Category Archives: Paffooney

Canto 122 – The Hidden Powers of the Avenger

In the central courtyard of the Palace of a Thousand Years, the Avenger made its reappearance atop a young, completely nude boy.  He ran into the courtyard full throttle, and suddenly pulling up in front of the animal handler, six of his young apprentices, and six mardenschmauz six-legged riding beasts.    The Avenger then hit them with a mind-blast, proving that whoever was under the helmet was a powerful telepath.  He did not, however, kill them.  He merely put all seven people and six hexipedal riding beasts into a deep and restful involuntary slumber.

Of course, it was obvious that it wasn’t Alec under the helmet.  Alec was especially aware that it wasn’t him, as he rushed to the scene of the attack knowing it had to be stopped, and most likely only by another telepath.

Besides Alec knowing that he wasn’t the telepath in the Avenger helmet, he knew it wasn’t Sara or Junir, because the naked body wasn’t a girl, and it definitely wasn’t blue.  Besides, he was beginning to know and befriend the only Space Nudist among the students of the White Spider, and he now recognized Hassan Parker’s skinny butt and tiny penis.

Alec’s own telepathy was at least strong enough to protect him from any attack against him that naked Hassan could muster, in spite of Hassan’s telepathic superiority.

“Halt, Hassan!  You must take that evil helmet off.  You don’t want to hurt anyone.”  Alec stood in Hassan’s way.

“I do not know this Hassan you speak of.  I am the mighty Avenger!  I have returned because of the foul crimes of Shen Ming.  The wronged ones must be avenged!”

Others gathered around the scene of the Avenger’s sleep attack.  Taffy King and Mai Ling arrived from across the courtyard.  Jadalaqstbr teleported to Alec’s side and slipped her soft hand into his.  And Shen Ming-sensei hustled across the green, lifting the skirts of his orange ceremonial robe with both hands.

“Bow before me, infidels!  Or be destroyed in the name of Shen Ming!”

“I did not ask for any destruction in my name,” muttered Shen Ming, low enough that Alec almost didn’t hear him say it.

“So, Shen-sensei, the Avenger has now become Hassan?” Alec asked.

“Of course!  Why didn’t I remember?  It’s the stupid helmet!” Shen Ming said with a chuckle.

“You mean, it’s controlling his mind?” Alec asked.

“Undoubtedly.  It is what it was designed for.”

Alec looked at Taffy and Mai Ling, both of whom had fearsome Psionic powers of telekinesis and no telepathic mind shields.  If Hassan took over their minds… Oy!  Everyone could die a horrible death.

Not willing to take chances, Alec ran towards Hassan the Avenger and forcefully applied his best roundhouse kick to the side of Hassan’s head, then reversed direction and kicked him in the midsection with the other leg.  The helmet, once dislodged, flew through the air and landed in the grass more than two meters away from anyone.

Hassan was lying on the ground, still as death.

His heart in his throat, Alec leapt to Hassan’s aide.  His own telepathy was healing-centered, and though Fangwoman of the Black Spiders had only taught Alec how to use it to inflict pain, he knew only too well that it could be reversed the way Sara Smith did it to heal instead of harm.

The green healing energy radiated from Alec’s hands.  He poured his power into Hassan’s potentially damaged skull.

Slowly, Hassan opened his eyes again and came back to life.

“Alec, you freed me!  That evil helmet takes over your mind.  No matter how hard I fought it, it made me do things I did not want to do.”

“You have always been nice to me and helped me, even when I was horrible to you,” Alec admitted.  “I couldn’t just let the Avenger thing do harm to my only male friend.”

“Alec, you have definitely changed,” said Taffy King, smiling at him.

“Yeah, maybe so… But please don’t tell Phoenix.  I don’t want him to lose respect for me.”

“Oh, no worries there,” Taffy said about their old Black Spider classmate, “He doesn’t respect you, and probably never will.”

“Well, good then…” Alec muttered, though the disappointment from realizing the truth of that stung him deeply.

