by M. D. Cooper
“You should just be happy that you didn’t put these shoes on, Colonel” Cindy grumbled.
“They wouldn’t have fit,” Girl said. “They only fit the one they’re truly meant for.”
“Seriously?” Cindy asked. “How in the stars am I the one truly meant to be CinderellaNot-TM?
“Porty?” Girl asked. “Do you think that you can come out and explain all this?”
“Porty?” Colonel Ramsey asked. “Who the hell is that?”
A moment later, a bearded head poked out of the Rec Room’s closet.
A dwarf?
The dwarf took a tentative step into the room and gave a small wave. “Uh…hi. I’m Porty.”
For some reason, Cindy couldn’t seem to find her typical rage. Instead, all she could think about was how darn cute the little man was with his long beard, bright red shirt, and shoes with little bells on the toes.
“Porty, what do you know about how the Fairly Goodmother’s tech works?” Girl asked.
“Tech?” Kitty asked. “No no! They have magic. How else could I be The CatWoman™?”
Porty’s lips twisted in an apologetic smile. “I don’t know how it works, but I do know for certain that it is tech, not magic. The specifics are above my pay grade, but I’ve seen enough over the years to know it’s nothing mystical…just some sort of crazy advanced nanotech.”
“Wait, wait,” Ramsey said, holding up his hand. “Why are you on the ship? I thought that all the dwarves got dumped before we took off.”
“Colonel!” Girl’s tone carried both shock and scorn. “I can’t just ‘dump’ Porty! He saved me. We were going to turn over the Glass Shoes to the Fairly Goodmothers, until you guys got evicted and BAMF—er, Cindy—got us chased off by that giant monkey.”
“Ape,” Vampy corrected. “Kong’s an ape.”
“Sorry,” Girl replied.
“So then how permanent is this?” Cindy asked, surprised at how accustomed she’d already become to thinking of herself as ‘Cindy’. Whatever tech these Fairly Goodmothers used, it was insidious. Still, other than her growing acceptance of her new situation and her inability to swear, she still felt like herself.
Porty stroked his beard and pulled himself up on the sofa. “Well, your vampire—which is weird because I’ve never known the Fairly Goodmothers to turn anyone into a villain before—”
“Jujubilee™ isn’t a villain,” Vampy interrupted. “A vampire suicide bomber killed himself, and the vampire blood got all over her. It’s not her fault.”
Porty shrugged. “I’m not judging. Look at me; I needed a job, showed up at Neverevereverland™ Station, and now I’m a dwarf. Do you know how hard it is to work on starships with these stubby little fingers?”
The dwarf wiggled his fingers in the air, prompting Cindy to look down at her own fingers, which were much more slender than they previously had been.
“So you weren’t always a dwarf?” Kitty asked.
“Really?” Porty snorted. “Do you think the flying monkeys were always monkeys? It’s the Fairly Goodmother’s tech—which really isn’t their tech, it’s the Council’s.”
“The Council of Supernatural Beings™?” Vampy asked. “Damn, that TM is getting really annoying.”
“Why do you think I just say ‘the Council’?” Porty asked.
“Huh,” Girl interrupted. “Cindy, I think I do need a name ending in ‘y’. We have Ramsey, Vampy, Kitty, Cindy, and Porty.”
“Porty’s not crew,” Cindy insisted, feeling a bit of her comforting grumpiness return.
“OK, sure, not yet,” Girl replied. “But still, I need a new name. I think I’m going to go with…’Tammy’.”
“Oh, no,” Vampy said as she turned and laid on the sofa, placing her boots on Porty’s lap and throwing an arm across her eyes. “I knew a Tammy once. She was a real bitch. No to Tammy.”
“Jujubilee!” Girl shouted. “Take your boots off the sofa—and off Porty! He and I spent a lot of time cleaning that.”
“I would,” Vampy said. “But I can’t take my boots off; they’re a part of this new…whatever it is that I’m trapped inside of.”
Suddenly Vampy’s boots disappeared, flowing into her legs and revealing her feet.
“What? Where the heck are my toes?” Vampy asked lifting a foot into the air, nearly kicking Porty in the head.
