Captain Steely Dan, she of the weird cadaverous flesh and inky black seaweed hair, dug into her pizza, zealous and jealous. She ground her teeth together, a pair of jagged chainsaws, grind the cockroach matter into a fine pulp. “Know what I like about cockroaches? They don't really ever die. Not until you've refined them down to their base elements.”

  “You sicken me,” Chicago murmured. “And also enthrall me.”

  She beamed, little roach legs twitching in her teeth. “Wanna make out.”

  He cringed, shaking his head, utterly repulsed. “Heavens no.”

  “That wasn't me asking you,” she replied. “That was me telling you what I want, and I wanna make-out. So obey your captain, AND your big sister, and let's get the smoochy-smoochy going on!”

  The sound of thick, goopy liquid with solid matter mixed in hitting the floor alerted them to Acinony's presence, kneeling on the deck, barfing. A pirate-babe moseyed up with a mop and bucket and proceeded to swab it up immediately, apparently a real problem around here that required constant monitoring of the situation. “You two are disgusting,” she growled, flecks of matter clinging to her furry cheeks and chin.

  “Oh no, madam!” Chicago insisted, bowing courteously. He could hear, yes hear his sister's eyes roll as he did it. “'Tis not I who am the disgusting one around here. Believe you me, my sister's antics get on my nerves quite a lot too. Between the two, I am the sane one who anchors her lest she get too carried away.”

  “And I'm the fun one who kicks his butt when he gets too uptight!” she laughed, slapping her brother's bottom.

  “Don't think you'll get away with whatever it is you plan on doing!” Acinony snarled, then reconsidered it. “Uh, just what the heck ARE you guys planning on doing?”

  Steely Dan shrugged. “You want a massive exposition dump, or do you want it fed to you gradually, with moments of clarity, of scintillating revelation, of when you slap your forehead and scream out, 'OF COURSE!' like Raul Julia in 'Street Fighter'?”

  The cheetah-woman worked her jaw, hemming and hawing, trying to find the best words for a proper response. “Could ya, I dunno, just gimme the CliffsNotes version?”

  “Ooh, yes, the 'CliffsNotes' version,” Steely cooed, swaggering around jauntily. “My second favorite kind of note.” She pointed both index fingers at Acinony and winked. “After the Death Note. Ha! But I jest, I would never stoop so low as to use a Death Note. I prefer to bloody my own damn hands.” She raised her hands, palms out, inexplicably painted a deep, oxidized red.

  “Anyway, by way of explanation,” Steely said, then caught herself. “Nah, explaining takes too much time, allow me to sum up. There's this faboo treasure known among us pirate circles as the Seven Seize.”

  “Not 'S-E-A-S', seas,” Chicago was quick to say. “'S-E-I-Z-E', seize, as in 'carpe diem', to seize the day.” He smiled suavely.

  Steely stared at him, cold and evil, then punched his shoulder. “Yeah! I was just about to get to that, ya stone cold twerp! Anyway, it's called the 'Seven Seize' and it's a fabulous treasure. You think Freddie Mercury in drag is fabulous? This? This is MORE fabulous.”

  “More fabulous than Liberace live?” Acinony asked.

  Steely Dan spun on her heel. “Liberace ain't seen NOTHING on the Seven Seize!”

  The cat-girl whistled. “Dang. That's fabulous.”

  “According to legend,” Chicago began, then stopped, noting his sister's icy glare, those deep black eyes like abyssal pools of oil-drenched tentacles reaching out to harvest his soul. “Ahem. I defer to your authority.”

  “Damn straight,” she growled. “Ahem, according to legend, the Seven Seize is the individual seven greatest treasures of the seven greatest pirate warlords to ever live. Individually, they were beyond compare. Combined, a staggering mountain of wealth. But! That was merely the iceberg on the cake!”

  “'Iceberg'?”

  “What?”

  Chicago shook his head. “Nothing.”

