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

[Alice Macher]

...pantheon that the Jewel-Encrusted Jarglebrath beast worships."

Penny and Aggie did their best to maintain a neutral expression.

"Probably true," said Lisa. She turned to Luna. "Am I missing much?"

Luna shrugged. "Not really. It's rather nondescript, as pantheons go."



So with that, we move on to the next morning where, in the model Roman streets of the Sappho Classical Studies Building at 3Bad, the filming of Homicidium: Vita in Viae was getting underway. In the scene they were shooting, Julia (played by Summer Glau) and Cassia (played by Sara) examined the corpse of an elderly beggar woman (played by Dame Judi Dench).

<Any idea what make of chariot ran her over?> said Julia/Summer.

<Looks to me,> said Cassia/Sara, <like a Year XXI (Hadrian's Reign) Jackal. You can tell from the impressions the wheels left on her face.>

Julia/Summer grimaced. <By Juno, this job never gets any easier. Well, what do we know about that model?>

<It's not too common nowadays. There are only two known owners. One is the current emperor, Marcus Aurelius.>

<Heh. Between you and me, I think we can leave him off the suspect list. And not just to spare our lives. Word 'round town is, he's pretty chill, for an emperor. Y'know, being a Stoic philosopher and all.>

Cassia/Sara chuckled grimly. <Yeah, agreed. So that just leaves the other known owner, guy by the name of...

[Tamar]

...Coitus Interruptus.>

<Mm. What d'we know about him?> said Julia/Summer.

<Not much. He kind of comes and go--> Sara started to giggle, soon joined by Summer.

"Cut!" said Whedon, shaking his head. "Geez, it's the Gluteus Maximus thing all over again."

"I... I'm sorry, Joss," said Sara who, like Summer, was still laughing. "But I mean, are these sorts of names supposed to be innuendy like that?"

"'Innuendy.' I like that. Very...me. Will have to have that worked into a script."

"Joss," said Summer, grinning, "I believe Sara asked you a question?"

"Oh, yeah. Well, to be honest, I'm not sure. They do seem out of place in a played-straight procedural, don't they? I mean, your characters didn't get silly names. Of course, that's because I...am a feminist. Did I ever tell you I consider myself a lesbian in a man's--?"

"Yes," said Summer, while surreptitiously mouthing Don't say it to her co-star. "Okay, so those silly names aren't on you; we know that. Who wrote the script for this episode, then?"

Whedon checked the script. "A freelancer. Name of... Pink E. Pye. Now there's a weird--"

Sara gasped. "Pink E. Pye? But, but that's the pseudonym of...

[Kamino Neko]

...Lisa! Why would she be trying to ruin Joss's production?'

'Well, my dear. That's a long story. Goes back near on 15 years...'

The others turned to see who was talking. No, it wasn't Lisa, who still can't get in. No, it was...

[Alice Macher]

..."Kristine Sutherland, Buffy's Joyce Summers!" said Sara, wide-eyed.

"That's right, hon," said Sutherland. She turned to Whedon and smiled. "Hi, Joss, good to see you again."

Whedon, though he was, like the others, unsure how Sutherland had come to be there all of a sudden, smiled and returned her greeting.

"Anyway," said Sutherland. "When I've told my story, you'll understand that Lisa was not in fact trying to sabotage this production. Rather, she was trying, if in a somewhat misguided way, to fulfill her lifelong dream of writing for a Whedon project..."

-----

And now, to make things easier, we go to flashback mode:


It was June 2, 1997, and three-year-old Lisa sat transfixed in her mother Anita's lap, her father Leslie beside them, as the closing credits of the Buffy first season finale, Prophecy Girl, came up on the TV screen.

"Did you like the show, monkeygirl?" said Leslie.

"Oh my Eris I loved it," said Lisa. "Buffy is the bestest show in the whole wide world. And when I grow up I'm gonna write for it, yes I am."

Anita chuckled. "That depends, munchkin, on whether it's still on after all that time."

