Chapter 3
Ameran President Gary R. Shrub picked his words very careful during his meeting with the Joint Chiefs. He had to both sound reasonably troubled that a woman with military-grade weapons was destroying one of Amera’s most iconic cities, but he also needed that firm, heroic resolve that was characteristic of the Ameran Presidency. When the video footage of the spider-like machine and its implausibly destructive chain-guns and its pocket-sized missiles was shown to him, he thought the opportunity had arisen to prove himself once again.
“That is troubling,” is what he said. His tone conveyed that cool, emotional yet distant mystique that all leaders should have. It said to the audience, in this case his trusted staff, that, while the situation was dire, he was convinced he would be able to play video games after it. This was not exactly part of his plan, it merely came naturally. President Shrub quite honestly believed he would get to go back to his office and play video games once this crisis was resolved and nobody would mind it.
“Troubling, sir?” Asked the Minister of Defense. He was too stern a character for President Shrub’s liking, always concerned with silly things like budget or the so-called Menieda Convention. Both these things seemed fictitious to President Shrub.
“Yes, quite troubling. However, I believe that the strength of Amera can get us through this situation.”
His father had taught him that one. Patriotic statements were enough to resolve most things. At worst, they would get his staff to answer the troubling questions in his place. At best, they were great quotable for the media. At the very best, they were both. For the President, life was about quotability and getting other people to answer questions for you. And loving Amera.
“Sir, with all due respect, there will be innumerable civillian casualties if we do not stop this woman,” the minister pressed on, “Wherever she acquired this weapon from, it is clear that the local authorities cannot resolve the situation. We must mobilize ground forces immediately to plan a tactical assault–”
“No,” President Shrub said, “That’s too messy.”
This was becoming annoying. Why did they always want to send the army everywhere? The army was for killing people overseas, not for killing people in Amera! Just like the police was for capturing Adhanians, not for all this “upholding the law” nonsense! They had the ABI and the AIA for spying on citizens and doing things inside Amera. He was about to suggest using those two agencies, but then he had a far better idea.
“Where is my daughter right now?” He asked.
The joint chiefs blinked and rubbed their eyes in elegant synchronicity. Their bewilderment clearly befitted their status as joint chiefs. “She’s, um, in the Oval House, sir. She’s safe.” Said the Minister of Ministers. She was President Shrub’s favorite minister. He had forgotten her name too. Maybe it was Sally. He liked that name also.
“Oh, I know she’s safe. Please tell Alt to take her to Rosewater immediately. She’ll know what to do.” President Shrub said. He punctuated the statement with a big, fatherly smile.
* * *
Nellidae found Libel to be quite burdensome, but she was not slowed down by the weight one bit. Libel found this assertion extremely insulting. She took great care of her scrawny figure! She was totally within her ideal weight!
“Wait, who cares about that?” Libel asked, “You learned to fly!”
“Learn? No, I just kind of knew how.”
Libel nodded. There was an odd, sudden strength to Nellidae’s voice. The way she was dressed up either underscored her seriousness and conviction or made her look completely insane. Libel was undecided.
Nellidae’s wings buzzed and fluttered so quickly that they seemed a collection of shifting lines behind her rather than anything solid. Her body did not seem to have changed at all – she was still rather short and unassuming, displayed quite clearly by the strange sleeveless leotard-thing she had decided to wear. But her antennae had grown back thicker and better-armored, and there seemed to be a glint in her eyes. Her flying was smooth and calculated, though her movements were not complex at all.
“Where are we going?” Libel asked.
Smoke blew out suddenly from below as Coulter fired a missile at a nearby shop.
Nellidae circled the disaster area created by Coulter’s machine, which was thankfully contained to a single city block. She flew past the tops of the nearby office buildings, wondering where to drop off Libel. Realizing there was nowhere really safe, she turned around in an arch and flew back down towards Coulter. The machine guns clicked, rose and fired a spray her way, but Nellidae sped past the bullets, sweeping over Coulter and towards a smaller shop around the corner.
“I’m going to drop you off where I can see you, but stay out of this!” Nellidae said.
Libel nodded again. What could she possibly do anymore? Nellidae was in charge now, strange as it seemed to her.
* * *
Coulter was at a crossroads.