  Steely Dan twirled back on Acinony. “You see, the individual treasures each contained a set of coordinates that lead to the penultimate Seven Seize itself!”

  Acinony cringed. “Y-You DO realize 'penultimate' doesn't mean that?”

  Slowly, gently, Steely Dan leaned forward, sliding her fingers through Acinony's long, blonde hair, her touch like the icy grip of liquid death tingling every nerve into wanting to shut down and die lest they experience it again. “And tell me, madam, just what DOES it mean?”

  Acinony tittered nervously. “Whatever the hell you want it to?”

  “Damn straight! I like you, Acinony Zasperate. You're going places.” She marched off, thrusting her index finger straight up. “Going straight to the TOP!”

  Acinony pursed her lips, regarding her cautiously, then turned back to Chicago. “Are you...are you two really related?”

  He gave her a coy look. “I don't know. Are YOU and Snap REALLY related?”

  She grimaced, biting her lip. “Touché.”

  “So! Brain Game!” Steely Dan purred, swaggering up to the floating boy maintaining this whole operation, the linchpin to her Lynchian construction of malfeasance. “How goes the boom-boom, pow-pow, shoot-'em-up thingie?”

  Floyd stared at her grumpily, a surprising amount of cynicism engendered by one so young. “You mean the gun?”

  “Yeah! That thing! What's the hold-up? Why hasn't it leveled that building yet?” She gestured at the truly impregnable fortress, a marvel of engineering designed to withstand any onslaught. Within its vaults lay some of the world's most important treasures, but it was only one in particular she desired, just one.

  “It's our energy source,” he replied. He gestured at the camera displaying poor Jessica, frightened out of her wits, pushing herself to even more reckless speeds. The monitors were not showing a very healthy heart muscle, her pulse basically a single solid white beam at this point, pulsating so brightly the technicians had to study it through sunglasses. “She's not going fast enough to generate the power necessary to punch a hole through that wall.”

  “So what do you suggest, Doctor Bighead?”

  He glowered at her sullenly, a cruel smile forming on his lips. “She needs to be scared...TO DEATH!”

  There was a long awkward pause and Steely glanced around, cleared her throat, and belted out, “BUM BUM BUM!”

  Floyd nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Well then,” Steely Dan chuckled, approaching the control dials to Jessica's diabolical death trap. “Guess we gotta crank this thing up to ELEVEN!” She started to spin the dial then balked. She looked at her little brother. “This only goes to 10.”

  “I took the 11 off and made it 10,” he explained.

  She looked at the dial, looked at him, looked at the dial, then him again, then the dial. “But. But mine. But this went up to 11.” He gently glided past her, brushing her aside as she babbled to herself, and cranked the machine up all the way to the number formerly known as 11.

  Meanwhile, the submarine reverberated with the sounds of massive feet stomping through the corridors, all in pursuit of smaller feet scrambling to keep one step ahead. “Run! RUN!” Snap screamed, Pink hot on her thagomizer. “Run if you value your dirty, rotten, lousy, stinking, no-good, misbegotten life! EEK!” Pink grabbed her by the tail, whiplashed her about, spinning her round and round above her head like a noisemaker, before letting her fly, slamming straight through three bulkheads into the enormous cargo hold, slamming into a pile of crates, burying her under them.

  Pink peeled through the metal hull like it was orange rind, sniffing the air, peeking around furtively for her pink-haired quarry. She moved slowly through the cargo hold, pirate-babes getting the heck out of her way, stopping at the pile of smashed crates. Shoving them aside, she roared into the middle, coming up short. Snap was nowhere to be seen.

  “Hi-YA! Piss off, slappy!” Snap came crashing down, her big elephantine foot getting Pink right in her face, knocking her down. She hit the deck hard, creating a large dent, but got up faster, slamming her hands together, creating a sonic boom that sent Snap sailing back. “I hate that triiiiiick!”