"Okay well," said Lisa, "if it's not, I'm gonna write for whatever other shows this--" She peered at the screen. "J-O-S-S W-H-E-D-O-N makes."

"Very. Good. Reading!" said Anita, kissing the top of her daughter's head.

"Yes," said Leslie, "we sure are proud of our big, smart--wait a minute, if she's still at the 'spelling out letters' stage, how'd she figure out he was the producer?"

"Leslie..."

"Heh. Sorry. Just chalk it up to the mystery that surrounds our magical girl here." He rubbed her head until she grinned and said, "Sto-o-o-p iiiiit, daddy!"



Two years later...


"Hey, Joss," said Whedon's secretary at his Hollywood office. "You gotta see what this kindergartener from Belleville sent you."

"Another stick-drawing of Buffy?" said Whedon, less than enthused. "Pass."

"No no, this is different. This little girl keeps sending scripts. For Buffy. This is the fifth one. Good for a laugh, right?"

"A script? Eh, why not." Whedon took the letter from her and looked at the script, written, of course, entirely in crayon, in block letters:

BUFY: U kant dye, Angle. U r my boifrend & I hart you.
ANGLE: I dont wont 2 die Bufy. But the profisy sayz the vumpire with a sole must giv his lief 2 stop the ebil SPACE VUMPIRES FRUM JOOPITRE.
BUFY: U dont haf 2 giv yur lief Angle. 4 I haf heer the Daggir of Jelly...

[Otaking]

The hollywood office filled with starched suits acquired a sharp tang of rubbing alchohol as hundreds of dollars worth of colognes and perfumes boiled away in the heat of the midday sun through the obscenely large picture windows.

Sweating, the various staffers looked on intently as Whedon, invisible behind the pink heart-shaped construction paper save for a few white knuckles, began to convulse, nearly tearing it.

Nearly a minute passed as time froze in a horrible tableau. Outside, a yappy little mutt was heard barking at a phantom cat.

Finally Whedon looked up from behind the script, face twisted in a manic grin.

Some sort of collective mind, the Overtoady if you will, possessed all the suits who simultaneously stepped back a pace, leaving the secretary alone to face a desperate man. A man who had already written the musical episode. A man prescient enough to know his fate on the other side of the shark three seasons in advance.

A dark vein pulsed on his temple in time to his words, "This. Script. Is. ...."

[Alice Macher]

...Genius."

"Heh, yeah," said Whedon's secretary. "Thought you might get a kick out of all the funny misspelli--uhWHAAAA?"

Whedon stood up and walked in front of his desk, gesticulating. "I'm serious. This 'Dagger of Jellia Jamb' plot is just what I've been looking for, to carry the series forward from the game-changing 'Graduation Day' season finale. And to think I was going to run with weak-ass scripts like 'Beer Bad' and that boring, BORING love interest, Riley. Instead, season four will be our best season ever. Get me Mr. or Ms...Winkullmayor?...on the line!"

Forty-five minutes and numerous attempts at ascertaining the correct spelling of "Winklemeyer" later, Whedon was on the phone with Lisa's mother, Anita.

"Let me get this straight," she said. "You want to buy a season's worth of Buffy scripts from my five-year-old daughter."

"That's right."

"...Who is this really? Robbie Levac, you little smartass, it's you, isn't it?"

"Who? No, I assure you, Ms. Winklemeyer, this is on the level. To prove it, I shall go on one of my unique, quirky Buffyspeak rants." He did.

"All right, Mr. Whedon," said Anita, giggling. "I believe you."



And so the next fall, Lisa's "Dagger of Jellia Jamb" storyline, with various corrections for spelling and compliance with the laws of physics, kicked off Buffy season four to much media acclaim. This was not the least because of the human interest angle of a precocious six-year-old with as many pigtails being the head scriptwriter.

"With this season," Lisa told Entertainment Weekly, "we're hoping to keep Buffy as busy with new mysteries as she is with her homework. Can I have another cookie?"

