Complete the Sentence II: Wal-Mart's Revenge of the Bacon!

[Kamino Neko]

...make sure everybody sees it. The whole world. (Or at least the ones who can read English...)'

'But, I really wrote it only for you.' Aggie bit her lip.

'But, it's too good for just me!'

'... Too good for you?' Aggie raised an eyebrow, and had to smirk.

'Too good for just me.'

'Mm-hmm.' Aggie giggled.

'Stay with me, Ags.'

'OK, if I'm to share it with the world, how should I go about this?'

'Well, if you're going to see sense--'

'Hey...' Aggie glared.

Penny never missed a beat. '--you should...

[Alice Macher]

...first do me six ways from Sunday, like I said. C'mon!" Penny tugged at her arm, and indeed was already starting to undress with her other hand.

Aggie glanced over her shoulder at her journal. "What about the poem?"

Penny gave her a smile that could melt butter at the North Pole. "Bring it with," she growled.



Two hours and a good many climaxes later (they lost count once they hit double digits), the two of them lay panting on their backs. "Okay... Whew... Okay," said Aggie. "So how do I get my poem known?"

"Ohhhh... My Aggiest of Aggies, if I could only live out the rest of my days in your... OW! No pinching," said Penny. "Fine, you have my full attention."

Aggie repeated her question.

"Ah, okay. What you do, see, is you ask Inky. He's the lit nerd. He'd know. I haven't got a clue."

Aggie would've smacked Penny with a pillow, but they'd long since spilled onto the bedroom floor, and even had they still been in bed, she wouldn't have had the energy just then.


"So where should I submit this?" said Aggie, after Inky had finished his little dance of joy and she'd finished squeeing over it.

"Goodness, Aggie," said the mouse. "That is indeed a superlative, nay, divine poem, but to be frank, I'm better acquainted with the murine literary journals. If I were you, I should ask Duane."


"You sure I can't publish this in the lit mag?" said Duane at school the next day. "Okay, then, for maximum exposure, I suggest submitting it to the Journal of...

[Kamino Neko]

...Applied Poetics.'

'... Applied poetics? ... Applied poetics?'

'Yes. It never occurred to you that poetry could be practical?'

'Well...no. I mean, other than uplifting the spirit, or such things.'

'Oh, yes, that's important too. But, the editor of the JoAP (narrator's note: rhymes with soap) can tell you more.' Duane gave Aggie the number for JoAP's editor, one Simon Season, then hurried off to meet Yun-Sung who had promised to show him her 'secret grove'...he was only mildly disappointed that she turned out to be speaking literally about a small woodland in Korea.

Simon, a somewhat frazzled middle-aged man in a clashing suit and tie, shook Aggie's hand, when they met the next day. 'Hello, Miss D'amour. I'm Simon Season...'

'Yes, I noticed the name on the door.'

'Ah, right.' Simon blinked and shook his head. 'So, you've brought a poem for me to consider including, right? You could have simply left it with a reader to pass on to me. But I have to say, I admire your spirit, taking it straight to the top...'

'Thank you, but I mostly did it so I could ask what "applied poetics" was.'

'Ah, well, that I can certainly tell you. You see...

[Tamar]

...we at JOAP believe that poetry, at its finest, can not only uplift the soul, but upgrade it."

Aggie blinked. "Upgrade it?"

"Yes." Professor Season quickly removed, wiped and replaced his reading glasses, before continuing. "The greatest poetry can cause a paradigm shift in human thought and action themselves. Have not, for example, scholars such as Harold Bloom noted how Shakespeare's works helped create modern individual consciousness as we know it? Has not the surviving poetry of Sappho helped many a lonely, perplexed woman over the millenia define and, ultimately, embrace her sexuality? Did not Hayyim Nahman Bialik's 'In the City of Slaughter' inspire many an Eastern European Jew, in the age of the pogroms, to cast off their traditional passivity and fight back against their oppressors?"

