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Trudi and Jenni were ready for the fray. Trudi had selected a chartreuse Asian-style Dior evening gown while Jenni had resorted to backless Ralph Lauren in pink, with matching high gloves. They were accessorised to perfection, and now they left their room to descend to grand staircase and attend the Christmas Eve dinner.
They opened the door and came across nine almost-naked green girls in jewelled bikinis.
"Oh," frowned Trudi. "It’s that kind of party."
"Hello," smiled Luuma of Caph, one of the slave-girls rescued by the Legion during the Transworlds Challenge. "Who is your master?"
The Wooster Twins exchanged glances. "Holy Eyes Wide Shut," breathed Trudi.
"Now remember, not all Earth girls are fortunate enough to have masters," Deela of Caph pointed out. "We have to select our masters on this planet, not be bought by them."
"Did I miss a memo about green body paint being in this season?" Jenni worried.
"We are not the Lair Legion’s slaves any more," Miiri reminded her fellow Caphans. "We need not service the sexual needs of others unless we elect to do so, and will not be flogged for disobedience."
Trudi and Jenni exchanged worried looks. "Looks like those articles about Nats were true. There is a whole ‘scene’ going on behind the masks," Jenni noted.
"Maybe the Legion just flew the Martian Bikini Team in for a little R&R?" suggested Trudi. "It’s not like everybody has to be green. It wouldn’t go with my outfit."
Hallie hurried past in a cream silk spaghetti-strap gown muttering to herself over the inefficiency of human clothing fasteners.
"She was green too," Jenni pointed out.
"But clothed," Trudi noted. "So maybe..."
Then Ebony of Nubilia strode past in her formal ceremonial priestess gear, which consisted mainly of feathers and swirling gold hoops.
"Where the heck are we going to get metal eggcups at this time of night?" worried Jenni.
"Well, you could always use hubcaps," Trudi suggested bitchily.
Dinner was served in the main dining room, around a long table with Mumphrey at one end and Asil at the other. CrazySugarFreakBoy! took one look at the complicated array of cutlery and grabbed a spork from his bag of tricks.
But his trials weren't over yet. "What the hell," he cried as he read the menu. "I'm supposed to put Spotted Dick in my mouth?"
"The grand dining room at the palace is bigger than this," Bev Campbell noted to spiffy, "so why does this feel so much more grand?"
"I think the Badripoor palace was built to impress," Mark Hopkins considered. "This was built so people who were already impressive could get fed."
Baroness von Zemo took her seat and glared at the woman opposite her. "You are Shazana Pel," she declared..
"Yes," the pigeonwoman answered challengingly.
"I’m the Elizabeth von Zemo."
"Okay."
The Baroness continued to glare at the pigeonwoman. "What is your relationship to De Brown Streak?"
Pel considered this. "I can defeat him in combat," she answered.
At that point CSFB! noticed there was a villainess sitting two places down from him. "Hey!" he objected, waving his spork past Odoona. "You zapped me with an anti-sugar ray!"
Beth von Zemo looked back at him. "Yes," she agreed. "Pass the salt."
"I thought you were Visionary’s neighbour, made homeless by the Hellraisers," Temporary Death puzzled.
"I’m Visionary’s former neighbour, made homeless by Kerry Shepherdson," the Baroness replied. "Read all about it in my forthcoming deposition."
The soup course was cleared away and the fish course appeared.
"Isn’t Nats joining us?" Ham-Boy wondered. "I know he’s blown away by, y’know, Uhuna dying, but..."
"Yo was trying to be getting of Nats to be dining," Yo answered, "but is not to be Nats is wanting to come."
"Where’s thuddy?" Vizh wondered. "It’s not like him to miss free food."
"Perhaps Cressie’s talking to Bill?" Hallie suggested. "She’s sensitive to people in pain."
Kaara the Caphan noted the intimate tilt of the former AI’s head towards Visionary with a practised eye. "Excuse me?" she said to Hallie across the dinner table. "Will you be having sex with Visionary tonight?"
Hallie dropped her spoon into the sauce and splattered Vizh. "What? No!"
"Er, yes," Vizh agreed. "I mean no. No to sex, not yes to sex, that is. No sex. Bad sex."
"Not bad sex," Hallie told him. "We don’t have sex. Of any kind, bad or good."
"What she said. Whatever it was."
Kaara looked across at her fellow ex-slaves. "Ah. Well then, we were wondering which of us you would like to have sex with, master Visionary."
spiffy started choking and Donar had to slap him on the back until his face fell into the fish sauce.
Vizh sat there with his fork half way to his mouth.
"Pick Deela," recommended Nitz is an audible whisper. "Or Philaana."
"I thought you didn’t have relationships with these unfortunate young women, Visionary," Hallie noted dangerously. Keiko surreptitiously slipped the steak knife out of the AI’s place setting.
"Oh, he did not sample us while we were slaves," explained Noona. "But now we are free and can have sex with whomever we like."
Trickshot sat up and began to smooth back his hair.
"It doesn’t quite work like that," Laurie Leyton advised them. "Well, I suppose it does actually, given the way you all look and the fact that guys are guys."
"But Visionary was very happy when Miiri thanked him for his kindnesses," Odoona noted.
"He what?" yelped Kerry.
"They had sex, apparently," the Baroness clarified helpfully, loudly, and distinctly. The general chatter at the far end of the table stopped dead.
"Remember that talk we had on appropriate confidentiality?" Miiri hissed to her sisters.