Porty chuckled and pushed Vampy’s leg back down. “I guess the costume doesn’t think you need toes.”
“OK, Porty,” Vampy said as she peered at the dwarf. “You used a word I like: costume. That implies that it can come off. But you used another word I don’t like: think. That implies that this thing can think…which I think is a bad thing.”
“Poor choice of words,” Porty said. “There’s some amount of NSAI in an outfit like yours, but it’s not a costume. No more than my diminutive height is. You’re what you are now. Through and through.”
“So this blood craving is for keeps?” Vampy asked. “I can smell everyone’s blood…it’s like a spicy aroma in the air.”
“What kind of spice?” Ramsey asked.
“Like cinnamon…mixed with iron,” Vampy replied.
“And that smells good?” Kitty asked. “I’d think it was kinda gross.”
“I know!” Vampy wailed. “It really should be, but I’m practically salivating at the thought of drinking one of you, I—”
Vampy clamped her mouth shut as Porty leapt off the sofa and rushed to the far side of the Rec Room.
“I think we need to find you some blood that’s not us,” Ramsey said around his golden carrot.
“There’s a station on our outsystem vector,” Kitty offered, “named…Most Eisley. Place is a last-stop tourist trap, though—they price gouge on everything.”
Cindy shook her head. “Doesn’t matter, the fool’s gotta feed.” She let out a long sigh and smiled. “Oh, thank goodness I can still say that.”
Kitty snorted. “You sound ridiculous, BAMF. We need to get a holoprojector to have little birds floating around your head all the time.”
“Do that, and I’ll see how far down your throat I can stuff your tail,” Cindy growled.
“Easy, Cindy, don’t get your poofy knickers in a twist.” Ramsey chuckled at his joke while Cindy turned her glower to him.
“You’re really not that threatening,” Vampy said as she rose from the sofa and sidled toward Cindy. “Do you think I could just have a little taste? Like a smidge? Just from your wrist.”
Vampy reached out for Cindy’s wrist, and Cindy was startled to see just how long and sharp the vampire’s black nails were.
She pulled her wrist away and took a step back. “No! Lashes, get ahold of yourself. You’re not a vampire, it’s just some sort of tech!”
Porty coughed and raised his hand. “We’ve been over this, Cindy. Vampy is a vampire now. She’ll die without blood.”
“Well she can’t have mine!” Cindy exclaimed.
“C’mon,” Vampy whined. “Just a bit? You smell. So. Good—now that you’re Cindy. Before, you had a bit of an oily odor.”
“Pardon?” Cindy growled—aware that it sounded more cute than threatening. Kitty giggled, and Cindy let out a long sigh. “I’m going to go clean my rifles.”
“Kitty, get us to that station as fast as you can,” Ramsey ordered. “They’ll have medical supplies, and we need to stock up our blood bank. A lot.”
“Oh! We have blood in the medbay! Of course!” Vampy exclaimed and rushed past Cindy.
“This crew just keeps getting weirder and weirder,” Cindy muttered.
A NEW FACE IN THE MIRROR
Cindy didn’t clean her rifles. She stared at them for a long time and thought about cleaning them, but instead activated a holomirror of herself and looked at what she’d become.
The woman who stared back at her was barely recognizable.
Her tattoos were gone, as were most of her muscles. Her waist was con
siderably thinner, and even when her ‘gown’ was transformed into a catsuit, it still felt like a corset was constricting her waist.
Were my eyes always this big?
She reached up and pulled her now-blonde hair from the elaborate coif it was in and let it fall down to her…butt.
Fiddlesticks! I can’t even think the word aaaaa…ahhhhhh…asp! Mother of Pearl, this is annoying!
Cindy spun and punched the wall, glad she could still get angry when she wanted to. Whatever was altering her speech wasn’t completely changing her behavior.
She drew a deep breath and felt her rage dissipate far more quickly than normal.
At least, not altering it too much.
“Yeah,” Cindy replied. “Just trying to come to grips with this.”
“Could be worse…you should see Lashes—er, Vampy. She’s on her third pouch of blood. It’s all over her hands and face; I informed her that I’m locking her in the medbay ‘til she cleans it up.”