She could quite easily continue to destroy every city in Amera, beginning with this city block and working her way up. She certainly had the drive required for this. Her college professors had told her that she was very ambitious, just before she froze them for use in cyborg experiments which she forgot to conduct after a while. She was busy with her Tician Certificate work and they just did not have priority.
But the allure of getting her revenge on the little glasses girl she was sure had been the one to somehow knock her off her building and injure her forehead was difficult to resist. A good compromise would have been to continue generally destroying this area – after all, she had a practically infinite supply of exploding needles and bolter bullets stored in this machine, and could always pop new ones from the gumball machine if she needed them.
Coulter nodded to herself, agreeing with that general course of action.
Then that thing had flown overhead.
In a panic, thinking it might have been some kind of aircraft, Coulter raised the guns and fired a daunting spray of bullets its way, the bursts crossing paths just where she expected it to move. But it had gone much too fast, and blazed past between both streams. Baffled, Coulter turned the C/S Gun Nightmare’s cockpit around on its axis, but the thing had flown past too quickly. She had video of it playing on one of the half-broken screens, but the computer could not decipher anything. It was too damaged. Coulter, by eye, realized it was too small to be an aircraft.
The machine clumsily turned around, lifting and setting down one leg after another in a curious dance. The main gun, the tank-like cannon thus far unused, clicked and thudded. Its shifting innards primed it for combat.
“Alright then, I will begin clearing the block until I find the glasses girl. Starting with that pet shop over there–!”
Coulter’s excitement was interrupted by something appearing right in front of her. The HUD displayed a strange girl hovering just above the ground. She had an odd cape that was divided into two and looked like hard skin. Wings, too, buzzing frantically behind her. A pair of goggles, a backless black plastic halter leotard thing without sleeves that seemed at home on a magician’s assistant girl, or maybe at some kind of costume play convention. The antennae were the most bizarre feature, and Coulter could have sworn the oh-so-slightly bronze skin and flat, long black hair with that dumb hair band were familiar to her.
Then the creature pointed at the machine and said:
“Coulter, you’re terrifyingly stupid for a genius!”
The voice clinched it. Eyes widened, jaw unhinging, Coulter gaped with the realization that she staring at that…that Ladybird.
“Ladybird?” Coulter whispered, the machine voicing her question aloud.
“YOU STILL DON’T KNOW MY FRICKIN’ NAME?” The girl replied, stomping on the ground in a childish display of anger.
“Wasn’t it Nellysomething? Ladybird is much better anyway, especially since you’re running around as some kind of dime store superhero.” Coulter joked. “Anyway, hop inside. You can ride shotgun!”
Ladybird grit her teeth and clenched her fists. “I’m not getting in that death-trap you idiot! I’m here to stop you!”
Coulter frowned, scratching her head. “Stop me? If I recall, I am still holding the gun here.”
The buzzing allayed and Ladybird stepped foot on the ground once more. She stretched her hand, wiggled her fingers as if preparing to demonstrate something. She then turned her fist on the concrete, punching a hole straight into the floor. Cracks ran across the street. The ground rumbled quite lightly, though Coulter felt none of it herself. Her stability sensor went off.
Raising her fist again, Ladybird turned it to Coulter’s machine. “Same thing happens to you if you don’t stop this, you maniac!”
Coulter golf clapped. “Amazing, you can punch inferior gravel streets.”
“I have super powers and stuff! Can’t you see?” Ladybird protested.
“Well, that’s plain and visible. You got louder and more obnoxious. Superpower indeed.” Coulter replied.
Ladybird showed her teeth again and this time, as if for variety, stomped the ground with only one foot instead of two. Cracks began to show on the surface, becoming more pronounced with each stomp. Coulter was becoming quite bored of this immature outburst when her computer came back to life suddenly. The HUD began to zoom in on Ladybird. The screen, in spite of the flower-shape of cracks across its surface, began to display a different light spectrum for Coulter to see, in which Ladybird was almost entirely green and purple.
Coulter went mouth-agape anew – but this time the expression quickly turned into a smile.
“Of course,” Coulter said to herself, “The verdite, the bug, it all makes sense. My time machine made her a mutant – verdite has metastasized inside of her!”