Canto 120 – Space-Walk

Junior Aero found the antique vacc suits somewhat clunky and uncomfortable compared to what the Aero Brothers had available on the Leaping Shadowcat.  Not that he’d had one on more than once, briefly.  But they had rigid sections in the thighs and upper arms that restricted fluid movements and joints that didn’t allow flexibility.  And there was no intelligence at all ln the helmets or in the systems circuitry.  It was like wearing the stupid Nebulon Danjer suits, one-piece protective organisms that Nebulons wore in space.  But even though levels of stupidness were the same, the current space-wear had none of the fluid movements that the totally stupid Danjer-critters allowed.

Ged was the one taking the lead.  He held the hand-rocket that moved them all through weightlessness in space.  All four students were tethered behind him.

Billy Iowa was tethered directly behind Ged.  Sarah was attached to his suit from behind him.  Junior had fastened his tether cord to the metal loop on the lower back of her suit.  And Gyro brought up the rear.  After the boobie-spotting plan hatched in the little blue guy’s evil little brain, Junior felt it was right to put him as the rear end of the line.  For a Nebulon, Gyro could be a real little rear end.

Stars filled the universe outside the airlock, nothing but perfect silence besides. 

The alien “seed-pod ship” was lit by Gaijin’s yellow star and Junior noticed how flower-like it really seemed to be.  Could it be just some sort of wandering interstellar organism?  Junior really didn’t know.  Still, it was no more deadly than anything else they had faced on Gaijin.  Even stiller still, it was certainly no less deadly either.

Ged signaled the start of the journey across open, airless space with the first blast from the hand rocket.  The line jerked each student forward in turn.

Sara turned and signaled that everything was okay.  Junior gave the “OK” sign back.

As they neared the big blossom-looking appendage, the scanner pad that Ged was holding identified the structure as an airlock.

As Ged drew near enough, prehensile tentacles of some sort reached up to take hold of him.

“Ged Aero-sensei, do we run for it?” Billy asked over the comm system.

“Let’s allow it to perform its apparent function,” their master answered.

Junior then watched in horror as the tendrils latched onto Ged’s suit and pulled him inside.  It looked for all the universe like the thing had eaten him.

“Ooh!  I don’t know about this!” said Billy, alarmed as the thing slowly consumed him next.

“Does it hurt, Billy?” asked Gyro.

No sound, of course, came back in reply.

“Sara, can you pull them out again?” Junior pleaded.

Sara didn’t answer as the blossom-thing swallowed her next.

Then it was Junior’s turn.

“Shneejara sohk nahl, Junior-san,” saluted Gyro as the thing grabbed Junior by the feet.  That meant in Nebulonin, of course, “It has been an honor adventuring with you, Junior-san.” Then, the moving, living tendrils were all over him.  He could feel them pulling at his suit, twisting, turning, and then, horrifically, popping his helmet off.  Slime covered his head and slid down into his suit.  All he could see was a faint reddish glow through the tendrils’ translucent flesh.  He sincerely hoped the slime was not digestive juices.

Scherzo 12  – The Debate in the Ready Room

In the ready room where the borrowed Tech Level 9 Vacuum Suits were stowed, Tiki Astro, Gyro Sinjarac, and Billy Iowa were all three busy trying to figure out how best to carry out their orders.  They had to prepare the five clunky-sized duro-steel deep-space suits to fit one normal-sized adult and four child-and-youth-sized bodies.

“It is going to be a difficult refit,” said Tiki, millions of calculations whirring through his Metaloid mind as he was thinking and talking.  “Gyro, you and Junior Aero are both ‘Nebulons, so you are really no bigger than ten-year-old boys of the humanoid persuasion.”

“Well, I don’t think you need to insult us just because we’re Space Smurfs,” said Gyro.

“You are calling yourself that name again, Buddy,” reminded Billy.  “That’s an insult to your race you know.”

“Oh, yeah… sorry.”

“No need to apologize to me.  I’m a Space Texan… I mean, Space Cowboy.  And neither of those names is an insult.”

“You are bigger than the Nebulons, but you are smaller than Ged Aero-sensei.  Your suit will have to be cut down to size too,” said Tiki.  “We best get started cutting and repairing.”

