“We warned you, Loki, to leave this event theatre alone. Now, your Father and all your brothers are demanding that you leave. At once!”
::::Reality shimmers::::
Jove: “Do you really think we’ve seen the last of him?”
Odin: “I don’t know how to answer that. Besides being a troublemaker, he is extremely resourceful.”
Rah: “What is to be done with all the timelines he polluted and the violence and deaths he caused?”
Vishnu: “Leave that to me…”
Jove: “Fine. But do not harm Loki. Look! He is in your hands.”
::::Reality Shimmers::::
As the 7-11 opens at 9:00a.m., Erika Johansen, is busy stocking up the YooHoo which seems to have become extremely popular of late.
An emaciated CoverGirl model comes in to buy her daily breakfast of cigarettes and chewing gum. Seeing Erica, she waves to her.
“Hi, Erica!”
“Hi, Adelle, how are you today?”
“Flying high, as usual, thanks.”
All Adelle has as currency is a hundred dollar bill…
…he had in fact been to the dentist’s office that morning, and the dentist had installed a temporary filling and instructed him to eat only soft foods for the next 48 hours.
Meanwhile, Joe Bradley, who had lost his footing near the car (some klutz spilled liquid soap when unloading stuff to use the laundromat), was revived at the local hospital. He called Jane on his cell phone; she arrived at the hospital’s emergency entrance, where a medic told her Joe was resting comfortably; he had been knocked unconscious and would be kept overnight for admission. Jane, her cheeks stained with tears, was relieved.
“I heard someone say ‘Joe is dead,’ she said in a quavering voice.
The medic answered, “That was Joe Potbottom, the laundromat owner. He had a screwdriver poked through his head like an ice pick.”
Jane’s son Mike and her daughters Susan–her 46” bosom still slightly exposed–and Doris, who was only 5’5" with a 38" bust–were there. (Susan, like her mother, was 5’10".) They too had heard that a “Joe” was dead and, while they and their mother reacted with shock at the death of the store owner, they were relieved to know that their Dad was all right.
Back to 26F: The bill lay unnoticed in the street for a while. A 9-year-old boy, George Blonda, picked it up. He took it to his parents–Bob and Mary Blonda, she of the Dolly Parton-like figure and coloring–and told them where he found it.
Mary inspected the bill closely. George was still holding a dirty paper towel he’d wiped it dry with.
“You’re sure you found this in the street, George?” she asked.
“Yes, Mom,” he answered. George was her third, and youngest, child; by this time Mary knew how to tell if her kids were telling the truth or not; here George passed muster.
“Well, you can have it then, but wait until we go to the store tomorrow. I don’t want you to squander it.” She handed the bill back to George and he wiped it again and folded it, and put it in a hip pocket.
The next day, at the store, Bob and Mary let little George buy a hot fudge sundae, and he paid with 26F. The counternam, not known for honesty…
…nor hygine, slips the foul bill into his mouth whilst pretending to put it in the till. A few moments later, he removes 26F from his gap toothed mouth and sends a supernatural cell phone message to Vishnu.
Then, Odin sits there and waits behind the ice cream counter, ignoring all pleas for more ice cream.
Meanwhile… at the hospital, a young intern, Morris Day, chats up the veloptuous Susan, unaware of her jail bait age. (I mean, Hey! She looks 17!)…
Susan, even more statuesque than Anna Nicole Smith, is an engaging sort and a sparkling conversationalist with an IQ of about 160. She speaks in a mellifluous contralto voice, much like her mother Jane. Big, deep blue eyes; golden-brown hair; creamy complexion; 32 healthy white teeth in her mouth. And a blouse with weak threads–which now pops open.
Morris, never one to hide his feelings, gets an instant, and quite large, erection at this. The counterman is about to hand him 26F in his change when the prudish 63-year-old Emma Gass, the store manager, sees this and…
…screams, “Morris! Get your hands off of that poor girls chest! Lousy, no good son-in-law of mine. This is an ice cream stand/hospital for god’s sake!”
Morris, oblivious to all else, stands there with the most perfect breasts he has ever seen in his hands. Susan smiles coyly.
Her father, though, is just about to shoot Morris, having been admitted with his Glock 17. How dare they touch his underage daughter!
“Joe!”
“Huh? What!?”
“I have something to tell you about Susan,” says Jane. “She’s…”
“…actually 22 years old. A few days ago, Susan was caught in a time warp as a result of all of those divergent timelines, and it deposited her in Siberia in the year 1996. It took her years of working as an travelling mime before she made enough money to get back to the United States. She arrived home just moments after the 16-year-old Susan fell into the time warp, so we decided to not tell anyone what had happened.”
Joe scratched his head. “Oh, OK. I guess Susie’s old enough to make her own decisions about those things, then.”