"But you said he was very happy with it," Noona reminded her. "You said it was quite refreshing to yekla-sto in the b’rah position with someone who was so balka-thriss. Twice."
"Is that good?" Vizh asked worriedly.
"Miiri seems to have enjoyed her unregulated and illicit sex with you," Losiira explained. "So we all thought we should thank you. But would you prefer us to attend you one at a time or all together?"
CSFB! sat back in a happy dream.
"It really isn’t... I don’t think..." Vizh stammered. "There’s no need to do that. Really. I didn’t help you for any... reward."
"Well then, that must have been a pleasant fringe benefit," suggested Hallie.
"If he don’t want to, I could use a little rewardin’" suggested Trickshot.
"I fear we have transgressed your world’s social mores once again," Miiri suggested. "And we are embarrassing our former master. These things are not discussed in such social forums here."
"No, that’s fine," CrazySugarFreakBoy! assured them. "Go right ahead."
"I miss the Hellraisers," whimpered Visionary.
"Maybe I’ll like the Lair Legion," De Brown Streak considered.
The butler announced the meat course.
"Vizh will take his with extra cyanide," suggested Lisa.
Sir Mumphrey flicked his cigarette lighter and relit the candelabras. The actors were still there in their mummer’s finery, but Pelznichol was gone.
Dancer rushed over to the Fool and snatched his mask off. "Con Johnstantine! I knew it was you!"
"Because I play the fool so well, or because I got your knickers off so fast?"
"Johnstantine!" thundered Sir Mumphrey. "I never invited you, you damned gatecrasher!"
"You didn’t," agreed the cheeky Cockney. He nodded to Asil. "The lady of the house did, though. She welcomed in the mummers. That’s me, squire."
"What happened here?" Hatman wondered. "That was pretty intense."
"Oh, it’s an old Christmas story," Hagatha Darkness replied. "Death and rebirth and new life and all that. It’s not the oldest story, but it’s old."
"The winter king was the one who found the black bean in their feasting bowl," Sorceress remembered. "For a short season they had whatever they wanted, and then they were slaughtered so their blood would make the crops grow."
"Nice customs here in Ing-Land," snorted CSFB!
"Aye, twas so," agreed Donar. "Long past."
"You’re not saying they did human sacrifices to you, are you?" Vizh asked, worried.
"Yo is hoping it had better not to have been!" frowned the pure thought being.
"Nay, twas not so. Not if I caughteth them first," agreed the hemigod hastily. "Verily. But yon crone ist right that tis an old story, and the struggle twixt hero and wild man to have the lady of yon land."
"I’d have thought these days a nice dinner and maybe a Cartier necklace would have done the trick," Trudi Wooster suggested. "Just saying."
"Excuse me," called Miiri, approaching Asil and Mumphrey. "If I understand the social occasion correctly, this is now a time for entertainments for the company?"
"We might have a sing-song or somethin’ yes," agreed Mumphrey. "And a few party games, what?"
"May my sister and I perform for you, in thanks for you kindness?"
Mumphrey glanced across at Visionary. "You mean a song, what?"
"Yes, a song. From our homeland."
Mumphrey smiled down at the green girl. "My dear, we would be delighted."
So the Caphans gathered together and sang something slow and old, in nine-part harmony, and their voices echoed off the old high ceilings and filled the hall with regret and memory, and when they finished nobody made a sound until Trisha started clapping loudly. Then everyone joined in.
"That was beautiful," Temporary Death told them. "I remember that, from before, when the Lost Daughters of Ygrail were carried off by the Artificers of Ur-Tiril, the Exiles’ Lament."
"It is often sung at formal occasions on Caph," admitted Sayaana.
"I remember it from the first time," whispered the conceptual being.
Then CrazySugarFreakBoy! performed "Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Does Whatever a Spider Can," followed by Josh Clement Jaggering his way through "I Can’t Get No Satisfaction," and Yo and Meggan with "Diamonds Are a Girls’ Best Friend," (except the word Diamond seemed to keep getting substituted for a more lapine noun).
Dancer stopped the show with "Someday I’ll Fly Away".
Some of the company began drifting off now because it was quite late, but most stayed for pass the parcel (Epitome cheated and x-rayed the contents). Johnstantine won. Then there was Hide and Seek, which involved some giggling in closets and behind curtains and ended with Harlagaz having second degree burns treated and then getting a lecture from his father. And there was Murder in the Dark.
There was some dancing then, to old tunes from Mumphrey’s ’45 collection. Kerry was sent from the room for making realistic gagging noises, but Fashion Accessory switched into something silky from Grace Kelly’s collection and danced with Yo. spiffy took to the floor with Bev. Hatman gallantly overlooked the Wooster twins’ blatant gatecrashing and partnered each of them in a waltz, but the sisters seemed much subdued after an earlier chat with Whitney Darkness. ManMan desperately tried to keep up with Shep. Mumphrey did his best to explain the gavotte to Pel.
"Don’t they make a lovely couple?" Lisette said, slumping down beside Trickshot and handing him another beer bottle. On the dance floor Bry Kats was swirling Beth Shellett round the room.
"Yeah," agreed the irritating archer. "Sorry about that."
"You’re not strutting your funky stuff?"
"I tried strutting earlier with those Barbi Twins," Carl Bastion confided. "Apparently I don’t have the right credit rating." He struggled to sit up. "You wanna dance, Laurie?"
"Too drunk now," admitted Lisette. "But we can sit back here and make snotty comments about the others."
"Deal."