“I can hear you!” Ladybird shouted, throwing a rock which bounced harmlessly off the machine’s leg, “Turn off your loudspeaker if you’re going to have important ruminations about me you failure as a human being!”
The machine’s legs shifted with mechanical cracking sounds, raising the monstrosity higher from the ground. The chainguns, missile launchers and main gun all pointed downward, alone dwarfing the insect girl in size. For a moment, only a low chuckling issued from the hidden loudspeakers, accented by a strange clicking from the various deadly instruments aimed Ladybird’s way.
Ladybird in response, gulped and tugged on the tight synthetic rubber neck of her clothes.
“I have a dream,” Coulter said.
“Oh boy,” Ladybird replied, “I do wonder what that is. Let me guess, you want to take over the world?”
Coulter laughed. “OF COURSE!”
In an instant, a hailstorm of bullets, missiles and previously-unseen laser fire rained upon Ladybird’s spot.
Concrete and tar chunks flew every which way as the onslaught tore apart the epidermis of the city – but Ladybird seemed to be nowhere in sight. The guns clicked, casting off large cylindrical cartridges, missile shells and oddly enough weird toner-cartridges. Coulter’s instruments were hard at work, but crippled, they could not identify Ladybird.
Not until she was right on top of them.
Ladybird flew down on Coulter as the guns reloaded, raising her hands over her head and swinging down for added force, crashing both fists at once into the main turret. The Machine shook and Ladybird was pushed back. One of the machine’s legs tripped and the whole contraption shifted back a yard while Ladybird flew the other way. She had bounced off the armor, just like the rock she had thrown before. The HUD inside the machine captured her expression of helplessness perfectly.
“Nice try,” Coulter said, as the machine recomposed itself and raised itself anew, “But I don’t use any cheap metal for my inventions. Ladybird, I would like to offer you a chance to surrender yourself for the good of mankind.”
Circling around cautiously, Ladybird did not stop for a second even as Coulter spoke. “Are you kidding me? For the good of mankind?”
“You don’t understand. Your body, right now, is a source of infinite verdite-based fuel! You are the only biological organism in the universe with a 32% verdite content in your bloodstream. I could bleed you out right now and have enough fuel to power even this fuel-guzzling contraption for a few months.”
Clearly disgusted by the suggestion, Ladybird began to fly even higher. “Go to hell! I’m not letting you experiment on me!”
“What experiment? This has already been confirmed. After I capture you, I’ll have an infinite supply of fuel! Even a verdite stone can run out of power if not given time to rest between heavy usage. But your blood…or I guess, hemolymph, makes you a little buggy battery. You will of course suffer nigh-eternally until you inevitably die of abuse, but until then, who knows how vast the quantities of fuel we can harvest from you would be?”
“That sentence structure was incredibly convoluted.” Ladybird replied, and stuck out her tongue, before zipping down towards Coulter anew, plummeting towards her like a bullet.
The machine’s legs shifted and its innards clicked and slid in preparation. “So be it!”
* * *
Smashing into the machine the last time had really knocked Ladybird out of her senses. She could scarcely concentrate on what the was doing, the world seemed a vague blur, but she continued to insult Coulter throughout their conversation. If she could get Coulter angry enough to punch her own control consoles, she might win by TKO. Or something like that.
Intending to smash into the machine from afar, she picked up speed, flipped and then turned, diving towards Coulter. The time spent flying away helped her regain clarity. If she could dive down with enough force, tough metal or no, a punch would cause some damage.
But the machine would not just allow her to strike that easily, and Ladybird slowed to a stop and strafed, a stream of bullets from the blazing guns flying by her left hip. She was thankful for her ability to hover – she flew more like a dragonfly than a ladybird, it appeared, and she could bob and weave easily in the sky.
With the machine’s many barrels pointed her way, she abandoned the plan.
Ladybird flew away from the Gun Nightmare, it’s spider-like form shifting subtly in its place as its guns followed her around. A sudden stream of bullets flew out of the barrels and was easily dodged. Ladybird zipped from side to side, taking advantage of the machine’s sluggishness. It was designed to combat other sluggish machines, not a flying creature with a smaller body and greater range of motions.