However, neither Lisa nor anyone at Mutant Enemy Productions had anticipated the real Jellia Jamb, in Oz, becoming aware of this storyline, and thus they'd neglected to ask permission for the use of her name, likeness, or certain salacious details about what she and General Omby Amby had been up to in the emerald goggles storeroom. When she found out, through a glimpse at Glinda's magic book ("rest of world" edition), she hired General Jinjur, who reassembled her women's army and led it into Los Angeles, eleven years before the other time she did that in this very thread.

"We demand," said Jellia and Jinjur from a makeshift podium atop Spago Beverly Hills, "that Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy immediately cease and desist all unauthorized uses of Oz personages (excluding the Buffy character Oz, since it seems he hasn't anything to do with our kingdom and besides, Seth Green's kinda hot), and furthermore that they pay us damages in the amount of...

[Tamar]

...eleventy kajillion dollars."

When it was pointed out to them that neither "eleventy" nor "kajillion" are numbers, and that last anyone heard, it's not clear Oz even uses money, Jellia and Jinjur conferred between themselves for a moment and then amended their second demand to "lots and lots of gold, please. We believe you have some in Fort Knox to spare."

Upon being told no gold would be forthcoming, Jinjur ordered her army to occupy Spago and hold the food, employees and customers hostage until their demands were met, and sent an ultimatum to the White House itself.

"The United States of America will not negotiate with terrorists," was the reply. "Now amscray."

"NEVER!" said Jinjur. "You tell 'em, Jellia, Princess Ozma... Glinda... and your... respective armies...oh crap."



"So sorry about this, folks," said Ozma to the crowd of bystanders as her and Glinda's far superior forces rounded Jellia, Jinjur and their army into the paddywagons, bound for Oz. "Jellia's always been mischievous, and as for Jinjur...she seemed to have been more or less rehabilitated until some idiots set her off by starting a 'Kick a Jinjur' campaign. Glinda, if you'd do the honours?"

Glinda nodded, uttered, "Blip blop glibble glop!", and with that, all the Ozians, herself included, were gone.

******

"Given the negative publicity all this caused his studio," said Kristine Sutherland in the present, "Joss deep-sixed the completed episodes young Lisa had written, and filmed 'Beer Bad' and the Riley/Initiative story arc instead."

"With considerable regret, believe me," said Joss.

Sara smirked. "Knowing Lisa, I suppose that didn't stop her."

"You suppose correctly. She kept sending me scripts every so often, over the years, for Buffy, Angel, Firefly, you name it. Probably figured I'd either forgotten the Jellia incident or was willing to let bygones be bygones. But I couldn't take any more chances on weird disruptions, so I instructed my staff to discard all her scripts unread."

"Until!" came a familiar, if unexpected, voice. "I realized I could use pseudonyms. So I totes did: anagrams like Kyrielle Manwise and Rip Dashier; not-quite-clues like Lizzy Blink, and of course...Pink E. Pye, under which name I finally pwned, er, won you over with my Homicidium: Vita in Viae script."

"Lisa?" said Sara, spinning around. "What the--? How did you get past 3Bad U.'s anti-magic defences?"

"Simple as refuting Todd Akin, Saraleh. You see, I'm not actually Lisa-in-the-flesh. What you see and hear before you is actually a...

[Alice Macher]

...tulpa, or thought-form. And no, not the magical kind, but the kind created through willpower, visualisation, attention and focus."

"Ah, so you're a projection of Lisa, like a hologram," said Joss.

"Basically, yeah."

"Actually," said Summer, "from what I've read of Tibetan Buddhism, a tulpa, once created, is independent of its creator."

"Oh reeeeally?" said Lisulpa. "Kewl. Well, I'm off. Things to do, people to see." And she scampered out of the model Rome and into the campus beyond.



"Oh...shit," said Lisa, legs crossed in a lotus position, back in her WUSSUP living quarters. She opened her eyes. "I was hoping no one would point that out to her."