  She landed on the other side of the hold, groaning and moaning, but her relief was short-lived, Pink on top of her in the blink of an eye. She grabbed Snap up, grabbing two of her arms, and started pulling apart. Snap shrieked. “No! I want to live! TO LIVE! To live and laugh and love and learn! And, oh by the way, have you not learned to count?” She swung her two free arms up, punching Pink's ribs so hard the rupture echoed across the hold, causing the pirate-babes to fall back, clutching their ears. Pink howled, absolutely gobsmacked, dropping her, and staggered back, clutching her sides.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Snap flexed her four arms. “Huzzah!” Her exuberance tapered off, watching with no small measure of horror as the monstrous pink behemoth steadily shrank, growing smaller and smaller, shriveling down to the size of a four-year old girl, clutching her sides and wheezing badly. “Huz...zah?”

  “Ow! It hurts!” Pinky cried, tears streaming down her chubby cheeks.

  Snap exhaled slowly, looking around the cargo hold. “Whew boy.”

  “Oh! My! GOD!” a pirate-babe shrieked, pointing in their direction. “She just beat up a little girl!”

  “That monster!”

  “That MENACE.”

  “Hey! HEY!” Snap screamed, flailing her arms around. “She wasn't a little girl three seconds ago! Don't point the finger of blame at me! I'm as innocent as a M-80 down a toilet on the Fourth of July!”

  “Stone her!” a pirate-babe shouted.

  “Yes! Stone her!”

  “Whoa, hey, no, no stoning,” Snap said sternly. “Not while my buddy Hippie Matchstick ain't here, but it's all in jest, we have fun, Hippie and me!” She ducked as a large rock chucked her way, whizzing over her head. “Oh. Oh flip.” She galloped off, the mob hot on her thagomizer.

  The upper gangway rattled as Steely Dan barged in, Chicago and Floyd beside her, pirate-babes flanking their rear, escorting Acinony and Praleene. Steely Dan took one look at Pinky loaded up on the hover-gurney, plugged into the Doc Lawful brand regenerator mod, and screamed bloody murder. “WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED TO PINKY?” She leveled her finger at Snap, wiggling in the grasp of the pirate-babes. “You hurt my little sister! YOU MONSTER. Nobody hurts Pinky! NOBODY.”

  “Lemme guess,” Snap grunted, “except you, right?”

  Steely Dan gagged, sticking her tongue out in disgust. “What? No! Why would I want to hurt my own sister? What kinda freak are you? A sick, twisted one, that's what!” She gripped the railing and leapt over it, dropping the twenty feet to slam into the deck, rising up to tower over the diminutive four-armed, pink-haired dragon-girl. “I'm gonna paddle your behind.”

  The pirate-babes backed off, giving them space, forming a ring that fenced them into a makeshift arena. Snap scoffed, clicking her claws. “Yeah? With what?”

  A smirk stretched across her pallid visage and she reached behind her back. With one smooth motion, she pulled it out of nowhere, a huge sword, long as she was tall and thick around the hilt. Jagged teeth wound around the edge, and the pommel was a thick, soot-laced exhaust tube. Snap's ear-fins flopped down, her jaw coming unhinged, slamming with a CLANG to the deck. Steely Dan twirled it once and the teeth began to spin around the blade, the inner mechanisms roaring to life, thick, acrid smoke belching from the hilt.

  “Now you gunna die,” Steely Dan giggled, thick black tongue like some deep sea mollusk snaking around her lips in a clockwise manner. “Nasty!” Right down the middle of her chin, a slit appeared, splitting it neatly into two halves, each half a triangular flap of fleshy skin lined with sharp barbs that curled inward, all while her tongue snaked out, a gruesome serpent with another nasty barb all its own on the very end. She lashed out, striking Snap right in the face, sending her flying backwards.