She could see how awkward the guns were as they shot lines of silver, nail-like ammunition her way. The lines were like trails of burning light in the sky, trails she need only move subtly to evade. She circled the sky, and the guns traced endless misplaced perpendiculars to her.
“Stay in one place so I can kill you!” Coulter shouted. The clicking and bursting of the guns was so intense her voice had been dulled of its enraged edge.
Then the clicking stopped. The main cannon pointed almost straight up.
Ladybird stare down and saw the barrel fill with an eerie glow.
She began to swerve immediately. An explosion of light accompanied the activation of the laser cannon, the heat of which Ladybird could feel. As though pushed aside in the air, she dodged it by a mere yard, the beam as wide as a human head it seemed.
It was an endless line of endless heat that went on forever in the sky and like a sword it swung every which way. Ladybird gasped, dodging the first swing. A second nearly got her leg. She ducked under a third, feeling a sudden flare of pain as the tip of her antennae was cruelly burnt just by a glancing touch of the laser.
The cannon was turning on its own axis! Ladybird had seen the machine’s turret move, but had no idea the cannon could too!
Stunned, Ladybird flipped and struggled as though caught within a net, dodging about a very confined space as the cannon circled and swung, the beam making chopping and swinging motions that seemed unnatural to it. Ladybird felt the heat of the beam, close enough that it was like standing in front of a furnace. If she got caught by that she’d be dust in the breeze, she thought, and kept flipping about in an ungainly panic.
“Stay in one place!” Coulter kept shouting.
Ladybird heard a clunking sound as two ports on the machine opened. Missiles! She thought, but then the laser swung past her right side, reminding her of the immediate danger. She danced alongside it, unable to do anything but constantly correct her own movements in this very small circle. She was trapped!
* * *
Libel beheld the carnage from a nearby rooftop, unable to see Nellidae too clearly. If she could jump to the next building, she could be close enough for a better view. Terrible idea, that. The next building was just far enough that her unathletic self could never clear it. She was the smart chick, not some crazy action girl! When the laser beam blasted toward the sky, Libel jumped and dove for cover behind a metal box, part of some ventilation system. She felt useless, which was ridiculous, what could she do in a battle of crazy superhumans anyway? She was an extra in an action movie! She was “girl #47″ in the credits!
A feeling, almost like an itch, assaulted Libel’s senses. She could not stand by any longer and hide, but she could not figure out exactly what to do either. Something told her she had to move, to get closer to the scene playing out afar. Swallowing in an attempt to bring down the lump in her throat, Libel scampered towards the side of the building and looked down at the alley between them. There were trash cans there and bags that might break her fall – but they would certainly also break her bones.
She heard a clunking sound, a sliding of metal doors issuing from the machine. Perplexingly loud, it was this sound that finally made her move. She ran back to the other end of the building, turned. She took in a breath and ran back the other way, feeling the wind beat against her. Not gonna make it, she told herself, as she leaped off to the next building. She closed her eyes and it seemed an eternity was passing by around her, suspended in mid-air. Her foot caught in something, she fell. She hit the floor on her side, scraping her thigh and arm on the rough and uneven concrete. But she made it!
Gasping for breath, heart racing, she sprang up to her feet and to the edge of the new building. She could see Nellidae in the sky, hovering from side to side in a vague, closed circle, the laser from Coulter’s machine continuously striking off the mark. But was it Libel’s bad eyesight, or was it inching closer?
All around here there was nothing she could use. She thought of pushing something on top of the machine or throwing something at it, but would that really distract it? Would the woman inside even hear it?
Like a flare going off, she heard a wizzing sound of fire and smoke. Horrified, she looked up to see Ladybird and two missiles headed her way. She screamed something, something loud and unintelligible, but it did nothing to halt the coming explosion. A curtain of smoke and fire seemed to cover the sky. Libel’s knees gave in and she fell to the ground, feeling defeated in a battle she did not even participate in. In an attempt to ally coming grief, she was about to tell herself she barely knew Nellidae–
And indeed, she apparently did barely know her, for Ladybird was still well alive.
* * *
Ladybird flipped in mid-air, evading the laser one last time before hovering in place, waiting. She covered her face with her arms.
