A sleek red hovercycle pulled into the huge scrapyard, mountains of smashed cars, trucks and appliances littered about for miles in all directions, a cemetery to technology long gone by – cast off relics of a bygone age, museum pieces, if museums still existed. The black girl wore a cute white blouse and green miniskirt, her blouse unbuttoned halfway down, the lower half bunched up and knotted above her bellybutton, and she wore knee-length white stockings and black Buster Browns. Kicking the hovercycle into park, she hopped off and removed her helmet, allowing her fantastic mane of huge wavy coils to spring out in all directions, a halo that exploded around her head and shoulders down to the middle of her back, thick and luxurious and quite physically impossible unless your name happens to be Kendra Wellseason.

  Which it was.

  “Hippie!” she screamed, rushing to the crumbling shack situated between twin towers of smashed automobiles, a dark valley of rust and broken dreams, headlights like sad eyes staring out from amid the rubble. “Hippie Matchstick! Lord Almighty, do NOT make me use your full name if you don't want me to!”

  She barged into the abandoned garage, long since stripped of anything of value, garbage littering the floor, grime and mildew saturating the corners and edges. Posters lined the walls – Pink Floyd's 'The Wall', the Grateful Dead, some of Cheech & Chong's greatest hits. Bowls of incense cluttered the floor, she nearly tripping over one, scattering its contents, its pungent aroma causing her eyes to water, her throat to burn. “Dang it, Hippolyta!”

  There, lounging on an upturned blue plastic milk crate, crisscross grid grinding into her freckled butt, sat a tall ginger girl, her ginger hair pushing more towards the orange end of the spectrum than auburn, and hundreds of freckles across her nose, face shoulders and chest to match, running down her arms, constellations of freckles, a veritable Orangey Way from her head to her toes. She wore a tie-dyed string bikini with matching tie-dyed stockings that were ripped and loose around her thighs. On her big feet were a pair of red Converse sneakers, holes in the toes, her big one peeking through each one, and around her throat hung a Norse Thor's hammer medallion engraved with many runes. Her hair sported a dozen beaded braids down her shoulders, and there, perched on her noggin, a classic Viking helmet, horns jutting out like handlebars ready to make her go VROOM.

  Pressing her thumb to the helmet, she pushed her off her brow, flashing her bright emerald eyes at the big-haired girl. “You acting like Cerberus is on your butt. What's the shake, Miss Wake & Bake?”

  “Hippie! Have you been under a rock the past 24 hours? We're under attack!”

  The tall girl stood, reaching around to grab a baseball bat, a Louisville Slugger, barbed wire wrapped around the end of it. “What's the lowdown, hoedown?”

  Kendra hustled out of the old garage, not without almost tripping over another incense bowl, Hippie right behind her. She pointed towards the city on the horizon, the enormous submarine gliding through the crystal spires, smashing them rather than negotiating passage, aerial traffic long since redirected to avoid further catastrophe. Hippie whistled sharply, pointing her bat at it like Babe Ruth staking his claim. “Damn. That submarine flies through the sky the same way submarines don't.”

  “Stow the quips, Snap's on that ship!”

  Hippie inserted a length of paper wrapped around a wad of cannabis between her pink lips, and with a spark of flame that popped from her fingers, lit it up, inhaling deeply. “So? She can handle it.” She exchanged looks with an increasingly frustrated Kendra. “She can't handle it.”

  “That's The Naughty Lass!” Kendra yelled, hopping mad, her mane shaking and shimmering like crazy in the sunshine.

  “The nautilus?” Hippie murmured, scratching her head.

  “That's the flagship of Steely Dan McCool!”

  “Ah,” Hippie said, as if that answered all her questions. “Who?”

  Kendra groaned, slapping her forehead, and the two strode over to the idling hovercycle. “Steely Dan! The pirate queen! Snap tangled with her before, she swore eternal vengeance! A blood oath! Vendetta!” Hippie mulled it over and began to say something until Kendra slapped her hand on her mouth. “Not like 'V for Vendetta'!”

  “Right. Well, so what? Everyone has a vendetta out for Snap. Lt. Frank. Diablois Dane. Vortigern Schlonk. Delilah Luggage. Zola Johnstone and his daughter. Doc Lawful. Quite the list. All I have is the CIA, FBI and Poseidon.”

