Space Quest!

[Darth Pacula]

G'day, Chris.

Well this is later than I meant to leave feedback, which is why I didn't claim dibs last night ... since my last dibs didn't actually develop into actual feedback, I didn't think I deserved it.

But that is neither here nor there. Nor is it elsewhere ... which raises the question, where is it? And why am I trying to be funny when I'm so obviously failing ... badly.

The best aspect of this latest hilarious little tale to escape your brain, for me at least, is trying to recognize all the little shout-outs, and spoofs, of various franchises. It's nerd heaven! (At least so long as you aren't one of those militant nerds who lurks on Internet forums, complaining that someone's rank insignia was upside down in one inconsequential two second scene, ie devoid of a sense of humor)

To list this in the order in which it occurs to me:

Lets see, there's Wing Commander, with the TCS appellation of the human starships and the Kilkrazi (which is both a wonderful spoof on the Kilrathi and cute pun all on it's own).

Calling a ship the Excel 2.0, which conjures images of the spreadsheet program, and opens the door for the running joke of each version's unfortunate predecessors.

Star Wars, with Captain Solo, his shedding first officer, and the insistence that he did in fact fire first. Take that, Lucas!

BTVS is of course a feature, with a canine Admiral Ozymandias, and a President Glorificus of definitely dubious sanity and morality.

Star Wars again, with the Jedi substituted with the Cuties, whose lightsabers are relegated to making toast ... please excuse me for a while as I strive not to bust a gut laughing.

Star Wars in turn collides with Sesame Street, with Yoda becoming Osca, aka Oscar the Grouch, who was just as green as his Jedi counterpart, if somewhat more blessing in the garbage can department.

Then it's back to Wing Commander, with the Tiger's Claw becoming the less militaristically named Kitten's Paw. Let's just hope it doesn't get blown up by cloaked enemy fighters like it's namesake, shall we?

Battlestar Galactica is the next to fall beneath your razor sharp wit, with Cylons becoming Xylons, which leaves the stage open for the 'Xylophone' class vessel.

A quick detour to Star Trek, with Seven-of-Nine becoming Tara of Nine (which raises the issue, what nine is Tara part of? Does she have nine equally hot sisters, perhaps? ) before we're back to Star Wars, with the Xylons sounding quite like HK-47 from the KOTOR games.

Tattoo threw me for a bit; the facial tattoos pointed me at Voyager, before I finally noticed the 'diminutive' bit and voila! We're on Fantasy Island! The starship, boss! The starship!

The silly names for the different settings of warp drive are a fun touch, and a nice link to Spaceballs, itself a great spoof of sci-fi movies.

The code phrases used by the perfidious plotters Glorificus and General Fang were a hoot, and a way of adding Batman, Dirty Harry, Alien, and Superman to an already overflowing pot.

Tara's crew ... has there ever been such a collection of snort-inducing oddballs assembles anywhere in fan fiction? If so, I haven't seen it. The name of Adequatus Integer even conjures up memories of the Asterix comics!

Their reason for Willow and Tara to keep their nuptials a secret was far more amusing than any archaic prohibition against forming attachments.

The Omnidirectional People Transporter, or OPT from this point out (to save my aching fingers) was fun, and suspiciously similar to a certain scene in Spaceballs.

"Oh-kay," Tara sighed. "Implement Special Order 99, please."

"Aye, ignorin' everything the crazy bint says, as ordered Captain," Connery replied cheerfully. Special Order 99 had proved very useful over the years, and had incidentally always confirmed Tara's belief that the President was too lazy to look up anything with a number attached and find out what it meant when she found it referred to in the official ship's log transcripts.

Can I just say how much I loved that passage? Well, even if I can't, I'm going to anyway. I especially admired the subtle connection to another 'Special Order' from a recent movie.

The Babe Collective ... Resistance is futile? Who's resisting?

And now we add the Three Stooges, and could there be anything more hilarious than giving a proud and dignified warrior the vocal stylings of Larry, Curly and Moe? Probably, and I imagine you'll come up with that too.

Toss in a little Iron Chief (they always sound just so excited on that, don't they!) and Red Dwarf, add a little more Alien and Spaceballs for spice, a dash of The Matrix, a little more Star Wars, and a cameo by Bill Shatner in ship like a giant accordion ... and you have spoof fic perfection!

Can't wait for more!

Cheers,
Paul.

[Artemis]

Updatey time!

Alex: Thanks In fact the 'Canadia' joke is my In-Joke That No-One Will Get, because there's only two people who know it, and I'm one of them. It was during a Wimbledon telecast last year, one of the commentators referred to a Canadian's home country as Canadia, so I've just kept at that ever since.

notl33t: Thank you. Regarding Sixty-Nine's appearance, her curly blonde hair is a reference to Six from Battlestar Galactica, and there's some Seven in there as well. But mainly I visualise Six of One from Tripping the Rift, who looks like this. Sixty-Nine is kind of all of those characters, melded together.

beanie: Thanks. How do I come up with this? I guess it's just having seen so much sci-fi, at some point it all goes critical in my brain and turns into self-parody.

Grimmy: Thanks Everyone in sci-fi likes Mozart - dignified, grand, no licensing fees required to play it in a movie... Fang is indeed not committed to the peace process, but I'd imagine he's confused already - Glory never told him he'd be losing his hair along the way, after all. How did Admiral Shatner get command of the fleet flagship? Probably slept his way to the top - I'd advise not trying to imagine that. Though I admit, I put him in just because I can imagine what an awesomely funny job Shatner would do of playing the role - he's hilarious on Boston Legal.

Anne: You're welcome Actually, part of the challenge is not leaning too heavily on the big names in sci-fi - I sometimes find myself having too many Star Wars/Star Trek references, so I go back and put in more to the more obscure examples.

Paul: Thanks. Wow, that's a pretty comprehensive list. You've definitely nailed all the references you mentioned, but it leads me to suggest that you haven't seen Star Trek VI? There's a lot at this stage borrowed from there - the intro with Captain Solo on the Excel was cloned from Captain Sulu on the Excelsior at the beginning of 6, and the whole ecological-disaster-leads-to-peace-overture is stolen from there. Aside from being a Kilrathi, General Fang is filling General Chang's Klingon role, and the diplomatic dinner was based on the Star Trek one, with other references thrown in - Miss Kitty in Azetbur's role, and Curly came from Brigadier Kurla in the movie. I still regret not thinking of 'Admiral Ozzel' as Oz's name... maybe I'll go back and change that on the website There is an explanation behind Tara of Nine's name, it'll be in a future chapter - rest assured, it's silly (and sadly no, there aren't eight other Taras out there).

The Xylon dialogue was indeed HK-47, based on same in U_O's Tinker series - that mode of speech was so subtly funny that I couldn't resist just pushing it waaay into stupidity. Tattoo is indeed Tattoo from Fantasy Island (hence "the ship, the ship!"), and Chakotay from Voyager. Adequatus Integer is a very Space-Quest-y bad pun on Optimus Prime.

The Omnidirectional People Transporters (luckily more reliable than the Spaceballs version) are from Hitch-hiker's Guide - in fact in the first chapter of this they were meant to be lifts (like HHG's Vertical People Transporters, just 'omnidirectional' because turbolifts move horizontally too), which is why Captain Solo uses one to get to the bridge. But then that joke with Tara beaming and beaming up came along and I sort of retconned them into transporters.

And now...

Author: Chris Cook
Email: alia@netspace.net.au
Rating: PG-13
Copyright: Based on characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy, and a whole bunch of sci-fi things owned by Not Me, most notably including the Space Quest series of games (Sierra Online), Star Wars (George Lucas/Lucasfilm), and Star Trek (Gene Roddenberry/Paramount). Many, many other properties will pop in and out from time to time; no ownership is claimed.

TCS Kitten's Paw
Bridge

"WHAT?!?" Tara yelled.

"You... heardme... Captain," Admiral Shatner said blithely, leaning heavily on one arm of his command seat. "GeneralOrderOne... clearlyrequires... yourship'sdestruction."

"What's General Order One?" Willow asked quietly.

"'Do anything the President tells you to do,'" Tara replied.

"People follow that order?"

"Not usually. Certainly not since Glorificus's term started."

"Inaddition," Admiral Shatner interrupted, "Iamyour... superiorofficer. I'morderingyou... tolower... yourshields... andtransferyour... commandcodestome. It'llmakeit... easierto... blastyououtofspace."

"Accordion's shields raising," Adequatus said.

"Admiral," Willow said, slipping off Tara's chair to her feet. "I'm sure this is just a misunderstanding. As you can see we're a consular ship, on a diplomatic mission, and obviously there's been a foul up, well, when I say 'foul up' I mean a tremendous spanner in the works, but we're working on it, and-"

"She's babbling," Tara murmured, relieved. Admiral Shatner seemed to be wavering under the assault of Willow's cuteness.

"-see, we're just trying to figure out what happened, and yes the Kilkrazi are understandably upset, but this isn't our fault, and we're actually in the best position to figure out who did do this, so don't you think, all things considered, when you take it all into account, that actually disregarding that silly general order would be a really good idea? Huh?"

"Well... whenyouputitlikethat," Shatner began.

"No," said a blonde woman, stepping into view on the Accordion's bridge. "Admiral, carry out your orders." Shatner blinked, then turned and nodded to his tactical officer.

"Multiple weapon locks, Captain," Tattoo warned. "Accordion and the Kilkrazi."

"Don'ttry... torun... Captain," Shatner said confidently. "Ourstretchdrive... ismuchfasterthan... yourconventionalengines."

"Captain, recommend we go to warp," Sixty-Nine said quietly. Tara looked at her questioningly, glanced at Willow, who was frowning at the new arrival on Accordion's bridge, then she nodded slightly, and rested her head on her hand, subtly tapping the controls on her EyePod.

"Captain!" the Admiral insisted. "Yourcommand... codes!"

"Here it comes," Tara assured him blankly. Willow glanced back at her, surprised at her acquiescence, and seeing the warning in her wife's eyes she moved slowly aside, out of the viewscreen's range, and held on to a safety rail.

"Now!" Tara ordered. Pilot jammed the helm throttle forward, and the Kitten's Paw leapt forward, between the two vessels around her, with the engines complaining at the effort of producing warp speed Bat Out Of Hell.

"Big... mistakeCaptain," Shatner warned, still on the viewscreen. "Helm... engage... stretchdrive."

Tara shot Sixty-Nine a look, and received a wink from the android in return.

"Do we have a plan?" Willow asked.

"It's taken care of," Tara nodded. "Somehow."

The Accordion bridge disappeared from the viewscreen, replaced by the view of space ahead, with stars streaking past the fleeing ship.

"Is that normal?" Willow asked.

"Newest drive upgrade," Tara nodded. "It makes stars look like they're not wearing their photosphere when we go past at warp. Just a visual distortion from the warp field." The entire bridge crew ducked reflexively as the front half of the Accordion, apparently no longer attached to the back half, went rocketing overhead and tumbled off into the void.

"Change course, make sure they can't track us," Tara ordered Pilot. "Sixty-Nine?"

"What the heck happened to them?" Willow added.

"When the Accordion targeted us, I assumed hostile intent on their part," Sixty-Nine explained. "They didn't raise their shields until a moment later. Anticipating our need to outpace them to escape, I took the liberty of transporting a quantity of liquid nitrogen into the core of the Accordion's stretch drive, causing the elastic component to quick-freeze and become brittle. Then, when they attempted to use the drive..."

"...the rubber band broke," Willow finished with a grin.

"Good work, Sixty-Nine," Tara said. "Willow..." she lowered her voice, so no-one else would hear her. "I'm not sure what to do."

Willow nodded her understanding, knowing how seriously Tara took her duty to her crew, and the need for them to have faith in her. Vulnerability was something she could show only to Willow.

"I need a galactinet interface," she whispered. "One entirely separate from the Republic's systems... of the TC Fleet."

"We can't link in from the ship without revealing our position," Tara said quietly. "People," she raised her voice, "we need answers to what's going on. We need a safe, out-of-the-way port, and a way to access the galactinet without it being tracked back to this ship. Suggestions?"

"Captain, my homeworld," Tattoo spoke up.

"How remote is it?" Tara asked.

"It won Space Piston's 'Farthest From The Bright Centre Of The Universe' award nine years running," Tattoo said proudly. "You can't get more remote. And there's a sizeable smuggler population - if we need to, uh, 'circumvent' Republic monitoring on the galactinet, that's where we'll find the technology and expertise to do it."

"Good, make it so," Tara nodded.

"Helm, set course for Tattooine," Tattoo ordered. "Warp factor Fast But Inconspicuous."

Tara leaned closer to Willow, as the ship veered to one side and changed speed.

"You suspect something?" she whispered.

Before she could answer, an alert sounded on Adequatus's security monitor.

"Captain, unauthorised system login on deck four, crew quarters!"

"Have a security team meet us there!" Tara ordered, rising to her feet, with Willow by her side.

TCS Kitten's Paw
Deck Four

Tara, Willow, Adequatus, and his team of spherical security droids arrived to find the alert coming from Sixty-Nine's cabin. The droids rolled into position, in a line across the doorway, slightly hampered by the way the final droid to roll up knocked into the one beside it, sending the droid on the far side of the line rolling off again, at which it overcompensated and knocked back into its neighbour, and so on.

"Knock it off!" Adequatus ordered. "Transform!" The droids obediently unfolded into their humanoid shaped and covered the door.

"Teletext One, command override," Tara said. "Open the door to Lieutenant Sixty-Nine's cabin."

The door swooshed open, to reveal Mzkyti, wearing only a towel. To the varying degrees of embarrassment of the onlookers, the towel was on her head.

"Um, hi," she waved awkwardly. "This Food-o-matic isn't letting me use it. You wouldn't have a cat biscuit on you, would you? I'm feeling peckish."

TCS Kitten's Paw
Conference Room

"There's no way we fired," Tattoo protested. "Our razor cannons were on standby - they couldn't have fired without being activated from the bridge, or by manual override, which we visually confirmed had not been used."

"Nonetheless, a razor cannon did fire," Adequatus pointed out. "There were no other ships in the area - a cloaked vessel would have given itself away warping in and out, or been revealed by our warp burst when we fled. We were on full scanning of the whole area, there was nothing but us, the dreadnought, and the Accordion. We fired - and I think we need look no further than our stowaway to explain why."

Mzkyti, sitting at the far end of the conference table, and slightly more decently clad in a ship's issue Sexy Boxer Shorts And Tank Top ensemble, poked her tongue out at the robotic tactical officer.

"I can vouch for Mzkyti's whereabouts at the time of the attack," Sixty-Nine volunteered.

"How?" Tattoo asked.

"How graphic do you want this?" Sixty-Nine replied. Mzkyti sniggered.

"Okay, understood," Tara waved a hand. "So she had her hands full during the attack, and couldn't have sabotaged our razor cannons in any way, shape, or form."

"More like she had her hand filling m-"

"TMI, thank you, Sixty-Nine," Tara interrupted loudly. "PG-13 rating, remember."

"Sorry. Anyway, I've been reviewing our sensor logs, and I think there was another ship present." Various eyebrows, and Tara's EyePod, raised at the android's statement.

"Why didn't we see it when we went to warp?" Tattoo asked.

"I believe it went on board the Accordion as soon as the Flagship arrived," Sixty-Nine replied. "The Accordion failed to raise her shields immediately upon entering the area, and detailed examination of our records show that her secondary docking bay was opened and closed just before her shields went up. She took on a cloaked ship."

"Small enough to fit into a class-two docking bay?" Pilot frowned. "No ship that small has a cloaking device."

"The Empire has a class of transport that does," Mzkyti offered. "Braca-class scout ships. But they're meek vessels, not designed for combat - they're all engine and cloak, minimal weapons. They'd never be able to power a razor cannon."

"Why tell us that?" Tara asked. "That must be classified information in the Empire."

"Captain," Mzkyti said, "after what I've just learned, about the 'attack' on my father's ship... I believe you've been set up. And my father was involved somehow. I overheard him say to our Captain, before we came here, that the Kitten's Paw would give him cause to destroy her - at the time I thought it was a prediction, but now I'm not so sure."

"You're saying General Fang is part of this 'set-up'?" Tattoo asked.

"I'm saying my father is working against the best interests of your people, and mine," Mzkyti replied. "As long as that's the case... I'm on your side. I want peace." She looked imploringly at Tara, who thought for a moment, then gave her a reassuring nod.

"That doesn't change the fact that we've apparently been framed by an impossible cloaked ship," Adequatus said.

"Unless one of these 'Braca' ships has been refitted with a razor cannon," Pilot suggested.

"It's been tried many times," Mzkyti said, "with weapon systems of comparable power. The attempts invariably failed."

"And in any case, a Kilkrazi ship docking in the TC Flagship?" Sixty-Nine wondered. "Even if there is a conspiracy at work, that would raise so many questions among the Accordion's crew..."

"Tara," Willow whispered, "I know Sixty-Nine is okay, and Mzkyti is effectively a prisoner anyway, but the others here - how well do you trust them?"

"With my life," Tara said. Willow met her gaze, and nodded.

"I think I can explain this," she said out loud. "But this information can't leave this room."

"We're agreed," Tattoo said, after glancing around the table.

"Alright," Willow said. "Not many people know this - in fact, I shouldn't know it, but I'm naturally inquisitive and I like poking around in databanks that, perhaps, I'm not strictly speaking allowed to be poking around in... See, a long time ago, in a galaxy... well, in this galaxy, actually... there was a war within the Cutie Order."

"A war?" Tattoo asked.

"This isn't public knowledge," Adequatus said.

"Well duh, she said it's secret," Sixty-Nine pointed out.

"About a thousand years before they started changing the names and making movies out of it," Willow went on, "there were two factions of Cuties. One faction believed as we do today, that every living being has the potential to be cute, in their own unique way. The other faction..." she paused, and grimaced at the thought. "They believed that their kind of cuteness was the only real cuteness. Their leader, Cordelia Bath, wanted the Order to only recognise individuals who conformed to her standards of beauty and adorability, and that all other kinds of cuteness should be destroyed. She and her followers attempted to take control of the Order by force, and when that failed, they left, kinda peeved at how things had gone. Miffed, in fact - they became the Miffed Cuties. Cordelia decided, to make them harder to track down, there would be only two, a master and an apprentice. Then, according to legend, someone asked what would happen if the master and apprentice were both on a shuttle and it had an engine failure, or if they met at a restaurant and both had the chicken, and got food poisoning... anyway, long story short, it ended up with there being six of them. One master, one apprentice, four backups. They call themselves Baths."

"Wait, call themselves?" Tattoo asked. "Present tense? These Miffed Cuties still exist?"

"We think so," Willow nodded. "We've tried to find them, of course, but it's difficult - unless they use their Miffed powers, they can pass as ordinary people, or even as regular Cuties, unless you know what to look for. We're as certain as we can be that they've never managed to infiltrate the Order's hierarchy, but we believe they're still out there somewhere."

"The blonde, on the Accordion's bridge," Tara said.

"I suspected, but I had to be sure," Willow agreed. "But this theory of a cloaked ship... Miffed powers revolve not around creating cuteness, but destroying it. Over the centuries, the Order has recovered Miffed ships with anti-cute cloaking devices - they make a ship seem so un-cute that it's impossible to detect, and they don't need much power - a cloaked Miffed ship could still fire a powerful weapon, like a razor cannon. And then, just now with the Admiral on the Accordion, that woman who showed up nullified the Aww power I was using to get him to let us go. Only a Bath could do that."