The missiles smashed right into her. Intense pain followed, an explosion of heat that sent her careening through an ocean of complete agony. Yet, she did not feel her skin ooze, or the plastic of her makeshift costume melt and meld against her fleshless bones. Rather it almost felt like a concussion instead. All of her body felt white-hot, to the point it was becoming cold.
She fell out of the inferno, opening one feeble eye. She was dropping towards the side of the machine. Now she had a chance!
Mustering up strength, Ladybird broke off like a ricocheting missile against an invisible wall, stopping in mid-air and instantly changing direction. She cleared the gap between herself and machine almost in an instant, flipped over. She came out of the flip with her leg raised and drop-kicked the cannon right where it connected to the turret.
An unsatisfying hollow sound issued. Ladybird fell helplessly aside, her foot hurting, smoke wisping from all around her body. Her wings ceased buzzing. She landed harshly on an uprooted chunk of concrete, the force causing her back to arch before dropping again against the flat ground, limbs outstretched, hemolymph and drool dripping from her mouth and nose.
Coulter wasted no time before starting to laugh at her misfortune. “Oh Ladybird! Such heroic struggle to do absolutely nothing to my Gun Nightmare! Oh ho ho! My cannon is just as–”
A loud, screeching noise cut her off.
Alarms and sirens blared inside the cockpit, the half-functioning instruments and video screens displaying warnings.
“What? But she did absolutely no–”
Camera footage revealed to her the horrible truth.
The cannon was dinged.
The mechanisms inside began to fail one after another, and the laser, for one small moment, brushed with the interior.
Coulter’s jaw dropped, mouth went wide. She knew what came next.
Metal rent, sizzled – the cannon twisted and warped slightly, which only caused more breakages. Trails of hot light began to escape the cannon at various locations, flying every which way, slicing up pieces of the machine’s legs, some of the side guns and cutting into nearby buildings, flying off into the sky. The cannon quickly became a cylinder about the shape of a large pile of beaten clay, firing rays of hot light at random, dangerous angles.
Inside the machine, Coulter quickly smashed the controls for the laser with her bare fist.
The beams of light subsided. One of the machine’s legs slid right out, causing its turret and base to come crashing against the ground. The other legs suffered cosmetic damage, one of the side guns was a molten mess, and the surroundings were honeycombed with 10 inch holes.
“The laser depended on the cannon’s shape?” Libel whispered to herself, hiding behind the low parapet of the building. She shook her head. “Who cares? I need to help Nellidae!”
She looked down. Gulping, knowledge of her only choice at this point, Libel stood on the edge of the parapet.
“Nel– Ladybird, I’m coming to save you!”
Had to be mindful of the secret identity business. Plus Ladybird was catchy.
Libel closed her eyes, pinched her nose, held her breath and jumped. She landed roughly on the Gun Nightmare, slid off, smashed the back of her head on one of the legs, which was bent double, bumped her back on one of the guns and crashed on top of something warm, soft, and copper-smelling. She thought she tasted her own blood her mouth too.
“I thought you were supposed to be smart.” Ladybird struggled to say, almost choking on her own hemolymph.
* * *
Neither of them saw the machine’s exterior lights continuing to blink.
Ladybird pushed Libel off of her, sliding to one side of the concrete slab they had both come to lay upon. Libel turned over to face her and wrapped her arms around her, holding her tight enough to cause her wounds to flare with new pain. Their combined exclamations of joy and companionship filled the void left by Coulter’s screeching weapons and movements.
“I’m so glad you’re okay! I don’t know what I would have done if, if–”
“–GET OFF ME, OH THE PAIN, I FEEL MY SPINE BREAKING, GAH.”
Apologizing profusely, Libel loosened her grip on Ladybird. She took her first perplexed examination of the costume, now uninterrupted by possible death, and felt it was quite spiffy for such an impromptu selection. However, Libel was sure she could have sewn Nellidae a better one, and would when they got the chance.
The machine behind them rattled awake.
“You think Annamaria Coulter would make a machine that is stopped by something as simple as a lost leg?” blared the machine’s audio system, Coulter’s voice now a crackling, incoherent mess that was barely audible except to those who knew her intimately. All Libel could understand was something about ravines that were dropped unto beer kegs.