  Kendra mounted the bike. “Come on, we need to-” She stopped, the shockwave of the massive particle cannon firing its crackling volley directly into the Fifth National Bank knocking her off the bike, rattling windows and causing a couple rickety car piles to collapse. Hippie stood there, the only thing stirring her hair and the smoke from her joint, unfazed and unmoved.

  Kendra popped up, shaking the dust from her hair. “What the HELL was that!”

  “Looks like a particle cannon,” Hippie mused. “Kinda like a Zeus thunderbolt, only cobbled together by some lesser pathetic mortal in abject defiance of the gods. Wonder how they powered it?”

  “Get on!” Kendra yelled, revving her hovercycle's generator. Hippie slid on behind it and they took off, shooting straight for the submarine.

  As The Naughty Lass passed overhead, Samson ran around in circles, screaming and flailing his arms. “Stop!” he begged, but of course it didn't stop. He however did stop and winced. “Why am I yelling at it to stop? Good grief, this is crazy, this is the worst day of my life! Oh, wait, no, there was the day Dad died. Okay, this is the weirdest day of my life – no, wait. There was the day I met Snap. Wow. So I guess this is just a normal day for me now?” A huge shadow fell across him and he looked up into the skull face of the immense grizzled gwowler bear, staring at him with those ugly yellow eyes. Before he could scream, it extended its big rubbery tongue and slobbered all over him. “Yeah, getting covered in bear drool, uh-huh. This is the new norm. Deal with it.”

  A shrill whistle caught his attention and he turned around to see two faces peeking out from behind the pigeon coops that occupied a portion of his rooftop sanctuary. The taller one belonged to a cute girl with pale blue skin and long white hair, white freckles all over her chubby cheeks. She stepped out, revealing herself to be twelve feet tall, and wearing a cute little bikini that looked like snowflakes.

  Her companion was nowhere near as cute, in fact, quite the opposite. A gangly skeleton, devoid of all flesh, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a mesh-back cap that said, 'VETERAN OF THE SKIN WARS'. Dangling off his ribcage were a dozen plastic bags, each one containing a different vital organ. “Wiley! Jotie!” Samson said with great relief. “Man am I glad to see you!”

  “Kid, what the heck are you doing here?” Wiley asked, his voice coming from a speaker built into his chest. “Downtown's a disaster area, the cops are useless, you are in over your head out here, rich boy.”

  “Not by choice!” the Holstein minotaur groaned. “Snap dragged me along! Then we got separated!”

  “Why am I not surprised? Where is the little hobgoblin?”

  Samson winced, pointing straight up at the submarine blotting out the sun.

  “Oh brother,” Wiley grunted.

  “Wiley!” Samson gasped. “You're an old soldier! You know what to do!”

  Wiley stared at the young minotaur, or at least Samson figured he was staring at him, hard to tell without eyeballs. “Kid, I ain't got no skin in this game.”

  “What you talking about! This is your city, your home! You have to do something!”

  Again with the long uncomfortable stare. “No, kid, I mean, I ain't got no skin. Period.” He held up his bony arms and waved them around in Samson's snout.

  The three of them jumped back as ropes plopped down around them, leading straight up to the submarine, and dozens of pirate-babes zipped down, surrounding them. A glorious array of multicolored bandannas, tricorner hats, thigh-high boots, cutlasses, flintlocks and flouncy skirts inundated them, and the girls squealed for joy. “Freeze!” the top pirate-babe ordered, shoving her flintlock into Samson's face. “You deliciously delightful handsome man-bull! Rawr rawr!”

  Usually one to keel over in horror or curl into a fetal position, Samson instead just chuckled, looking at the antiquated pea-shooter pointed at him. “Heh, well, little lady,” he said, popping his pecs, “I'd just like to see you try!” The pirate-babe clicked the hammer back and shrugged, then pulled the trigger. Pure ionic energy poured out of the barrel, frying him where he stood. When the barrage stopped, he stood there, no longer black-and-white but just plain black, smoke rising off his body. One look at the smirking pirate-babe and he let loose the loudest, shrillest scream ever before keeling over, sprawled out on his back, arms and legs twitching sporadically.

  More ropes shot from the submarine, anchoring to the buildings, pirate-babes zip-lining across the gaps, storming apartments and offices, raising chaos and mayhem as they looted and plundered to their heart's content. The Naughty Lass glided to a stop, hovering above the Fifth National Bank, 1 through 4 lined up in a nice neat row down the street, but they were nothing to Steely Dan – distractions full of toys and baubles. What she craved lay within the vaults of building number 5.