"So..." Tara thought out loud, "...the Miffed Cuties are manipulating the Republic and the Empire. Trying to start a war, which would give them the opportunity to destroy the Cutie order."

"We have to get your sensor logs to Capsicum," Willow said. "I know a few tricks about defeating anti-cute power, I might be able to show up the cloaked ship. If we can get that evidence to the Senate, maybe we can stop them and the Empire going to war over this."

"Do you think the President might be mixed up in this?" Tara asked. "She ordered us to have our weapons cold, and sensors off, during this whole encounter. If we had, even if we'd escaped we'd have no evidence. And Shatner practically admitted that she'd told him to destroy the ship."

"Could be," Willow mused. "But is she being manipulated because she's an idiot, or is she in this willingly because she's evil?"

"She's a President," Tattoo said glumly. "Could be either."

Tattooine
Mos ESPN

A transporter beam deposited Willow and Tara, both dressed in the lightly-coloured robes common to the populace, in the middle of a marketplace and faded away with a faint 'Glad to be or service...' Tara looked around speculatively, while Willow blew a trio of notes on her tri-recorder, and studied the results.

"That way," she pointed. "This tourist handbook Tattoo gave us pinpoints the techno-scavenger district pretty well, we shouldn't have trouble finding it."

"Thanks Tattoo," Tara said, her EyePod picking up her words and transmitting them to the orbiting Kitten's Paw. "We'll check in every two hours. Keep the comms on a secure frequency, I don't want anyone to track us down here." She offered her arm to Willow, who looped hers around Tara's elbow, and they set off through the bustling city.

"According to this," Willow went on, reading the tri-recorder's tiny screen, "we shouldn't have any difficulties with the locals - with no tribal tattoos no-one will have any reason to pick a fight, so if we just look inoffensive and slightly confused, we should do fine."

"I am inoffensive and slightly confused," Tara pointed out. "The second because the first makes it so unlikely that my own government would try to kill me."

"We're dressed as dirt farmers," Willow explained. "Tattooine's primary agricultural industry. Mos ESPN is a big sporting centre - gladiatorial droid fights, zero-g foozball, pod-person racing, you name it. Farmers often come into the city to watch."

"Dirt farmers?" Tara asked. "They have especially good dirt on this world?"

"Nope," Willow shook her head.

"Oh," Tara frowned. "That's... depressing."

"Yup," Willow nodded. "Highest suicide rate for any career besides spoo ranching. But because so much of the population turns to crime to stave off boredom, they have the galaxy's most thriving smugglers' guild, and all the usual clandestine workshop activity to go with it. We shouldn't have any trouble finding a galactinet scrambler."

"Good," Tara said, glancing at Willow. She gave a sad smile. "I'm sorry you got dragged into this."

"Hey, no," Willow shook her head vehemently. "There's no such thing as danger I'd want you to go into without me. Remember what I said on our wedding night?"

"Woo-hoo?" Tara grinned.

"Besides that."

"Hot mamma yamma?"

"Besides that."

"Get out of my sight or I'll weld you to an ore freighter's waste hatch?"

"Besi- when did I say that?"

"When that room service droid interrupted us," Tara smiled fondly.

"Oh, yeah," Willow giggled as she reminisced. "But what you know darn well I meant was, I'm yours and you're mine. No-one threatens my wife without me getting in their way. And if I'm the one in trouble, there's no-one I'd go to for help before you."

"Sweetie..." Tara said, obviously controlling herself with difficulty, "they're... keeping a biosigns lock on us from the ship... so if I drag you into a secluded corner and do what I'm really tempted to do, they'd know, and Sixty-Nine would tease me for a month."

Willow grinned, and leaned over to steal a quick kiss.

"She won't know if it happened between scenes," she pointed out. "It'd be bad writing to refer to a key event that happened off-screen like that."

"True," Tara nodded. "How long has this scene got to go?"

"Should be over any second now," Willow said, studying the tri-recorder.

Tattooine
Mos ESPN, techno-scavenger district

"Tattoo?" Tara asked. "Is Sixty-Nine sniggering at all?"

"No Captain," the reply came. Tara and Willow both breathed a sigh of relief.

"I wasn't entirely sure that'd work," Willow admitted. "It was worth the risk, though." Tara smiled slyly at her.

"This looks like a likely place," Willow suggested, surveying the building they had come to a halt outside. Beyond the gate attached to it, they could see a junkyard cornucopia of discarded technology.

"Hello?" Tara called as she and Willow went inside the small, badly air-conditioned shop that adjoined the yard.

"Huh? Customers!" An unfortunately odorous blue-grey-skinned alien with eye stalks and a five o'clock shadow that was heading well into evening popped up from behind the shop counter and grinned alarmingly at his two clients.

"Blatz is the name, ladies, Fester Blatz, at your service," he introduced himself with a pretentious hand on his scrawny chest. "What can I possibly help two such lovely dirt farmers as yourselves with? We got everything here, all at very reasonable prices, I might add. Salvaged droids? I know losta people would tell you they're just junk metal, but no siree, I say they are too droids, and they can come in very useful. I know, a repair pod! Got one here from a Discovery-class ship, only been used once, found just floatin' in space if you can believe that, turns out the pilot couldn't get back through the pod bay doors of the mothership, how stoopid is that? Nothin' wrong with the pod though, I guarantee it. Are you two together? 'Cause we got a good deal on vibrating-"

"We're here for a scrambler," Willow interrupted quickly.

"A scrambler, eh?" Blatz scratched his chin, causing a small cloud of dust to float off it. "Hmm, lemme see what we got out back... C'mon, I'll show you the selection." He lifted into the air on a pair of biologically-implausible wings, and hovered over to the door leading to the yard, with Willow and Tara following.

"Here, you're in luck," Blatz said, picking a piece out of the general junk pile. "This here scrambler is so good, you plug it into a galactinet socket, you can make an omelette on the other end, that's how good it is. Yours for the low, low price of ten bars of pig-latinum, or equivalent acceptable currency."

"That's pretty steep," Willow frowned.

"Doesn't matter, I'll put it on the ship's credits card," Tara shrugged. "Ultimately the President ends up paying for it - kind of fitting, seeing as this is her fault."

"Hey, did you say credits? I don't take no credits," Blatz protested, crossing his flabby arms over his chest. "I have a moral objection to any society that can't think of no better name for its currency than 'credits'."

"Let me handle this," Willow said quietly, stepping forward. She put on her most adorable expression, and batted her eyelashes at the alien.

"Credits will do fine, won't they?" she asked sweetly.

"No, they won't," Blatz said.

Willow looked a bit confused, then tried again: "I said, credits will do fine, right?"

"No, they won't," Blatz insisted.

"Darn it," Willow muttered, "you'd think the Order would keep a record of species the Aww doesn't work on. Seems like that'd be a useful thing to know, wouldn't you think?"

"What, you think you're some kinda Cutie?" Blatz asked.

"Well, yeah," Willow nodded. "Cutie Knight, Willow Wilco."

"You are?" Blatz's face lit up, which was an alarming sight. "Oh man, that's different! Here, take the scrambler! No, forget payin', I owe you guys!"

"Thanks," Willow said, as the scrambler was dumped into her arms. "Um... you owe us how?"

"Oh, a while back I had this kid workin' here," Blatz said, with the easy air of one recounting a problem that's no longer his. "Had this stoopid idea that he'd build some kinda super-engines out of the junked racer parts. I said to him, I said they make those things in industrial clean-rooms. They use all kindsa fancy tools and parts that don't get thrown away, cause even if they break, just the metals they're made of are too valuable to chuck. I said to him, there's no way you can open up the insides of an engine, in a backyard with sandstorms comin' and goin' and just a tarpaulin over the top of it, and get it to even start up after, let alone go fast enough to compete. But would he listen? No. Mad, the kid was drivin' me crazy, I swear - I even stopped payin' him, told him if he wanted to work in the shop he'd have to be a slave, and he still wouldn't go away! Then this Cutie comes along, some tall guy with this apprentice or whatever who's totally into him, like givin' him these lovey-dovey looks, and he says the kid has Aww potential, and takes him away! This whole suburb, I swear, threw the biggest party, you wouldn't believe..."

"I think I know the kid," Willow said, glumly. "He's one of the trainees I teach."

"Wha- you teach him? He's not here is he?" Blatz glanced around worriedly.

"No, he's on Capsicum," Willow assured him. "Easily a thousand light years away."

"Phew! How's he doin'?"

"I think," Willow told him, after thinking, "you probably saw him at his best."

"Aw, man, I'm sorry," Blatz commiserated. "Here, you want a cup of coffee?"

"Thanks, no, we're in a hurry," Willow said.

"Thanks," Tara added, as the alien showed them out. "What was that all about?" she asked Willow once they were out in the street again. They stood against the side of the shop as a pair of lingerie-clad nuns of the Bene Hill Sisterhood went past, jogging in the sped-up motion their faith demanded of them, then started walking slowly back towards the edge of the city.

"I think he meant Annie," Willow shrugged. "You remember, the annoying one? He was one of Master Qui-Gon Fishin's pet projects. The man had a knack for disaster."

"Really?"

"Oh he meant well," Willow said quickly. "He was very noble and self-sacrificing and all that, but... well, everything he did just blew up in his face. This one time he rescued a swamp creature and got it appointed to the Senate - it spent three years annoying the heck out of everyone, and then it ended up unwittingly handing over five systems to an insane dictator. Not Qui-Gon's intention of course, but that's how everything he tried turned out... Well, there's a statue of him in the Temple, and the inscription says, 'We shall not see his like again'."

"That's not so bad," Tara said.

"It took the Council three months to decide to be polite rather than accurate, and leave the 'with luck' off the end," Willow added. "That was after he started claiming he'd found a new way to become a ghost. Turns out it was just the old way, getting killed."

"Oh," Tara grimaced. "Oh, well... at least it helped us out here." She reached to activate the communicator in her EyePod, but was interrupted before she could.

"Captain!" Tattoo's voice said, sounding agitated. "TCS Accordion in scanners, incoming!"

"The Accordion?" Willow asked, shocked.

"They've duct-taped her back together - she's firing!" There was a distant thump of beams impacting on shields. "We can't lower shields for transport. Captain, can you get to a shuttlecraft of some kind? We could try holding her off until you're back here-"

"Belay that," Tara ordered. "I'm leaving you in command, Tattoo. Keep my ship safe."

"But Captain-"

"That's an order, Commander." There was steel in Tara's voice - Willow found her heart racing with attraction, as well as from the tense situation.

"Aye Captain," Tattoo replied after a pause. "Don't worry, we'll make sure they follow us away from here. Where should we rendezvous?"

"No rendezvous - go where you have to to keep safe," Tara ordered. "We'll get the evidence to Capsicum ourselves. Fly safe."

"And you, Captain," Tattoo said. "Captain - get to Mos Tunseemly, you'll be bound to find a smuggler ship there. Kitten's Paw out."

The comms channel went dead, and Tara stared up at the sky for a moment. Then she took a deep breath, and reached for Willow's hand.

"Well," she said, "here we are. On our own, I guess."

"They'll be fine," Willow assured her.

"I know," Tara nodded, smiling at herself. "C'mon, let's find out how we get to Mos Tunseemly."

Next Chapter:
Be amazed! as Willow and Tara cross the vast Tattooine desert!
Sigh exasperatedly! as the Miffed Cutie makes another appearance!
Probably see it coming! as our heroines find a scoundrel to fly them to off this dirtball!

[watty]

Bugger. Bugger bugger bugger. I forgot to fb last chapter. I really liked the Canadian joke, was the Wimbledon commentator Aussie or Brit? I bet it was John Barrett. And now you have me in so much hysterics reading this update that I can't type properly. Blast the skies in the heaven.

The stupid Shatner was kray-see man. And the Accordion's engine being driven by a rubber band? *sniggers* I also can't believe that Cordelia Bath is so conscientious to have backups for her Miffed Cuties. This is so damned funny. And I wonder if the president isn't a MC herself.

Seriously (why?) I get the warm and fuzzies at how Tara can turn to Willow and not be the captain for a second. Their private space really is the place where they don't need to be brave. Even disguised as dirt farmers looking

inoffensive and slightly confused

which covers 101% of how tourists look, heehee. Their desert adventures will be fun I'm sure, with Tara's strength and Willow's Aww; and lurve for each other (awwww) what obstacle can't they overcome? (well, provided said lurve can sustain them and get them food, drink and shelter for the trek to Mos T.).

You know, the writer is being such a tease, cutting off sentences just as they get to the naughty word. And okay, referring to the end of the scene in the fic itself, that's brilliant to the point of surreal (sez the geek who put herself and a bunch of her friends as Willow's chat buddies). Will the rating ever increase past the PG-13 mark? Will Captain Tara and Cutie Willow feel the urge so much that they petition the writer to move some of the offscreen happenings onscreen and damned if Sixty-Nine sniggers? Can the readers start an online petition? Am I being the queen of hyperbole again?

This is funny. I think I said that already. Hee.

p.s. did I say there was HoYay! between Annie and Qui and/or Obi (eeep, threeway alert!)? Did I? Did I? *hysterical laughter*

p.p.s. apologies for the wild stuff, I'm in a Not Entirely Myself Reality today.
[br]

[SithLordWiccan]

Chris, I gotta hand it to you. You're doing such a good job at making this story engaging and dramatic, one could almost forget that this is supposed to be a parody. Of course, then you have something like Mzkyti appearing before anyone wearing a towel on her head, and then you're jolted back to reality.

And I gotta admit, I'm getting most of, if not all, of these references. I did catch that the whole plot is based off Star Trek VI, though I gotta say that the funniest one was the one back in Chapter One with the whole "Captain Solo shooting first" gag. (BTW, are you getting the unaltered DVD versions of the OT when they come out in September?) On the other hand, there were some that I missed until later readings, like equating Adequatus Integer to Optimus Prime (and this is coming from a hardcore Transfan, so you should know how much it pains me to admit that, though I should have suspected when I realized that Teletext One was standing in for Teletran One.) Their inclusion wouldn't have anything to do with our recent conversation about the Transformers fic you plan to write, would it?

And as an odd coincidence, I was watching Spaceballs yesterday (the watered down TV version that gets rid of all the best jokes, BTW ), and I couldn't help recall all the warp speed gags while watching the Ludicrous Speed scene. Can we expect to see a "Warp Factor Hold Onto The Rails?"

So Tara of Nine and Willow Wilco are all alone on Mos EPSN, hoping to find a way back to Capsicum. I can't help but wonder who is going to help them, especially since you already blew up the most likely candidate...or did you?

Anyways, can't wait for more.

[grimlock72]

Heh, Glory is obviously miffed about something and should fit into the Miffed Cutie mold easily Miffed Vapour would probably be a better term, as obviously Cordelia isn't cute, 'pretty' can be argued but cute ?? Nah.

About 50% of the Star Wars related jokes are passing me by at Ridiculous Speed of course (do they have an Emergency Break as well btw?;-).

Hmm.. how did the Accordion manage to track the Kitten Paw (to bad it's not a carrier, heh) anyway? Will the Kilrathi battleship follow ? Fang must be rather confused still.. besides he might think someone kidnapped his niece.. oh oh..

The in-between-scenes part was fun, typical Spaceballs humour

[Artemis]

watty-boss: Thanks. I believe the commentator was Australian, our networks still expend just enough effort on tennis to actually send a couple of people over there. Glory might be Miffed? Have you seen this movie before? That little 'private moment' with Captain Tara was my nod to Gina Dartt's 'Just Between' Voyager series. I can't guarantee that the rating won't spontaneously up itself for a chapter somewhere, if the characters complain enough.

Alex: Thanks. Yeah I'm considering getting that DVD set - I don't have Star Wars yet, and it'd be good to have the version with Solo as he should be (though aside from that and the Jabba scene, I like the changes, especially the new look for Cloud City). Adequatus is one of the sillier puns, so don't feel bad for not getting it. I did want to get the line "Transform and roll out!" in there somewhere ('roll out' being appropriate for droidekas, after all) but it never quite fit in anywhere. There will no doubt be many more warp speed jokes, and in fact chapter six will find our heroines holding on at unsafe speeds.

Grimmy: Thanks (and thanks for letting me know about the missing thumbnails on Looking-glass too, I'm always forgetting to upload them). It won't really be addressed by the story (then again, it might), but the Accordion tracked the Kitten's Paw using a special plot device they have attached to their sensors I hadn't thought of the Emergency Brake, but now I'll probably have to find a way to fit it in. I wouldn't be surprised if Cordy's vendetta against the Cuties stems from jealousy at their cuteness...

And now, Chapter Five![/b]

Author: Chris Cook
Email: alia@netspace.net.au
Rating: PG-13
Copyright: Based on characters from [i]Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy, and a whole bunch of sci-fi things owned by Not Me, most notably including the Space Quest series of games (Sierra Online), Star Wars (George Lucas/Lucasfilm), and Star Trek (Gene Roddenberry/Paramount). Many, many other properties will pop in and out from time to time; no ownership is claimed.

Tattooine
Mos ESPN

"How do you suppose we find some transport?" Tara wondered.

"Ask a local," Willow said promptly. "Excuse me?"

A passing sandy-haired dirt farmer reined his lumbering mount in.

"Whoa Dewdrop... Will this take long? I'm after some power converters, those things sell out like you wouldn't believe."

"No, not long - we need to get to Mos Tunseemly," Willow explained. "You wouldn't know anywhere we could hire some transport, or get directions, would you?" She gave a cute grin, just to be sure.

"No problem, just thumb up a taxi," the farmer said, nodding to a stall on the edge of the district, by the open desert.

"Thanks," Willow waved goodbye.

"I thought the phrase was 'thumb down', not up," Tara mused. They crossed to the stall, and read the attached notice: 'For taxi service, activate a thumbper and wait.'

"Nope, looks like up," Willow shrugged. She and Tara hefted one of the heavy thumbpers from the stall to the sand, and peered at its controls.

"Let's see, 'two to five blocks, one mile or less', 'next suburb, one to three miles', 'to city centre, three to five miles'..." Willow read the options.

"'Desert Odyssey, up to 2001 miles,'" Tara said, skipping ahead and pressing the appropriate button. The thumbper began to belt out a slow rhythm into the sub-surface: dum-dum dum-dum dum-dum...

The pair stood back as the ground began to tremble, then a gigantic sandworm, with a few tattered seats attached to its back, burst out of the desert and drew to a halt.

"Youse wanted a cab?" the worm rider called, tossing down a rope for Willow and Tara to climb up.

"We're headed for Mos Tunseemly," Tara said as she and Willow hauled themselves onto the sandworm's back.

"Ah, hive of scum and villainy," the cabbie nodded. "Very popular, nice place, you won't find better scum and/or villains on the planet. Imported scum, you know - last year's scum crop wasn't so good, on account o' them Tuscan raiders out of Mos Italia, so they sent off for some scum from Adigeon Prime. 'Parently their scum has been pretty good, for off-worlders. They was gonna get it from Nar Shada, but there was some strike or sumfin, and it got cancelled. Mos Tunseemly, 'at's a long trip, youse got the cash for it?"

"Is a Republic credit card okay?" Tara asked. "Capsican Express?"

"Yeah that's fine," the cabbie nodded. "Strap yourselves in, okay? Youse prefer surface or the subway?"

"Uh, is surface alright?" Willow asked, looking worriedly at the sand still streaming off the worm and its rider.

"Yeah fine," the cabbie said good-naturedly, shaking sand out of a broad-brimmed hat and wedging it onto his head. "Jus' keep your hoods up, youse can get a nasty sunburn. Seatbelts done up? Okay then... hi-ho Duranium! Away!"

