BAMF asked, quizzically. “Then how does she go to the ba—”
“Ohhhhkaaaayyyy,” Ramsey said. “We are not having that conversation again. Let’s get this show on the road. Everyone, grab your pack; looks like we have to walk the rest of the way.”
“Where is it that we’re going, anyway?” Stick asked as she leapt up to the top of the coach and started tossing the team’s bags down.
“That’s impressive; especially in those heels,” Lashes commented.
“Yeah, I feel so agile!” Stick said with a big grin, and she did a cartwheel across the top of the stagecoach before throwing the last of the team’s bags down.
Lashes grabbed her bag when Stick tossed it to her, and pulled out the map of The Dark Forest™ she had tucked into one of the pockets.
“Well, we have to go almost all the way to the Mystic Lake, to some place called the Millinery. That’s where the colonel’s friend works, running security…I wonder if they have any meat there. I could use some raw meat.”
BAMF shouldered her pack while eyeing Lashes and Stick. “Colonel, how did we end up with these two?”
“You’re telling me,” Vivia said with a squeaky chuckle. “They look more like villains than the good guys. I sure hope you can help your friend Ronnie before they turn on you.”
“Why would they turn on us?” BAMF asked.
“Well,” Vivia said. “You remember about the villains in The Dark Forest™ I was telling you about, right?”
Ramsey and the three women nodded.
Vivia shrugged. “Well, two of you are villains, and villains fall in with villains.”
“You’re saying ‘villains’ so often it’s starting to sound comical,” Lashes said.
“Vampire-Jujubilee™,” Vivia said in a very serious voice. “There is nothing funny about villains.”
“Besides,” Stick said as she spun and stomped her extremely high-heeled boot without even wavering a millimeter. “The Cat Woman™ has joined with The Bat Man™. She is no longer a villain.”