by M. D. Cooper
Vampy shook her head.
As they spoke, a commotion began at the far side of the room. More soldiers had arrived, and some newcomers who looked like technicians were setting up portable shield generators.
Once they came online, a tall man stepped into the chamber with a woman at his side. She was dressed all in red, and sported long, red locks. Her outfit looked as though it had been dipped in blood, and Vampy began to salivate at the sight.
“That makes no sense at all,” Vampy whispered to Kitty. “Has she finally cracked? She’s been a bit weird since the whole CinderellaNot-TM thing.”
Kitty gave Vampy an appraising look. “A bit?”
The president was speaking to a soldier wearing the insignia of a major. They appeared to reach some sort of conclusion, and the planetary leader stepped forward, addressing Vampy and Kitty.
“OK, you’ve made your attempt to sabotage us again, Crossbar scum.” His voice was strident, with no small amount of anger clearly evident. “This time, you’re caught red-handed—not sure how you thought you could pull this off with just two people.”
“Me either,” Kitty groused. “I blame you, Vampy.”
“Me? You were the one all about the ‘thiefing’.”
“I could have done it alone. You got us caught,” Kitty shot back.
Vampy considered their options, and her eyes fell to the Disknee World logo and the strange markings below it.
Vampy wasn’t sure how Cindy could pull it off, either, but they had to try.
Kitty sighed and leant against the CMD cylinder. “We’re screwed, she’s just a poofy bimbo now. There’s no way she can convince—”
Cindy said a second later.
Vampy shrugged and turned to peek over the CMD cylinders. “Back off! If I see a finger near a trigger, I’ll blow us all to stardust!”
The soldiers began to fan out while the major gave the president a significant look, likely conversing over the Link.
“OK,” the president called out. “We’re taking it easy here. You take it easy, too.”
“I’m all about being easy,” Vampy called out, then caught herself. “Dammit, you know what I mean. We’ll come quietly, but first, we want to see our people—see that they’re OK.”
“Who? Colonel Ramsey and Cindy?” the president asked.
“Yeah, them, and Porty the dwarf. He’s the boss, and we need to talk to him before we do anything!” Vampy called back, hoping her statement didn’t sound too ridiculous.
“The dwarf? Seriously?” The president shook his head in disbelief.
“Yeah! Pronto, or we end everything!”
Vampy saw Cindy-now-Gemma stand on her tiptoes and whisper in the president’s ear. With one hand, she unbuttoned her coat and pressed her body against the man, slowly sliding up and down his side.
“Shit…I didn’t think Cindy had that in her,” Vampy whispered.
“I don’t think that Baaa…B…who she used to be, would have, either,” Kitty said.
Vampy gave her a sharp look. “Shit, you can’t say her old name either? And I couldn’t say mine before.”
“I guess not. I wonder if I can say my old name…” Kitty suddenly frowned. “Umm…what was my old name, Vampy?”
“Really? Kitty, stop messing around. Your name is The CatWoman™. What ‘old name’ are you talking about?”
Kitty peered back around the CMD cylinders where Cindy-now-Gemma was still working her particular brand of magic on the president. “I have no idea, Vampy. I mean, I used to be named ‘Selina’, but now I’m just The CatWoman™. But I don’t mind too much if you call me ‘Kitty’—just so long as it’s in private.”
“Works for me,” Vampy replied. “I never liked my old name, though. ‘Vampy’ works for me.”
“Old name?”
“You know, ‘Jujubilee™’.”
“Oh, right.”
As it turned out, ‘a few minutes’ was just over an hour. Vampy was lucky that neither she nor Kitty had to use the san anymore, or they’d probably have had an accident while waiting.
Porty was the first one to arrive, and he was pushed to the front of the group by one of the soldiers. He looked a bit worse for wear—not that it was easy to tell. Dwarves never looked particularly kempt.
“Porty!” Vampy called out. “You OK? They didn’t probe you or anything, did they?”
“What?” Porty asked, glancing nervously at the soldiers holding him. “No! Is that a thing I need to worry about?”
“Probably not,” she replied with a laugh. “Just trying to lighten the mood a bit.”
“Well, you’ve got terrible comedic timing,” the dwarf shot back. “Now, what—wait a second. What are those doing here?”
Vampy gave a little fist pump before replying, “Yeah! We’d hoped you would recognize them. They have Disknee World logos on them. Do you know anything about these? One seems to be broken.”
“Sure. They’re standard Disknee Power Modules—an older model, mind you. I doubt that one’s broken, though; they have a ten-thousand-year service expectancy.”