  Snap sat bolt upright, an expression of shock, awe, and some other thing zigzagging across her face. “Dang. Times like this I wish I remembered what Mom told me.”

  “Why?” Acinony yelled. “What did I tell you?”

  She grinned sheepishly. “I don't know, I don't remember. OH BOY!” She rolled aside as the chain-sword struck the floor instead of her head, sparks flying everywhere. “Hey! Careful! If I didn't know any better I'd say you were trying to kill me!”

  “I am trying to kill you, fenderhead.”

  Snap frowned. “But that makes no sense! I thought I was the love of your life, the girl of your dreams, the one you wanna take home in a carriage made out of a pumpkin!”

  “Ahem,” Chicago called down. “That would be me.”

  Snap choked. “Oh, fudge, now I got a sparkle-pire have the hots for me. Minotaurs, shark-dudes, I'm tellin' ya folks.” She sighed at the audience. “It's not easy to be this hot and have all these takers lining up to have a piece of me.”

  “Who the heck are you talking to?” Steely demanded.

  “Shh,” Snap hissed, beckoning her closer. She turned and pointed towards the fourth wall. “See? Out there. In the audience.”

  Steely Dan took a cold, hard look and her eyes grew wide as saucers. “PEOPLE! AAAAAAH!” Dropping her chain-sword, she lurched away, smashing straight through the bulkhead and several more bulkheads beyond.

  “Ha, works every time,” Snap laughed, turning around to walk directly into Chicago's chest. “Ow! Dang! What the eff, you're like hard!” She raked her claws across his bare chest, impressed not a scratch on him. “Well. That must come in handy.”

  “The carbon in my body is 100 times denser than diamond,” he replied coolly. “I'm indestructible.”

  She smiled, her tail wagging. “Is that a challenge?”

  “Enough talk,” Floyd growled, flying down between them. His veins twitched, a revolting image that made Snap's skin crawl. “I can explode her head in the blink of an eye!”

  “Whoa, like 'Scanners'?” Snap gasped.

  His eyes lit up. “Totally like 'Scanners'!”

  Chicago frowned. “When did you see that movie? It's rated R, you can't watch rated R movies!”

  Floyd froze up, lowering to the floor, standing on his scrawny legs. “Uh, er, I, um, I read. Fangoria Magazine.”

  “See? Kid's legit!” Snap sneered, pointing at Chicago. “YOU, however, are a poser!” She ducked just as the chain-sword roared over her head, rolling into a ball to zip away.

  “I can't believe I fell for that,” Steely snarled, twirling her chain-sword, smoke swirling everywhere. “She has a real way about her. I hate that.”

  “I find her fascinating,” Chicago mused.

  “And I find you oughta, uh, just shut up!”

  “Captain Steely!” A pirate-babe ran up, awkward in those stupid high heels, nearly falling over. “The cannon! It's primed and ready to fire!”

  “Well, it's about GOSH DARN time,” Steely cooed. “Looks like Floyd's gambit paid off and that kid got so scared she broke the speed barrier! Now. Focus in on that bank and FIRE!”

  The girls giggled. “At WILL, Captain?”

  Steely Dan rolled her eyes. “So soon? JUST DO YOUR JOBS!”

  They scattered as she marched to the great cargo bay doors, grinding open at her arrival. Pareidolia City sprawled before them, a gleaming jewel in the midst of the vast Pacific Ocean, and there nestled between The Daily Zebub newspaper building and the great lion-shaped complex that served as PCPD headquarters lay the impervious monolithic Fifth National Bank.

  “This gonna work,” Steely Dan asked her floating little brother, “or is this going to result in me pushing your watermelon-sized brain down between your legs to cram it up your butt?”

  “My calculations are never wrong,” he sneered. “Now watch and behold!”

  “Isn't 'watching' and 'beholding' the same thing?” Chicago asked. He smiled, ignoring his brother's grumpy stare.