"Um, well, I'm not familiar with that last example, but otherwise, yes, good points." Aggie pictured herself as gnat-sized when stood beside Shakespeare and Sappho, who pointed down and laughed at her. She did her best to banish the image, and straightened her posture. "So... your journal analyzes how such poems changed human thought and behaviour?"

"Indeed it does, Ms. D'Amour. But in an age of declining regard for poetry, JOAP also serves as a showcase for new poetry that we feel can, and should, serve that same function. Now then, your poem, 'A Penny's Worth,' you say it's called? I may as well give it a preliminary reading now; then, if I feel it has potential, our editorial board will review and discuss it. If we feel, according to our exacting standards, it fits our criteria, we shall accept it for publication, perhaps with revisions where indicated." He held out his hand, whereupon Aggie, willing her hand not to tremble, passed him the manuscript, and he began to read.

"Mm hm... I see... Oh. Oh, my. I never... My, my, my. Who'd have thought...? Ah ha! Ah HA HA HA! My stars! Well!"

Aggie, completely at a loss as to whether he was mocking, or orgasming over, her poem, rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet.

After what seemed like hours to her, Prof. Season handed back the manuscript. "Ms. D'Amour! I must say, 'A Penny's Worth' is...

[Kamino Neko]

...worth rather more than a penny.' He laughed at his own joke for a while, while Aggie pondered whether he was damning her with faint praise, or what.

'I...thank you?' She finally stammered an answer as his laugh sputtered to a stop.

'You most welcome, Ms. D'Amour. I think we'll certainly be publishing this. It'll have to go to the committee, of course, but...well, this is a once in a lifetime achievement in verse.'

'I...what?' Aggie blinked. 'Once in a lifetime?'

'Oh, yes.' Simon smiled, almost beatifically, and set the poem into a file. 'I am positively at a loss for words - in a good way, of course. Though, of course, I suppose if I gave it some thought, I could come up with a description that almost does it justice.' He rested his chin on his hand, and did so. 'Ah, it is...

[Alice Macher]

...an antidote to despair, a hope-and-meaning tonic!"

"Come again?"

A light-bulb appeared over Prof. Season's head (he had some partial toon ancestry, a few generations back), and a corresponding smile slowly spread across his face. He took the manuscript back out of the file and put it in his briefcase.

"Rather, Ms. D'Amour, I invite you to come with me. If you're comfortable doing so, of course."

Aggie blinked a few times. "Where'd we be going?"

"To visit an old friend of mine, in the hospital."

Since Aggie certainly had no objection to visiting the hospitalized, having done so herself from time to time, she nodded, and followed him to his car in the college faculty parking lot.

They drove to Belleville Psychiatric Hospital. No, not to the Criminally Insane wing where Evil Cyndi was, but to the short-term inpatient clinic. There, after signing in, they went to the clinic's common area, where they found a man, around Season's age, sitting in front of the television. His face was blank, his hair unkempt, and his whiskers scraggly.

"Hello, Peter," said Season.

"Mm," said Peter, not turning to face him.

"How are you today?"

"Same's I am ev'ry other day. No point 'n asking each time you come." Peter's voice was a complete monotone.

"Well." Season smiled and opened his briefcase. "I've brought with me something this brilliant young woman has written, that may give you a different perspective on things."

"Fat chance o' that."

Aggie knew that attitude, that tone of voice, intimately. No, it wasn't from when Marshall and Karen told her off. She'd been in despair then, yes, but it was a hot, burning, stabby feeling, as if a hundred white-hot needles had pierced her insides. No, what Peter seemed to be going through now was what she'd felt beginning about three weeks after her mother's death, when she'd cried and screamed herself out and then there'd been nothing left inside her. A dull, grey husk of what she'd been. It had been several more weeks, following psychotherapy at Nick's insistence, and a short course of Prozac, before she could look directly at anyone again. Before she could smile.

"Just read this, Peter, please," said Season.