"What's that, darling?" said Luna. "I thought you were meditating."

Lisa explained what was up.

"Tsk. Well then, you'd better see to it this mea culpa--"

"Tulpa, hon."

"--this tulpa doesn't cause any trouble."

"No worries, moon pie. I intend to do just that. There's just one thing I need you to do for me first."

"Of course. What's that?"

"...Help me up. My legs have fallen asleep and I can't un-lotus them."



Meanwhile, back at 3Bad, Aggie had just left the library when she spotted Lisulpa from behind. "Lisa! What--? How did you get here?"

Slowly, with a grin, Lisulpa turned to face her, and...

[Tamar]

...tried to plant a big wet one on her lips.

"The helling hell?" said Aggie, grabbing her arm with one hand and pinching Lisulpa's lips shut with the other. "Not cool and not funny, Lis. I thought I'd made my boundaries clear a long time ago."

"Ymmph rmmph...ggmph, rmmph? Srmmph."

Aggie let go of Lisulpa's lips. "What?"

"You are...Aggie, right? Sorry."

"Uh...yeah." Aggie's face softened. "Lisa? What's going on? Are...are you okay?"

"No time!" Lisulpa about-faced and sped off.

"Lisa, wait! You still haven't explained how you got past the...Damn it, she can't hear me."



At dinner in Rugmunch Hall, Aggie told Penny about her disturbing encounter.

"Wow," said Penny. "That's not like Lisa. She's flaky, but she's not that flaky. Not the least because she does take her 'SUP Y'ALL school--"

"That's WUSSUP, Pen," said Aggie.

"--very seriously. So why would she be flitting--and flirting--around here, and how'd she beat the anti-magic safeguards, unless...unless she's an evil Lisa from a parallel universe. Like that one who barged in when we were working on our American History tableau, remember?"

"I remember. But today, that couldn't have been an evil doppleganger. She didn't have a goatee."

"Well, not all evil parallel-world dopplegangers necessarily have goatees," said Penny.

"Now who's being naive?"

"Don't you quote Homer Simpson at me, bitch."

"No, I'm Grasseater. You're the bitch. Bitch." Aggie stuck her tongue out.

The two of them stared each other down a few moments. Then, as one, they bussed their trays quickly and headed back to their dorm to continue their conversation with less of an audience and even less clothing.



When they were done, er, conversing, they took a nap, nestled in each other's arms, only for Jade's screaming and moaning to awaken them. Taking a moment to orient themselves, they threw on clothes and dashed to Jade's and Sara's room at the other end of the hall to see if anything was the matter. There, they found a sock on the door. "Well, that explains it," said Penny in a hushed voice. "Go, Jade."

At that point, Sara entered the hall. "Is she still at it?" she said wearily, then remembered to lower her voice too. "I forgot my laptop, and had to work on one of those old, crappy 'puters in Beauvoir.* Froze up on me and I lost twenty minutes' worth of work."

"Sorry to hear it," said Aggie, touching her arm. "Anyway, we only just got here. The, er, associated sounds woke us up."

"And are keeping us from studying," said Jules who, with Temperance, had just joined the three of them in the hall.

Just then, the door opened, and out came Lisulpa, pulling up her "banned in 40 of 50 states" skirt with one hand while carrying her stripey socks and shoes in the other. Through the cracked-open door, the others could just make out Jade, still nude, sprawling onto the floor face down, and babbling to herself in rapture.

"Wak! Guess we were bein' kinda loud. Sry to inconvenience you, everypony," said Lisulpa. "I'll be heading off now."

"Just a minute." Penny grabbed her arm. "We want some answers here, twit."

"Penny, be nice," said Aggie, nonetheless grabbing the other arm when Lisulpa began to struggle. "Now, spider-hair...talk to us. Do you know what day it is? Do you know who we are? Do you know who you are?"

