Twink Him!

The following "story" was copied from my In&Out called ATTACK and DEFEND. It was written as a group effort (taking alternate turns to write sentences) by Aria, Europa, Geo, Ravenwand, and Steve.....

The red light flashed on the orangutang's remote collar. An electrode in his brain sent the signal: "Attack and Capture!" Sim-Sim, the orangutang, lunged from the nearby palm tree and tackled Snowflowers, paralyzing her with a taser gun.

Europa put her hands on her hips. "I do not PREEN, Steve. Hey wait a minute... I'm gold?!" Europa cried. "Dammit, I was meant to be PURPLE!" Hastily she grabbed a purple crayon and began scribbling all over mer new metal body.

As you may have expected, that didn't really work. "Ok, it's ok, I can live with being gold." She strode over to Ravenwand and giggled "Hahaha! You look like a Monaro!!"

Not knowing what the heck a Monaro was, Ravenwand simply said, "Thanks, I think." She didn't care if she looked like a Monaro, a Monorail, Mononucleosis, Monodiglyceride or Monofilament. This red armor was SO better than that ball gown!

The orangutang's brain controller fried as the coconut spy-cam crashed and splashed in his ears after he got elbowed and he was suddenly drawn to the fresh scent of bananas that hung off the banana tree. Sim-Sim droped his taser gun and knuckled his way into the jungle with his bananas. Snowflowers remained safe as she sipped on her pina colada, oblivious to the whole event.

Aria walked in, her eyes dazed, and said, "I have no clue where I am, man."

Steve shot Aria. The Clueless were fair game and he knew if he didn't shoot fast that someone else would get credit for the kill.
Unfortunately, while he was debating what to take for a trophy, Sim-Sim scampered off with both the ears.

Europa had her hands on her hips again. "STEVE!!! BAD!!! NO shooting Aria! Now I'm going to have to reverse time. Ouch, my brain." But reversing time was easy for a mind like hers - there was nothing else in it to slow down the process. Aria was whole again and Steve's gun was relieved of it's ammo.

"Oh, Ravenwand... a Monaro is a make of car", Europa said with a grin. "Very flash. Classy. And yes, I have to agree with the ball gown statement... ball gowns SUCK!!!"

"Now Aria, I need to have a talk with you over here for a moment," Europa said, taking Aria by the arm and moving off from the others.

Steve threw down his now useless gun. "Dang that Europa and her time reversal power! I've been reversed so many times I feel like I'm 300 years old. One day she's gonna push time too far back and we'll end up unborn."

Europa returned to Steve's side. "Steve, you know I wouldn't make a mistake like that. Now let me tell you a little secret", she said and whispered in his ear.

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Aria thought about what Europa had told her about Steve. Hmmm...interesting...yes...

Europa mused over Aria's thinking about what she said to her about Steve about... how many about's? Um, yeah. "I thought you'd find that interesting, Aria", Europa giggled, innocently falling on her face.

"Man! I gotta stop doing that!" she cried, looking around to see if anyone had seen.

Ravenwand had seen, but didn't say anything. She decided to take the "Prime Directive," the only real lesson in life she had learned. Too bad it was from the Star Trek series. Ravenwand had led a sheltered life.

(Ravenwand cringed at her poor use of punctuation.)

Steve wondered if he should uncringe Ravenwand. No... because if he did it wrong and she got hurt then she would probably sue him. That's what happened when you tried to be a good neighbor. Better just to let her uncringe herself.

Steve got a large cardboard box and put it over the cringed Ravenwood. That way if any small children passed by, then they wouldn't have to see such a disturbing sight. The Snowsuit Kid, for example, often seen wandering around the battlefield.

Europa wondered just exactly when Raven had turned into a wood. She didn't think Raven looked like a forest at all, apart from the cardboard box having the slightest resemblance to a tree.

She decided not to dwell on the matter, and getting those mischievious glints in her eyes once more, picked up a handful of the Snowkid and threw it at Ravenwand, while readying another with the target of Steve.

Suddenly for a reason only she knew, her whole body went limp and rose up into the air where she hung, like a puppet suspended from invisible strings.

The whole world went silent and the sky darkened dramatically as Europa hung there... turning blue as the life silently slipped away from her. Steve and Ravenwand just watched, unable to do anything for her.

But suddenly Europa opened her eyes and grinned. She dropped back down onto the ground with a soft thud and yelled "JUST KIDDING!!!" to Steve and Ravenwand, who didn't really think it was quite as funny as she did.