"Whas' point? Shrinks haven't helped. Three classes 'a antid'pressants haven't helped. No point. No point t' anything."

"Ms. D'Amour?" said the editor.

"Aggie, please." She suddenly felt titles were too... distancing, under the circumstances.

"Aggie, then. Would you kindly read your poem out loud? If nothing else, the sound of your voice is new to my friend here."

Not knowing what to expect, Aggie took the manuscript and recited her poem.

About a quarter of the way through, Peter turned to look at her.

About two-thirds of the way through, actual expression came into his eyes.

Three-quarters of the way through, he smiled.

By the time she'd finished, Peter was grinning widely, and weeping.

"And how do you feel now, Peter?" said his friend.

"I feel... I feel like the sun is shining again. Like God, long dead, is newly reborn. I feel full of... purpose." He bolted out of his seat. "Nurse! Could I get a shave, please? Also, how long until dinner? I'm starving!"


Many hugs later (until the clinic staff intervened to remind them of the "no physical contact with patients" rule), and after much shedding of tears amongst the three of them, Season left the clinic with Aggie. "Do you see now, dear, wise Aggie? Do you see the potential of what you've created?" he said, as they entered the parking lot.

"Thank you, Simon," said Aggie, blowing her nose. "You're very kind, and Peter's lucky to have you as a friend. But while I guess I'm wiser than I once was, I wouldn't call myself 'wise.' And it's still only a love poem."

"Tish-tush! I'll hear no more false modesty. Aggie, with this poem, we can...

[Kamino Neko]

...change the world for the better.'

'Change the...' Aggie's breath caught, and her eyes went wide. No, nothing untoward had happened. It was simply the grandeur of the thought that struck her. This...this was what she had lived for, for the longest time. '... We have to do this!'

'I had hoped you would say that.' Simon smiled, then tapped his chin. 'Now that I think of it, though, our publication is too small for the importance of this poem...'

'I'd get a swelled head if I really believed that...' Aggie shook her head (which was still normal sized. ... Well, just a tiny bit bigger.)

'What you need to do is bring it to....

[Tamar]

...the Poetry Bowl!"

"The the the Poetry Bowl?" said Aggie, holding the manuscript tight against her chest. "The TV event of the year? The telecast that advertisers spend all year bidding for airtime on, and making funny, sexy commercials for?"*

"The very same," said Simon.

"But... that's only a week away. They'll never accept my entry now."

"Oh, didn't you hear? One of the top two contenders was disqualified for plagiarism. Seems he lifted his entry from Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, simply changing the references to children's games into more... adult pastimes, then adding the odd Latin bit and Lord Byron allusion. So they either have to fill that slot, or they'll have a very short poetry program. And no one wants that. Hundreds of millions of viewers in North America and abroad will be devastated. Parties cancelled, pizza places going bankrupt..."

"All right, all right, you've convinced me." A look of solemn determination came into Aggie's face. "Let's Penny their world."


The time: one week later. Sunday night, 8:30 P.M.

The place: MetLife Stadium, New York City.

"All right, poetry fans," said the announcer, Robert Pinsky. "We're back with the second half of the Poetry Bowl, here on NBC. How about that halftime show by Maya Angelou, huh? Shame about that dust-jacket malfunction at the end, but apart from that, what a show-stopping performance!

"And now, next up, from Belleville, is rookie poet Agathe "Aggie" D'Amour, with her entry, 'A Penny's Worth.' Quiet please, ladies and gentlemen..."

Aggie stood at the microphone. This is it, ohmigod... Her mouth opened but nothing came out. She felt suddenly paralyzed. Stricken.

And then, on the giant screen, she saw Lisa, who'd dyed her hair blue and wore a cap with a blue mock-cowlick. Next to her was Sara, wearing a 'NON ILLEGITIMI CARBORUNDUM' t-shirt. And there, next to her, was Penny, sporting--in total violation of her usual fashion sense--a giant blue foam '#1' hand. She seemed to be mouthing the words, 'I love you. Knock 'em dead, Sappho.'"