“What are you talking about?” the president asked.
Just then, two more figures were brought into the chamber. The first was Colonel Ramsey, who was somehow still in possession of his golden carrot—which he was gnawing on implacably, despite his hands being cuffed behind his back.
“Hey, everyone,” he said with a wide grin and a nod to Vampy and Kitty. “You two ladies OK over there?”
“Peachy,” Vampy replied.
The other person was Cindy. Except this Cindy was behaving very not-Cindy-like. Like the colonel, her hands were cuffed behind her back. But instead of standing calmly, she was struggling like there was an entire colony of ants underneath her poofy white dress.
She was mmmphing a lot, but little sound got out due to the rag stuffed in her mouth, with another strip of cloth tied around her head to hold it in.
The president looked back at the commotion and scowled. “Is that gag really necessary?”
At that
moment, Cindy, or rather Gemma-now-Cindy, stomped on a guard’s foot and launched herself at another, trying to bite his arm.
“Yeah, it is,” the stompee said through clenched teeth.
The president turned to Gemma-now-Cindy and grabbed her chin, locking her eyes onto his. “Listen here, you stupid whore. If you don’t calm down, I’m going to have my guards shoot you in the feet and dump you off the side of a mountain. See who you can stomp on and bite then.”
Gemma-now-Cindy’s eyes grew wide—almost a bit lustful, if Vampy was any judge—and she nodded silently.
The president only gave the colonel a cursory glance and a shake of his head before turning to Porty. “Now, what’s this all about? How are our CMD modules connected to that weird theme world?”
“Beats me,” Porty said. “I’ve heard talk that they used to license these things out way back when. There should be something on the side about their warranty information.”
“There’s some writing here, but I can’t make it out,” Vampy called out. “It’s all weird looking.”
“Like stick-figure words?” Porty asked.
“Yeah!”
The dwarf grunted and shook his head. “Yeah, that’s old-school dwarf notation. Let me take a look.”
Porty took a step forward, but one of the soldiers put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the woman asked.
“Oh, just let him take a looky,” Cindy-now-Gemma said. “He’s just a little dwarf. What’s the worst he can do?”
“Uhhh…he could break our one functional module,” the president ground out the words.
“OK, look,” Porty said, spreading his hands wide. “I’ll stay on this side of the modules, and I won’t touch the functional one. I make a move, your tin soldiers here can shoot me.”
“He might be able to fixity it right up,” Cindy-now-Gemma added, dragging a hand along the president’s arm. “Dwarves are very clever.”
The president grunted. “And devious.” He glanced at the major. “You can hit him?”
“Yes, sir,” the major replied. “We can hit the two vampires as well, but there’s worry about a bio-connected switch on their bomb.”
“OK,” the president said, and gave Porty a little push. “Go work your magic.”
Porty shot the president a dark look before straightening his shoulders and striding—as much as his legs allowed—across the room to the power modules. “No magic required. Someone was probably just messing with it.”
“ ‘Messing’?” the president asked.
“Yeah, the red light means someone has tried to crack the case. If they actually did, that would void the warranty and terminate the service agreement. If not, then getting it back online just takes a simple reset code.”
Vampy saw the president’s face take on a deathly pallor before he replied—unconvincingly—“Well, if those Crossbar vamps screwed up their module, that’s on them.”
Porty reached the two cylinders and knelt beside the one with the red light on the top. “Hi, girls. Nice pickle you’ve gotten into here.”
“Yeah, we’re soaking in vinegar,” Vampy replied.
Do you think you can fix it?”
Porty nodded. “I think so. Even if they did void the warranty, I might be able to do a workaround. I’ve had to deal with these things a few times, just never ones this old.”
Vampy eased around the cylinder, watching Porty as he read the dwarven notation. Over by the door, Cindy-now-Gemma began to fidget, while the colonel just grinned around his carrot. The president was tapping his right index finger on his thigh, lips tight, but otherwise motionless. The soldiers were also perfectly still, though their weapons were all trained on Porty.
“Ah, yeah, shit, guys,” Porty called out. “You’ve got a service agreement that goes another five thousand years! Seriously, why didn’t you just send a message to the Disknee World? The details are all spelled out right here. Probably in your manual, as well.”
“Our what?” the president asked.
Porty looked over his shoulder, scowling at the Allarans. “Seriously? Where do you think you got these things? Maybe Santa Claus dropped them down the chimney? That’s not how he operates.”
“Uhhh…no one really knows.”