“Oh, no need for that,” said Gyro.  “My powers make it easy to shrink the suits to fit just by Psion ability alone.”

“Oh, right.  I am not familiar enough with how your powers work to add that to my calculations.”

“You don’t need to worry about the computer science-y stuff.  I can handle the modifications without that.  I just reduce the spaces in the atoms themselves with Psionic squishy-power.”

“Cool,” said Billy.

“Watch me fit this suit for Billy.”  Gyro’s hands began to generate a reddish glow.  He then touched Billy with one hand and the space suit with the other.  The glow transferred something unseen from Billy’s body to the bronze-colored vacc suit.  The suit immediately shrank to Billy-size.

Billy then tried the suit on.  Gyro had tailored it to fit perfectly without cutting it up and putting it back together again.

“That is much more efficient than the way I thought we would have to do this.”  The robot-boy tried to smile, but, being a Metaloid and clueless about how humanoids actually did that, it looked more like a pained grimace.

“Why do I get the sense that you have something evil in mind, Gyro?” Billy asked.

“Um, well… Sara’s the only girl on this mission.  I was just thinking…”

“She can read your mind better than I can,” Billy reminded him.

“But not if she doesn’t suspect anything.  And she does have mammary glands that the rest of us don’t have…”

“Breasts, you mean.”

“Yeah, um… I mean, I could just tell her because of those… well, she would have to be topless to make it fit right.”

“Is that actually true?” Tiki asked.

“Yes… um, kinda…”

“Tiki can’t read minds, and even he knows you’re lying,” Billy warned.

“Yes, but… well, for a chance to look at her perfect mammary glands…”

“Yeah.  She’s seen all of us naked.  But we never got to see her,” ruminated Billy, not-so-innocently either.

                                    *****

When Ged Aero-sensei brought the rest of the team into the ready room, Gyro and Billy were already suited up, all except for their helmets.

“Gyro has an easy fix for resizing the suits,” said Billy.  “All he has to do is read you by putting a hand on your shoulder and then resize your suits with his other hand.”

Junior Aero was wearing only a t-shirt and briefs, so Gyro demonstrated by slapping a small blue hand on his ,shoulder and then shrinking the vacc suit to the perfect small size.

“You have a really amazingly useful Psion power, Gyro-kun.  You are adapting to White Spider training really well,” said Ged Aero-sensei. 

Gyro grinned with obvious pride.

“He does have one small problem though,” said Billy.

“What is it?” Junior asked.

“Um… Sara, er… in the front you have… um…” Gyro gestured helplessly with both hands in front of him.

“The word in Nebulonin is spahnkharas,” said Junior helpfully.

“Oh, my breasts.  What about them?”

“To, ah… to shape the suit properly, um… you need to… take your shirt off?”

“Is that all?”  Sara quickly pulled her shirt off over her head.

Gyro’s eyes grew larger by a couple of sizes.  He reached out his small blue hand.  It was trembling.  He placed it on her shoulder hesitantly, never moving his gaze from those two gorgeous…

“Gyro, what’s wrong with you?” asked Sara, doubt creeping into her voice.

Gyro smiled.  “I can see your naked front parts, Sara.”

Sara smiled back at him.  “Just do what you have to do, Gyro.  Or I will ask Junior to remove your… What’s the word in Nebulonin, Junior?”

“Spahnschloop ar nembhis,” said Junior.

“Yes, your personal private parts.  With those gone you won’t be able to think that way so much anymore.”

Gyro turned a bit blue-white and quickly finished resizing and reshaping her vacc suit.

Once they were all suited Gyro and Billy were the last to place their helmets on.

“Gyro, honestly, that worked amazingly well,” said Billy.

“Yes, we got to see something quite beautiful,” Gyro answered.

“Put your helmets on while you still have all your spahnschloop ar nembhis.  She’s a powerful enough telepath to know what you are saying even though she has her helmet on,” warned Tiki.

“And don’t you forget it!” both boys heard her say in their minds.