The machine’s base separated and dropped towards the ground, raising the turret a few yards overhead. A ring, to which the legs were attached, was visible for the first time, situated between the base and turret. The ring spun quickly on its axis, repositioning the legs – it switched them to make up for the lost leg from before. The legs struck ground anew, shaking Ladybird and Libel off their stone slab and throwing them on the ground. When the machine’s transformation was complete it resembled a large tripod, mounted on tall legs attached to the ring and base, the turret comfortably at the top.
Ladybird struggled to stand, raising her arms out to the sides to shield Libel.
“Oh that’s rich,” Coulter said. On the sides of the machine, Ladybird spotted the chain guns and missile launcher, covered in dings and undulations, barely hanging on the sides. The missile box’s shutter doors were stuck half-open on one side and melted shut on the other.
“Rich indeed,” Ladybird replied, smirking impishly, “We’ll see who the fastest gun in the west is. Coulter, can you even see the sides of your tank?”
Coulter laughed her trademark, “Oh ho ho!” laugh. “Dear, I have status monitors for that, why would I need to see–”
Checking her status monitors, Coulter’s laughter waned as she discovered that they were perpetually frozen in “perfectly okay status” mode.
“Oh.” Coulter said. “Well, that changes everything.”
The machine immediately raised its leg for a vicious jab and Ladybird leaped up to meet it. She punched the tip of the leg to no avail, her fist merely sliding off the polished surface. The steel foot slammed into Ladybird’s chest and drove her back-first into the ground. The machine forewent its own balance and tipped forward, forcing more and more pressure unto Ladybird, crushing her further into the ground. Ladybird felt awash in an ocean of pain, grasping for a handhold on the machine’s sleek spider-like foot. She had to get it off before her ribcage collapsed.
She found two round bolt caps coming out of the sides and held unto them for dear life. The machine shook and lost its balance entirely as Ladybird shoved the foot a yard into the air and off her body. Tapping on the last of her strength, Ladybird flew like a bolt of lightning, and she swept out from under the machine’s leg the instant it crashed back to the ground. Seizing the one final chance she would get, Ladybird hopped up onto the peak segment of the leg and dove forward atop the base, grabbing the orb-like connection between the two. The machine fumbled, waddling this way and that to remain standing while Ladybird manhandled it.
Ladybird grit her teeth and closed her eyes. Her sinews burnt, her lungs held without air and her muscles tightened painfully. Even her now extraordinary strength was waning, but she had one more herculean labor to perform.
A sound like a train crashing ripped from the machine as Ladybird tore off the leg entirely, lifted it overhead and quickly swung it down in a chop, slamming the tripod like a baseball across the street. The 500 amero store folded under its weight, the machine crashing through the entrance in a cloud of dust and steel, leveling the whole building. Thrown back by her own blow, Ladybird crash-landed on the same crater she had been squashed into moments earlier.
* * *
Libel’s world was moving too fast for her to react to, one second she had been pushed out of the way by Nellidae, the next there was concrete and glass flying everywhere, a machine had flown (no, not flown, it had been flung) out of her sight, and her legs had given out. Kneeling feebly, she cried out.
“LADYBIRD–”
Nellidae raised her hand from out of the hole, as if to tell Libel she was alive, if unwell, and to please be quiet and stifle her drama. All this was conveyed with a wave of her hand, like a greeting.
Libel, not knowing what to make of this gesture, merely cried. She then leaped into the hole, took Nellidae in her arms and cried some more. A stench of copper seemed to rise from every one of Ladybird’s pores, and she felt so incredibly light when Libel held her. This only made her cry even more. She pushed herself against Ladybird’s chest, and feeling little cushioning there, cried even harder.
“HEY!” Nellidae shouted, “ARE YOU MAKING FUN OF MY FIGURE?”
Silence. The mood had been broken.
Rattled, Libel removed herself quite slightly from Nellidae, wiping tears and cement dust from her own face.
“Stupid! What are you even doing?” Libel shouted.
Nellidae thought about it and replied, “I’m being really pissed off at Coulter.”
At that moment, Coulter blasted off.