Aggie smiled with determination. I'll show 'em who's poetry quee--congresswoman 'round here. She began to recite...


When she was done, the spectators, all 82,566 of them, bolted to their feet as one, cheering and applauding. Cheerleaders back-flipped and cartwheeled. Fireworks went off. The brass band played "I Can See Clearly Now."

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Robert Pinsky. "Ladies and gentlemen... OI! QUIET! ... Thank you. The judges have conferred, and the winner of the 2012 Poetry Bowl is... Aggie D'Amour!"

Aggie was, of course, on cloud nine for the remainder of the evening, from a cohort of great international poets carrying her on their shoulders to the locker room, to Penny spraying her with a bottle of non-alcoholic champagne, to the brief interview with Pinsky, to the phone call from the president.

In the following days, exposure to Aggie's poem seemed not only to aid recovery from depression, but to lower crime rates, make banks less grabby, and encourage more bipartisanship in Congress. It was effective in translation, too: around the world, dictatorial governments opened talks with dissidents; construction companies decided that requiring bribes and doing crappy, substandard work was wrong; and at least some terrorists began to aspire to other things in life rather than, you know, death.

Of course, cooler heads around the world realized that the effects of one poem might prove temporary, and so Aggie found herself called upon to produce more work. However, not realizing what had made the difference with her last poem (*cough*super-weed*cough*), she found it excruciatingly hard to write follow-up pieces. One such, er, attempt at inspirational poetry read:

If in the world I could change but one small thing...

[Kamino Neko]

...I would like to teach the whole world to sing,
But not like that Coke commercial, since that was cheesy,
And using it to sell cola was kind of sleazy,
And that really just makes me sad,
... This poem's getting kind of bad,
But if I work, I think I can salvage it,
No, I can't, it's too much - it's just really...

At that point she just gave up, folded it into a paper plane, and tossed it. Unfortunately, she missed the garbage bin, and it flew out the window, eventually drifting into a nearby park.

Said park was hosting a children's soccer tournament at the time, and the poem landed next to the announcer. Noticing Aggie's signature at the top of the page, he read it aloud.

It took 2 days to quell the resulting riot, which eventually spread through the city.

Aggie watched the TV news report about it, and glanced out the window. 'Think it's safe to go out?'

'I'll check.' Penny went over and opened the window.

From below came cries of 'Booooo!' 'Your poem was bad, and you should feel bad!' and '...

[Alice Macher]

..."You let us down, man! Er, woman. Whatever."

"I guess not," said Penny.

A few minutes later, the phone rang. Aggie checked the display and, seeing Simon's number, answered it, hoping he at least wouldn't yell abuse at her.

"H-hello?" said Aggie, trembling.

"Hello, Aggie. I've been following the news. It's dreadful. Absolutely dreadf--"

"Look, Simon, I'm so, so--"

"--ul that someone would play such a cruel prank as to sign your name to such doggerel and put it before the public. Well, rest assured, my dear, that I've pulled some strings to have the FBI's finest forensic specialists track down this rapscallion, this, this jackanape, this--"

Aggie sighed. "Tell the Feds not to waste their time, Simon. It was me. I wrote that awful thing."

Long silence.

"Suh-Simon? You still there?"

"...Why, Aggie? Why did you do it?"

Aggie teared up, while Penny stood beside her and rubbed her back, and the rodents climbed on her shoulder to nuzzle her. "I I I didn't mean to share it with the public. It was just one of I've lost count how many crappy poems I've tried to write, this past week, as a follow-up. Finally, I made a paper airplane out of it and tossed it, but a draft took it away from the garbage bin and out the window, and... and I guess someone found it..." Another long silence. "Hello?"

"...Why did you sign it?"

