Cave Sitting
or
The Just Us League
"Fuck me - Etrigan!" said Panty. She and Stocking had heard that he was working with the Underwear Over Their Pants freaks. So meeting him on their space station shouldn't have been a surprise. But a demon in mediaeval clothing just isn't something you expect to see lounging on 2001 inspired furniture in a teleporter room.
"As I remember he already has," hissed Stocking. It was so typical of her sister to have grabbed one of the few men they met at work who Stocking was interested in. Scanty and Kneesock's brother was, in Stocking's opinion, an utter dish and *deep* beside. While she was pretty sure that her sister's only interest in him had been generated by the notoriously short demonic refractory period. That, and the facts that Etrigan was male and had a pulse, of course.
Etrigan rose to his feet and - after only the briefest pause to finish his habitual pina colada - began to recite:
"That I had a heart to place at your feet
Most holy delightfulest angels two
In seppuku most bloody and yet sweet
For princesses who do make the air air turn blue
A garden of entrails I would provide
A heap of offal from torsos torn
Tear from friends and enemies the hide
That my two loves should see my passion sworn
But what scarlet violence can I do
What horrors inflict, what helpless souls steal
That would not be surpassed by you two?
To attempt to match you would be unreal!
You out bloody the bloodiest fiends of hell
You sweet and bloody ringers of the bell!"
"Um, thanks, hun. Boy, you and the two sister-units sure must have some real fun scrabble games," said Panty.
"Heroes, fan boys, demons, and men named Joss
All express their high unholy hope to you
That Daten's city's most painfullest loss
Leads to Anarchy in the Jay-Ell-Eww!"
"Well, that's sweet and all - and nice breaking of the fourth wall there - but Lawyer Monkey says that there's a lot of stuff to be worked out with the contracts if we're going to join. Especially with that League Heroes's Code Of Conduct. It all started with this ad: 'Superhero looking for working vacation and lair swap in alternative universe (not Marvel.)' So..."
***
"So what do you think?" asked Panty. She kicked a fallen minion in the jaw idly; she had to test the steel toecap of her new Jimmy Choo combat stilletos, even if her heart wasn't in the fight.
"Mehh. I was expecting more from a place called *Goth*am. I mean, these minion guys - what are they, juggalos? I was expecting the Crow and we're fighting the Clown Posse? Where's the goth in that?" asked Stocking.
That was when the Boss Freak appeared. He obviously thought that he was a piece of work and that they'd be blown over by him. But when you've fought a 50 story high Satanic penis ghost an escaped mental patient wearing white face isn't going to impress you.
"Goth? You want Goth?" he asked. "Why so serious, pretty ladies? Why not stop and smell the flowers? Like, for instance, the lovely one in my button -"
Panty scowled at the smoking Berreta (the brand had been recommended by a friend) in her right hand. "I still say these things smell like a mixture of grandmother stank and ass. Sure makes a motherfucker dead when you put one through his head though."
There was a screech like a door that needed oiling and both Anarchy's recoiled in horror as some kind of *creature* scampered to the corpse of the fallen sociopath and began to weep. Demons they could deal with - they were literally cousins, given who Stocking's father turned out to be. And ghosts were just a source of pocket change. But this -
"What the fuck is it? The soul of every fashion mistake ever made?" asked Panty.
"Could be. What I want to know is why it has an errect dong growing out of each side of its head? You don't think they're functional, do you? Because -"
"Please don't say it, Panty -"
"Hey, it's not like you'd have to look at the thing while you were doing it..."
The thing spoke: "Oh, my sweet Pudd'n! To think that you were killed by dese two lousy trollops -"
There was a swish. Followed closely by a head-sized thump.
"She took the name of pudding in vain," said Stocking, scowling at the decapitated head. "People can't do that! I mean there's gotta be a law, hasn't there? Like in Saudi Arabia?"
"Fucked if I know. But, hey, with fashion sense like hers, I'd call it a mercy killing. Not least for those of us who had to look at the bitch... Ok, what the fuck do you want?"
Panty turned in annoyance, the better to excor- to ecks-cor- to say more mean things. Then she did a double take when she saw not the Too Old To Do Dude she had been expecting, but the barely over 40, hot, ex-special forces Year One version of Commissioner Gordon.
Panty changed gears with the smoothness of a woman born to drive stick. "By which I mean hellooooo! What can my sister - who's not really into guys by the way - and I do for Gotham's finest? And I do mean f-i-n-e-essst."
"You just shot the Joker and decapitated Harley Quinn!"
"Yep." Panty batted her eyes. "So what are you gonna give me, Commish? A sticker?"
"She *loves* stickers," said Stocking. "Stickers and cock: such are the limits of her mental world. She's the nymphomaniac of the short bus set. Just be sure to clean that back seat *real* good after she gets off."
"But - but you're superheroes!" Gordon pointed out. "You're not supposed to kill homicidal repeat offenders! Not even if we were in Texas!"
Panty shrugged. Didn't this guy have a talking lawyer monkey of his own to explain stuff? "I've got a right to self defense, haven't I? I mean, the guy was going to try to kill me? And I had reasonable grounds for believing that based on his past actions?"
"Well, yes.."
"And Ms I'm The Playing Card Too Lame To Get Used left dead bodies behind the way Stocking does candy wrappers?"
"Harley Quinn did have a track record of homicide, yes."