The 500 Amero Store rumbled, causing Libel and Nellidae to stare feebly at it, expecting the worse. The legs of Coulter’s machines kicked up, dust flew everywhere, and within the cloud, they saw an orb flying into the sky, remnants of the turret and base shedding like the skin off a bug from its sleek surface. Both girls sighed and collapsed into the crater for a moment, catching their breaths, which were now tainted by copper. They let the adrenaline work itself out of their bodies. They were safe for now, safe to breathe in the bad air.
* * *
“Ah, I feel so naughty!”
Amanda Gilead contemplated skinny-dipping in her luxurious heart-shaped pool. The tall hedges around the pool served as a natural defense, and it was quite late at night anyway, but the thought of it was still so deliciously bad. What if somebody saw her, a beloved retired television personality, her curvy figure and large bust exposed to the world, her shoulder-length pink hair lusciously wetted, the makeup on her gorgeous face running from having spontaneously leaped naked into her own pool.
It was so random, so terrible it made her feel giddy. She felt naughty just thinking about it. She got to the pearl tile steps which led poolside, a copy of Papparazi Primetime in her hand, with the headline “Rozalin Shrub’s Secret Life: Teenage Succubus!” on the front page. She pulled up her turtleneck sweater, and pulled her skirt down ever so slightly, revealing some of her decadent choice in lingerie.
“Oh no, I can’t do this.” She moaned, blushing fiercely. “This is so bad.”
It was bad. Skinny-dipping in the pool of her own mansion, driven forth by the thought of being exposed to the world? So perverted. Most celebrities would have joined a cult instead if they wanted attention, maybe even joined a sham religion like that John Fruzze guy. She cast wide-eyed glances around. It was dark, and her 100% Salsawood torches and real imported tiki idols stolen from downtrodden South Ameran tribes were the only sources of illumination around the pool. What if papparazi were watching? She knew at least one guy who took pictures of her when she went to Hippie Mart the other day.
A hidden animal urge overwhelmed her, and she cast off her turtleneck altogether. She ripped the clip from the back of her head, letting all of her hair loose. She even swung her hair about in slow motion, like porn stars did.
“I’m going to skinny dip in my underwear. I can do that much!”
Amanda took three leaping, confident steps towards her own pool before a massive tidal wave threw her unto her back and slid her all the way into her fully-featured 1 million amero kitchen. She lay wet, half-naked and dazed on the floor for several minutes, before realizing the horrible truth.
There was an alien invasion in her back yard.
Tremulously peeking out of the glass doors at the back of her kitchen, Amada saw the huge steel pod floating on her pool. Floating, in spite of its prodigious size. She was thankful she had bought the Apollo-sized pool, or else she’d have lost all the water from that impact. Perhaps even the whole pool too.
She realized her husband had taken all the guns in the divorce settlement. Perhaps his dream of becoming a penniless huntsman in the Ameran woodlands had been the correct choice, as opposed to living in a multi-billion dollar estate completely defenseless against alien invasions.
“Umm,”
She stepped outside, raising her hands.
“I come in a two-piece!” She said, her wet skirt clinging to her hips, thighs. What she had meant to say was entirely different, but now she could never take it back. The aliens had been greeted by a vague description of her lingerie.
The orb in the pool responded by opening a sliding door.
No aliens were to be found, but rather, a woman fell out of the machine, feebly flopping her way through the water and out unto the steps. Amanda hurried to her side, dropping her wet skirt behind her in the process. She knelt beside the woman, taking her by the arms and dragging her out unto the marble flooring. She brushed the woman’s wet red hair out of her face. Was she Adhanian? No, bad Amanda, that was politically incorrect! Not all brown-skinned people were Adhanian. She could be Sealandian or even just a chick with a tan. The lab coat and turtleneck were eerily casual for an alien invader too.
She found herself entranced by this woman’s alien charms. It was like one of those strange films–
Click. Amanda moved her eyes alone to stare at the gun barrel suddenly pointing at her forehead.
“I’m commandeering your estate and resources towards my mission, you primeval rich slut–”
The woman’s arm dropped, her eyes went blank and she tipped aside. She had passed out from exhaustion in quite a sudden manner. Her mouth hung open, drooling.
Amanda could not believe it. She stared, enraptured not only by the woman’s beauty but by her first reaction to being saved from drowning in a pool. Amanda was really, honestly, dealing with a bonafide criminal sociopath.