  We won't get into building number 7.

  Steely Dan admired the devastation, watching her plan unfold. Not exactly how she planned it, to be sure, but hey, at least she was making progress. “I'm more a half-full cup kinda gal,” she admitted.

  The pirate-babes approached, Snap and Jessica prodded ahead, Jessica wobbling badly, her legs solid oak trunks of pure muscle threatening to break the skin. Chicago grimaced at the sight of her. “You really proud of yourself, Steely?” he groused.

  She flicked him her extended middle finger, and by extended it, it shot out like Pinocchio's nose and jammed him right in the eye, sending him staggering back. “Don't attempt to shame me,” she sneered. “I am beyond such concepts as shame. No, this is just one more rung on the ladder to me accomplishing my goal.”

  “To eat all the cheese in Wisconsin?” Snap asked.

  Steely Dan pulled out her chain-sword and whacked it over her head with the broad side, sending her directly into the floor, her head sticking out like a nail. “No. Well, yes, but tangential. I shall be Queen of the Seven Seize, and all that goes with it!”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Ow,” Snap groaned. “Uh, and what goes with it?”

  Steely Dan grew thoughtful. “Yanno, I really don't know.”

  “Seriously,” Snap snarked. “You endanger the lives of countless innocent people, and you don't even know what goes with it?”

  “Well, what should I say, oh vaunted sage of the mystic arts?”

  “LIE!” Snap snarled, flashing her fangs. “You can lie, we all lie! I lie all the time! I tell my parents, 'I'll be home by ten', I never come home at all! Hell, I haven't seen the inside of my house in over a week! Just say, I dunno, a really awesome Tabasco sauce is in the works if you win! See? Lie! Honestly, you're a BAD DUDE. Why is it so hard to LIIIIIIE? It should be your most sterling feature! Aside from, you know, the persistent creep-a-zoid factor.”

  Jessica, held up between two pirate-babes, stared at her in disbelief. “You haven't been away from your house for a week! It takes ten M-80s and a crowbar to pry you out of bed, let alone out the door!”

  Snap looked at her, then at Steely and Chicago, then at her, then them, then her, then them. “SEE? See what I mean? How easy it is to lie! If I can do it, you can do it!”

  “And in doing this, this 'lying',” Steely said, making the 'quotes' sign with her fingers, “this would make my life easier? Or harder?”

  Snap clenched her teeth, puffing out her cheeks. “Whew. Well, that's uh, that's easy! Yeah! Yeah, easier!” Her voice trailed off as she stared into the distance. “Unless of course they're smarter than you. And by 'they' I mean my parents. They're definitely smarter than me. In which case they punish you twice, once for lying and once for thinking it. And by 'you' I mean 'me'. So no, like I said, it's not easy at all. Very hard. Almost apoplectic.”

  Floyd floated up, gloating, rubbing his hands together, while Pinky trotted on obediently, humming to herself. “Hey!” She stopped, swinging her doll at Snap's direction. “You mean ol' potato! You hurt my chest! Now you're in for a lickin'!”

  “Not,” Steely Dan intoned, “yet.” And on a dime, the little girl in the polka dot dress quietly acquiesced.

  A small drone whirred up, sounding for all the world like an exact replication of the Jetson's car, Snap snorting in spite of herself. It stopped in front of Steely Dan and a blue hologram flicked on, a three-dimensional representation of one of Steely's pirate-babes, wearing a hard helmet and orange vest, a dozen other pirate-babes in similar attire jackhammering away at the vault door behind her. “Captain Steely, we're at an impasse! These vaults are made of sterner stuff than we first realized. The cannon softened them up, molecular integrity compromised, but it should be noted – these babies were tough as nuts to begin with!”

  “That's okay,” Steely Dan said.

  “Ah! See!” Snap said. “Lying already!”

  “No, seriously, it's okay.”

  Snap pursed her lips. “Come again?”

  “You see, where we can no longer compromise with the metal vault itself,” Steely explained, “we shall compromise with the ones who control the vault.”

  Snap nodded. “J-Jesus?”

  Snap gave her a placid look. “No. The bankers.”

  “Ah. Well, see, Jesus beat up a bunch of bankers, tossed tables, whipped 'em half-to-death, so he controls the bankers so he also controls the vault.” She grinned. “Ta-da!”