"I don't know!" Aggie began to hyperventilate. "Oh God I'm gonna die I'm gonna--"

Penny took the phone from her and said, "She'll call you back later Prof. Seasoning okay sorry bye!" Then she hung up.

Penny found Aggie a paper bag to breathe into, and soon Aggie had calmed down.

"I just don't understand," she said. "Every poem I wrote before 'A Penny's Worth' has, according to, like, everyone, been crap. Every poem, or fragment thereof, I've written since 'A Penny's Worth' has been crap. How is it that 'A Penny's Worth' was not merely non-madness-producing, non-riot-instigating, not merely good, but messianically great?"

"Gotta be honest with you, little Grasseater," said Penny, cradling her partner's head as it rested on her shoulder. "I've been wondering the same thing, in the back of my mind, since I first 'came down' from reading it. Hm. Tell you what. Let's retrace the day you wrote it. What did you do that day?"

"It was a weekday. Went to school."

"Anything out of the ordinary happen, or did you notice anything odd, at school? No? Okay, and after school?"

"I went canvassing for that nuclear disarmament group."

"Okay. Whose houses did you hit?"

Aggie thought a moment, then listed them off. "And John's was the last one before... inspiration struck."

"I see," said Penny, crinkling the paper bag in her other hand. "What happened at John's?"

"I made my pitch, and he cut me a cheque. Then Chessica popped her head out and said she needed advice on... girl stuff. So I went down to the rec room with her and we talked for half an hour. Then I left, and within a few minutes, I had my Big Idea and I rushed home to get it down."

"Anything unusual about John's place that day? Okay, that's kind of like asking if the Earth was revolving around the sun that day, but you know what I mean."

Aggie thought. "Well... he was working on something with Bob and Freckles, which is new as far as I know, because he usually just has the girlbots help him. Oh, and there was an awful lot of smoke. Smelled funny. Even wafted through to the basement."

"Smoke, huh?" Penny let go of the bag and scratched her chin. "Some sort of chemistry experiment, maybe?"

"I don't know." Aggie shifted slightly. "I heard John say 'like a massive brain-processor upgrade' at one point, and Freckles say 'maybe it's really true about us not using 90%' at another."

Penny thought some more. Suddenly, "Sorry, Ag, gotta get up," she said. "Gotta make a phone call." And she went to call John. With his permission, she put him on speaker-phone.


"Smoke?" said John. "--Ah yes, I recall. We were having a deuce of a time trying to get our latest invention to work properly, when Bob suggested we three temporarily boost our intelligence. He produced a container of cannabis that he said he'd reverse-engineered from his hair, such that instead of making others who inhaled it... pebbled?"

"Stoned," said Penny, repressing a giggle.

"Right, right. Instead of making them stoned, it would have the same effect on others as it does on him. It would make them, temporarily, a genius. And the more and longer one inhaled, the more genius one would acquire."

"I understand. That's all I needed to know. Thanks, John. Bye."

Penny hung up. "Well. That explains it, little Grassinhaler." She grinned and turned to face Aggie. "Just think, if you could go from poetry zero to poetry hero just from the second-hand smoke of that pot, imagine what smoking it directly could--Aggie? Ag? You in there?

"...Aggie?"


Yep, you guessed it. Aggie was catatonic. To bring her out of it, Penny and their pets...

[Kamino Neko]

...did a dramatic reading of A Penny's Worth (hey, they got it, they should use it).

Aggie sat up. 'OK, joke aside, what really happened, John? ... John?'

'We already hung up, dear. He wasn't joki--ah, crap.'

Another recitation (and interpretive dance...er...interpretation) of the poem, and they managed to keep her from passing out again.

'But... But... But...'

Penny grinned. 'I think they call them roaches for pot, not butts...'

'Stop that.' Aggie glared. 'Aaah! Daddy'll kill me if he hears what happened!'

'I don't think he'll be that upset that you accidentally inhaled a head full of mary jane, dear. Maybe at Bob, for--'

Aggie raised an eyebrow. 'You are suspiciously familiar with pot-related slang...'