Nevertheless, Steve and Ravenwand laughed politely, although when Europa wasn't looking at them they rolled their eyes at each other and made twirly motions with their fingers while pointing at their own temples.

From the corner of her eye Europa noticed their behavior, but she wasn't offended. It wasn't anything she hadn't seen many times before.

People often jumped to the conclusion that Europa was crazy and even when she showed them the affidavits from her doctors attesting to her sanity that she carried with her everywhere they seldom changed their minds.

But Europa wasn't one to crawl into a corner and brood over other people's misconceptions of her. Instead, she put those misconceptions to work, using them to her advantage to get what she wanted out of life.

This worked with simple folk like RavenWnd and SnowKid but the clever Steve was proving difficult. Somehow he managed to see through Europa's cynical manipulations of his psychological misconceptions. It was almost as if he had a firm grip on reality.

Although Europa couldn't imagine Steve having a firm grip on anything (he had just fallen over again) it did seem that his skull contained more than a haphazard assortment of gears, springs, loose screws, and duct tape.

She flipped out her Book of Powers and checked the index to see if she had X-ray vision or not...

"I am NOT simple!" growled Ravenwand, (whose name is mysteriously misspelled quite often by Steve). "I grajimicated with a 4.0 grade average! Granted, it was almost thirty years ago, but who's counting?"

Europa quietly stopped counting on her fingers. "NOT me!" she said, laughing heartily. "Wow Ravenwand... so if you graduated more than 30 years ago... you would have been like -12, right? Now that is what I call NOT simple!"

Europa did a backflip to loosen up her muscles.

Steve frowned. "Loose muscles don't look good on you. Keep them tight. I'm afraid the loose ones look remarkably like flab. Next time, do a front flip. Front flips tighten. Back flips loosen. It's the old counter-clockwise thing. Watch out for it.

"Actually," quoth the Raven to Europa, "I graduated at seventeen. A little early still, but I'm just old." Ravenwand plucked a strand of gray from her hair and began weaving a basket.

Steve marched around shouting, "Look at me! I'm a robot! With a ray gun! And I live in a magic castle! I go 'clank clank bzzzzt! clank clank bzzzzt!' all day long. Then I eat pancakes. And play Pinochle with my dog Cookie who only has three legs. Hahahahahahaha!"

Someone off in the distance murmured something about hitting the refresh button.

"Um...Does that include bellybuttons?" Ravenwand asked Steve, noticing her navel had acquired quite a bit of damage during the New Years Eve party. She was unaware how this damage occurred.

Steve touched his chin. "Maybe you were refreshing yourself a little too hard and a little too often?"

It was at that statement that Europa scratched her ears right off. Thinking about how cool it would be if the world had an "invert" button, she wandered off to grow some new ones.

When she returned half a split second later, the others wondered how she even had time to turn around, but she wasn't saying. Instead, she just stood there staring at them, waiting to see who would be the first to die, erm, comment.

Seeing as they took too long to say anything, she thought she'd tackle them anyway.

only thing was, should she retract her spikes or not?

"My shiny red suit is impervious to spikes, so bring it!" yelled the red-suited middle-aged woman. Ravenwand had no clue what the phrase "bring it" meant, but she used it a lot.

Europa thought she knew what "bring it" meant, but had always associated it with shallow cheerleaders, so got a little confused. Instead of "bringing" it she "brunged" it, and ended up spilling a whole lot of twink everywhere.

Steve was marching around again, screaming, "Death to the masses! I am Steve the Magnificent, bringer of doom, inspirer of fear. I am He Who Hoots... HOOOOOOOOT!... HOOOOOOOOT!"

Ravenwand took a small vial of liquid out of a special pocket in her shiny metal suit, and looked at Steve menacingly.

Europa looked at the small vial and wondered why the heck she'd put little bottles of twink inside the awesome metal suits anyway. "Go on Ravenwand", she crooned. "Twink him!"

"If I twink him, will he stop hooting?" Ravenwand asked Europa.

Europa wasn't quite sure, but said "YES!!!" anyway. She just wanted to see Ravenwand twink Steve.

In fact, she wanted to see it so bad that she wondered why that was, as she gave Ravenwand a little nudge. Just to get her started, you know.

But Ravenwand refused to budge and Steve? Why that wiley old codger just hooted louder than ever and now with an edge of sarcasm to it... HOOOOOOOOOOT!