Willow and Tara clung to their seats as the sandworm thundered off across the desert at an alarming speed. Their driver kept up a running commentary all the way.

"Youse from off-world? I mean I see youse dressed like dirt farmers, but there's like fifty dirt farmers on the whole planet, and about, what, a couple a' thousand Cutie Knights who all dress like dirt farmers, so youse know, odds are. It don't matter, I like off-worlders, it's good for business, is tourism. Hard currency, yannowaddamsayin? Locals all pay in water, which youse know, fine if you're a dirt farmer, but Republic credits is more useful. S'not like you can use water for buyin' stuff off've the galactinet, other planets got oceans full of it, it ain't economically sound, is what I'm sayin'. Government orta do sumfin about it, yannow? But nah, I knew this new governer, he was never gonna be no good. Oh sure, he's all square-jawed and muscley, and sayin' stuff like 'vote for me if you want to live' but they never keep their promises once they're in office, do they? I mean, promisin' to 'terminate high taxes', yeah, sure, I'll believe that when I see it, yannowaddamsayin? And I tell ya, not five minutes he'd been in office in Camandakeen, what happens? 'Oh, wait a minute, my personality inhibitor's been shut off, I'm experiencing compassion, I can't terminate taxes anymore 'cuz terminating is wrong.' Huh. I wasn't surprised. All the city folk, they're all complainin', but who voted for him in the first place? Not me. Don't blame me, I tells 'em, I voted for Kodos..."

Tara, having overcome the urge to hang onto her seat with both hands, reached for Willow's hand and held it. They exchanged an amused glance, as the cabbie's endless socio-political opinions continued to wash over them, and Mos ESPN vanished over the horizon behind them.

Tattooine
The Kent Dirt Farm

Ma Kent looked out of her kitchen window as a landing pod rocketed by overhead and buried itself in the nearest dirt paddock.

"Clark, Connor, Kara, Karen!" she yelled. "We got another mouth to feed!"

By the time the family had gathered up shovels and reached the crash site, they discovered the mound of dirt was already being disturbed from beneath. Before they could start digging a glowing red blade punched through, and the blonde last seen on the bridge of the TCS Accordion cut her way out, spitting out dirt and brushing off her dress as she did.

"I hate landing!" she cursed, before looking around at the assembled Kents. "What? Never seen anyone miscalculate a flight vector before?"

"You're not wanting to be adopted, are you?" Ma Kent asked, with some reluctance.

"With you yokels?" the blonde asked disbelievingly. "Shyuh! As if."

"Who are you?" Clark asked good-naturedly, the insult passing him by without registering.

"My original name is Dis Harmony," the blonde said, "but you should properly address me by my Dark Name of Bubble Bath."

"Bubble Bath?" Karen repeated, stifling a giggle.

"Shut up," Harmony glared. "Okay," she added, looking around, "I'm in the middle of nowhere. Damn. Do you hicks have any means of transport I could steal?"

"Hey, what makes you think you can just steal stuff?" Connor protested.

"Easy, I'm a semi-major character," Harmony sneered. "Whereas you're a cameo at best - it's screw up several chapters if I got beat to death by you idiots, but you all being dead, wouldn't matter at all. Here, watch."

Tattooine
The Kent Dirt Farm, five minutes later

Harmony dusted her hands together in satisfaction, as the bodies of the former Kent family lay at her feet.

Tattooine
The Kent Dirt Farm, five minutes earlier

"See?" she asked. "It's called jobbing, get used to it. Now hand over some transport, or that scene ends up in the final version of the story."

"Fine," Kara said sullenly. "There's a chocobo ranch out back."

"Ooh, what kind?" Harmony asked gleefully.

"White, milk, or dark," Clark said. "Or carab, if you want."

"Ugh, I hate carab chocobo," Harmony groused. "Okay, consider yourselves poorer one milk chocobo. Seeya suckers!"

"Well, that wasn't very nice," Clark complained, after self-proclaimed-Bubble Bath had stolen their prize chocobo and ridden off into the desert.

"I didn't see you helping any," Kara sniped back. "Being all good-natured, and stuff."

"Well it's not like we'd ever have sold the chocobos anyway, everyone's buying those riding dinosaurs from Yoshi Station-"

"Oh shut up. Dad was so right about you."

"Kids!" Ma Kent barked. "Quit bickering and get to your chores. Those new droids aren't going to clean themselves, and if I don't see them out on the south range by sundown, I'm pulling out the kryptonite!"

"Yes Ma," the quartet morosely promised, slinking away to their assigned chores.

Tattooine
Somewhere between Mos ESPN and Mos Tunseemly

"And then," the cabbie went on, in his fifth hour - Willow has privately concluded that his voice was some sort of sonic amplifier necessary to help the sandworm carve through the desert at such blinding speed - "this guy wants to know if Duranium here," he patted the worm's rock-hard hide, "could get up to eighty-eight miles per hour, so I says sure, but ain't no way youse is gonna stick no flux capacitor to my worm, I don't care what sort of doctor youse think youse are... Those scientist types, man, they're the worst. Couple a' years back, this bunch turn up, says they can make rain. I aks you, rain? Isn't that great, they says? Look, I says, I'm a sandworm rider, okays? Ain't nowhere on my license it says 'mudworm rider', on account of me not being a mudworm rider, 'cuz there ain't no mudworms here. You want rain, go to Kaminouttatherain, see? Easy. 'At's why they calls it that, ain't it? Sheesh, scientists..."

"What's that?" Willow asked, pointing to a dust cloud on the horizon.

"Eh, s'just a storm," the cabbie shrugged without looking. "They ain't no trouble, I gots a little rhyme I can teach youse about goin' through storms, well, ain't a rhyme as such, on account of it don't rhyme, but it works anyway, learned it from this guy from Floridan..."

"It's getting closer," Tara frowned. She tapped the controls of her EyePod, which opened a tiny hatch on its side and produced a delicate fold-up telescopic lens.

"It's someone riding... some kind of bird," she said in surprise.

"Eh?" the cabbie asked, reining Duranium in. The huge worm slid to a halt, and dug its head beneath the sand for a moment, emerging with the world's largest nose-bag in which it munched happily as its passengers watched the new arrival as she sped up and skidded to a stop.

"Hey!" Willow shouted. "It's the Miffed Cutie from chapter four!"

"That's Bubble Bath to you!" Harmony shouted up. "Now are you going to come down and get massacred, or do I have to come up there?"

"Willow?" Tara asked quietly.

"I'm trained for this," Willow assured her. "I'll handle her."

"I'm coming with you," Tara said. "Sir, we'll take care of this," she added to the cabbie.

"Hey, be my guest, I ain't got nothin' to do with no dizty chicks in leather dirt farm outfits."

"I heard that!" Harmony yelled. She pulled a metallic hilt from beneath her robes and activated it, producing a long, crimson energy blade.

"Whoa, my cue to leave!" the cabbie exclaimed, whipping up Duranium just as Willow and Tara finished clambering down to ground level.

"Hey, that's my toast blade!" Willow complained, as she sized up Harmony. "You copied my toast blade!"

"We have our agents within your Order!" Harmony boasted. "You'll never know who they are, but nothing you do can ever remain a secret from us-"

"It's Annie, isn't it?" Willow frowned.

"How did you- I mean, no!" Harmony recovered, badly. "We'd never be... so obvious. Yeah."

"I saw that coming," Tara pointed out. "And I don't even know the kid."

"Yeah, well consider yourself lucky," Harmony spat. "Now I went to all the effort of stealing an escape pod and coming down here to kill you, so are we going to fight or what?"

"Wait a minute," Tara interrupted, stepping in front of Willow and giving her a wink as she passed. "What do you mean you stole an escape pod? Weren't you giving Admiral Shatner his orders?"

"Yeah, but... see, the Miffed way... stealing is more, you know, evil..." Harmony said defensively.

"But wouldn't it have been smarter to have the Accordion stay in orbit?" Tara asked. "Then you'd just be able to transport back up once you're done killing us. Whereas now, I assume, you're going to have to ride that ridiculous bird back to some settlement, and find a ship, and-"

"Yeah, well... shut up!" Harmony countered. She swung her blade, Tara raised her left arm casually to block the strike, and it was cleaved in half, the severed end falling with a dull thud onto the sandy ground.

"Well... crap," Harmony muttered, looking in consternation at the bottom half of the blade which she still held, while the top half flickered and disappeared on the ground.

"Titanium sheath," Tara smiled, pulling back her sleeve and revealing the thin metal mesh covering her arm. "It's handy for carrying heavy grocery bags, too."

"But..." Harmony spluttered. "My evil glowy sword..."

"Oh come on, it's for cutting bread!" Willow exclaimed. "How tough did you think it was supposed to be? Now this," she added, producing a different hilt from her belt, which extended a brilliant blue blade, "is a sword. I've tested it on foot-thick tank armour."

"...oh," Harmony's face fell.

"And," Willow went on, "I'd like for you to think very carefully about my probable attitude to people who try, even ineptly, to hurt my wife."

"That's me," Tara smiled.

"Think carefully," Willow repeated. "But quickly, unless you want to find out whether you're more damage-resistant than foot-thick plasma-bonded hyper-steel."

"Uh," Harmony hesitated. "Right. Then. I'll just be... going..." She took a couple of dignified steps backwards, then turned and leapt onto her riding bird, which vanished with a faint 'meep meep' in a cloud of dust.

"I guess that confirms that she's the apprentice Miffed Cutie," Willow said thoughtfully.

"How come?" Tara wondered.

"If she was the Master, there'd have to be one worse at it than her," Willow replied. She took out her tri-recorder, blew a chord, and studied the screen. "There's a settlement of some kind a couple of miles east, hopefully we'll be able to get some kind of transport to Mos Tunseemly there."

"Okay," Tara agreed. "You're desert-trained, lead the way."

"C'mon," Willow said, extending her arm. Tara looped hers around Willow's elbow, and they set off. "It's best to keep to the ridges," Willow went on.

"For safety?"

"Plus the view's nicer. Why'd you step in back there? I mean, I know you can take care of yourself, and you were awesome and all, but..."

"I set my EyePod to record," Tara smiled. "Then she admitted to being a Miffed Cutie, and of being in charge of Admiral Shatner's attempt to destroy my ship. That'll be a lot of help when we get to Capsicum - it's one thing to show evidence that the attack on the Kilkrazi was a set-up, but it's a lot more convincing when we can prove who was behind it."

"Smart girl," Willow grinned, then her face lit up as a thought struck her. "Hey wait - do you realise what this means?"

"We're not going to be wanted fugitives forever?" Tara suggested.

"Annie's going to get kicked out of the Order!" Willow exclaimed, doing an impromptu spazzy dance. "Goodbye Annie! No more emo! No more petulance! No more 'I'm gonna be the most powerful Cutie ever' without actually listening to a word in the philosophy and morals classes- yipe!" she exclaimed, as she suddenly vanished downward into the sand dune.

"Willow?!" Tara started in shock. The sand settled back into place where the redhead had vanished. Tara took a quick, slightly panicked look around, then put her hand over her face and jumped on the same spot, likewise plunging into the sand.

She felt sand press around her for a moment, then it was gone, and she landed heavily on something soft, which proved to be Willow and a bean bag. The two disentangled themselves from each other and awkwardly got their feet.

"Are you okay?" Tara asked, helping Willow up.

"Yeah," Willow nodded, brushing sand off herself. "Not the first time I've had a Tara land on me, nor do I hope it's the last... ew, eck, sand in my mouth!" she spat fitfully.

"My hair, too," Tara frowned. She made an adjustment to the metal mesh covering her left forearm, producing thin spikes from the tips of her fingers, and set about combing her mussed hair.

"Where are we?" she wondered.

"No idea, one moment I was rejoicing, the next I landed on a bean bag," Willow shrugged. "I don't know, maybe this is the settlement we detected? I didn't expect it to be underground, but then again it makes sense in a desert environment-"

"Ahem... uh, hello?"

Both women spun around towards the source of the voice, which proves to be a group of odd-looking creatures some distance away behind them. They were humanoid, with snouts protruding from their faces, short hair all over their bodies, powerful legs, and long, muscular tails.

"Are either of you the Hand of God?" their apparent leader asked, after a brief hesitation. His companions cringed slightly, as if expecting fire and brimstone at any moment.

"How do we handle this?" Tara whispered to Willow.

"Well there's a Cutie directive saying that if someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes, but I don't think that's one of the better ones," Willow replied. "At least, I've never heard of anyone actually doing it." She stepped forward and raised her voice. "Um... no?"

"Oh thank Shai-hummus," the creature said, as the group relaxed visibly. "Sorry, no problem - he's supposed to be along at some point. So, if you don't mind us asking, who are you?"

"Willow Wilco," Willow introduced herself, "and Tara of Nine. We're on our way to Mos Tunseemly, and we just sort of... dropped in."

"Right," the creature nodded, "sorry. We should put a warning sign up, or something. I'm T-Stilgar, nice to meet you. Call me T-Stil. So, Mos Tunseemly... let me think..."

One of his companions spoke in a strange, clicking sound.

"What's that Skip? Oh yeah, I remember it, thanks. Yep, we know the place," T-Stil said to Willow and Tara. "'Hive of scum and villainy'... we get the tourism brochures every now and then in the mail. C'mon," he waved a hand, "I'll show you to the hangar, you can rent a 'thopter."

"Thank you," Willow smiled, rewarding their strange benefactor with a dash of cute.

"That's very kind," Tara added, contributing her own home-grown cuteness. "So, you're all here waiting for the Hand of God?"

"In a sense," T-Stil nodded, leading the two women along one of the tunnels branching out from the entry cave. "Not so much 'waiting for' as 'hiding from', really. I mean, having the Hand of God show up - that's like a visit from the landlord, only ten times worse. And the prophecies of the Reverend Bad Mother-f... our prophecies are a bit R-rated," he interrupted himself apologetically, "say that Johnny Muad'oh the Hand of God will lead us in holy war, and the sands of Tattooine will run red with the blood of off-worlders. It just sounds like a huge pain in the butt. I mean, what's wrong with off-worlders? And holy war? Good Shai-hummus, what's it good for? Absolutely nothing. So we stay out here, beneath the desert, and hopefully Muad'oh won't be able to find us."

"So this 'Shai-hummus' is a kind of god, for you?" Willow asked.

"Oh, no - Shai-hummus is the sandworm," T-Stil explained. "We just use it as a kind of exclamation, because... well, when you live underground in the same area as hundred-ton worms that burrow all over the place without looking where they're going, they tend to leave an impression on your culture. They've got their good points, though - they eat sand, and leave spicy hummus in their wake. We've got a special technique for harvesting it, that gets all the sand out, and we turn a tidy profit with a few restaurants in the major cities. It's a pretty good arrangement. Another reason we're trying to avoid the whole 'holy war' thing, it'd be bad for business. Here we are."

The trio emerged into a hangar, beneath a large clamshell-type roof which was slowly opening. A variety of spindly-looking winged vehicles were scattered about.

"It's about two hours to Mos Tunseemly, that'll be fifty credits to rent a 'thopter," T-Stil said, producing a currency reader from a pouch on his bent. Tara handed him her Capsican Express card. "Thanks. Just park it outside the Cantina, the owner knows us, he'll keep it safe until one of us goes into town to do the shopping."

"Thank you," Willow smiled. T-Stil gave them a grin, then handed Tara's card back and wandered off.

"Do you know how to fly one of these things?" Tara asked Willow.

"I know the theory," Willow said. "Plus I'm good with technology, shouldn't be a problem. These look like your basic model hornithopters, so instead of fuel they're powered by psychic emanations from the pilot."

"Psychic emanations?" Tara said, grinning as she guessed where this was going.

"Uh-huh," Willow said, lifting the canopy of the nearest craft and jumping into the pilot's seat. "See, I sit here, and then... well, I think horny thoughts... and the machine revs up and that powers the wings. They usually come with a few issues of Playbeing in the glove compartment, but," she leaned back in the seat and gave Tara a smouldering look, "I was thinking we might be able to come to an alternative arrangement?"

"We just might," Tara agreed. "Sit forward." Willow did so, and Tara slipped into the seat, reaching around Willow and pulling her back to lie against her chest, sitting comfortably between her legs.

"How's this?" she purred into the redhead's ear, idly stroking Willow's stomach.

"Mmm... and we're ready for take-off," Willow replied, as the 'thopter's systems powered up, reading maximum energy. They had just enough time to strap themselves in and pull the canopy shut before the craft shot up into the air and whirred away across the desert.

Tattooine
Mos Tunseemly

After an enjoyable, if occasionally erratic flight, the hornithopter set down in a small car park outside a dome-shaped bar in the bustling smuggler port of Mos Tunseemly. It continued rocking for some time, then the canopy opened, and Willow got out, straightening her robes.

"What a way to fly," she grinned.

"Uh-huh," Tara smirked, zipping up her uniform. She attached a Gaffi-Stick Lock™ on the 'thopter's controls and sealed the vehicle's canopy, coming to stand beside Willow, facing the bar.

"'The Star Wars Cantina'," she read off the building's neon sign. "'No farmboys-with-a-destiny allowed'."

"Beats me," Willow shrugged. "Well, let's go find us a ship."

The Star Wars Cantina
(the weirdest creatures you've ever seen-a)

The pair came down the short flight of steps into the bar area, and took a look around. Some sort of unidentifiable smog hung about the ceiling, dulling the muted conversations taking place around the bar and in the various alcoves. An enormously varied assortment of aliens were currently engaged in bartering, negotiating, threatening one another, getting drunk, or in some cases fooling around under the table, which was embarrassing or physically distressing for bystanders, depending on their species. The general hubbub quietened for a moment, and various heads, eye-stalks, and other sensory organs turned Willow and Tara's way, then they were evidently deemed non-threatening and business resumed as usual. On the stage, a pair of drunk Talosians with a karaoke machine were holding forth at the top of their telepathic voices: "My, my, this here Anakin guy, may be Vader some day later, now he's just a small fry, he left his home, kissed his mommy goodbye..." A small band composed of nerf herders was dutifully accompanying them.

"First time in a spaceport bar?" Willow asked, noting Tara's mingled surprise and mild distaste for her surroundings.

"First time I've been in one for any reason other than hauling Sixty-Nine out by her ankles," she nodded.

"Wait by the bar," Willow advised, "I'll make the rounds and see if I can get word of any ships looking for passengers. I've done this before, you'd be amazed how much diplomacy happens in bars. Don't drink anything the tri-recorder can't identify," she added as an afterthought.

"I think that narrows down my options," Tara grinned. They went their separate ways, Willow vanishing into the crowd, Tara leaning easily against the bar, ordering a jynnan tonnyx from the burly bartender and telling him about their parked 'thopter.

"Hey hot stuff," a disreputable voice slurred from behind her. She turned around to discover she was being looked up and down - but mostly in between - by a grubbily-dressed spacer with either a very disfiguring scar, or bad acne.

"We're wanted men," he grinned lasciviously, indicating himself and his companion, for whom the description 'walrus-face' would be polite. "I have the death sentence in twelve systems."

"And?" Tara asked, raising an eyebrow - she'd found that this achieved a lot, in terms of expressing disdain, when she was wearing her EyePod.

"Well..." the man hesitated, "...isn't that kind of... exciting?"

"Grrough?" his companion added.

"Yer," he nodded, "chicks like dangerous men... right?"

"I'm a Fleet Captain," Tara said levelly, "which, you should know, gives me the authority to enact any outstanding death sentence under Republic law." She raised her arm and extended a blade, a wood saw, a screwdriver, and by mistake a ballpoint pen, from the mesh covering her hand. "Immediately," she added, with a slightly dangerous grin.