Penny facepalmed. 'I...

[Tamar]

... have never done drugs, ever. Remember that time I told you about, when Stan ended up in my bed, drugged by Cyndi? Well, my first instinct, when I saw how fuzzy-headed he was talkin', was to whale on him for toking in my house. Does that establish my 'clean and sober,' 'just say no' credentials enough for you, my nubile narc?"

"... I'm sorry, Penny," said Aggie, hugging her. "I shouldn't have said that. I'm just... weirded out. I've never been 'high' before, and had always prided myself on that. And don't say 'Worst hippie ever,' because not every hippie does drugs."

Penny smiled and motioned for Aggie to nestle against her again on the couch, then put her arm around her and kissed her on the top of her head. "I know that, Love Revolution. But much as--was that a cracking noise? Never mind--I don't approve of 'the drugs' myself, I still think that if you unintentionally get exposed, once, to something like pot, it's not on you, y'know?"

"Besides," said Lisa, who had indeed just apparated into their apartment, "that wasn't the first time for you. Remember when Bob first got transformed, down at the multidimensional TV station, and he discovered that smoking his hair made him smart, so I recommended he stick around for awhile and do so while we got a computer set up so he could record his smartnesses? And then afterward you and I got all giggly and babbly and hungry? ...Aggie? Ag? Earth to Agronaut..."

"Lisa." Penny gave her that look. "Go home."

"Yipe!" said Lisa, and with a CRACK!, she was gone.

A third dramatic reading of 'A Penny's Worth,' and Aggie was herself again. "My God. I never realized."

"Yeah, well," said Penny, sighing. "But look, Booberry-Hair. So you were exposed to one kind of pot or another, twice. Did it ruin your life? Have your grades dropped? Have you gained weight? Lain around all day doing nothing? Ditched me and the gang for full-time potheads? Have I made my point?"

Aggie grinned. "In order: no, no, no, no, no, and yes."

"That's my girl." Penny gave her a big smooch and hugged her.

"Even so," said Aggie, after a while, still in huggy mode, "I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the idea of smoking that stuff so I can go on writing the poems that make the whole world sing. Because then it's as if it's not really me writing them, y'know?"

"I understand," said Penny. "You gotta do what you feel is right. All the same, I think it'd help make both our lives easier--"

"And ours," said and thought Inky and Copenhagen.

"--make all our lives easier, if you made some sort of public statement to explain everything. You don't have to name names; in fact, probably better you don't, since while Bob as I understand it has a license to smoke himself, I'm not sure he's legally allowed to share himself in...that way. But let's see a lawyer first, before you do that, just to make sure you cover your ass. Your luscious, spankable ass." She reached down and grabbed it. "Uhhh... what were we talkin' 'bout again?"


So Aggie, flanked by her attorney, read her statement at a press conference, and as a result...

[Kamino Neko]

...had her Poetry Bowl medal stripped from her. The apartment also got egged once or twice, but Lisa set up an enchantment on the window before the third incident, which resulted in the egg-thrower getting egged instead.

'All in all, it didn't turn out too badly...' Aggie shrugged, as she put the finishing touches on a painting based upon the poem.

'When can I see it?'

'Wha? Oh, the painting. Here, take a look. But I meant the situation.' Aggie grinned. 'So, what do you think?'

Penny simply gazed at the painting, swaying slightly.

'Pen?'

Sway, sway, sway...drop.

'Pen!'

She ran over to Penny, who was starting to come to her senses. '... So...beautiful.'

'... Thanks, I guess, but is this really a time to be calling me tha--'

'Not you--'

'... Gee. Thanks.' Aggie deadpanned.

'--the painting. It's like...looking into the face of God. Or, I dunno, the full-frontal nudity of God.'

'...' Aggie looked at the painting. She had to admit it was good, but... 'I 'unno. I don't really see it.'