*shick* Europa had cut herself on the sarcastic edge. It was inserted in a strange place and caught her quite unawares.

She didn't know that Steve was quite the edgy person. She thought she'd better keep a closer watch on him so he didn't push her over the edge. And just when she was on the edge of a new idea... it completely flew over the edge - she lost it.

"SNAP OUT OF IT STEVE!" she yelled, completely unaware that she should have been yelling it at herself. Quickly she snapped a glow stick and threw it to Steve. "Oh, that was as far as the plan went in my mind", she grumbled.

Steve caught the glow stick and glanced at Europa with one eyebrow raised, trying to think fast.

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After five days of waiting for Steve to think fast, Europa thought that maybe time was running out. Well actually, the glow stick had long since run out, so they didn't read the signs very well at all. She wondered if his eyebrow hurt yet.

Steve lifted one foot, moved it over an inch, and set it down. "Now Super Sloth leaps into action," he thought, and contemplated his next move.

Europa shuddered. So it was alive. Although it seemed to move verrrry slowly, she was wary lest the Sloth be pulling a trick to catch her off guard.

Ravenwand Took out her Bottle-O-Bubbles and began blowing a myriad of spherical floating entities toward Steve, to encourage him. "Come on Steve! YOU can DO it!" she said in her best Rob Schneider imitation.

Europa leapt into a frenzy of bubble popping. Seventeen years old, and she still couldn't resist the urge to pop bubbles like a little kid. She waited to bash whoever was about to say that that was what she IS.

Steve slowly opened his mouth to speak, but Europa slapped it shut, saying, "I KNEW what you were going to say! Mwahahahahaha!"

Europa looked extremely grumpy. It was going to take a lot of be-nice-to-Europa before she would consider speaking to Steve again. Plus, she just wanted to see him suck up to her.

Ravenwand unfolded her lawn chair and sipped rum and diet coke from a fake plastic coconut. This would be rich. She hadn't witnessed a good suck up for quite some time!

Steve groveled. He crawled to the shed and pulled out his emergency box of Be-Nice-To-Europa. Damn! The rats ate half of it! They love that stuff.

Steve crawled to Europa on his belly, his tail between his legs, whining, and held up a half a box of Be-Nice-To-Europa to her while he kept his face in the dirt.

"Wow" mused Ravenwand. Steve's 'tail' had to be pretty long to be tucked between his legs like that... She sipped her drink and mused, "Wonder if she will accept half a box?"

Europa didn't really want a 'long-tailed' Steve crawling on the ground towards her so she rapidly accepted the box.

"Ooh, this looks like fun!" Geo exclaimed as he entered the room.

Europa ran over to Geo, exclaiming his name, still a bit creeped out. Now, she couldn't have someone running round in here without one of the special battlesuits she had issued the others, so she handed Geo one of blue.

Steve's quickly looked up from his Gameboy. "Wait a minute! You gave ME the blue suit!"

Europa snapped her fingers and Steve fell over unconscious. "Hey, Geo, I'm sorry." Europa nodded at Steve. "But I HAVE to take the blue suit off you. But you can have any other colour you choose.

Then she woke up Steve and gave him a hug, telling him she was very sorry for upsetting him and that it will never happen again, but if he thinks he can annihilate her, he is mistaken.

The battle must begin soon, she thinks... and she has her team ready. Steve in Blue, Ravenwand in Red, Geo in [insert colour here] and herself in Gold. (Gold - blarg! - thanks to Steve.)

Where were the ones they must battle?

Geo gets in his Green suit and prepares for the worst. "Umm...is there going to be a battle or a fashion show? Does this suit make me look fat?" Geo asked as he turned around.

Aria raised her fist. "I want to join Europa in this valiant battle! I demand the color purple!"

Ravenwand passed around plastic coconuts with gatorade to all her fighting buddies. "Good luck, fellow warriors!"

Europa once more had her hands on her hips. "Aw man... why does everyone want to be on my team? Who are we meant to fight???? And NOOOOOOO, Aria, you can't have purple cause that's the colour I wanted before STEVE put me in gold. Awww, ok, you can have purple."

Europa looked over at Geo, trying to decide if he looked fat or not... She decided he didn't, and (blushed a little). "OK EVERYBODY," she yelled, "WE NEED A TEAM TO BATTLE!!!"

And so it was that the Gold, Red, Blue, Green and Purple stood together, ready.