  “I like your reasoning, but still no.”

  Snap pouted. “Not my reasoning so much as my theology ya don't like.”

  The submarine slowed to a stop, hovering there in defiant obstinance of God's ordained physical laws, a mocking middle finger raised in glorious rebellious salute of the universe's one unyielding rule – that two bodies with mass will be attracted to each other. And yet, there it hung, gigantic, nay, colossal; metallic, an engine of destruction that should have dropped like a rock, crushing everything underneath it, grinding it into a fine powder.

  Instead, more pirate-babes disembarked, zipping to the surface, terrorizing the locals and creating general havoc. They smashed windows and raided stores, hauling off tons of loot in the process, the wealth of one of the greatest cities in the world. Loading them up on conveyors that shot them back into The Naughty Lass's cargo hold, the girls popped the cork on their rum-flavored wine, the biggest dang block party in the world at the moment.

  “We love to loot! Because we're cute!” they sang, shaking their butts in glorious Fossean choreography, all fishnet stockings and corsets galore. “We'll steal your lunch money! We'll steal your suit! And that's the truth!”

  “Jazz hands, girls, jazz hands! WOO!”

  Samson sat in a large, bubbling hot tub, flanked by pirate-babes on either side. He smiled tepidly as they giggled and cooed, liquor overflowing their goblets, wondering whether or not this would result in something bad happening to him. As nothing bad was happening NOW, he decided to split the difference and call it a win. “Uh, no thanks,” he stammered as it passed his way, the pirate-babes giggling at his nervousness. “I don't think it's legal for me.”

  “Yeah? And I don't think it's legal you're joining us in a hot tub we stole.”

  He thought it over and then nodded enthusiastically. “You make a salient point! Lemme go for it!” The girls cheered and applauded, slapping his broad shoulders, and he held up a goblet, allowing them to fill it, bubbling over with a satisfying fizz. “And down the hatch she goes! Huzzah!” Opening his mouth wide, he tossed it back, most of it going down his throat. He smacked his lips. “Well, doesn't seem to have any adverse conditions.” On cue, his eye bugged out and he gagged, clutching his throat, clawing at it, then slowly sank under the bubbling pool.

  “Oh my goodness!” a pirate-babe squealed. “Did someone slip him a roofie?”

  “No!” the girl who served the drink said. She glanced at the bottle and did a double take. “Plus, it's non-alcoholic!”

  “What are you idiots doing?”

  The girls screamed, scrambling out of the hot tub, as Steely Dan made her dreadful presence known. “Honestly, I don't pay you to lounge about. Wait.” She sniffed the air, smiling, licking her lips. “Is that beef stew I smell?”

  “Oh no! Samson!” The pirate-babes struggled to haul the big Holstein out of the tub, but he was simply too big and heavy. “What have we done? He's gonna drown!”

  “And feed us for a fortnight!” Steely Dan beamed.

  The ground shook and Steely stepped aside as Pinky trudged up, powered up and bulked up, cute little girl giving way to ridiculous overpowered behemoth, may we never use the 'H' word. With a grunt, she picked the hot tub up and upturned it, pouring the contents across the pavement, Samson along with it. He coughed and sputtered, the pirate-babes pouncing, covering him with kisses, relieved to see he was alive and well.

  Steely Dan smacked her big little sister's brawny bicep. “Hey! I was gonna eat him!”

  Pinky glared down at her little big sister, her disgusting face looking pretty disgusted. “You am one sick cookie,” she grunted.

  Steely Dan feigned indignation. “Ooh! Sick cookie! Ooh! Sick burn! Nyah! Fine, be that way, you self-righteous moralizer.” She stared at Samson, the gears in her head churning, cranking, seemingly on the verge of overload, when something clicked. “Wait a second. That's Delilah Luggage's kid. What's his name? Samsonite. Yeah. Bundle him up, he'll make a swell hostage.”

  “What!” Samson yelled. “Taken captive by a crew of bodacious pirate babes?” His eyes sparkled. “Shall I dare achieve the American dream?”

  Steely led the way down the decimated street, citizens extricating themselves from the rubble, those not overwhelmed by the trauma fleeing from her presence. Shoving a push broom around the lobby of the collapsed Fifth National Bank, a lone janitor with a bristly mustache and denim coveralls moseyed about, almost unhindered by the current calamity that had befallen his current place of employment.