Their captive sighed. "October 25, 2012. I recognize...Penny, Aggie and Sara, but not you other two, no 'ffence. I know my pig-tailed poon partner in there is named Jade, 'cos she introduced herself. As for me..." She sighed again. "I'm not actually Lisa. I'm her tulpa."

"Her what?" said the other women.

Lisulpa explained who she was and how she came to be.

Penny raked her hair. "So...yet another magical screw-up for our Ms. Mandrake. Well, at least this doesn't seem to have done any damage, not to mention it seems to have made Jade's night."

"Nuh nuh," said Lisulpa. "Weren't you listening? I'm not a product of magic, but of Tibetan Buddhist contemplation."

"Come on. The Lisa we know can't sit still long enough to contemplate anything."

"And yet, here I am. Besides, if I were a magical spell, how would your campus's defences not have neutralized me on sight?"

"...Yeah, point. But how is it you even know about that?"

"As a tulpa, I know everything Lisa knows. (Don't say it.) No more, no less. 'S why I don't know these two...lllovely ladies here, because, presumably, Lisa's never met them."

Jules and Temperance blushed, the former with more of a grin.

"Anyway," said Sara. "While it's clear you mean no harm, we can't really have you running around campus sexing everyone up. Not like there's a shortage of opportunities here, amirite? So, how do we send you back to Lisa?"

"Got me. Not sure if Lis read that far ahead yet."

Penny facepalmed hard enough to leave a mark on her forehead. "Ridiculous twi--mmph phmm!"

"Come on now, Pen, don't overuse the catchphrase," said Aggie, restraining her lips. "I suggest we send our tulpa friend here back by...



* The renowned main library at Bad Bad Bad.

[Alice Macher]

"...Tulpapult?"* said Lisulpa, bouncing on her toes.

The others looked at her.

"Y'know, like a catapult... for... tulpas... wow, tough crowd." She tugged on her collar.

"Wait a minute." Aggie snapped her fingers. "That gives me an idea."

Aggie got out her phone and made a call.



"What up, Ag?" said Lisa, back in Belleville. "No, I hadn't read that far yet... Yeah, I'm not surprised Pen reacted that way... What's that? ... That's an awesum idea." Yes, she pronounced it such that you could tell it was spelled that way. "I'll get right on it. Thx. <3ubye." She hung up and put her phone aside. "Luna, got a couple of hours to spare?"



Two hours later, in Penny's and Aggie's room, Lisulpa played with and petted the cats. This was part of an ongoing sexual self-restraint effort which had also included: a game of euchre with Penny, Aggie and Sara; walking on her hands, until she lost her balance and nearly overturned a bookshelf, whereupon Penny gave her the glare of doom; and reading Aggie's History of Western Magic 1050-1650 textbook, until all her tut-tutting at the mistakes led Aggie to snatch the book away.

Diva, Penny's flapper cat, was just about to have a purrgasm from the belly-scratching when Lisulpa's head suddenly snapped upward. "I gotta go," she said. "Something...no, someone is calling to me."

"You mean Lisa?" said Penny, turning toward her.

"Negatory. Someone else." Her form began to flicker.

"Aw, c'mawn, sugah," said Diva. "Don't twenty-three skidoo on me heah. I'm almost... ooh, yeah... prrrrr," she went on as Penny quickly assumed belly-scratching duties.

"Sry 'bout that, Diva," said Lisulpa, now barely visible and with a faint, choppy voice. "L8R, girls, and thx..." And with that, she vanished.

"Finally," said Penny, after diplomatically waiting a minute just to be sure the tulpa was gone.

"I must admit," said Aggie, smiling as she petted her cat Muffy, "I wasn't sure my idea would work."

"Having Luna create a tulpa of herself? How could that not work? (Although how Lis got her to focus for that long, I'll never know. I still have no idea how Lisa did it.) Of course Lisulpa would make a beeline for her."

"Just like a tulpapult."

"You mean a ca--?" Penny looked at each of the pets in turn and caught herself. (They were a bit sensitive to words like "catapult" and "catastrophe," no matter how many times their owners patiently explained such terms were etymologically unrelated to their species.)