Cindy laughed—tittered more like. “Did you really?”
“Of course! It took Porty and I a full day to get this ship cleaned up. I’m not going to let the medbay look like a crime scene. That’s the new rule aboard the Van. You mess it, you clean it.”
“That doesn’t sound quite right,” Cindy replied, looking at her knuckles.
“How’s about ‘I’m not your mom or your maid’?”
“A bit on the nose.”
Girl let out a long sigh. “Well you’re still just as ornery as ever. “
“I think I’m still just as strong, too,” Cindy said, shadowboxing for a moment. “My control still feels just as good. Hard to move with whatever’s squeezing the life out of my gut, though.”
“I tucked some of your free weights under your bed, “ Girl suggested.
“Perfect,” Cindy said and reached under the bed, pulling out a twenty-kilogram weight. She lifted it into the air and almost fell over.
“Shoot, I guess you are a lot weaker,” Girl said.
“Noooo…” Cindy whispered. “It feels like less than five kg. I almost threw it into the overhead.”
“Seriously?” Girl asked aloud.
“Yeah…I think I’m actually stronger!”
Girl gave a soft laugh. “Look at that, maybe being Cindy isn’t all bad.”
Cindy nodded slowly as she idly tossed the weight in her left hand. “I can see some benefits.”
She set the weight back in the rack under her bed and grabbed one of her rifles, an IR-43X. The weapon felt light, and Cindy wondered if she’d be able to fire it one-handed.
She set it on her workbench and leaned over the weapon to field strip it.
“Fudge crackers,” Cindy muttered as her long blonde hair fell in front of her. “This hair is nuts.”
The thought crossed her mind to cut it, and she pulled open a drawer—which was much more well organized than she remembered—and grabbed a pair of scissors.
“You sure you want to do that?” Girl asked. “Most people would kill for long silky blonde hair like you have.”
“I’d kill not to have it in my face while I’m working,” Cindy replied. “Still…I’ll just try to cut the tips.”
She held up her hair and opened the scissors, closing them quickly in a deft snip. The scissors slid around the hair, with the blonde locks sticking out from between the blades.
“Huh,” Cindy said as she tried again, cutting slower, and holding the handles at an angle to push the blades closer together.
The hair still slipped between the blades and Cindy shook her head as she peered at the golden strands. “What the heck is this stuff?”
“You could use the mednano to examine it,” Girl offered. “Well, maybe in a bit. Vampy is still cleaning up in there.”
Cindy nodded as she looked down at where her outfit’s bodice stretched across her breasts. There was a small ruffle along the edge, and she tried the scissors on it as well, with the same result as with her hair.
She tried sawing at the fabric to no avail, and grabbed a knife from the belt slung over the back of her bench, trying to slice into the fabric on her forearm.
“This stuff is nuts,” she said as the knife failed to penetrate the fabric—which stiffened as she tried to push the blade into her arm.
Cindy laid her arm on the workbench and drew the knife back, ignoring Girl’s suggestion that there were a half-dozen better ways to test the outfit’s resiliency.
“Muffle it, Girl,” Cindy said as she slammed the knife down into her forearm.
The blade hit her arm and nearly sprang from her hand as the blade bent.
“Holy stars,” Cindy whispered as she looked at the bent knife. Without a moment’s thought, she grabbed a ballistic pistol of the rack, thumbed the safety, and fired it into her arm.
The shot ricocheted off her arm and into the overhead, shattering a light.
“That was really reckless!” Girl exclaimed.
“I know.” Cindy grinned. “Good to see some things haven’t changed.”
She held up her arm and looked for the point of impact, but couldn’t find it. She was completely unscathed.
“It’s like armor,” she whispered.
“Are you OK?” Vampy said as she burst into the room, her eyes alighting on Cindy, who still held the pistol.
“Yeah, I’m peachy,” Cindy replied.
“You’re not…you know, trying to end it, are you? I know that being CinderellaNot-TM is weird and all, but it’s not the end of the world. There’s a lot worse that could happen.”