Her two admirers made themselves scarce.

"That was meant to be a corkscrew, why can I never find the dratted corkscrew," Tara frowned, retracting the assorted tools back into her arm sheath. On the stage the Talosians gave up the microphone to a trio of Neimoidians, who launched into an off-key rendition of 'I Been Through The Desert On A Worm With No Name.'

"Hi sweetie," Willow said, appearing at Tara's side. She gave a playful grin. "Do you come here often?"

"I was wondering how long it'd take for a hot woman to hit on me," Tara smiled back.

"I'm feeling lucky," Willow said. She indicated a creature standing nearby, which appeared to be a humanoid turtle, wearing a headband across its face with eyeholes cut in it.

"Hey Dudette," it waved at Tara.

"Shellbacca here says his captain is willing to take passengers," Willow explained. "I made a few discreet enquiries, and the ship's reputation is good. C'mon."

The two of them followed Shellbacca through the drunken crowd, arriving at a secluded booth where their would-be captain waited. She was lounged comfortably in her seat, with one foot up on the table, holding a drink of something corrosive-looking, and wearing black leather pants with a red stripe down the side and a black leather vest, both of which were so tight they looked to have been painted onto her ample figure. On closer inspection, it turned out that they had been painted on, and the only actual clothing she was wearing were a pair of heavy combat boots, and a holster strapped to her thigh.

Shellbacca leaned over and murmured in her ear, then sat next to his inadequately-dressed captain.

"So," she said with an appraising grin, "my first mate tells me you're looking for a ship. First mate in the naval sense, that is," she added. "Not in the, y'know, mating sense. My first mate was Starbuck... no, wait, it was Aeon. Or was it Servalan? Oh who can keep track." She shrugged, and turned her attention back to Willow and Tara.

"I'm Faith, and I'll be your captain for this flight."

Next Chapter:
Drool! as Faith continues to not wear a lot!
Say 'it figures'! as Willow and Tara's trip develops complications!
Reach for the popcorn! as we build up to yet another space battle!

[SithLordWiccan]

DIBS!

This fic just keeps getting better and better, Chris. And once again, Harmony proves to be inept when it comes to the whole "evil" thing, though as far as providing cheap laughs, nobody can do it better.

And Bubble Bath...

LMAO about the fate of the Kents. Guess Superman's not coming to rescue them. And nice "Crocodile Dundee" reference with the "You call that a sword? This is a sword!" And I’m glad that Annie’s gonna get kicked out of the Order. Little bugger had it coming.

What's with the "Hand of God" people? I'm afraid that's another reference that flew by my head. And I wonder where you got the idea for the Hornithopters from. LMAO! about the song the Talosians are singing. I'm afraid to admit that I like that song. And nice Chewbacca parody with Shellbacca.

Now let's talk about Faith for a minute:

She was lounged comfortably in her seat, with one foot up on the table, holding a drink of something corrosive-looking, and wearing black leather pants with a red stripe down the side and a black leather vest, both of which were so tight they looked to have been painted onto her ample figure. On closer inspection, it turned out that they had been painted on, and the only actual clothing she was wearing were a pair of heavy combat boots, and a holster strapped to her thigh.

Naked Faith...Naked Faith wearning combat boots... I wonder which Starbuck had the honor of being her first mate, because if it was the female one...HoMary!

Anyways, can't wait for the next chapter.

[DaddyCatALSO]

Oh, my achin' abs, "hornithopters." An "erratic flight" is to be e xpected.

Poor ol' Harm: she doesn't seem to get any more respect from fic writers than from the show writers :-).

Faith in painted-on clothes.....

[beanie]

I HAVE NEVER CRAVED HUMMUS MORE THAN AT THIS VERY MOMENT!!!!

Honestly man, it's just cruel. But all's well, hummus eating is me once I get to my fridge.

[Muzak]

Back! Great, let's see. Well yes the Harm- excuse me, Bubble Bath scene was very cute with Willow being all Grrr, I'm butch. And well, who doesn't love a good "Harmony is dumb" scene? Your little word plays are so darn cute, I think you may rival Willow (sort of). Heehee, jynnan tonnyx. Superman and Ninja Turtle cameos. Man, this is the stuff of great literature!

Onwards and forth of literary master.

Oh and quick question. Will we see more of Shellbacca? WEEEE turtles.

Yeah and your like plot is like totally off the hook . . . yeah. Woo! characterization . . .

-beanie

[grimlock72]

Heh... Harmony lost her 'evil glowy sword'...aaaaaaaww I do wonder if Willow's sword/bread slicer survived the test against that reinforced tank armor at all. She only said she had tested it after all, heh.

'I Been Through The Desert On A Worm With No Name.' sounds like a neat song. What would a subway-sandworm ride be like anyway, most of all how would one stay on the worm ?:)

Did I spot a Ghostbusters reference there by the way ?

[watty]

Hee, there are definitely references in this story that I haven't spotted, but I don't mind.

How I love the cuts between scenes. Especially the AU-slaughtering of the Kent family by Har-Bubble Bath. Isn't it a great education tool? To show kids the consequence of their action before they commit the action? But really, her head is full of nothing but soap suds is it?

"Oh come on, it's for cutting bread!" Willow exclaimed. "How tough did you think it was supposed to be?"

*snerk*

Oh, btw,

She took a couple of dignified steps backwards, then turned and leapt onto her riding bird, which vanished with a faint 'meep meep' in a cloud of dust.

meep-meep

And boy, Cantina scene. The love just piles up doesn't it. I mean, dubious patrons, ninja turtle first mate and *big stupid sigh* rogue space captains. *swoons*

Now then, to the main topic at hand. Just exactly what type of bribe will it take for the rating to, um, spontaneously up itself? Because we're already on the topic of horniness, shouldn't let all that

Psychic emanations

go to waste, eh?
[br]
[br]

[Krokador]

Oh my god, I've been laughing soo hard reading this.

"I'm from Toysrus," Adequatus spoke up.

The puns are just so much fun, and of course, Willow and Tara being in it. That's just an hilarious story you've come up with! Faith with a ninja turtle is the image that sticks in my mind right now, that and Bubble Bath riding a Chocobo! A chocobo doing meep meep... I though their noise was more like KWEEEH!?

Oh, and the Kent family, when I read Ma kent, I immediately thought about the Daltons. Seems like I was right, and Clark is actually Averell lol!

Well, what to say, it's not the first fic I read from you, and everytime I'm hooked to the bone by how you write! I'm not big on the feedback boat, but hey, this deserved that I jumped in just to say: "Update soon please?" lol keep going!

[Useful_Oxymoron]

Heya, Chris. Here's the Feedback I promised you in my pm. Heh, finally got my computer up to speed again. Installed a new harddrive, which is S-Ata. I already had another S-ATA, three ide drives hooked up to a controller card and two optic drives. And considering my boot-system is somewhat unusal, getting everything to talk to eachother can be a bit of an ordeal. Anyway, I'm here now.

First of all, thanks for the Fester Cameo. Man, I could just see him eating his own earwax while chattering away, trying to make a sale. You got him down pat, my friend!

Willow asked, looking worriedly at the sand still streaming off the worm and its rider.

So you like the worm, ey? You liked to ride the worm, ey? I let you ride the worm! (Ahum, sorry. Obscure Space Quest 6 reference there. Still, that giant tapeworm was actually cute.)

Loved the Kodos reference too. Hehehe, you're doing so incredibly well with this story. Like in the true sense of space quest, there's a pun or a reference around every single corner.

Harmony has the makings of a true Dark Lord of the Sith... but I'm not sure the other Sith would want to have her around. Loved Willow going all Paul Hogan on her : 'That's not a sword. This is a sword'

Miffed Cutie

Is it just me or does that sound almost like the name of a crappy Anime superhero?

Goodbye Annie! No more emo! No more petulance! No more 'I'm gonna be the most powerful Cutie ever' without actually listening to a word in the philosophy and morals classes- yipe!"

And thank god for that. It was quite a relief when they lower that breathing mask on his face and strap on a black cape. Heh, it was in the movies.

Her two admirers made themselves scarce.

And good riddance! Tara is Willow's alone.

On the stage the Talosians gave up the microphone to a trio of Neimoidians, who launched into an off-key rendition of 'I Been Through The Desert On A Worm With No Name.'

...

The only thing scarier than that would be four Gorns performing 'Yesterday'.

Faith Solo and Shellbacca... Uh, whoa? And Faith's first mate, would that be the male of the female version of Starbuck?

Great stuff, please keep it up!

[tarawhipped]

Good lord, Chris. Every update is so chock full of punny goodness, I wouldn't even know where to start at this point, but I couldn't let another update go by without telling you how much I love this. Half the references are probably going right over my head, but I'm getting loads of laughs from the ones that are smacking me in the face.

Faith's never done much for me, but as Han Solo? Yowzers. Perfect! Looking forward to whatever's next.

-Cam

[Artemis]

Alex: Thanks Yeah, Harm and the cheap laughs... I like her, I really do, but that's what she shines at. The Hand of God people are the Fremen from Dune, with the Rippers from Tank Girl thrown in. The hornithophers were Dune too, originally ornithopters (flappy-wing aircraft, instead of fixed-wing). I like the Anakin song too - we all got together and sung that (and the Star Wars Cantina Copa Cabana song) in the queue waiting to go into episode 3. I don't know which Starbuck Faith deprived of his or her innocence. Possibly both, simultaneously.

DaddyCatALSO: Thanks. Harm never gets any respect At least I made her an idiot savant in Smut Bunnies, so she had one marketable skill.

beanie: Thank you. Yes we'll see more of Shellbacca for the next couple of chapters, as well as someone else from TMNT... I like butch Willow, she's adorable when she goes butch.

Grimmy: Thanks. Yep, Ghostbusters reference - there's another one coming up. The sandworm song is one of the more convoluted references (to Air America - I'm curious if anyone can follow the bizarre logic that lead to that). I guess sandworm riders have very strong seatbelts, but we'll never know for sure.

Watty-boss: Thank you Meep meep! I had fun with the flash-forward, and I think in part it was just so I could have Harmony actually achieve something. Plus I don't like Superman all that much (Power Girl, on the other hand, rowr). Seems like every sci-fi film has done a Cantina Scene, so there was plenty to draw on there. I can now happily confirm that this story's rating will change upwards, for a short while - enough for everyone to have their fun - at some point in the future. I've worked out the how and why, and rest assured, it's silly.

Krokador: Thanks. I'm really not sure what sort of noise a chocobo makes, I only know about them second-hand, but I've been mushing references together all over the place already, so what's one more? That Kent Farm scene was actually one of the first I thought of for this story, the idea of them acquiring children by spaceships crashing in the back yard. (I almost forgot to put it in while the story was on Tattooine, but I remembered and inserted it, which led to the whole Harmony encounter.)

U_O: Thanks Glad I got Fester right, it's been a long time since I saw him (Space Quest III). Harm is indeed a bit much for any respectable evil mastermind group to deal with - but then again, Palpatine's no great shakes in the plotting and scheming department, I'm honestly not sure whether Harm wouldn't out-do him in an evil overlording contest, if only by luck and flair. Darn, I wish I'd thought of Gorns singing... well, there's still more chapters, you never what might show up. As I said above, maybe the original male Starbuck, maybe the new (hot as hell) female Starbuck... maybe both, who knows?

Cam: Thanks. Glad you like Faith the smuggler - she's a little bit of an homage (and something of a parody) of U_O's scoundrel Tara from the Tinker series. Only even more eccentric. This next chapter is Faith's chapter, so enjoy

Well then, onwards and upwards! Except there's no up and down in space, so just onwards and... onwards, with CHAPTER SIX (the Faith chapter):

Author: Chris Cook
Email: alia@netspace.net.au
Rating: PG-13
Copyright: Based on characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy, and a whole bunch of sci-fi things owned by Not Me, most notably including the Space Quest series of games (Sierra Online), Star Wars (George Lucas/Lucasfilm), and Star Trek (Gene Roddenberry/Paramount). Many, many other properties will pop in and out from time to time; no ownership is claimed.

The Star Wars Cantina
(music and blasters and old Jedi Masters)

"We need to get to Capsicum, very quickly," Willow was explaining. "Is it a fast ship?"

"Fast ship?" Faith asked disbelievingly. "You've never heard of the Clitoral Hood?" Tara had the misfortune to be taking a sip of her drink.

"Um, in what sense?" Willow asked, blushing bright red and patting Tara on the back to help her through the coughing fit.

"USS Clitoral Hood?" Faith frowned "The ship that made the Wastrel Run in less than twelve parsecs? The ship that-"

"But, parsecs are a unit of distance," Willow interrupted.

"I found a short-cut," Faith said flatly.

"So how does that prove the ship's fast?" Willow persisted. "I mean, it proves you know how to navigate, but-"

"Look do you want a ride or not?" Faith asked exasperatedly. "Note to self," she added to Shellbacca quietly, "stop making that Wastrel Run boast."

"What we're interested in," Tara said, sidestepping any further nitpicking from Willow, "is getting to Capsicum without any... Republican entanglements."

"Why, is there an election on?" Faith asked. "I know what you mean, those campaign salesmen are right bas-"

"We're working with a PG-13 rating," Tara said quickly.

"Oh." Faith looked disappointed. "So, I can't, for instance, tell you about the time I ------ the Jewel Princess of Risotto in the ---- with a ------ and then we ----- with ---- and... oh, ----!" she exclaimed, hearing herself fail to say key words. "I like telling that story."

"Sorry," Tara shrugged helplessly. "And no, there's no election, but we really need to steer clear of any Republic authorities at the moment."

"Well, alright," Faith shrugged, which was particularly noticeable given her lack of clothing not applied with a paint brush. "I need the cash, I'm in a bit of a situation, money-wise - I heard Pizza Hutt's figured out I keep shutting off the relativistic time distortion buffers so I can claim they took more than thirty minutes to deliver, and they're sending bounty hunters after me until I pay them back. Which I'm not gonna do!" she added to Shellbacca, who let his head drop into his hand, in dismay. "It's the principle of the thing. Okay, I'll tell you what," she went on to Willow and Tara. "You girls want to get to Capsicum. It'd be tricky to get there directly, but I can get you the next best thing. Have you ever heard of the Subway?"

"Only rumours," Willow said, leaning forward.

"The Collective know about it," Tara added. "But we never encountered it directly."

"Well," Faith smiled, "it's all true. A secret network of wormholes spanning the entire galaxy - it's how smugglers smuggle, how escapees escape, and how phantom ships stay that way. You want to travel under the radar? The Subway is built there. And I can get you to a gate."

"But, hasn't your first mate told you who we are?" Tara asked, confused. "I'm a Fleet Captain, she's a Cutie Knight... we're pretty analogous to law enforcement. How can you be sure we won't turn you in just for knowing this?"

"Well, I could count on you needing me to get where you need to get," Faith smiled, "but basically I'm relying on the fact that I'm so amazingly charming."

"We're not looking to be fussy," Willow said, "but, are you some kind of criminal? Under the circumstances, we can deal with smuggling - heck, there's plenty of systems with dumb prohibitions, and not everyone running around them is doing it to make people miserable, but... you're not a pirate, or anything, are you?"

"Oh, no," Faith shook her head - other bits of her shook, too. "No, not a pirate, of course not. Not exactly. Not in the negative sense, no. I'm a... Shellie, what's the word that describes me?" Shellbacca thought for a moment.

"That'd totally have to be slut, dudette," he shrugged.

"No, not that!" Faith scowled. "Okay, some basis in fact, but it's impolite - I prefer to be called a 'bonne vivante.' How come he can swear and I can't? No, I was thinking... social worker."

"Social worker," Tara deadpanned.

"Yeah," Faith grinned. "I freelance with social causes. Seeing to the common good, that kind of thing. Look, you're a Cutie," she said to Willow, "you can tell if I'm lying. I don't hurt people, I don't take advantage of people, I don't kick 'em when they're down, and I don't make my living by being a pain in the --- to anyone who doesn't deserve it. Oh come on, I can't say ---?!"

"She's telling the truth," Willow confirmed.

"So, I get you to a Subway gate, in exchange for... you girls want a private cabin?"

"Please," Willow nodded.

"With or without me watching the action via hidden cameras?"

"Without," Tara said firmly.

"Drat. Okay, that'll come to seventeen thousand credits."

"What? We could almost buy our own ship for that!" Willow exclaimed.

"Sure, but who's going to fly her?" Faith countered.

"I'm a Class A pilot," Willow nodded.

"I can fly anything up to and including a heavy cruiser," Tara added.

"Fine," Faith sighed. "Fifteen thousand, and let me point out, your cabin will feature a Risottan queen-sized pleasure bed, with all the accessories available should you want them."

"Done!" Tara said at once. She caught Willow's surprised glance, and explained: "Sixty-Nine's told me about them. It's worth it." She handed her card to Faith, who handed it to Shellbacca, who scanned it and handed it back to Tara.

"Docking bay ninety-four," Faith said. "One hour." She glanced across the bar, and Willow and Tara followed her gaze to where it had settled on a pair of blue-feathered twi'ti women.

"Make that two hours," Faith amended.

She got up and made a beeline through the crowd towards her latest would-be amorous encounter, only to find her path blocked a few paces from their table by a seedy-looking amphibian.

"Going somewhere solo?" the alien rasped, raising a pistol.

"Only for the moment," Faith said distractedly, looking over her captor's shoulder to make sure her targets weren't leaving. "I intend to be part of a threesome in about two minutes' time..."

"Pizza Hutt is very angry with you," the alien went on, waving his pistol in what he no doubt hoped was an intimidating manner.

"Hey, they made the 'thirty minutes or it's free' promise," Faith shot back, hands on hips. "If they can't be bothered to think that through logically, screw 'em. Not literally," she added quickly. "Hutts and me don't go together. Well, except that one time, but I was drunk, and it was more out of curiosity than anything else..."

"They've put a bounty on your head," the alien grimaced.

"Oh shut up, Freddo," Faith laughed. "Since when do I care about having a bounty on my head? A booty, on the other hand-"

"I'll make this simple," Freddo glared. "Hand over the money, or-"

"Or what?" Faith chuckled.

"You don't want this to get ugly," Freddo replied.

"Well," Faith shrugged, "I could say that it got ugly as soon as you showed your blubbery face, but that'd be unkind, and I'm the very soul of politeness. But I will point out that your zap gun has 'replica' written on the side of it, while mine," she drew her blaster and prodded Freddo between the eyes with its business end, "has 'Type II Phaser - Vienna Choir Boy setting' written on it. Do I need to draw you a diagram, or are you following the implications of all that?"

"Ah," Freddo said awkwardly. "Well, in that case, I'll just be... going..."

"Seeya," Faith grinned. "Oh, before you go, one last thing-"

"Oh no," Freddo shook his head, "I know about the 'one last thing' trick, it's always the one last thing that's the pain in the-" He broke off as Faith took a swift step forward and brought her knee up to his groin with planet-breaking force.

"Yep," she agreed, "it really is." She pushed the stricken bounty hunter out of the way, and finally reached the table occupied by the two twi'ti women, who had been watching the encounter with interest.

"Ladies," she smiled sweetly. "I've been outlawed in no less than twelve solar systems. How do you feel about finding out why?"

Docking Bay 94
Two hours later

"This has got to be a joke," Willow said, regarding their would-be means of transport with distinct scepticism.