  “Yo! Scruffy!” Steely Dan yelled, snapping her fingers to garner his attention. He stopped, stared at her indifferently. “Calling it, you take the rest of the day off.”

  “Aye, Scruffy hears ya,” he grunted and continued sweeping where a broom had no place to sweep. “An' Scruffy don't care.”

  “I like him,” Steely Dan said as Chicago strode up. She turned to her brother. “He has your job.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “You may, but you won't get it.”

  “First things first,” the janitor drawled in his lackadaisical tone. “I'm gonna teach these girls how to properly swab a deck. None of these half-assed measures.”

  Steely Dan staggered forward, lurching, grabbing his shoulders and giving him a firm shake. “This man,” she growled, a low hiss,” is a national treasure. Get him two tickets to the Memorial National Opera House!”

  “Make it 'Don Giovanni',” he muttered. “And we'll make that flying tugboat gleam from top to bottom. I guarantee it.”

  Steely sniffled, cradling her head in her right hand. “G-Go on, get,” she choked. “Gimme a minute here. I think I'm gonna cry.”

  “I am not relinquishing my position to some janitor you pick up off the street,” Chicago said sternly, only for Steely to pop out her chain-sword without breaking a sweat or saying a word, the spinning teeth centimeters from his nose. “Heh, like I was saying, how best may I facilitate your transition, sir?”

  “I wanna bowl of M&Ms in my bedroom,” he grunted, “all the green ones taken out.”

  “You're a seaman now,” Steely Dan warned as they stomped their way through the demolished bank. “It's called a 'cabin'.”

  “Lines are drawn in the sand for a reason,” the janitor muttered.

  Pinky stomped up to the rubble, tossing boulders aside like they were beachballs, freeing people trapped under the collapsed rubble. The bank manager, a stodgy fat pig in suspenders and pinstripe trousers, coughed and brushed himself off. “Yo, bacon grease,” Steely Dan blurted out, forgoing any civility and etiquette. “I need access to the lowest levels of this bank. Can you provide it?”

  “We do not negotiate with terrorists!” the manager blustered.

  “Fine.” She reached behind her back and whipped out her chain-sword, firing it up, smoke and flame belching from the hilt pommel, and brought it down to the manager's snout.

  “Like I was saying, I can access ANYTHING in this dump!” he shrieked, grinning through the terror.

  “That's more like it. See, Chico? When you threaten people, they'll obey you.”

  “I was not aware of that fact. How enlightening. Truly you are one of, if not the, philosophers of all time.”

  Steely swaggered off, clicking her heels together. “Bingo, Ringo.”

  With Pinky clearing a path, the manager led them to an access elevator. “How do we know we're not walking into a trap?” Chicago asked calmly.

  “Simple,” Steely Dan answered. “I always act as if I'm walking into a trap. And I go anyway, because I'm a masochist.”

  A slot by the door opened up and the manager inserted his card, which opened yet another slot allowing him to place his hand on the palm scanner. This then opened yet another slot, allowing him to squeeze his fat face in, a retinal scanner beaming into his eyeball. Finally, this opened yet another slot and-

  Steely promptly fired up her chain-sword, vivisecting the manager into ham hocks and bacon strips. Chicago flinched, dodging the blood and entrails that smeared the walls around them. “I hate pointless gags that go on and on and on,” she groaned, licking the blood off her blade. “Infuriating!”

  “Unfortunately it did have a point,” Chicago grumbled. “He was going to get us down below!”

  “Trial and error, bub,” Steely said, shoving her chain-sword into the crack of the elevator doors. “Trial and error.” Cranking it up a notch, she let the chain-sword do the talking, slicing through the doors, sparks flying, hacking away an opening big enough to step through.

  The McCool family peered through the hole, gazing down the long, dark shaft vanishing into the shadow. Steely gestured down, smiling at Chicago. “After you.”

  He smiled and stepped through. “My pleasure.” He plummeted feet first, vanishing into the abyss. Cackling whimsically, Floyd floated down after, followed by Pinky who jumped down, pushing her arms against the walls, slowing her descent.

  “Hold down the fort, Scruffy,” Steely said.

  He snorted, looking at the remains of his former boss. “Scruffy ain't cleaning this mess up.”

  She patted his cheek. “And I wouldn't dream of making you do so!” And with that, she jumped in, her echoing laughter fading as she disappeared into the bowels of the earth.