“Well, now you know,” Porty retorted.
He touched two points near the top of the cylinder, and a panel slid open.
“Damn,” one of the techs standing near the door said. “We had no idea that was there.”
“Not surprised,” Porty mumbled. “Probably can’t tell your ass from your elbow, either.”
“Easy now, Porty, let’s not get the folks with the rifles pointed at your back any more riled up than they have to be,” Vampy cautioned.
Porty only grunted as he reviewed the readouts on the display before shaking his head. “Well, this module was licensed to Allaran, so I’m doubtful that it was mucked up by those Crossbar folks. From what the logs show, it seems like ten years ago, someone was messing around and tried to increase the module’s energy output. I’ll just reset this…and put a lock on that….”
The dwarf stood and dusted his hands off as the panel closed once more. The light atop the cylinder remained red, and he glanced at the president and his soldiers, wearing a confident grin. “Just needs a moment to reinitialize.”
Nothing happened for half a minute, and his smile began to droop.
Vampy sighed. “Okay, here goes nothing.” She closed her hand into a fist—something she had to do carefully these days, given how sharp her claws were—closed her eyes, and gave the cylinder a solid whack.
“And would you look at that,” Porty crowed with delight, the volume of his proclamation nearly scaring Vampy out of her skin.
She cracked an eyelid to see the light atop the cylinder glowing a bright green. “Oh thank stars,” she whispered.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” the president said in awe. “Look at that, we have two CMDs. Now we can really get our global warming underway!”
“Not so fast,” Vampy said, peering over the cylinders and trying to ignore all the guns aimed at them. “One of these belongs to Crossbar. I have a sneaky suspicion you started this whole power-module-stealing thing. Time to give theirs back.”
The president snorted. “Right, yeah, like that’s happening.”
“Figured you might pull something like that,” Porty said with a wide grin. “Lights out.”
The moment he spoke, both cylinders’ indicators flipped from green to red, flashed for a few seconds, then shut off entirely.
“What the—!?” the president shouted. “What did you do?”
Porty chortled as only a dwarf could. “I just bought a bit of insurance. I’ve linked these two modules. Until the Crossbar one is back on its stand in their energy chamber, yours won’t power up. Oh…and don’t get any smart ideas after that, either. If their module leaves their chamber at any time, yours will shut down.”
“What the…” the Allaran president stammered a second time.
Vampy stood, and Kitty rose beside her. “So…I guess you guys should bring a cart or something so we can load this one up.”
“Cindy…” Kitty called out. “Are you going to stay like that? Ever since Vampy saw you all decked out in red, her stomach has been rumbling.”
“I don’t know how to change back!” Cindy-now-Gemma wailed.
The president turned to her, brow lowered. “Gemma, what are you talking about?”
“No,” his not-wife replied, shaking her head. “I’m Cindy-now-Gemma. She’s
Gemma-now-Cindy. I want to be Cindy-not-Gemma, but I’m not sure how to do the not-Gemma part.”
“Gemma…Cindy…whoever you are, you’re making my head hurt.”
“You just have to want it,” Vampy called out. “Really want to be Cindy again.”
Cindy-now-Gemma’s face pinched with concentration, and then suddenly, her red outfit turned white and poofed out into the customary many-layered dress. Her hair turned blonde, and her delicate features returned.
Likewise, Gemma-now-Cindy’s dress disappeared, replaced by Gemma’s skiing outfit and long, red hair. Still gagged, she began to thrash anew.
“Aw, shit,” the president sighed. “I guess that thing you mentioned isn’t going to happen tonight. I was looking forward to finding out what ‘scrubbing my tub’ was all about.”
Cindy stretched out a dainty finger and tapped it in the middle of his forehead. “Now you never will. That’s what you get for being such a very bad boy!”
RECOMPENSE
STELLAR DATE: 04.09.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Port Valerious
REGION: Crossbar, Crossbar System, Alkaid Void
Vampy’s eyes widened in shock as she walked down the ramp with Ramsey to meet Crossbar’s representatives.
Being vampires, she’d expected them to be dark, dour, looming figures and all that—the sort she could blend in with and see if she felt at home.
What greeted her was an entirely different sight.
The colonel snorted.
A woman stepped forward from the group of four individuals at the ramp’s base and pressed her palms together, bowing her head ever so slightly. “Greetings and salutations, esteemed visitors. I am Goiana, the Effulgent One of Crossbar. We are most blessed to have ones such as yourselves gracing us with your presence.”
The other three…sparkly…vampires followed suit, though their bows were deeper.