"Yeah, that."

"Technically, that solution, while as clever as I'd expect from you, isn't really a... a tulpapult, because it involved pulling Lisulpa back from Belleville, rather than flinging her there."

"Whatev," said Aggie. "I wonder what Lisa and Luna will do with their creations?"



Well, let's not belabour the answer, shall we? The tulpas, with help from Charlotte's quantum powers, were pleased to receive a one-way ticket to the Dimension of...



* Credit to Kamino Neko for the pun.

[Tamar]

...Moral Tulpatude.

Charlotte, contrary to what you may think, was okay with this. "Better those hypersexual versions of Lisa and Luna get up to their hijinx some place where I don't have to hear about it."

So, with that settled, we move on to the Harvard Department of Really Complicated Science Believe Me, where John Johnson III, Demi Lovato and the girlbots were hard at work testing a new method of transporting...

[Alice Macher]

...time.

"You know how people are always saying they wish they had more time?" John and Demi had written in their research proposal. "We aim to make this a reality: affordable, and with minimal impact on the spacetime continuum of our universe. The proposed Timegrabbatron will procure time, in microsecond increments, from nearby Universe X-42ii, which isn't using its time much, being as it is devoid of life. (*footnote: We've checked. It's a small universe.) A series of successive time procurements would add up to minutes, even hours, of extra time, which users could employ as they wish, without adding to the age of our universe as a whole."

What a concept! Couldn't possibly go wrong, yes?

...

BAHAHAHA! I can't keep a straight face. No, as the genre-savvy reader you are, you know very well it could, and would, go wrong.

You see, the team had failed to account for the effects of inter-universe relativity. So when they built the Timegrabbatron, powered it up, and siphoned fifteen minutes, local time, from Universe X-42ii, then brought it into their lab, Chessica happened to glance out the window. "Uh, John? Demi? Hate to interrupt your victory smooching, but...you'd better come look."

So John and Demi, together with the girlbots, looked out the window and saw, to their horror, a shower of...

[Lia S]

... babies.

X-42ii contained only the best quality time, because nobody had been using any of it before. Someone messing with the timeline while you're not expecting it leads to bad timing, and we all know that the combination of a good time and bad timing leads to babies. To add to the confusion, adding unexpected time can make the wrong things go faster, cutting out the whole nine months and launching the baby at high speed.

As you can imagine, this led to a lot of couples being very surprised about how quickly things happened, and many of the men are said to have said "that's never happened before!".

John, Demi and the girlbots (well, one of them anyway) quickly switched off the Timegrabbatron to end the baby shower. Having significantly added to it by accident, the team now felt responsible for finding a solution to world overpopulation. Demi suggested they should modify the Timegrabbatron to...

[Tamar]

...convert it into a Babyprovisionsatron, which, when mass-produced, would generate baby food, formula, diapers, clothes and other necessities, which the team would then make available for free (as a condition of licensing the device throughout the world) to all the new parents who couldn't afford them.

"We could also use the proceeds from the patent to seed modest registered education savings plans, to ease the financial hardship even after these kids are past infancy," said Demi.

"D'awwww," said the girlbots, sniffling.

"Mm, yes, that is both logical and feasible," said John. "Make it so."

The others looked at him with a raised eyebrows. "What?" he said.

Demi kissed John and ruffled his wild red hair. "Don't ever change, nerdboy."



One of the insta-babies whose parents didn't need financial assistance was--get ready--Robert Nicholas Levac-D'Amour. That's right, good old RN.

"Bizarre John/Demi and co. inventions or not," said Aggie, nursing him in the dorm one week later, "I'm still at a loss as to when our little bundle of joy here was actually conceived. I totally don't recall my visiting a clinic and being artificially inseminated with Rule63!Lisa's sperm."

"Neither do I," said Penny. "And yet the paternity test, after we had Lisa put on a gender-change belt (presumably again), confirmed it beyond reasonable doubt: this is the very child whose birth hath been foretold. By, um, himself." She shook her head. "My God, is our life weird."