"Hey, you made it!" Willow and Tara turned to see Faith sauntering into the docking bay, with her paint severely smudged and twi'ti lipstick marks on her neck, and elsewhere. Mostly elsewhere. "She's a beauty, isn't she? Had her for eight years, best ship in the sector!"

"When we said we needed a ship," Tara said slowly, "you did know we meant a spaceship, didn't you?"

The object of their attention was indeed a ship - a barquentine, in fact, with a hull made from polished wood, three tall masts decked out with rolled-up canvas sails, and an assortment of cannons poking out of portholes along either side. The only apparent concession to any technology later than wind power were four stubby mechanical legs, extending from folding panels in the bottom of the hull to keep the vessel from tipping over. No doubt due to Faith's unique style, the crew consisted entirely of shapely women and well-toned men, with about one handkerchief's worth of clothing each.

"Oh relax, she's spaceworthy," Faith said, waving a hand vaguely as she and her two reluctant passengers made their way up what looked very much like a gangplank. "I just like the look of her. I mean, I'm a pirate, right? So I should have a pirate ship."

"I thought you said you weren't a pirate?" Willow pointed out.

"I said I'm not exactly a pirate," Faith corrected her. "And this isn't exactly a pirate ship." She glanced over the side as a sudden burst of blaster fire preceded Shellbacca into the docking bay, followed by a squad of uniformed Pizza Hutt Gamoran guards.

"For example, a pirate ship can't do this," Faith added quickly, as Shellbacca raced up the gangplank, shooting out the ropes mooring the vessel as he went. Faith jumped onto the bridge on the rear deck, grabbed the wheel, and spun it as hard as she could, kicking various pedals at the same time. Energy shields flickered on around the hull, forestalling the Gamorans' attempts to blast their way through, a plexiglass dome slid over the exposed deck, and the vessel lurched out of the docking bay, spun around drunkenly, and rocketed up into the sky.

"Captain Harlock eat your heart out," Faith grinned roguishly, as Willow and Tara hung on to the mast, and the planet Tattooine shrunk into the distance with alarming speed.

"Just for future reference," Tara asked, prying her fingers off the mast, and noticing that her left hand had made indentations in the metal, "how often are you attacked like that?"

"It seems like the kind of information that should really be in the brochure, before people book passage," Willow added.

"Oh relax," Faith waved their concerns away. "They were just Gamorans, it's not like they'd ever have hit anything. That whole 'most dangerous guards in the universe' thing? Complete scam on anyone who hires them. You know they can't actually see further than fifteen feet? True."

"Yo Captain dudette, course?" Shellbacca interjected, appearing from below decks. Both Faith and Tara turned, Tara backing down with a bashful smile once she'd realised the first mate wasn't addressing her.

"Best speed to Ender," Faith ordered.

"Aye aye, warp speed Totally Mondo," the mate replied, taking Faith's place on the bridge and spinning the wheel seemingly at random. The interstellar pirate ship's sails unfurled, glowed brightly, and propelled the vessel into warp.

"Now then ladies," Faith turned to Willow and Tara, "I'll show you to your cabin."

USS Clitoral Hood
Guest quarters

"This is... nice," Willow said at last, after Faith had left her and Tara in their temporary home.

"Very... forthright," Tara said after a moment's hesitation.

The cabin was decorated according to Faith's tastes, which meant a gigantic four-poster bed, several sumptuous lounges large enough for several people to snuggle on each, and a collection of erotic art that was sure to cause a riot in any civilised system.

"That's interesting," Willow said, gazing at one of the paintings in spite of her better judgement.

"I've heard about that," Tara said, wide-eyed. "I just didn't think it was possible for humanoids..."

"A spot of redecorating?" Willow suggested.

"Let's do," Tara agreed hastily. There followed several minutes of hasty activity, in which paintings were removed from walls and placed discreetly behind couches, statuettes were deposited in drawers.

"Our host is a woman of many talents," Tara said idly, trying not to pay attention to the image right in front of her face as she lifted a large canvas from the wall above the bed.

"Or possibly just one talent, and lots of ways of doing it," Willow suggested, opening the closet, and hastily closing it again. "Still," she said, trying to keep her voice from wavering, "it takes all types."

"So does she, by the looks of things," Tara mused, picking up an open photo album from a coffee table.

"Is that her?" Willow asked, peering over her shoulder.

"I think that's her leg," Tara squinted. "That's someone else's arm... unless she's triple-jointed." She turned the page. "That's... definitely her. All of her."

"It could be worse," Willow shrugged, as Tara closed the book and put it carefully in a drawer.

"I suppose," Tara conceded. "A nymphomaniac pirate is better than a real pirate. At least she's not breaking any laws."

"So far," Willow added. "Besides laws of nature." She picked up a throw rug and used it to cover a life-sized statue of Eccentrica Gallumbits in all her considerable glory, and, finally deeming the room to be one she could sleep in without needing counselling later, sat down on the bed.

"Actually, this is a really good bed," she said, surprised.

"Risottan," Tara said, joining her. "It looks fully-functional. Massage mode, null-gravity cushioning, inbuilt climate control... and hot tub transformation at the push of a button."

"Does it have anything that'd impede Tara-snuggling," Willow asked, shooting her wife a sweet smile.

"Nothing at all that'd impede Tara-snuggling," she replied.

"Then I like it," Willow grinned.

USS Clitoral Hood
Bridge, later

"Yo ho... yo ho... a pirate lass for me..." Faith hummed to herself as she played with the held idly, steering gently this way and that as her ship hurtled through space.

"We found the video camera," Tara said from behind her. Faith spun around in surprise, then leant back on the wheel and shrugged.

"Can't blame a girl for trying," she grinned.

"And the holographic imager," Tara ticked off on her fingers. "And the negative space scanner, and the tri-dimensional vid-grabber, and-"

"Okay, okay," Faith said. "So you've got the private cabin you paid for... I knew you'd find them all anyway."

"Did you know there's a dog sleeping in the bar fridge?" Tara asked.

"Is that where Zool got to? It's okay, he's a Rura Penthe Retriever, they like the cold."

"And we found the stealth imaging array in the statue's third boob," Tara added.

"Oh man, I don't get to have any fun," Faith groused. Tara raised a disbelieving eyebrow, as one of Faith's crew wandered past on some errand. She was built like a goddess, her skin shone with lovingly-applied oil, her outfit consisted entirely of a low-slung belt and various rings, none of them on her fingers, and her abdomen sported an intricate tattoo which displayed, in explicit and rather artistic detail, her favourite activity in the universe. There was a downward arrow included, just to ensure there was no confusion.

"Somehow I think you do," Tara said, sitting on the edge of the wood-panelled navigation console.

"Yeah, I do," Faith agreed, her eyes following the woman until she disappeared below decks. "Still - no offence to my many and varied companions - when a Cutie and a member of the Babe Collective wander into my life, I can't help feel a little pang when it turns out they're only interested in each other." Tara gave a shrug, managing to include in the simple gesture a measure of sympathy, but also an acknowledgement that Faith was indeed getting nowhere near the inside of her or Willow's pants.

"Where is she, by the way?" Faith wondered.

"Online," Tara replied. Faith's eyes widened in shock. "Don't worry," Tara added, "we picked up a scrambler on the planet - she's positive no-one will ever be able to track the signal to this quadrant, let alone this ship."

"If you say so," Faith said uncertainly.

"She once out-hacked Architect Sanders," Tara said. Faith nodded her acceptance of Tara's assurances.

"So, what is it with you two?" she asked after a moment's thought. "How do a Cutie and a Babe hook up?"

"She didn't try to seduce me," Tara said simply.

"Why not?" Faith asked, surprised.

"No - I mean she didn't try to seduce me," Tara repeated. "Alright, from the beginning. I met her on Mondas-"

"And your heart stood still?" Faith asked hopefully.

"I was newly promoted to Captain," Tara went on, ignoring her. "I'd just been assigned the Kitten's Paw, and was waiting there to rendezvous with her. The Cyber Mardi Gras was on at the time so there wasn't anywhere to stay on the surface, so I was told to report to an orbiting hotel they've got, the Bed-and-Breakfast Star."

"I thought that was a moon?"

"It's no moon, it's a space station," Tara said. "They just stucco'd the outer hull so it looks like a planetoid."

"Mondasians have no taste."

"Then it turned out they'd overbooked too, so I had to share a room. I asked about my roommate, and somebody told me that her name was Will-"

"Da do-"

"This isn't a musical story," Tara cut Faith off.

"I never get to be in musicals," Faith frowned, crossing her arms over her stomach. Tara politely ignored the impressive effect this had on her chest.

"So I was expecting a man, and when I went to my room, there's this petite redhead, in a gorgeous white dress, lying on the bunk, up on one elbow looking at me as I stood dumbfounded in the doorway. I was... absolutely drawn to her, at once. And after I got over the idea that she could be, I saw she liked me too. It's not unusual for people to make a pass at Captains-"

"Successfully, on this ship," Faith said, proudly.

"No doubt," Tara grinned. "I guess it's the uniform, the position of power-"

"You're hot," Faith said.

"I suppose being with the Collective did teach me a thing or two."

"You're hot," Faith repeated.

"I can hold my own, I guess," Tara smiled bashfully.

"You're. Hot," Faith insisted.

"Alright already, I'm hot," Tara gave in. "I've had my fair share of proposals, ranging from the sweet to the annoying. Willow didn't try to seduce me - even when I was giving her all the right signals to let her know she was welcome to..."

"Come aboard," Faith suggested.

"Something like that. And I'm sure she knew. But everything she said and did while we were together made it seem like... like getting me wasn't what was important to her. It was about making me happy. That's what counted, for her." She smiled to herself. "That's how it still is between us."

"Those ones are rare," Faith said, suddenly sounding a lot more sincere than usual.

"They are," Tara agreed. "For me, there's only one. In all the universe, one Willow."

"I know I seem... crude," Faith said, looking away. "But I don't mean any disrespect to you two. To what you have."

"Not crude," Tara shrugged. "Just different. I don't mind, really. Even if we did have to redecorate the room."

"It's all okay, isn't it?" Faith asked, anxiously.

"Everything's intact, we just put most of it out of sight," Tara said.

"You ought to see my cabin," Faith grinned. "In fact, if you two want-"

"No," Tara said.

"Kidding," Faith chuckled. "Did you say the Kitten's Paw? I know someone who serves on her."

"Sixty-Nine?" Tara guessed.

"How'd you know?"

"I can see how you two would get along," Tara smiled fondly. "She took an oath of non-celibacy as soon as she enrolled at the TC Academy. The Chancellor told me once that the four years she was there, they had to cancel all the morning classes - half the campus wasn't getting enough sleep." She took on a thoughtful expression. "I don't think she ever really figured out that organic beings use beds to sleep in."

"I ran into her on Risotto," Faith said.

"I think she mentioned you when she got back," Tara nodded. "She said she'd had some real competition in... that beauty pageant, or whatever it is she goes there every year for."

"Miss Dress Up And Put Out," Faith supplied. "Yeah, it came down to a tiebreaker, just the two of us. She won narrowly - I never figured out the whole 'less is more' thing, with regards to nudity. So in the tiebreak I wore these cute earrings I picked up on Ferenginar - and that's admirable restraint, for me - and she beat me by going in a set of Adepta Sororitas powered armour, totally covered from the neck down - though you have to admit, for a celibate order the Adepta really love showing off in sexy armour - and she just had this 'come hither' look the whole time..."

"I wondered where she got that armour from," Tara mused. "I thought she'd just slept with a Battle Sister."

"She did, but afterwards," Faith nodded happily. "Whole squad. That was a great after party." She looked up as Shellbacca bustled up to her, out of breath.

"Dudette," he panted. "Scanners... totally huge... Federation transport... porn... bogus censors..."

"Did he say porn?" Tara asked.

"Right," Faith said grimly. "Sorry to interrupt your trip, but this takes priority."

"What is it?" Tara asked, tapping a command on her EyePod. Willow appeared from their cabin a moment later.

"You remember how I said I'm not exactly a pirate?" Faith asked. She kicked a control, unfurling more sails, and steering towards a distant speck of light, that turned out to be a cargo ship.

"We can't let you raid a defenceless transport," Willow insisted, taking in the situation at a glance. Tara stood beside her, arms folded, silently backing her up.

"Okay, one, they're not defenceless, that's a refitted Mustang-class corvette," Faith said. "Two, this isn't exactly a raid... more of a rescue."

"There's prisoners?" Tara asked.

"Well... not so much prisoners as... porn," Faith admitted.

"Porn," Willow replied flatly.

"Yeah. Look, the whole Federation, they're ultra-conservative, right?" Faith explained. "No X-rated movies, no hot sex scenes, no porn, no hyper-cable TV, not magazines for the discerning buyer, no toys - can you imagine that?"

"I thought the Federation was benevolent and liberal?" Tara said.

"Wrong Federation," Faith shook her head.

"At last count there's forty-two Federations in known space," Willow confirmed.

"Right," Faith agreed. "This one is all about oppressing its people by not letting them get their rocks off when they want to. They confiscate porn, I liberate it."

"You're a porn pirate?" Willow asked incredulously.

"I'm a freedom fighter," Faith said proudly. "Freedom from tyrannical oppression, in the area of erotic material. I steal from the prudish and give to the horny. Is that so wrong? Come on, there's fifteen cargo bays on that ship packed full of quality erotica that those clowns have confiscated off law-abiding people who just want to get off on it, and they're going to dump it into a star or something. You're seriously going to stop me saving it all?"

"She's telling the truth," Willow said quietly to Tara. "You're the ranking Fleet officer here." Tara looked from Willow to Faith, and at the distant freighter.

"Legal material, by Republic standards?" she asked.

"You betcha," Faith nodded. "I have standards. Shellbacca, have you scanned a manifest for that ship yet?"

"Totally yuh," he said, handing Faith a notepadd. She in turn handed it on to Willow and Tara.

"It all looks legit," Willow said, scanning through the list. "Most of these are on the Cutie accepted erotica list."

"They're all Babe Collective-approved for positive hotness," Tara concurred.

"Hey, they've got your calendar!" Willow pointed excitedly.

"Your what?" Faith asked, intensely interested.

"I was in the Babe Collective 2428 Aquatic Leisure Attire Calendar," Tara admitted.

"Very tastefully done," Willow assured her.

"You?" Faith asked. "Swimsuit? Right!" she announced, rounding on her crew. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are taking that ship!" She turned back to Willow and Tara. "So you're okay with this? Good, honest porn liberation, no evil piracy involved?"

"Alright, we'll allow it," Tara agreed, after glancing at Willow for confirmation. "But we try it Willow's way first."

"What's her way?" Faith asked.

"I can try using the Aww on them," Willow suggested. "There's a good chance I'll be able to get them to stand down without a fight."

"Seriously?" Faith frowned sceptically. "Don't get me wrong, I've seen a lot of cute men and women - often in their birthday suits - but I don't know if there's anything so cute it'd make me surrender. I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful cuteness field surrounding everything."

"Oh really?" Willow challenged, with a slight grin.

"Cuteness and fluffy pink sweaters are no match for a good dose of sex appeal, kid," Faith shrugged.

"Tell you what," Willow said diplomatically. "Give me a shot at them, and I'll tell you which issue of the Cuties' Secrets Catalogue I modelled for. If it doesn't work, you can do whatever it is you do anyway."

"Hot damn!" Faith rubbed her palms together gleefully. "You've got yourself a deal. What do you need? Communications console? Helm? Backrub?" she added with a lascivious leer.

"Yes, no, and only from Tara," Willow replied without a pause, moving to the wood-panelled console. Tara beamed; Faith shot her a frustrated glance, then turned to Shellbacca.

"Just in case this doesn't work," she said, "have the crew ready to launch the slut bombs."

"The what bombs?" Tara asked, overhearing.

"Ah, you'll like this," Faith grinned. "Or at least, I like this. My own design." She picked up a sharp-nosed shell from a box Shellbacca had hauled from a stowage compartment. "See, these punch through the other ship's hull and stick there, sealing the gap - they can't remove or damage them without venting their atomosphere."

"Breaching pods," Tara said flatly.

"I know, nasty weapons," Faith nodded. "Usually filled with nerve gas or radiation emitters or all kinds of ickiness. But these are different. Hey!" she shouted at the crew scurrying about on the main deck. "Who wants to demonstrate?" The entire crew raised their hands.

"They want you to demonstrate a weapon on them?" Tara frowned.

"Watch and learn," Faith winked. She whacked the shell's nose against the rail, starting it beeping, then tossed it to one of the gunners, a shapely woman wearing various gauzy veils arranged with no particular intent to cover anything that needed to be covered. The shell landed at her feet, then lit up and projected a holographic Faith, who leapt on the gunner and proceeded to non-verbally make her an offer she couldn't refuse - not that she'd seemed inclined to in the first place.

"See? Slut bombs," Faith smiled proudly, as veils flew into the air. "That freighter crew's probably been in space for weeks, and they're not even allowed to have an issue of Playbeing to look at. Trust me, once we slam a few of these babies into their hull and they start doing their thing, it'll be days before their captain can wrangle the crew into manning their stations again."

"That's... unique," Tara admitted, blushing furiously as the hologram occupied its target's full attention. She turned away to find Willow bending over the communications console, evidently doing some last-minute rewiring behind it, which didn't help her blush subside.

"Hey, she's got a nice-" Faith started.

"Concentrate on your slut bombs," Tara ordered. "Willow?"

"Almost there," Willow said, straightening up. "Just patching up the system a bit, the Aww works best over video link when it's a crystal-clear picture. Shall we try- what the heck?" she broke off, seeing the action on deck.

"It's a hologram," Tara shrugged. "Her idea of psychological warfare."

"What is she doing with..." Willow tilted her head sideways. "Oh! Okay... um, right, then." She steered the communications screen around so that the energetic goings-on weren't going to be in the background.

"Let's do it," she nodded. "The Aww. Not any other 'it' we might be doing. Hailing them."

"Signal, like, achieved, dudette," Shellbacca reported.

"USS Cli- that's ridiculous. USS Hood to Federation transport, respond please." The screen flickered, then cleared to show a drab man in a drab uniform in a drab command deck.

"This is Commander Leylan, Federation contraband transport London," he replied. "You're not listed on Federation traffic control, and not transmitting regulation ident codes, Hood. You are aware those are punishable offences?"

"Stiffs," Faith snorted quietly.

"You don't need to see our ident codes," Willow said sweetly. "I mean, ident codes? It's just paperwork really, isn't it - obviously we're going to get it all done, sealed and stamped and delivered and all that, but better to get the journey done first and worry about the paperwork later, otherwise, well, what if we got interrupted half-way, but we'd already filed a flight plan for the full trip? There'd be going back and revising the documentation and retransmitting it and more work for everyone at the traffic control office and don't you think it's a lot better to get it right the first time 'round? Then there's no extra work, and everyone can go home on time and enjoy a nice cup of coffee, and not be rushed or overworked. Don't you think?"

"Uh... yeah," Leylan nodded, taking on the slightly glazed look that people tended to get when Willow babbled at them unexpectedly. Faith, who had been looking at her watch, sidled up to Tara.

"How did she say all of that in four and a half seconds?" she asked.

"...so in fact it'd save everyone a whole heap of trouble," Willow was saying, "if we took all that nasty contraband erotica off your hands, because then you don't have it, which is what you want, we do have it, which is what we want, or at least what our over-sexed captain wants-"

"I resemble that remark," Faith huffed.

"-and see? Everyone has what they want, everyone's happy, and isn't that a much nicer state of affairs than the one we're currently in?" Judging the Commander to have been deluged by cuteness enough, she lifted her chin and ordered: "So stand down and prepare to transport your cargo to our hold."