“Thanks, dad,” Susan said, and then she picked up Morris, slung him over her shoulder (life in Siberia had made her strong), and carried him off to an empty hospital room for some hot & heavy lovin’.
The counterman, who was Odin, realized that it was his quitting time, so he left the hospital/ice cream shop and went to a nearby bar. He had 26F in his pocket, having forgotten that he was supposed to give it to Morris as change. He sat next to Adelle, who was complaining to anyone who would listen about how she couldn’t buy cigarettes because the 7-11 wouldn’t accept any bill larger than a twenty. Odin was just ordering a beer when he noticed Loki sititng at a table across the bar. Loki was watching the Anna Nicole Show on the bar’s TV set, and hadn’t seen Odin enter. “Why on earth was Eris impersonating this insanely annoying woman?” Loki wondered out loud.
Odin smiled. This was perfect. He picked up his beer and walked over to Loki, who still hadn’t noticed Odin…
…So Odin pours his pitcher of beer over Loki’s head and begins doing an odd little dance while chanting, “Ook. Ook. Look at me, Loki. Ahk. Ahk. I think I’m gonna spew.”
Norse gods are just that way, you know?
Loki good naturely dries himself off by sending the beer molecules to a dorm room at USC. This went entirely unnoticed in said dorm room. But it did cause a flock of seagulls to burst into flames in the Seatle area in late 1979. A surprising untalented guitarist saw this and thought it make a good band name. He was wrong, but he still ended up making millions of dollars.
After ending his little dance, Odin lays 26F on the table in front of Loki.
Seeing Nikki just outside the bar, Loki supernaturally compells her to come over and join them.
“Nice, son,” notices Odin, “Now how about one for me?”
Loki thinks for a moment, then transports over a woman for dad. That woman is…
…Sally Mears’ blond friend Olivia Short, not so statuesque as Sally but quite the tramp. Her role model was Heidi Abromowitz.
Olivia had determined, by dint of extensive medical testing, that she was unable to get pregnant and, apparently, immune to known sexually transmitted diseases. She had been prudent enough to earn a Seventh Dan in karate, and thus could fall madly in bed with men with impunity. Ironically, Eloise Sharp, the wealthy mother of 15 mentioned earlier in this thread, has been a mortal enemy of Olivia for many years.
Unaccountably, Olivia has 26F. She looks at the calendar in her purse, and senses a familiar sensation. “Well, it’s that time again,” she muses as she goes into yet another 7-11 and exchanges 26F for five ones; she goes to a restroom in a nearby building and buys what she needs from the vending machine.
The clerk at the 7-11, meanwhile, a totally guileless 19-year-old boy who has had an infatuation for Olivia for several years (and has never heard of Eloise Sharp), realizes that Ms. Short has actually handled this fiver. But he…
…realises that he has to stay at his station until the end of his shift. He breaks into a sweat. She’d been here! Again! The next few customers barely register on his consciousness. He keeps looking at the door through which she’d left. With his usual low opinion of himself, he acknowledges that he has as much chance of going out with her as he has of swimming to Australia–and he lives in the United States–but he can’t get her out of his mind.
Abruptly he takes a fiver out of his wallet and swaps it for the magical banknote that she had touched.
Meanwhile, Loki enters the store. He approaches the cashier, who sees only a nondescript man dressed in faded jeans and a battered university jacket with an unreadable emblem, and says,
…“Gimme a hot dog.” As an afterthought, he adds “and a scratch-off ticket. I’m feeling lucky tonight.” The cashier, still in a daze about Olivia, gives him the hot hogs and the ticket. Loki pays for his purchases (using exact change) and scratches off his ticket. He doesn’t win anything, so he tosses the ticket into the trash on his way out the door. Outside, Nikki is waiting in a car. Loki hops in and they leave.
About a minute later, a large GMC conversion van pulls up to the curb and seven beings pile into the 7-11. They are, of course, the seven Team members. They wander through the store, gathering beer, chips, Slurpees, and other sundry stuff, while Five walks up to the cashier and asks…
Five is disguised as yet another buxom woman. The cashier is starting to feel a little woozy, but his rock-solid sense of general unworthiness prevents him from saying more that the minimum to ‘her’. “Uh, well, that’s on the West Coast, isn’t it?” He grins weakly.
Five, seeing that the cashier does not pick up on the coded greeting, says, “Oh, well, never mind then,” and places several purchases on the counter. ‘She’ glances around in time to see Four and Six hastily withdraw tentacles, spines, and extra eyes inside their disguises. The cashier, distracted by the excellent simulated decolletage that Five presents, notices nothing else.
Six sidles up to the counter. Out of sight of the cashier, he touches a tentacle-tip to Five and taps out a message: “Distract him again. I need to check the cash drawer.”