“I should get her inside,” Amanda said to herself, “I’ll give her cocoa and clean her gun, and maybe she’ll have her evil way with me! Oh, this is so bad!” Cheering, she struggled to pick Anamaria Coulter up off the ground. She had not exerted herself this much, nor for so much fun, since the time she met her husband and carried his drunken self out of a bar as he shot the ‘tender in the face twice.
* * *
On a high, windswept balcony of Amera’s Oval House, a young woman looked out at the side garden with a sigh. Awaiting the moment where she would be taken to Rosewater, a moment she knew would come quite soon, Rozalin Shrub sat in her balcony, brushing her sunflower-yellow hair and watching the secret service agents hunting for moles. They used tazers, which seemed far less effective than mallets, to her.
She wished she could be down there hunting moles too, or doing anything but being closely guarded.
She raised her hand in front of her eyes. Snapping her fingers, she caused a small spark to ignite. It burnt her hand lightly, but the pain was nowhere to be found. Doing that never really hurt her.
Three rapid knocks on the door alerted her, and she stood, moving towards her closet to pick out her usual black dress, sleevess, low at the back and with the pleated dress, that she always wore on official business. The door opened and a rather small, red-faced, egg-shaped bald man entered, waving his arms around. “Madame Shrub, I have great news!”
Rozalin turned around and feigned joy. “Is my daddy being impeached?” She asked, sarcasm heavy in her voice and face.
The egg-shaped man frowned. “I’m glad to see you’re still such a highly optimistic and energetic girl.”
Rozalin frowned back and bent forward to face the little man. “What do you want?”
“The situation in Rosewater has somehow been resolved! Sure there were some strange sightings, but we can chalk those up to aliens or something like we always do. No need for you to get involved.”
“Excuse me, what?” Rozalin asked, for once perplexed and concerned with the strange happenings in that forsaken city. “Something in Rosewater resolved itself? Was it the Magi?”
“No, no sign of magical or alien involvement. Maybe this Coulter woman had mechanical problems?”
Rozalin wasn’t buying it. She hurried to the closet to pick out her dress, along with a pair of jeans, a large baseball cap and shirt, and a hoodie. “Prepare my limo Alt, I’m going anyway.”
Alt made another egg-shaped frown. “Excuse me, I think you’ve confused your role with your father’s, you don’t order me–”
Rozalin darted around, smiling demonically, a glow in her red eyes. Wisps of fire and smoke trailed from behind her, wrapping the surroundings in an illusion of heat and flame that made Alt feel as though in hell. The young woman in the night gown threw her arms out to the sides, palms up. Large cackling fireballs danced on her shoulders and hopped up and down on her hands. Snakes of hell’s own fire traced her arms and legs.
“You were saying, Alt?” She said, her grin not once fading.
Alt stood up stiffly, straight like an egg-shaped pole, arms and legs shaking. “LIMO. I AM GETTING YOUR LIMO, MADAME SHRUB. BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT I DO. I GET LIMOS, FOR YOU.” He replied.
At once the fires vanished, leaving nothing burnt in their wake, and Rozalin smiled sweetly. “Yay~! Road trip.”
/Chapter End
* * *
Libel U. Lidae’s Fun Bug Facts
“Hi there! Thanks for joining us in another installment of Libel’s Fun Bug Facts! With my darling co-host, Ladybird!”
“…What’s with the lab coat?”
“Oh this? Well, I should look professional since I’m going to be saying facts and all.”
“You’re just going to quote Wikipedia.”
“…Well excuse me, miss picky. At least I’m not wearing a leotard made from scuba spandex, and a pair of goggles.”
“Blah, just give them the bug fact.”
“Right! Today we’re going to give a fact about none other than the Skimmer and Percher Dragonflies, my namesake! Did you know that Dragonflies spend almost all of their lives underwater? They are born as naiads that are fierce underwater insect predators, with extendable jaws that can snatch prey and shove it right into their mouths. They breathe through gills located in their rectum and propel themselves through their–”
“It can’t be, oh no, you’re not saying–”
“Yep! Dragonfly naiad have water jet anuses!”
“…You sound so proud of yourself, but you’re named after these grotesque beasts. You are a true bug nerd.”
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