"Stand to..." Leylan nodded dazedly, "...transport cargo..."

"I love it when you go al butch at the end," Tara murmured in Willow's ear, as Faith gaped in disbelief through the deck hatch at the stacks of magazines and DVDs materialising in the cargo deck.

"It's not very butch," Willow blushed. "I'm not large with the butch."

"Large enough for me," Tara winked. Willow beamed, then noticed Leylan still zoning out on the monitor.

"Uh, we can go about our business," she finished. "Move along."

"Move along," Leylan ordered, snapping out of his daze.

"How did you do that?" Faith asked, as the London ambled on its way. "I mean, mind control? It's some sort of hypnosis, right? A-"

"That's the Aww," Willow said.

"No kidding?" Faith blinked in surprise, then laughed. "Okay then... Well, Shellie, get us back underway-"

"Incoming!" the first mate announced.

"Oh now what?" Faith moaned in annoyance.

"That was a nice trick," a voice echoed out of the speakers. "But that cargo doesn't belong to you... so it's time to hand it over."

"Receive only," Willow frowned, studying the console. "There's no return signal, I can't Aww them. Whoever they are, they must've guessed how we did that."

"Who is this?" Faith demanded.

"You don't remember me?" the voice asked mockingly. "Oh, but I remember you. I never forget a face." Faith frowned, then realisation dawned.

"Robin!" she snarled. "Show yourself!"

"As you wish, 'Captain,'" the voice chuckled. Everyone on deck whirled around as a shape suddenly blocked out the light from the nearest sun, a massive warship decloaking directly above them.

"That's a Republic heavy cruiser!" Tara said in shock.

"They found us?" Willow added anxiously.

"She's renegade," Faith shook her head, pointing. On the uncomfortably-close hull, they could make out the ship's original name, TCS Icky Eel's Claw, which had been crossed out in bright red paint and replaced with 'USS Robin Reliant'.

"It's my ex," Faith said dejectedly.

Next Chapter:
Recoil! from the unnatural spectacle of a guy who didn't think Faith was all that!
Shrug! as the Clitoral Hood escapes by using a technobabble device never before referred to!
Worry! as Willow and Tara reach Ender, only to be stalked by an unseen predator!

[SithLordWiccan]

Again, I get DIBS!

Well, Chris, it seems that you've been able to top yourself in the comedy department. I mean, even though this fic has produced some very LOL worthy moments, I think the ones present here manage the quite impossible feat of trumping the others flat.

I mean, who ever heard of a ship called the Clitoral Hood? Most people have heard of that, I would imagine. And having the autocensor bleep Faith's dialogue. (I wanna hear that story! Ah, well. Maybe we can hope for it on the outtakes.)

Nice job parodying the "Greedo scene". Thankfully, we don't have to endure years of wondering whether or not Faith shot first. (Though to be honest, something tells me that Faith isn't the type to...um...shoot first. )

I can certainly sympathize with Faith trying to get Willow and Tara's "escapades" on video. I'm sure she's not the only one who'd like the opportunity to try it.

Nice flashback to how Willow and Tara met one another. (And nice use of a "Doctor Who" reference. As a recently converted Whovian, I was kinda hoping I'd see one or two nods to it here. Any chance of getting another, preferably an appearance by a certain race of dustbins with a particular fetish for EX-TER-MIN-A-TING?

Somehow I always knew that Faith was the champion of porn. She's a latter day Robin Hood. All of us should bow down to her and thank her for delivering smutty goodness to one and all.

Can't wait for the next chapter, Chris.

[Cynthia Taz]

ah, another wonderful update. Faith's slut bomb should be category as 'weapon of destruction', though compare to the power of aww it's still has a long way too go... and a newly improved slut bomb with holographic Willow and Tara will definitely do a world of good....

can't wait for the next chapter!

Cynthia Taz

PS: I want a copy the Babe Collective 2428 Aquatic Leisure Attire Calendar and Cuties' Secrets Catalogue...

[grimlock72]

Wherever do you get those ideas, esp. how do you combine them into such a weird convulted comical mess ??

" I steal from the prudish and give to the horny. Is that so wrong? " is a great line, sounds alright coming from Faith too, heh. Once you know her she's easy to persuade ain't she ?

Seems Tara's Republic (sounds nice btw. has bigger problems if rebels can run of with Heavy Cruiser. Having Shatner as captain is bad enough but loosing other big ships.. It's not always size that matters, hopefully..

Now since a captain can't fly such a BIG ship al by him/herself those slutbombs might come in handy after all.

I like this Faith, very much comical..

grimmy

[watty]

I was at all the references I could recognise, so I can imagine all the other ones I don't. Wait, I have to say this again:

Pizza Hutt

The post-modernism of characters acknowledging that they're in a story (with PG-13 ratings, and the beeps!!!), that's taking the 'taking the fourth wall away' to an art.

"But, parsecs are a unit of distance," Willow interrupted.

omg! do you know how that has always bothered me from the first time I saw Episode 4??

LOL about Faith being the Space Quest equivalent of a smut bunny. Who can blame her for wanting to record the lovin'? She deals with these vids all the time, may as well start making her own, right?

Very sweet story about how Tara met Willow. Sometimes the exposition gets in the way, but it's so unintrusive here. Oh, and we so need copies of the Babe Collective 2428 Aquatic Leisure Attire Calendar for every kitten.

Eagerly waiting for the next episode. Faith's ex? How fun!
[br]

[Artemis]

Alex: Thanks There will indeed be more Doctor Who references, including Daleks. Though they won't quite be 'exterminating' as per usual As for Faith's story... Faith isn't at all happy about being bumped down to PG-13, and I can reveal that she has a plan to get around that problem

Cynthia Taz: Thanks. An upgraded 'vixen bomb' featuring Willow and Tara... interesting idea Sadly the calendar and catalogue won't be around for another four centuries :( But I'm sure all Kittens will get preferential treatment when it comes time to order them.

Grimmy: Thanks. Where do the ideas come from? I watch too much sci-fi. How do they get combined like this? Same reason, really The Republic does have a bit of a ship-losing problem, which will be explored in the next chapter - I'll pretend I had it planned all along, rather than just making it up after I read your feedback Still, even the Federation had ships go rogue now and then (three I can think of, off the top of my head - the Reliant was stolen, and the Phoenix and Valiant both went rogue to varying degrees).

Vengeful Mac-watty: Thanks Kudos to Spaceballs for the Pizza Hutt gag. That parsec line always bothered me too - and the real explanation is pretty much the same as the half-assed one Faith gave, which is just compounding the problem. I'm sure Faith does make her own videos, but she's a moral character at heart, by her own weird standards - she'd keep any Willow and Tara goodness she managed to wrangle out of her guests to herself Seems the Babe Collective calendar is in great demand... I might have to see what I can do about that. Not promising anything, but I'll see...

And now, it's time for...

SPACE QUEST!
CHAPTER SEVEN

Author: Chris Cook
Email: alia@netspace.net.au
Rating: PG-13
Copyright: Based on characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy, and a whole bunch of sci-fi things owned by Not Me, most notably including the Space Quest series of games (Sierra Online), Star Wars (George Lucas/Lucasfilm), and Star Trek (Gene Roddenberry/Paramount). Many, many other properties will pop in and out from time to time; no ownership is claimed.

USS Clitoral Hood
Wrong end of USS Robin Reliant's guns

"Your ex?" Tara echoed.

"Doesn't that imply you actually stopped sleeping with someone?" Willow added.

"Hey!" Faith protested. "Okay," she shrugged after a moment's thought, "but hey, on principle... We went out for a long time, three... actually, closer to four hours. It was when I was just a deck hand on the Jolly Roger, learning my trade - pirating and the other stuff. Robin was sweet and all, and uh-huh, you bet he looked fine all right," a wistful smile crossed her face, "but he was one of those guys who sees a girl like me as a challenge."

"I gave you a chance, Faith," Robin's disembodied voice echoed across the deck. "I thought all you needed was the love of a good man, but-"

"I do!" Faith shot back. "Usually around about breakfast time. Then a woman about eleven, flip a coin for lunch, party in the hot tub in the afternoon..."

"You're wasting your life, Faith!"

"Since when do you get to decide that?" she shouted.

"Since I have a bigger ship than you do!" Robin shouted back.

"No question your ship's big," Faith grinned, "but I've handled bigger, and walked away in one piece. Walking slightly funny, granted," she muttered under her breath.

"It's pointless arguing with you, you never listen! Just hand over the porn, so I can deliver it to the rightful authorities." The Robin Reliant opened its gun ports and sprouted an impressive array of weapons.

"That's a lot more than normal for a ship that size," Tara noted, worried.

"He over-compensates," Faith smirked.

"You've got ‘til the count of three," Robin warned. "One... two..."

"Shellie, fire the gun!" Faith ordered.

"Thr-"

A white-hot jet of energy burst from the bow of the pirate ship and splashed over the Robin Reliant's hull, sending it spinning lazily away into the void. Willow and Tara looked around in confusion as the Clitoral Hood's power dimmed, though Faith seemed unconcerned.

"What was that?" Willow asked.

"That wasn't any armament I've seen before," Tara said.

"You know the phrase ‘it's not the size of the waves, but the motion of the ocean'?" Faith asked.

"Yes," Willow said cautiously.

"Anything can be sexy, if you look at it in the right way." Faith chuckled to herself. "That's the Ocean Motion Gun - I just hit them with a psycho-plasmic burst that short-circuited the pleasure centres of every crewman on that ship. Right now they're being hugely aroused by, oh, bulkheads, blinking lights, the sensation of breathing, not to mention the many and varied possibilities open to them in terms of stickin' their hands down their pants and wiggling bits around."

"That'd be... distracting," Tara admitted, gazing at the out-of-control Robin Reliant as it tumbled end over end.

"Distracting ain't the half of it," Faith chortled gleefully. "Not my preferred way of getting a ship full of guys to pop their corks all at once, but it's a nice to have an ace in the hole, if you finished a chapter on a cliffhanger and have to get out of it in a hurry. Only problem is, it drains the ship's power plant for about a minute. Sci-fi tradition, can't seem to get around it no matter how much I tinker with the gun."

"How long do you think it'll take them to get themselves... organised?" Willow asked, following Tara's worried gaze to the distant enemy vessel.

"Oh, plenty of time," Faith said over her shoulder.

"I think they're righting themselves," Tara said.

"Huh?" Faith joined them at the rail and peered through a telescope. "What, did he get a crew of eunuchs this time?"

"They're targeting us, babe-ette," Shellbacca reported.

"Power?"

"Ten seconds."

"They're firing," Tara warned.

"Our shields are good," Faith said confidently.

"Those are frigidity torpedoes, the effect will go through shields," Tara added. "Willow can use the Aww and my Babe Collective training can negate the effect, but you and the rest of the crew-"

"Screw that!" Faith protested. "Shellie! Warp speed! FTL jump! Hyperspace! Starburst! Transition! That... thing that Lexx does! Get us the hell out of here!"

"Warp power available!" the turtle reported.

The Clitoral Hood tore space a new one and vanished, a fraction of a second before the torpedoes hit it. Deprived of their target, they veered around and homed in on the Robin Reliant itself.

"Ha-ha!" Faith cackled, watching the distant scene on the ship's monitor. "That'll teach him!" She made a rude gesture astern, then turned to Willow and Tara.

"So, how do you like the life of a pirate?" she grinned.

"Not for us, I think," Tara returned, allowing herself to smile back a little.

"I like my close shaves a little less close," Willow nodded.

"Speaking of shaves, do you want to see-"

"No," Willow and Tara said at once.

Planet Ender
(Ewoks shot on sight)

Willow, Tara, and Shellbacca materialised in a clearing in the forest, and the transporter beam - evidently reprogrammed by its owner - faded away with an enthusiastic "Hope you get laid down there!" in place of the usual bland corporate feel-good motto.

"It's, like, this way," Shellbacca pointed, taking the lead. "Can't beam down right on top of the gate, they have, like, security forcefields, and stuff."

"Thanks for going with us," Tara said as they set off.

"It's no biggie. The Captain dudette said she's got something she needs to do, but there's stuff she needs dispatched through the Subway, so I do this, y'know, all the time. ‘Sides, I like to get back to nature, and stuff, every now and then. Ender's not home - the surf sucks, and they totally don't know how to make pizza here - but the trees are kinda pretty. Mind the Labion root monster. Hey Frank."

"Hey," a tentacled monstrosity sprawled over a fallen log replied, waving several of its assorted appendages. "Faith around?"

"Sorry dude, no. I'll tell her you said hi."

"Thanks man." Willow and Tara skirted around the creature's perimeter, and deliberately resisted picturing it and Faith together.

"The Subway doesn't mind Faith," Shellbacca went on. "They just, y'know, prefer she stays away. Last time they let her into the SGC, she like tried to open a looped wormhole, so she could meet herself. Took the tech dudes like a week to get the system cool again."

"Why'd she want to meet herself?" Willow asked, while Tara thought ahead a little faster, guessed the answer, and reddened. "What?" Willow asked her. "...Oh."

Shellbecca zoned out a bit, admiring the scenery. Willow walked closer to Tara, studying her face as her blush faded, replaced by a pensive expression.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Hmm? How come?" she replied.

"Little frown," Willow shrugged. "Adorable of course, but still frowny, and a frowny Tara is an unhappy Tara."

"It's nothing. Nothing much, anyway." She grinned sheepishly. "I miss my ship. But there's nothing we can do about it, just now."

"They'll be alright," Willow assured her.

"I know," Tara nodded. "Tattoo's a good exec - if I had to trust my ship to anyone, it'd be him. But... it's still my ship. It's not easy to be away from it, when it's in trouble."

Willow nodded her understanding, and took Tara's arm, hugging it softly.

"Thanks," the blonde smiled. "How did you go online? Anything useful?"

"Oh, yes!" Willow nodded excitedly. She produced a notepadd from her robes. "I accessed the Cutie network, covertly of course, and got to work on the sensor logs from the battle, with a bunch of neat cuteness filters... Here, look at this."

Tara watched the notepadd as it played a recording of the encounter between her ship and the Kilkrazi dreadnought.

"Now if we freeze here," Willow went on, pausing the image, "see how the razor cannon shots seem to come from the Kitten's Paw's weapons array? But, if we zoom in and enhance..." She did so, and Tara smiled in admiration.

"There was a cloaked ship," she said. "The shots come from just in front of the ship's cannons... That Bubble Bath woman must've sat right on our hull, to make it look as if we fired."

"Presumably she got the plan explained to her in very easy-to-follow stages," Willow agreed. "But I went one better. Look at this." She tapped a command into the padd, and the centre of the image blurred and cleared to reveal the ugliest spacecraft in all of recorded history.

"Ugh!" Tara exclaimed. "What's that, and who sneezed it onto my ship?"

"That's her ship," Willow said triumphantly. "It's probably just a standard shuttle, with extra power for the cannon. But that's what it looks like with a Miffed Cutie anti-cuteness cloaking device running. It's so un-cute it's invisible to the naked eye. This is actually with a lot of extra cuteness artificially added to it, so we can see it."

"The mind boggles," Tara said earnestly. "But this is wonderful, Willow. This is irrefutable proof - we can present this to the Senate, and-"

"-and you and the Kitten's Paw will be cleared," Willow nodded. "And we can set about investigating the Miffed Cuties, and finding out how Glorificus is somehow behind it all."

"I was thinking that'd be a good place to start looking," Tara nodded.

"It seemed pretty obvious," Willow agreed. "But the Cutie Masters like to have all the dots connected before they recognise what's staring them in the face... Did you hear something?"

"What?" Tara asked, halting. Up ahead Shellbacca realised his charges had stopped, and paused, looking back curiously.

"Sort of a... clicking," Willow said quietly, turning slowly, scanning the trees around them. "Or a noise that a lizard would make."

"An animal?" Tara asked.

"I don't think so," Willow frowned. She did a double-take at a tree branch not far away.

"What?" Tara followed her gaze, but the branch was empty.

"I almost saw something... I thought I saw eyes," Willow said, shaking her head. Tara blinked, then stared.

"I thought I saw something," she said. "It's gone now... Just for a moment, it looked like a part of the forest moved..."

"Yo, dudettes?" Shellbacca asked, ambling back towards them. "What's the lowdown?"

"I think we're being watched," Tara said quietly.

"Huh... bogus. Like, flashback stuff, Foot Clan in the trees," the turtle frowned. "I don't see anything."

"Me neither," Willow said. "It's gone, whatever it was..."

"Whoa!" Shellbacca said, reeling back from a glance at Willow's padd. "That's totally non-heinous!"

"Is that good or bad?" Willow asked.

"Bad, I think," Tara shrugged.

"What is that thing?"

"That's what's trying to stop us getting to Capsicum," Willow explained.

"Whoa, bummer. Dudette! Get down!"

Willow glanced down to see a triple-laser sight on her shoulder, an instant before Tara tackled her to the ground, shoving Shellbacca out of the way in the same motion. Something whizzed overhead and splattered on a tree trunk, leaving a bright purple mark, but Tara was already rolling over, grabbing the blaster from Shellbacca's belt, and firing back in the direction the shot had come from. Her shot hit the side of a tree, blowing a branch off, and for an instant an exotically-armoured form was visible falling in the debris.

"Whoa," Shellbacca said, getting back to his feet. "Bogus."

"What was that?!" Willow asked, scrambling upright and drawing her sword.

"I don't know," Tara frowned, approaching the scrubby bushes where the debris had landed.

"Someone totally tried to shoot you, dudette!" Shellbacca said in dismay. He peered at the tree behind them, where the shot had hit. "Uh... with a paintball?"

Willow and Tara exchanged incredulous looks, then continued to advance on their would-be attacker. When they got close enough, they again exchanged a glance, confused this time, as the patch of ground where the branch had fallen was quite empty of anything besides bits of wood.

"It can't have gotten away," Tara said. "I saw it fall, and nothing got up, or moved."

"Maybe... it has some sort of camouflage," Willow said slowly. "It could be anywhere..." They both looked slowly around, then jumped as a loud clicking sound emanated from the bushes. Tara quickly picked up a stick and swung it, hitting something invisible in the midst of the debris.

"Ow!" a female voice protested. A patch of forest seemed to recoil, then blur and change colour, chameleon-like. At the point of Tara's blaster and Willow's sword, the patch of invisibility resolved into a young blonde woman, clad slightly in ornate armour but mostly in a fishnet body stocking, with a remote-controlled paintball gun attached to her shoulder plate.

"Uh... hi," she smiled sweetly. "Could you perhaps not kill me? Just wondering."

"Who are-" Willow began. A device on the blonde's waist produced the clicking sound again, and she heaved an exasperated sigh.

"Sorry, one moment, I have to take this," she said, holding up a hand as it being held at gunpoint was a minor inconvenience. She retrieved the device, flipped it open, and held it to her ear.

"Hello? Mum! How many times have I asked you not to call me when I'm on a hunt? Because it's really difficult to be stealthy with my phone buzzing, that's why! I know, but if I put it on silent I'll forget to take it off again after, and I'll be missing calls for like a week. Well, what is it that's so important? See, that totally could have waited until I got home! Mu-u-um, I'm on a hunt, this is important!"

"Excuse us?" Willow asked.

"Mum, I'll call you back... yes, it can wait... no... yes, I know... yes, I'll call my sister... no I won't be nasty to her... yes, I'll feed the sarlacc when I get home... no, I promise I won't feed Dawnie to the sarlacc... mum, that was only one time, and it spat her out, she was fine... mum I have to go... no, seriously... okay... okay, bye mum. Later. Yes, I promise. Bye. I'm going now. Yes, I know. Bye." She flipped the phone closed. "Sorry. Parents, huh?"