…So, Five begins to talk in what seems to a form of free verse, but is actually a form of hypnosis. While listen to her, cashier boy aka Bryant Gumble, is mesmerized by visions forming his mind of the planet of nice looking women with very large and perfectly shaped breasts. Once he acyually in a trance, Five and Six go through the contents of the cash drawer.
“What is going on here?” asks Five, “It nothing but dry cleaning tickets and condom packets! Where’s the money? Show me the money!”
“Hmmm…,” ponders Seven, “This means something.”
What should’ve been amazingly clear to them all, is that 26F and all the money really is there in the cash drawer. Their own minds are being manipulated by someone else.
Seven, having been closley following Loki for some time now, is somewhat immune to such things. But only somewhat. It is a powerful mind playing with them. Seven catches a glimps of money out of the corner of her eye, but when looks directly at it, it is a condom packet.
“Who is it?” she wonders, “Loki? Rah? Vishnu…?”
Just then, several police cars, ambulances, firetrucks, and civil defense vehicles screach to a stop outside the 7-11, and out of one of the firetrucks steps…
…“Aw, shit!” says Vishnu, and comes out hiding to commandeer one of the firetrucks and drives away.
At the 7-11, everything returns to what it was before and George W notices that he is now fondling a rather attractive, amazingly large breasted woman instead of working a Slurpee machine.
A Secret Service man walks up to the prez and says…"
The secret service agent looks left and right, adjusts his dark glasses, then competently squeezes the left breast. A thick red liquid comes out. Without missing a beat, he switches to the right before the president notices. Cola comes out. He puts a lid on, and hands the president the cold drink and one of those funny straw/spoon things.
“Thanks,” says the president.
The first agent pays the clerk, and he and the president walk out. The second agent quietly has the woman arrested for indecent exposure.
The clerk asks: “Mr. President? Would you mind signing this five dollar bill?”
“Um, is that the one we paid with?”
“No, Sir, you paid in nickels. But we’d really like your autograph.”
…“I don’t know, you look like an Al Qaida terrorist to me.” “WHAT?!” Bryant Gumbel screams, visions of arrest and indefinite detention filling his mind. Fortunately, one of the Secret Service agents whispers to Bush that Gumble is a respected news reporter.
“Oh, OK,” Bush mutters, “God knows I need all the good publicity I can get these days.” So now 26F receives the signature “George W Bush”, and Bryant carefully places it into his wallet. He puts four $1 bills and a Sackie into the till to even things out.
Bush and his entourage leaves; none of them thinking to question why a well-known news anchor is working as a clerk at a 7-11.
As soon as the presidential motorcade turns the corner, Bryant Gumble leaves the store, hails a taxi, and tells the driver to head for the airport. The seven Team members follow him in their van…
…a 1987 Dodge Caravan with a dragging tailpipe, no left rear turn signal, ripped seats, and the headliner is drooping. The AM radio is stuck in the on position, full volume. Right now they have it on NPR, having tired of the local Spanish station’s policy of only playing cumbias.
Six is driving and is kind of a ninny. He insists on stopping at every light. Since this is Miami (?), there are a lot of lights. Even some traffic lights.
Losing her temper, Seven finally shouts, “BY GRANTHAR’S HAMMER! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, YOU STUPID NINNY!?!”
Six, surprised by this outburst, breaks down in tears. Great racking sobs. “I was just trying to drive defensively,” he offers.
At that moment, the presidential motorcade passes them by again. George W is driving and appears to be lost. Or looking for someone! The limo stops and a hooker climbs in.
Seven recognizes that the prostitute/clerk the limo just picked up was actualy Vishnu in disguise. Pretty good disguise, too. Seven couldn’t remember off hand if Vishnu was supposed to be male or female, but he/she sure looked as a Miami hooker!
They followed the motorcade to a Hotel where a very special person comes out to meet them. That person is…
…author William Peter Blatty, who, according to recent news, is embroiled in an infringement suit over someone else’ improper use of The Exorcist. He wants Dubya to assist him with his side of the matter.
The two men actually have admired each other for years, and the President asks for Blatty’s authograph, and vice versa. Dubya, his mind on other things (including the Secret Service entourage’s increasing suspicions about the woman they’ve invited into the car), absent-mindedly hands Blatty 26F. The novelist thanks Dubya for this; the limo pulls away and Blatty mulls over what to do about it.
A few days later, he goes to an ATM of his bank; he prepares an envelope including several royalty checks and some cash, including 26F. After toting the amounts up, he pops his card into the machine and effects the deposit. However, when the ATM deposit well is emptied of cash the next morning, the sharp-eyed bank clerk…
…notices that banknote 26F is glowing slightly… and that the two banknotes on either side of it also seem to be glowing, as if something had infected them.
He looks again. Nothing. He shakes his head, writes it off as an illusion, and moves on with the collection.
Meanwhile, Dubya and Vishnu have arrived at a bunker underneath Washington. And the Team is…