'That's probably because you've been looking at it all through the creative process. This...this...' Penny looked and was overwhelmed by it again.

Aggie sighed and threw a blanket over the painting. 'And now my painting is dangerous, too...'

'At least it's dangerous because it's too good?' Penny sat up and rubbed her head. 'Also, we really should put padding on the floors. Ow.'

'But it's dangerous, either way. I guess I'll have to destroy it...' Aggie sighed, and went to get a knife.

'NO!' Penny tackled her.

'... Ow, darnit, Pen, what was that for?'

'You can't destroy it! It's too wonderful for that!'

'But, nobody but me can look at it without passing out, and that's not good.'

'Well, to be fair, that might just be me. We should test it on other people.'

'I don't think that'd be ethical...'

'Well, if they know, they can choose to help or not.'

Charles piped up. 'Perhaps some animal testing first?'

Inky's voice followed on closely. 'Hey! Don't use those words! That's just sick!'

'Boys...' Aggie raised her hands. 'Don't fight, please?'

Charles harumphed. 'I was only suggesting that perhaps I and the rodents could look first, and if we don't pass out, you could ask some of your human friends to help.'

'Well...' Inky spoke slowly. 'If it doesn't involve dissection, I suppose it's not too bad...'

After a bit more (rather boring, I'll be frank) discussion, Aggie finally agreed to let them do it.

They thought it was quite pretty, but didn't pass out.

So, the next day they asked Sara and Lisa if they'd be willing to help. They both agreed - though, at Aggie's suggestion, both Tiff and Luna would be there, but not allowed to look at the painting, in case something went wrong.

It was a few hours later when the painting was finally revealed, first to Sara (they'd decided it was probably safer to do it one at a time), who...

[Alice Macher]

...said, "I... I... I'm going to church--on my own--not because my parents are making me--to give thanks to the eternal living God for this painting--if I hurry now I'll be in time for the Eucharist--where's my purse--here it is--wanna come, Tiff? --no? --okay --okay bye!" And with that she was out the door.

"Well, damn," said Penny. "That's the only time I've ever seen her excited about church. Her parents finally stopped trying about half a year ago. Okay. Lisa, you're up. --I'm not gonna bite you, geez, get over here."

So they revealed the painting to Lisa, and...

[Kamino Neko]

...she promptly winked out. No apparition, just no more Lisa.

'Holy crap, we killed Lisa!' Aggie threw the blanket over the painting again.

'No you haven't.' Lisa's voice came from...somewhere.

'Lis'?' Aggie looked around. 'Where are you?'

'Here.' Lisa reformed a little in front of her. Or, well...her head did. Her giant, disembodied head.

'...' The whole group simply gaped.

'I have transcended. I am far beyond mere mortals, now. I--' She stopped, and glanced over at Luna, who'd begun to weep. Not tears of joy, either.

'But...I liked Mortal Lisa. I...I don't think I want to lose her to...to...'

LisaHead glanced at Luna, frowning. 'But--'

But Luna wasn't listening...she'd taken out her wand, and pointed it at the painting. 'Incindi--' She stopped as Penny grabbed her wand and her mouth.

'No magicstuff in our apartment, please...especially something that sounds like it'll be fire, thanks.'

LisaHead looked at Luna, and winked out of existence again...then she re-coalesced - full body, and fully solid. Also, naked, much to Aggie's annoyance. She then promptly passed out.

When she came to, with a blanket thrown over her, she looked up at Luna, who was holding her hand. 'Hey, Moon Pie.'

Luna smiled. 'You're...untranscendant again?'

'Yep. Couldn't have you crying.' Lisa let out a yelp as Luna pulled her into a hug.

Penny and Aggie turned to give them some privacy.

'So...the painting is definitely too dangerous.' Aggie looked, sidelong at the painting, suspicious of it, even though it was covered.

'Apparently so.' Penny sighed.

'OK, we need to decide what to do with it. I think...