"Yup. Well, at least my memory was spared the squick of the, er, bestie-baster. Oh, and the labour of course. And most importantly, we finally get to see RN grow in real time." She smiled at the baby as she switched him to the other breast.

"Heehee yeah," said Penny, beaming.

After a few moments, Aggie said, "Did you see about the attendance thing?"

"Yep. All our profs and TAs have been notified we'll be absent for the next month, and getting our lecture notes and handouts from classmates, so we can keep up. And I also got us exempt from any lab requirements for the month."

"Cool. Thanks, Pen. So we have some time to bond with the kiddo before he goes to campus day care."


Said day care was run by--don't worry, no one cruel or sicko or neglectful or such, but by the, let's say, eccentric...

[Alice Macher]

...Dell Irium. No, she wasn't Delirium of the Endless. That's a fictional character in the Ctsverse as in ours, as are Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire and Despair. (Now Desmond of the Endless, on the other hand...well, let's not get into that here, shall we?) Neither was she insane.

Dell, however, did have eyes of two different colours, as well as hair that changed colour, length and style spontaneously. It was rumoured she was part fey, but if she was, she wasn't talking. She had been romantically linked in the past with one Liz Adams, for what it's worth, but that's almost certainly not significant. (Or is it? No. No it is not. Stop asking.) Dell also had a musical voice. By which I mean, of course, that when she spoke, musical notation--staffs, key and time signatures, notes and all--appeared just above her head.

"Hel-lo, Ms. Levac, Ms. D'Amour," said Dell when she met with them and RN for the first time, in her office, that afternoon. "I'm delighted to meet you. And ooh, hello little Robert." She beeped his nose lightly. "You're going to love it here in day care."

"We generally call him RN," said Penny, smiling.

"RN? Curious." Dell tapped her chin. "Would that be because he has a round nose? A runny nose? A link to the Roman netherworld? Ooh, wait, I have it: he was a royal nymph in a previous life, wasn't he?"

"Ahhhh...nnno. If you must know, it's because that's what his future adult self, whom we've met a few times, goes by."

"Future self? Oh my stars and toadstools! Your son is a temporal tenshi?"

"A whaaaat?"

"Oh, you know: an angel that flies through time. They can be identified by their mark of--"

Aggie jumped in. "No, no. He's just good with time travel tech. Well, good enough to appear at a given point in the spacetime continuum for a few minutes, anyway." She beamed with maternal pride.

"Oh." Dell's face fell. "Well, of course, if one wants to cheat...sorry, sorry. Where are my manners?"

The two moms exchanged glances.

"Yes well," Dell went on, "we were talking about optimal planetary hours for feedings, weren't we?"

"Uh...no," said Aggie.

"Ah. Well, no time like the present. Now, RN's a Scorpio, right?" She pulled down an astrological chart from the ceiling and examined it. "So if we calculate the conjunction and sextile at--"

"Wouldyouexcuseusforamomentyesthankyou," said Penny with a spooky grin, as she yanked Aggie up from her chair.

Down the hall, the moms spoke in hushed tones.

"You're sure this campus day care is fully licensed and accredited by the state?" said Penny.

"Yup. You've seen the pieces of paper yourself."

"And you're sure a background check on this...person, her staff and volunteers didn't turn up any history of, y'know, complete bugfuckery?"

"Language, Pen. There are kids here. And yes, I showed you the report. They all have the required certifications and training for their respective positions, and none of them have a police or psychiatric record."

"So...this Irium chick is just weird, nothing more."

"And nothing less." Aggie grinned.

"Heh." Penny took her hand. "Okay then, Grasseater, I'm satisfied."



Another person who was satisfied was Fred, over at the all-male Dockers University. Why? Because he and Brian had received permission to film a documentary on residence life there. However, when they informed Hank, their RA, Hank's eyes narrowed and he said...