"Who are you and why did you shoot at Willow?" Tara asked severely.

"Chill! Those things just sting a bit, she'd have been fine." The blonde stood up and brushed herself off. "And I want it on record that you did not find me on your own. I have an A++ stealth rating, I'm not losing that just because you lucked out with my mum calling, and... You're not locals."

"No," Willow said.

"Oh," the blonde said, perturbed. "So, you wouldn't know about the hunt, and... Okay, I can see how you'd get the wrong impression."

"What impression?" Tara asked.

"You're on a paintball range," the blonde shrugged. Willow and Tara looked accusingly at Shellbacca, who looked uncomfortable.

"Well, technically, the whole, like, planet's a game zone," he explained. "You know, Ender's Games? They televise it... But I totally thought no-one'd be out in the forest like this, I promise, dudettes."

"Fine," Tara sighed, handing his blaster back.

"Sorry about, you know, shooting at you," the blonde said to Willow.

"Don't make a habit of it," Willow replied.

"No, course not. I'm Buffy," she introduced herself. "Yikes," she added, before anyone else could speak, "it that yours?"

"Huh? Oh." Willow noticed Buffy's gaze had fallen on her padd, still displaying the anti-cute ship. "No... just something we ran into."

"Never thought I'd see one of those again," Buffy shivered.

"You've seen it before?" Tara asked, as Shellbacca shrugged and waved for them to follow him as he set off again.

"I'm good at seeing through camouflage," Buffy boasted. "Pretty hard to make a living as a hunter otherwise. Yep, some ditz turned up a few months ago in that hunk of ick, and y'know, bought some stuff..."

"Stuff?" Willow persisted.

"Genetic samples," Buffy clarified. "She said she was from the Republic Museum, and she was cataloguing the finest predators in the galaxy... and... she was lying, huh?"

"Uh-huh," Tara nodded.

"The plot thickens," Willow mused. "What would the Miffed Cuties want with her DNA?"

"I don't know," Buffy declared heroically, "but I intend to find out! So, I can come along, right? To save the galaxy from... whatever it is... going on... these Miffed whatsies are threatening the galaxy, aren't they?"

"So it seems," Tara said, regarding Buffy warily.

"Well then I'm saving it!" the blonde said, resuming her heroic posture. "It's my duty, to see that... my DNA... look, if I'm off-world that's a valid excuse for not having to babysit my sister, okay? Can I please come along and help save the galaxy?"

"What do you think?" Tara asked Willow in a hushed voice, as Buffy looked imploringly at them.

"She may have innate Aww powers," Willow replied. "That's at least a level three pout, untrained of course, but there's talent there. I guess the Temple wouldn't mind having her drop by. And if she does have something to do with all this..."

"Okay, you can join us," Tara told Buffy.

"Yay!" the predator skipped and clapped her hands. "So, fill me in, what are we saving the galaxy from, exactly? And are you establishment or rebels? It's usually rebels."

By unspoken consent Willow - able to shrug off Buffy's pouting and talk non-stop to keep her from interrupting - began to explain their situation.

"Wait," Buffy frowned part-way through, as Willow paused for a rare breath, "rogue starship? Doesn't your fleet keep track of its ships, or something?"

"They used to," Tara offered. "But it all got too complicated..."

"See, they used to just build a few models of ships," Willow explained. "It took ages for Utopia Deuteronopia to build a shipyard capable of constructing a fully-functional starship, but once they had, they could just keep churning them out one after the other.

"They the corps of engineers invented the Configurable Grid Interface," Tara continued. "Shipyards that could reconfigure themselves overnight. Just input a new set of blueprints, and the shipyard would be capable of constructing a completely new class of ship."

"So...?" Buffy asked.

"The TC Fleet used to just re-use the same models every time they needed a new ship," Willow clarified.

"But now they use CGI to produce new ships at the drop of a hat," Tara added.

"And consequentially, there's about a bazillion different classes, and no-one can remember them all."

"I heard it took six months searching the production archives to confirm that the Ha'tak At'tack Cruiser class were built by the Fleet," Willow said.

"They were?" Tara asked, surprised. "I thought they were some kind of mobile tourist attraction. They don't look like TC ships."

"Apparently they are," Willow shrugged. "Some file clerk accidentally sold the whole class to the Goa'nnas. They like parking them in deserts and sunbathing on the sides."

"And I thought I had problems," Buffy muttered to herself.

"Ladies, gate-a-mundo up ahead!" Shellbacca announced. The trio looked through the forest to see a large metal circle standing in a clearing.

"Oh, that thing," Buffy said dismissively. "It doesn't work."

"It does, if you know the code," Shellbacca grinned. "Stand back, this is gnarly."

"No probl-wah!" Buffy yelped, as her step back got her yoinked into the air by a rope trap coiled around her ankle.

"Are you okay?" Willow asked, as she and Tara scrambled underneath to hold Buffy's weight, while Shellbacca rolled his eyes and turned back to the gate's controls.

"Sure," Buffy said, with as much dignity as she could muster. "I meant to do that. Just checking if you were paying attention. Damn Ewok traps."

"Hold her steady," Shellbacca said over his shoulder. "This should get her down." He hunted among the various symbols on the gate's control device, and pressed several.

"Random doodles locked," the gate announced. "Please stand back." The metal circle flashed into life and generated an elastic pink film over itself, which swelled outwards as if being inflated from the other side.

"Is that bubblegum?" Willow asked, sniffing. The huge pink bubble intersected the rope holding Buffy aloft, vaporising it, then abruptly burst, leaving a liquid-like event horizon in the gate.

"Apple-flavoured, I think," Tara said, picking a piece of gum off her shoulder, waiting for Willow and Buffy to pick themselves up off of her.

"Wormhole extreme, dudettes," Shellbacca announced, striding up to the gate and vanishing into the event horizon, leaving ripples in his wake. The trio of women followed him up to the gate, and regarded it with various degrees of apprehension.

"It's not going to do that thing where the bird runs through it, and then it's solid when the coyote tries to follow, is it?" Willow asked.

"Only one way to find out," Tara shrugged, sticking her arm into the gate. Barring a few ripples, nothing seemed to happen. "Looks safe enough."

"Hey, look - this is cool!" Buffy exclaimed. Willow and Tara glanced at her, to see her drawing a smiley face in the event horizon.

"Come on," Willow sighed, taking Buffy by the arm and leading her through, with Tara beside them.

Next Chapter:
Cheer! as the Kitten's Paw makes a reappearance!
Boo! as Glorificus does likewise!
Complain about pretentious sci-fi! as we do the political subplot!

[SithLordWiccan]

Wow. Third time DIBS. I must be getting good at this.

ETA: Well, I'm back, and ready to leave the every wonderful feedback.

Seems like our girls have gotten themselves another companion, though I do have to question Buffy's hunting attire. A fishnet bodystocking is not something you wear when you're trying not to be noticed.

LOL @ Faith's antics towards Robin. And I'm sure that she's had a lot of experience playing with...erm, big ships. And I want to see her...close shave.

And yay for more sci-fi references! I can't get enough of these. I got at least three Stargate references (the best one being Faith's attempt to infiltrate SGC to meet herself. Hmm...fanfic ideas are brewing.)

And dear god, Chris. You are a master of writing cliffhangers. Update soon, please?

[grimlock72]

Having only seen the SG movie I got none of the references, but Faith meeting herself is a fun idea Did I spot some predator in there btw. with a cell phone even ??

I liked the Ewoks, cute little critters Now if we're talking Barf-Barf Binks...

Don't make the political subplot to difficult for little old me, ok ? Star Wars ep.1 was hard enough, though this story is a bit more interesting which might help

-grimmy

[Useful_Oxymoron]

Brave, brave Sir Robin... Uh, sorry, couldn't resist.

Faith in the SGC mucking about with the system... cue the mental image of general Hammond personally kicking her through the wormhole back to her homeplanet.

Buffy is the predator! Oh, I just bet Arnie S. and Danny Glover are toast now, that's for sure. I think she's no match for the Aliens, though... especially if she brings along her phone. Aliens tends to be non-understanding about those sort of things.

Labion Root monster... cue nightmares of playing that game on an ancient computer with a monochrome monitor so you hardly see the roots. Unpleasantless...

And consequentially, there's about a bazillion different classes, and no-one can remember them all."

The kit-bash is a bit more of a classic, though.

Great story! Keep 'em coming, please!

[watty]

at Faith and Robin's story, such a contrast with how Tara met Willow.

Another at the Robin Reliant, which teehee, is anything but big. I can just imagine it being staffed by a bunch of Del-Boys and Rodneys, heehee.

Funny thing about Endor. It's not cute. Although, as a planet-wide paintball arena it has potential. Love Buffy, she's a riot! Appointing herself sidekick.

Oh, btw, I so picked up

dudette

gonna use it more in real life, it's a cool word.

[br]

[Cynthia Taz]

Another great update! So Buffy fed Dawn to sarlacc... um... so wanna see it...
And how much I would willing to pay to watch Faith's ship in action...

[Darth Pacula]

Four updates, two and a half months. That's how long I let my feedback for this slide. That is truly atrocious. And then I just went and lost all the feedback I just wrote, because I hit ctrl-V instead of ctrl-C.

As such, I can't be arsed writing it again. Sorry. But to summarize, this is hilarious, and you rock.

Cheers,
Paul.

[Artemis]

Alex: Thanks Hey, I agree with you on fishnet not being good hunting gear, but that's the Predators' choice, not me. I guess when you can become invisible, you can wear whatever you like. Yep, Stargate references - more this chapter. Sorry the update took this long.

Grimlock: Thank you. Well-spotted, Buffy's cell-phone was indeed doing that weird noise the Predator kept making (which I can only assume was it being over-dramatic, as you'd think normally a hunter would want to keep quiet while it's hunting). I wouldn't worry about the political subplot - nothing in this fic has been very intellectual so far, I doubt it'll start now

U_O: Thanks. Now I've got the Brave Sir Robin song stuck in my head (and yes, I do know all the horrible methods of death). I too had to struggle with the Labion Root Monster - not because I had no colour on the monitor, but because I had no coordination Normally yes, aliens would be unkind to Buffy as a Predator - then again, who knows what the aliens would turn out like in this fic?

watty-boss: Thank you. I owe 'dudette' to the TMNT cartoon - it's been ages since I saw it, but I'm pretty sure they used to say that to April all the time. Buffy's self-appointed sidekick status will continue, and get more grandiose. And yeah, even though we don't see them much (or ever) down here, I know what a, let's face it, silly-looking thing a Robin Reliant is.

Cynthia Taz: Thanks. Yeah, Dawn got fed to the sarlacc, but she's survived. Dawn's fine too (drum beat ) Faith's ship is more or less stolen from Captain Harlock - though the main gun is more Star Blazers, and I don't know of any TV show that has what the main gun does to its target.

Paul: Thanks. Ah, the dreaded ctrl-V - I've done that a few times myself. Why'd they have to pick two keys so close together? In any case, the thought is appreciated

And now (finally) it's time for:

SPACE QUEST!
CHAPTER EIGHT

Author: Chris Cook
Email: alia@netspace.net.au
Rating: PG-13
Copyright: Based on characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy, and a whole bunch of sci-fi things owned by Not Me, most notably including the Space Quest series of games (Sierra Online), Star Wars (George Lucas/Lucasfilm), and Star Trek (Gene Roddenberry/Paramount). Many, many other properties will pop in and out from time to time; no ownership is claimed.

The SGC
(Just outside the range of MGM's legal department)

Willow, Tara, and Buffy stepped out of the wormhole's other end to find themselves in a cavernous bunker-like chamber, with Shellbacca standing nearby facing away.

"That felt like it took ages," Buffy complained. She looked at her travelling companions. "Uh... you're kind of naked, did you know that?"

"Eep!" Willow exclaimed, covering herself with her hands as best she could.

"I hate it when teleports do that," Tara muttered, doing likewise.

"Hey, where's my armour?" Buffy protested. "I'm naked - I can't be naked! Just because stylish predator combat boots are affordable doesn't mean they're easy to find! Especially in my size, it's like they think if you're not six feet tall you don't need bonded polycarbide footwear..."

All three were surprised once more when their clothes emerged out of the gate behind them and, in various intricate convolutions of the fabric of space, wrapped themselves back around their owners under their own power.

"That was an... odd sensation," Tara said warily.

"I think I just lived a day in Faith's life backwards," Willow snorted.

"Sorry dudettes," Shellbacca said, turning around. "Forgot to mention, the, like, more remote gates are still on ADSL - Assigned Decency Standard Lag."

"Huh?" Buffy asked, her eyebrows meeting in confusion on her forehead like two cars trying to park in the same spot.

"Our PG-13 rating took a few seconds longer to arrive than we did," Willow explained. All four turned as a blast door in the side of the chamber opened to reveal a woman in a yellow jumpsuit-like uniform, accompanied by a squad of guards.

"Oh, it's you," she said, seeing Shellbacca. "Your captain isn't around, is she?"

"No problemo General, she just sent us. She's like, busy, or something."

"Better safe than sorry." The woman looked at Willow, Tara and Buffy, and extended a hand in greeting.

"Welcome to the SGC - I'm General April O'Neil. One L."

"How many O'Neils are there around here?" Buffy asked.

"You'd be surprised." O'Neil glanced at Tara. "You're with the Fleet? The silver bodysuits a giveaway; Shellie, why is Faith sending Fleet officers here?"

"Relax," the turtle said soothingly, "she's cool."

"Because you know the secondary point of this place is smuggling, which is by definition illegal?" O'Neil asked.

"Yeah. No problemo, Captain Tara and her Cutie friend are just on their way to Capsicum, no questions asked. It's, like, a 'bigger fish to fry' kind of scenario."

"True," Willow nodded. "We're not here to enforce any local laws. Uh, so long as you're not violating the big ones, that is... Wait, secondary purpose? What's the primary one?"

"Don't you know what the 'GC' in SGC stands for?" O'Neil asked. Willow and Tara shook their heads.

"It didn't really seem, y'know, relevant," Shellbacca shrugged.

"Excuse me," a man in a ridiculous outfit shouted from the back of the room, where he had set up a curious device. The gate opened with its customary elastic burp.

"Move to one side, please," O'Neil waved to the group. They watched as the man stood back from his device, which opened up to reveal a small metal ball surrounded by three spiky, spinning rings.

"Oh, does that power the wormholes?" Willow asked.

"Is that a Vega machine?" Tara wondered. "I didn't realise they came with spikes."

"Actually, no," O'Neil said. At a signal from its controller, the three rings aligned, and sent the tiny ball hurtling out, through the gate.

"Fore!" he yelled.

"It's 'Golf Club'," O'Neil explained. She turned to the golfer, who was packing up his portable tee and studying a monitor. "Looked like a good opening drive, Jack."

"Yeah, fifteen billion light-years down the fairway," he replied. "It's a par five, though. Tricky cluster of black holes just short of the green."

"Golf club?" Willow asked incredulously.

"Sure," O'Neil said. "The whole point of golf is to use the maximum amount of real estate for the minimum amount of sport. You can't get bigger than the whole universe. We're just doing the smuggling thing to keep the business running - the high-paying players aren't turning up yet. We haven't figured out a way to fit golf buggies with engines big enough to get around the course on their own."

"I thought golfers used metal sticks," Buffy said. "What's with the ring thing?"

"Yeah, we have some rather large and powerful members," O'Neil said, wincing. "The whole 'golf club' thing got to be too much of a problem after Galactus misunderstood the rules and used the whole club - as in this entire facility - as a sand wedge. Hence the automated system. Now, are you ladies going straight to Capsicum on foot, or would you prefer we send your ship along? I assume you have a ship?" she added to Tara.

"Yes, but they're not with us at the moment," she admitted.

"Not a problem, we'll use the big gate. Follow me please."

"Dudettes, it's been totally real," Shellbacca smiled. "But I gotta head off, Faith needs me to keep her cargo moving."

"Goodbye Shellbacca," Willow said, shaking the turtle's three-fingered hand.

"Here's Faith's payment," Tara added, programming a data chip and handing it over.

"Thanks dudette!" Shellie grinned.

"And don't worry," Buffy proclaimed, striking a heroic pose. "We'll save the galaxy, no matter what tries to stop us!"

"Uh... okay," the turtle nodded, bemused.

"You know you're just tagging along, right?" Willow asked Buffy.

"I don't mind keeping a low profile," she nodded. "But at the crucial moment, I'll-"

"Are you coming?" General O'Neil called from the corridor.

"Oh, whatever," Buffy grumbled as Willow and Tara headed off.

The SGC
Super-Gate Room

"Alright, what's your ship's name?" O'Neil asked, standing by the gate controls.

"The TCS Kitten's Paw," Tara replied.

"With or without italics?"

"With."

"Okay, I'll tell you what," O'Neil said. "As a favour to Faith for not screwing with causality again, I'll authorise a super-gate deployment. That'll get you, and your ship, to Capsicum right away."

"Oh... uh, thank you," Tara smiled, surprised. "That's very generous."

"I just don't want her to turn up in person again," O'Neil muttered. "You have no idea how much work it is rebuilding the time-space continuum before anyone notices it's broken. It was just lucky for us she launched her little self-love experiment on a Friday evening, so we had the weekend to fix it. If it'd been a weeknight, everyone would have shown up to work the next day to find their Tuesdays stuck sideways through last month, and the cretaceous age wedged upside-down in the garage."

"These gates can really do that?" Willow asked.

"Flying through wormholes ain't like dusting crops," O'Neil nodded. "For one thing, there's not a lot of insecticides involved. And propeller-driven aircraft don't play a major part in it, except that one time we accidentally scooped up that Earhart woman and couldn't figure out how to send her back. We ended up setting her up running a bar in a space station and pretending it never happened - it was that or a guest role on Voyager, and she said she'd rather have a steady job. Okay, the Kitten's Paw... looks like they're out in the Mylanta Nebula, keeping out of the way of a Republic flagship."

"Are they alright?" Tara asked quickly.

"Doesn't look like they've taken any damage. We're just about ready to bring them in now."

"Bring them in?" Willow asked. "You've got a spaceport in this place?"

"No need," O'Neil shook her head. "We can bring them in here."

Willow, Tara, and Buffy all looked around the nondescript concrete chamber, which was roughly the size of a shipping crate, with varying degrees of disbelief.

"I know what you're thinking," O'Neil smiled to herself. "There's not enough space. That's why the first thing we do-" The nearby gate burst into life, and disgorged something like a bubble of heat-haze, which filled the centre of the room with a slightly eye-watering optical effect. "-is gate in a hell of a lot of space."

"That's... implausible," Willow nodded, staring around at the room, which was now somewhat larger than a decent-sized moon.

"But effective. I mean, there's plenty of space out there, no-one's going to miss a bit for half an hour, are they?"

Battlestar Gesundheit
Galactic Sector Twelve-and-three-quarters

The Commander glared around in unspecified dissatisfaction as, over the noise of spacecraft hulls scraping together, the tactical display showed the Battlestar, its subsidiary fleet, and the swarm of Xylon raiders - all previously spread over several hundred thousand cubic kilometres - now tightly packed into a very confused mass twenty metres wide.

"What the hell just happened?!"

The SGC
Super-Gate Room

"And here comes your ship," O'Neil continued, working the controls. The gate opened again, and through a rather severe twisting of several laws of physics disgorged the Kitten's Paw, intact, through its five-meter-wide circumference, and into the suitably-enlarged room. The ship landed with a loud 'clang' on the concrete floor, making Tara wince.