  Down below, locked up in the generator room, Jessica's heart rate reached perilous levels, her speed so great it generated its own magnetic field let alone powering the treadmill that powered the massive particle cannon. “Can't...breathe,” she heaved, her leg muscles stretching taut under her skin, bulky and horrendous. “Help...me!” The monitors reached critical levels, going into the red zone.

  The cannon's barrel turned bright green, crackling with energy, the muzzle slowly lighting up deep down in the chamber, building upon itself, slowly but surely, until, swiveling the entire submarine into the direction of their objective, it fired, obliterating everything – buildings, traffic, people – in its way, striking the side of the bank and turning its once imposing facade into rubble. 'Ka-BOOM' had a new picture for its dictionary definition that day.

  Snap battered her way into the generator room, the pirate-babes squealing and fleeing in the face of her cute wrath. “I gotcha!” she yelled, catching Jessica as she gave up, nearly flying back into the blades, flamethrowers and snapping turtles, striking Snap with such force it generated a shockwave that rocked the entire Naughty Lass from stem to stern, sending it reeling out of control.

  Steely Dan clung to the door as the ship lurched, threatening to send everyone tumbling into the ocean, crates and cracker barrels, and a few of those odd little peg games that are impossible to win, tumbling out. “What the HELL was that?” she demanded.

  Chicago smiled, holding onto Floyd who struggled to keep him from sliding out. “I do believe that was Snap Zasperate.”

  Acinony drop-kicked her guard over the railing, grabbing Praleene by her bushy tail and leapt over the side, sliding down the rapidly developing incline to the cargo doors. “Mrs. Z!” the squirrel-girl squealed. “What are you doing!”

  “Watch and learn, Praleene Jane!” The cheetah-woman whistled sharply and as they jumped out of the door, Praleene clinging to her for dear life, the Hydrogen-Powered Lovecraft swooped around the side of the submarine, coming right under, collecting them as they landed in the backseat, operating wholly on autopilot.

  Acinony hopped into the front seat while Praleene literally wrestled with her own tail. “And that's,” the cat-woman laughed, hitting the accelerator, “is how it's done!”

  “Captain!” The bridge crew appeared on the intercom screen, Steely Dan punching the respond key. “We've managed to contain the damage! The ship is righting itself now!”

  “Get us into the city proper,” she ordered. “I want that bank's treasure yesterday!”

  The bridge crew stared at her nervously. “Uh, h-how? This isn't a time machine.”

  Steely Dan twitched. “Just get us to the bank.”

  “For God's sake get me to the bank...on...TIIIIME!” the crew sang, breaking out into a big dance routine with heavily rehearsed choreography, strutting back and forth under the laser lights blasting off the disco ball, fog machine belching steam.

  Steely showed her appreciation for their hard work by smashing the screen with her fist.

  Praleene managed to untangled herself, coughing up chunks of her own fur. “Wait! What Snap and Jessica! I can understand the innate desire to disown a disappointing offspring, but Jessica is innocent!”

  “I'll ignore that,” Acinony grumbled. “Right now, our focus is on stopping Steely Dan from getting whatever is in that bank! That means we have to make a tactical retreat. Snap will be fine. Relatively speaking. As for us, we need to get the gang together and make this a fight they won't forget!”

  “I love it when you talk like that, Mrs. Z!” Praleene squealed, pumping her tiny fists. “You sound like such an ass-bad!”

  Acinony grimaced. “R-Right.”

  Steely Dan turned to her crew. “Blast that Cadillac out of the sky! You,” she pointed at an able-bodied sea-babe, “get my kid sister.”

  “But she-”

  “Don't 'but' me, get her here. I want her to witness her big sister's triumph as she's on her way to become – QUEEN OF THE SEVEN SEIZE!” She stopped and glanced around. “Think it's kosher to end a chapter on the same bold exclamation as the previous one? Yeah, I'm a rebel. I'm doing it anyway. Become a trendsetter.”