“I wasn’t trying to off myself,” Cindy said and patted her arm. “I was seeing what this…whatever it is…can withstand.”
“What do you mean?” Vampy asked.
Cindy didn’t reply. Instead, she turned the gun on Vampy and shot her in the stomach.
“Cindy!” Vampy screamed, clutching her stomach. “You shot me!”
“Did it hurt?” Cindy asked.
“Uh…no, it didn’t actually.”
Vampy pulled her hands away from her stomach to see her gleaming black catsuit unmarred by any injury, with no more blood than what her stained hand had smeared on it.
“See?” Cindy said. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”
“Holy shitbiscuits,” Vampy whispered. “I’m bulletproof!”
“Yeah, so am I,” Cindy replied. “That’s what I was testing; not trying to kill myself.”
Vampy stared at Cindy’s neck in a way that made her feel vaguely uncomfortable.
“What about your skin? Can you still cut it?”
“Dunno,” Cindy said, and grabbed her knife as Vampy licked her fingers. “That’s really gross, Vampy.”
Vampy sighed. “I know.”
Cindy shook her head and lightly dragged her knife along her sternum. It felt sharp, but didn’t break the skin. She pushed harder and a thin line of blood appeared on her flesh.
“I had to put some muscle into it, but it looks like I’m not bulletproof everywhere,” she said.
Vampy made a slurping sound and Cindy looked up to see the woman licking her lips, long fangs protected half way to her chin.
“Milk and cookies, Vampy, those are huge!”
Vampy made an embarrassed squeak and rushed from Cindy’s room just as Ramsey poked his head into her room. “Did I hear gunfire?”
“Just a bit,” Cindy replied. “Turns out our outfits are bulletproof.”
“Seriously?” Ramsey asked with a grin.
“Yeah, not sure how much yet, but I can’t even feel a point blank shot.”
Ramsey chuckled and rubbed his hands together. “This just keeps getting better and better!”
Cindy shook her head. “What’s gotten into you, Colonel? Why aren’t you worried about us? And how am I even the one asking this?”
“I don’t know,” Ramsey said, his brow furrowing. “You’re right, I should wonder about adverse side effects and whether or not you�
��re OK…but for some reason I’m not. If you think about it, they use this tech to modify an entire planet full of people. They’ve been doing this for centuries. It’s tried and true, and we got it for free.”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Cindy replied after a moment’s consideration. “Does that mean that even Kong was a regular person? That’s quite the mod.”
Ramsey shrugged. “Who knows? Could have been an NSAI. But it does make me wonder about Vivia…she was so lifelike. Did they have a way to shrink people down that small?”
“I still think it must be some sort of optical illusion,” Cindy said as she looked at her arm again.
“I watched the bullet hit your arm, mushroom and ricochet off.” Girl interjected. “You all may be compromised by whatever was done to you by the Disknee World’s tech, but I’m not.”
“Really?” Ramsey asked, pulling his golden carrot from his mouth. “Porty gave you a firmware patch. We can all tell you’re acting differently.”
“Hmm…”
“He’s right, Girl.” Cindy nodded. “A lot different. You’ve only made two suggestive statements since we came back.”
“Three,” Girl corrected. “But you weren’t there for one of them.”
“Still, you’ve changed. More than just some patch to your networking code would do.” Ramsey leaned against the doorframe and took a bite of his golden carrot.
“It’s hard to explain,” Girl said. “I’m trying to think of an analogy for you…. Oh, I know! Imagine you were looking at everything on an old 2D screen, and then you saw your first holointerface. It’s like that for me. Before I was in the ship, tucked inside my core. Now I am the ship; it feels like my body. At least, I think it does. I really don’t know what a body feels like. But I think it feels like this.”
Cindy shook her head and looked down at her white-gloved hand. “I still don’t know if I’m OK with this, but I sure didn’t think a little visit to the Disknee World would do this to us.”
“We’re on our vector to Most Eisley Station,” Girl announced. “Sti—Kitty has an external berth. We’re five hours out.”
Cindy yawned, a high-pitched, dainty sound that made her angry just to hear it. For a second or two, at least.