"Sorry," O'Neil said bashfully.

"I just got that aqua paint job done, too," Tara muttered. They looked up as, far away - according to the convoluted physics of the room - a hatch opened on top of the ship's bridge module, and Tattoo's head poked out.

"It's okay Tattoo," Tara called up to him. "We'll be going to Capsicum now."

"Ah... okay boss," he shrugged.

"Via a panel-beater," Tara added, frowning at the damage to her ship's hull.

Planet Capsicum
Homeworld of the URP

Tara looked out of the airlock warily.

"Okay, I think we got it right this time," she allowed. "Tattoo, keep the engines running in case we need to make a quick getaway." Willow and Buffy followed her out onto the landing pad.

"Why'd we have to leave so quick?" Buffy wondered.

"Think how long it took to draw and colour that one page," Tara pointed out. "If we stayed a comic, this chapter would be even later than it is already."

"I wouldn't have minded staying there a bit longer," Willow grinned. She added, whispering in Tara's ear: "Your bottom is really cute." Tara blushed, and bumped her hip into Willow's

"I never realised how much I'm wearing practically nothing!" Buffy complained. "Mum was right all those times she told me I wasn't allowed to go out looking like this... who knew?"

"So, how come you're out, looking like that anyway?" Willow asked.

"Uh, invisibility field?" Buffy said. "Makes it kind of difficult to ground me. So, this is Capsicum, huh?" She looked around at the horizon-to-horizon city. "Is there a planet somewhere underneath all this, or it is just skyscrapers all the way through?"

"No-one knows," Willow replied, while Tara flagged down a taxi. "They sent an expedition down to the lowest basement anyone could find last year to figure it out."

"And?"

"Their last transmission was 'My god, it's full of Starbucks,' then they were never heard from again."

Planet Capsicum
United Republic of Planets Senate (lobby)

The trio made their way stealthily through the throng of senators, aides, sycophants, and assorted hangers-on. Luckily the escorts on the arms of most of the senators were exotic enough that no-one paid the three of them any attention. Until someone shouted at them at the top of her lungs.

"Willow! Tara! Uh... scantily-clad stranger!"

"Oh no," Willow shook her head, as Faith elbowed her way through the crowd, wearing a Navy uniform that had been substantially cut down from its original size. "We're trying to be inconspicuous. We were trying, I should say."

"Oh, sorry," Faith shrugged. "No biggie... Hey, everyone! Get a load of these!" The pirate turned back to the crowd and pulled her top down.

"How does that help?" Tara asked sceptically.

"They're not looking at you anymore," Faith grinned. "How've you guys been? Who's the blonde? You promised if you were gonna have a threesome it'd be with me!"

"No we didn't!" Willow exclaimed.

"You did in my imagination," Faith smirked.

"I'm Buffy," Buffy introduced herself. "Saviour of the Universe."

"Does it need saving?" Faith asked.

"Well, yes-" Tara said.

"And I'm the girl to do it!"

"-but only coincidentally. What are you doing here? We left you half way across the galaxy."

"Are you kidding?" Faith laughed. "The amount of time it took for you to get to this chapter, I've been from one side of the galaxy to the other, and added another digit to the number of people I've slept with."

"That's... great, Faith," Willow sighed. "But we kind of need to be low-profile here..."

"Oh, sorry. I'll ditch the uniform, it's probably drawing attention."

"Is she always like this?" Buffy asked, as Faith quickly disrobed in front of everyone.

"We haven't really known her that long," Tara shrugged.

"But the smart money is on 'yes'," Willow added. "I'm not so familiar with the upper echelons of government... Anyone have any ideas how we get into the senate itself?"

"Yo," Faith said, dropping her skirt on the tray of a passing waiter. "Not a problem, I'm in and out of the senate all the time. Because there's a bunch of cute senators who are in and out of-"

"Yes, Faith," Willow frowned, "we all saw that coming."

"So did-"

"That too. Can you get us in the senate? By which I mean," she added, as Faith opened her mouth, "can you implement some means of the four of us being able to enter the senate, not anything else you might be about to suggest based on the phrase 'get us'?"

"Oh, fine," Faith crossed her arms. "Okay, follow me."

URP Senate
President Glorificus's Office

Tara pushed the door to the President's office open and strode through, with Willow at her side, and Buffy lagging behind, peering over her shoulder to where Faith was making out with a squad of presidential guards.

"What the- guards!" Glorificus shouted.

"They're busy," Tara snapped.

"All twelve of them?"

"Afraid so," Willow grinned.

"Wow, they didn't teach that in high school sex ed," Buffy mused, staring through the side door to the restroom Faith had dragged the guards into.

"Okay," Glorificus nodded. "In that case... It's so good to see you Captain Tara, I'm immensely relieved you survived that unfortunate and entirely nothing-to-do-with-me incident in the Neutral Zone."

"Uh-huh," Tara said flatly.

"I don't suppose," Glorificus continued, "that you're so overwhelmed by my being pleased to see you that you'd overlook that uncharacteristic attempt to have my guards shoot you just now?"

"No," Tara frowned.

"We've got evidence," Willow said. "Scans of the stealth ship your sidekick used to attack the Kilkrazi ambassador's vessel, full sensor logs of Admiral Shatner's attempt to blow us up, and the ambassador's daughter is ready to testify about the deal you made with her father to start a war between the Republic and the Kilkrazi."

"Can it coppertop," Glorificus snarled, before snapping back to a sickly-sweet smile and approaching Tara. "Tara, honey, you know I've always wanted nothing but the best for you..."

"Keep your distance," Tara warned. "Willow's told me all about Miffed Cutie mind-wiping powers, you're not getting your hands into any part of me."

"If she's not interested, I'll give it a go!" Faith called from the other room.

"The idea never crossed my mind," Glorificus protested, quickly discarding her black leather mind-wiping gloves. "No, see, this is actually all for the good of the Republic. The Cuties aren't any use anymore, they're old and stale-"

"Hey!" Willow protested.

"-their ways aren't up to keeping the peace, and they're not willing to consider alternatives. Miffed Cuties aren't evil, we're just different to them - it's not our fault they consider us 'unnatural' after all. And I know I've had to be manipulative, and not reveal everything right away, but in fact, you see, everything I've done has been to make the galaxy a better, safer place. Especially for you, Tara - in fact, I want you to be my new apprentice. Huh? How does the title 'Luxury Bath' sound? You could help protect the galaxy, and all the Cuties, including Willow, wouldn't have to endanger themselves ever again."

"So you've been trying to help me all along?" Tara asked.

"Yes, of course."

"Even though you're trying to start a war that'll wipe out half the galaxy, just to keep yourself in power?"

"Uh, yes... can't make an omelette without breaking a few... solar systems, you know..."

"And you've directly tried to have me killed several times?"

"Well... not a lot..."

"And you've tried to kill Willow too?"

"Uh... see, I can explain that..."

"In fact, if everything had gone your way, Willow and I would both be dead by now," Tara finished.

"Um... well... okay, I know it looks bad..." She suddenly flung out her hand, sending a bolt of lightning shooting towards Tara, but Willow intercepted it with her toast knife.

"You mean, evil person!" Buffy shouted. Glorificus looked nonplussed.

"Do I know you?"

"Buffy Summers, chosen one."

"Who chose you?"

"Uh... I did?"

Glorificus gave up, and sprinted back behind her desk.

"You'll never defeat me!" she boasted. "I don't care if you've uncovered my fiendish plot to create a huge army of clones on the ocean planet Kaminouttatherain and then goad the Kilkrazi into declaring war on the Republic so that the senate has no choice but to authorise the army's use, so that it can then turn on the Cuties and wipe them out and leave me as unopposed Empress of the whole galaxy!"

"Well," Willow admitted, "we'd figured out the bit about starting a war... the rest is new though."

"Oh?" Glorificus's face fell.

"Thanks for filling in the blanks."

"Uh... sure. Anytime." Glorificus looked around desperately, then flung herself into her chair, which shot up through the ceiling. Willow and Tara ran to the office's windows to see a Miffed Cutie stealth ship take off from the roof and cloak itself.

"Whoops," Tara cringed. "Do we have a Plan B?"

"Senate chamber," Willow said.

URP Senate
Senate Chamber

A hooded and cloaked figure stood on the central dais of the huge Senate chamber, addressing the various senators moving here and there in their senatorial travel pods on the polished floor.

"It is im-per-a-tive that we declare war now!" she shouted, surreptitiously reading from a notebook. "I therefore put forward the motion that this senate au-tho-ri-se the Random War Act, and fur-ther-more also authorise the act to legitimise any secret armies that may or may not have been built without anyone's approval or knowledge, no matter how suspicious the whole things sounds! All in favour!"

"Hold it!" Willow shouted, as Tara drove her towards the dais in a spare travel pod. "The Cutie Order objects on the basis that the President is evil, and also you're not the President anyway!"

"Am too!"

"Are not!"

"Am too!"

"Am too!" Willow grinned.

"Are not, and I can prove it!" Harmony shouted back, pulling back her hood.

"What do you know, it worked," Faith chuckled from the travel pod's back seat, where she was crammed in with Buffy. "Guess I owe you five bucks Red."

"O-okay," Harmony stuttered over a chorus of jeers from the senators. "Well... actually I am President Glorificus, yeah! Except I was attacked by Cuties, and their evil nasty magic made me look... you know, younger and hotter... Evil magic does that, you know. And coincidentally the security tapes from the President's office were mysteriously destroyed, so there'll be no record of her, I mean me, doing anything suspicious like using Miffed Cutie lightning powers, or stuff-"

"Uh, no, the security records are intact," the Senatorial secretary pointed out.

"Shut up!" Harmony hissed, as the video footage appeared on the Senate's jumbo-big screen. The senators booed and jeered as Glorificus tried to fry Tara with lightning, then went silent as the footage switched to events in the restroom, featuring Faith and the Presidential Guards.

"Oh - hey!" Faith shouted, getting to her feet. "I'm pay-per-view, that'll be twenty bucks each from all of you!"

"I... propose," Admiral Shatner said, getting to his feet in the Navy delegation pod, "thatweignorethese... farcicalallegations..."

"And we can prove you're part of the plot too!" Tara glared at him. "You tried to destroy my ship!"

"That'sa... lie!" Shatner shouted, grabbing the wheel of his travel pod and accelerating towards his accusers.

"I'll handle this," Faith said, stepping out of their pod.

"Faith, be careful!" Buffy warned.

"Oh come on, it's just a dodgem car."

"Hey," the secretary protested, "you're not allowed to leave your pod while the senate is in session-"

"Oh kiss my ass," Faith sneered. "On 5:30pm Tuesday, if that's good for you." She jogged over to Shatner's pod and smacked him on the head with an impressively large dildo, knocking him out. His pod ground to a halt up against the central dais, which Willow and Tara were clambering to the top of.

"Hey!" Harmony protested. "This isn't fair - you can't treat the President like this-"

"You're not the President," Willow snapped.

"Yes I am!" Harmony retorted. "Aren't I? Who won that argument?"

"We did, you're not the President," Tara said, shoving her aside. "Everyone, listen up! Glorificus has confessed to high treason, and is escaping to Kaminouttatherain where she's been building a clone army. We need the whole navy mobilised right away - except Admiral Shatner - to stop them from completing their preparations for war. Are we all agreed?"

The chamber filled with murmurs as the senators began to bicker with each other.

"Can we do a popularity poll first?"

"How's this going to affect my voters?"

"What about the allegations that the Kilkrazi have WMDs?"

"Can I try?" Faith asked, tossing the dildo to Buffy. "Hey, hold this for me."

"Where'd you get this from anyway?" she asked.

"Three guesses," Faith grinned.

"Ew!"

"Here, let me," Faith said, climbing to the top of the dais. "I know how to handle politicians. Hey everyone! Vote for me and you can define 'sexual relations' any way you want! All in favour?"

"AYE!" the entire Senate shouted.

"There you go," Faith grinned at Willow and Tara.

"This isn't doing wonders for my belief in the democratic process," Tara muttered.

"At least we got the result we wanted," Willow shrugged. "What say we sort this out, then take a couple of weeks off, then reform the political system of the galaxy?"

"Alright," Tara smiled. "Just so long as we've got a schedule set out. I'm worried though - we don't know how close Glorificus is to having her army completed. What if they're ready to fight by the time we arrive? We'll have the fleet at our backs, but-"

"-better to stop the battle than have to win it," Willow finished. "Well... do you suppose under the circumstances we'd be allowed to use some highly unauthorised technology?"

"I think Faith just got herself elected President," Tara shrugged. "Under those circumstances, who knows?"

"Come with me to the Cutie temple," Willow said. "I think I know a way we can beat Glorificus to Kaminouttatherain."

"Where are we going?" Buffy asked. "Did we save the galaxy, or are we still working on that? Can I come along?"

"Me too," Faith added. "As your newly-elected President, I insist. It's fun hanging around with you guys." She turned back to the assembled senators. "Okay people, I'm off for a bit. Uh, be awesome to each other until I get back, that's an order. And have tribute ready for me - studly guys and comely lasses. Or vice versa, I'm not fussy."

Planet Capsicum
The Holy Temple of the Cutie Order

"What is it?" Buffy asked, looking at the tall blue box stuffed inelegantly one of the Cutie Temple's dusty storage rooms.

"It's a spatio-temporal transport capsule," Willow said.

"It's a what now?"

"A mobile phone," Willow explained, opening the door. "Everybody get in."

"It'll be kind of a tight squeeze in there," Buffy pointed out.

"All the better," Faith smirked at her.

"Oh for the last time - I'm not bi!" Buffy protested.

"I've got a Buffy the Vampire Slayer season three DVD set that says you are," Faith shot back.

"That's subtext," Buffy argued. "It might be attraction, if you look at it that way, that's not the same thing as confirmation!"

"Yeah yeah, and Xena and Gabby were just 'friends', sure," Faith laughed, taking Buffy's hand and dragging her into the phone box. "You keep telling yourself that... Wow."

"It's... bigger on the inside than it is on the outside," Buffy said, looking around the cavernous control chamber.

"Oh, no," Willow shook her head, fiddling with the central console. "No, that'd be breaking all the laws of physics. You can't have something bigger on the inside than it is on the outside."

"Oh," Buffy said. "But... how?"

"It's smaller on the outside than it is on the inside," Willow smiled.

"Uh... but that... hey, hang on a minute!"

"Are we ready to go?" Tara asked, closing the door behind her as she entered the chamber. "The Kitten's Paw is leading the fleet, they'll be there in thirty-six hours."

"Alrighty, let's get this show on the road!" Willow said excitedly. "Course laid in, coordinates set, and here we go!" She flipped a lever, and the console's central column began pulsing up and down.

"Heh," Faith chuckled. "Has anyone ever noticed how phallic that is?"

"I'm sure no-one but you thinks of things like that," Buffy pouted.

Next Chapter:
Pray! as Willow and Tara try to foil Glorificus's evil scheme!
Fantasize! as Faith engages in more lewd conduct!
Um...! It's not easy coming up with three new adjectives every time, you know...

[SithLordWiccan]

DIB-A-ROONI!

ETA: OK, I'm back. (And fourth time in a row I got the dibs. Hooray me.)

Anyways, Chris, if this is what you do when you take too long to do an update, I can't wait till you get around to updating "Smut Bunnies". (Which, by the way, when is?)

Once again, I have to say that my favorite part of the story is all the references you put into it. I've started up a running tally of how many I actually get, and...well, let's just say that the number's really, really huge. Of the ones in this chapter, I gotta say that the nod to the TARIDS was the best. I'm surprised at how quickly I've become a Whovian.

"That felt like it took ages," Buffy complained.

No kidding.

And HOORAY! for NakedWillow and NakedTara. Oh, yeah. And NakedBuffy, too.

"Our PG-13 rating took a few seconds longer to arrive than we did," Willow explained.

And what a few seconds it was.

"Welcome to the SGC - I'm General April O'Neil. One L."

"How many O'Neils are there around here?" Buffy asked.

"You'd be surprised." O'Neil glanced at Tara.

I don't know what's funnier: the fact that this is funny on its own, or the fact that it's even funnier if you get it.

And a great, big LMAO @ the comic panel. (who did that, anyways?) I've been wondering what the Kitten's Paw looked like. I never thought that it would look like the Andromeda Ascendant. I take it you're a big fan of that show, too?

"Think how long it took to draw and colour that one page," Tara pointed out. "If we stayed a comic, this chapter would be even later than it is already."

"I wouldn't have minded staying there a bit longer," Willow grinned.

Hee!

"Is there a planet somewhere underneath all this, or it is just skyscrapers all the way through?"

"No-one knows," Willow replied, while Tara flagged down a taxi.

I could give you the Star Wars explanation for that, if I wasn't too busy laughing about this...

"They sent an expedition down to the lowest basement anyone could find last year to figure it out."

"And?"

"Their last transmission was 'My god, it's full of Starbucks,' then they were never heard from again."

And HOORAY! for Faith making an appearance again, and doing a lot more good than Han Solo ever did. (I mean, did you ever see him drop his...or make out with...or suggest...OK, I think I should stop right there...)

"Are you kidding?" Faith laughed. "The amount of time it took for you to get to this chapter, I've been from one side of the galaxy to the other, and added another digit to the number of people I've slept with."

HEE!

"You'll never defeat me!" she boasted. "I don't care if you've uncovered my fiendish plot to create a huge army of clones on the ocean planet Kaminouttatherain and then goad the Kilkrazi into declaring war on the Republic so that the senate has no choice but to authorise the army's use, so that it can then turn on the Cuties and wipe them out and leave me as unopposed Empress of the whole galaxy!"

Hey! Way to give away the ending of Episode II (the actual one, in addition to mine.)

"Well... actually I am President Glorificus, yeah! Except I was attacked by Cuties, and their evil nasty magic made me look... you know, younger and hotter... Evil magic does that, you know. And coincidentally the security tapes from the President's office were mysteriously destroyed, so there'll be no record of her, I mean me, doing anything suspicious like using Miffed Cutie lightning powers, or stuff-"

And again with the plot giving away...

"I've got a Buffy the Vampire Slayer season three DVD set that says you are," Faith shot back.

"That's subtext," Buffy argued. "It might be attraction, if you look at it that way, that's not the same thing as confirmation!"

Hee! That reminds me, I got the Chosen Collection a year ago, and I've yet to actually delve into it (mostly because the packaging design makes me wonder whether or not I'm gonna break a disc when I try to get it out). It's things like this that make me wanna, though.

"It's... bigger on the inside than it is on the outside," Buffy said, looking around the cavernous control chamber.

"Oh, no," Willow shook her head, fiddling with the central console. "No, that'd be breaking all the laws of physics. You can't have something bigger on the inside than it is on the outside."

Yeah, you can.

"Heh," Faith chuckled. "Has anyone ever noticed how phallic that is?"

"I'm sure no-one but you thinks of things like that," Buffy pouted.

Well, I do...now that Chris has brought it up. Thanks a lot.

Glad to see this get updated, Chris. More soon? Please?

[spells42]

Chris
, , ,

I think your brain should be preserved for scientific research (when you've done with it, of course!) to see what it takes to produce such convoluted, twisted, crazy, .. and did I say funny? ... fiction.

Anne

[notl33t]

whoo! just in time to beat my post-Thanksgiving studying spell.

nice comic panel! it makes visualization on my poor imagination-sucked brain a little easier.

excellent chapter as always. although i can't be the only one wishing for more random TMNT-related characters . . .