"And this is fucking America, isn't it?" said Panty, who might even have felt proud of herself for asking a rhetorical question if she'd known what the word meant. "So I got a right to exercise my, uhhh, Third Ammendment rights on this Jester guy."
Gordon's brow furrowed handsomely. "You mean... you stopped him from forcibly quartering soldiers in your home?"
"Well, he ain't going to now is he?"
"I suppose not..."
"And do you want the NRA on your ass?"
Gordon shuddered. Swapping the Joker for those freaks would be like pulling your kids out of the local Catholic Church run daycare centre and handing them over to Michael Jackson. Or maybe he had that metaphor the wrong way around? Whatever. "No!"
Then he realized: what Panty said actually made sense. His cop's intuition told him that didn't happen very often, but that didn't matter. With the Anarchys replacing Bat Man, Gotham's serious crime rate was going to plummet. And placed to take the credit as he was, anything was possible - becoming mayor, a senator, even - yes, even getting a lucrative book and movie deal and going on Oprah. "So why didn't Batman..?"
"Put a cap in his ass? Fuck, who knows? You should see the twisted shit in that cave we're staying in."
"Some of it shocked even me," said Stocking.
"And little miss Gothella DeVille here doesn't say that too fucking often," said Panty. "My guess is that maybe the two of them had a *thing* going on? All those rubber suits and electric shock gadgets -"
"Which I'm testing thoroughly, by the way," said Stocking. "So maybe someone could deliver a truck load or two of new Bat batteries? And an instruction manual for some of the more complicated restraint devices would be nice."
Panty nodded; she *so* did not want to have to Crisco her sister out of any more Bat devices, even though the Bat did seem to have an endless supply of the stuff. Oh, Alfred was a sweetie and had done his best to help - but there was only so much you could expect from an 80 year old guy when you gave him a bound and greased naked girl and a spatula. Which reminded her: she should have something delivered to the heart surgery ward. Maybe he'd like some booze and cigarettes?
She *really* hoped he'd get better, or at least regain consciousness before he died. He was such a dignified old coot. Even Panty knew that it wouldn't be right if his last words turned out to have been "V-v-iolet pubes..!"
She patted Gordon's hand. "Now, just you wait a moment and you'll get something nice from Panty as soon as she finishes clearing up this Arkham mass breakout thing. Hey, freaks! ...This is going out live all over the city right? *Because I wouldn't want to have ca[ anyone because I had to do a second take*."
There was a certain amount of fumbling from the watching TV news teams, then a thumbs up.
"Ok: FREAKS! Anyone not back in their cage by dark is going to get self-defended by the sister-bitch and I! Seriously people, what the fuck? You find a place where you get three hots, teevee, soft toilet paper, warm showers and free drugs, don't even have to do any work - and you fucking break out? How many of you are going to get it that good outside? Anyway: take a look at Bobo the clown and his girlfriend Fenella The Fashion Victim. Everyone see that?"
"..Now fucking decide which you'd rather feel. That soft, soft paper on your ass. Or the cold hard sidewalk a knock-knock-knockin' on your head. You've got until dark: decide right."
"Give the psychotic bitch her due: she knows how to speak to her own peeps," Stocking muttered as she fussed with her phone. With the freakout under control she had real work to do: hitting the mass media until it bled coin.
Panty pretended to ignore her - while secretly adding the remark to her payback diary. "So, Commissioner - Jim - *Daddy* - Stocking has to make like a smart little shit and decide which Hollywood talent agency we're going to let us sign up. Now, while she's doing that, how about you and I find a nice room in an immoral hotel with a good porn channel and -"
"Ohmigawd, Panty - you're not going to believe this -" Stocking pushed her phone in front of her sister's face. "In this world hot slutty celebrity chicks who release sex tapes -"
Panty's went wide and she grabbed the phone -
"- Become even bigger fucking stars than they already were! Fucking-A, Stockin' girl! We are never going home - this place is the real Heaven!"
***
Garterbelt patted the masked man's (he was otherwise naked except for a towel) lithe, muscular shoulders.
"There, there. I mean, fitting in in a new place and all is bound to be tough.."
"It was a shi - I mean, a *feces* monster! No one told me there'd be things like that! People know I don't like these sort of things: I made that clear in Hitman Volume 1!"
"Well, yeah. But after that business wit' the pressure washer, and that fourth disinfectant shower, you started to clean up real nice..."
"It must have weighed two thousand tons! More, a lot more, if we assume a high fibre content!"
"Really? The last one we had was bigger. I think it's something in the water around here that makes them grow so big." He winked. "That ain't the only thing affected if you know what I mean..."
"And that green haired woman tried to *molest* me. She touched an *extremely* private part of my body!"
"Oh? Heh, well, I guess Scanty hung around Panty too much during the second half of Season Two, while they were teamed up against both their sisters. I suppose she's going to have to re-learn some boundaries..."
"Well, she really *should*. It was most upsetting. I'm almost certain that my Little Bat is bruised!"
"Here - maybe if I rub those shoulders? Is that martini good for you?"
Batman fluttered his eyelashes. "*Divine* actually..."
"I think you'd really love the buffet at the Bear Club..."
Maybe this place wouldn't be so bad after all, the Bat decided...
***
"So everyone who fucking lives in Gotham was 'Like let's an ecstasy party! With free beer and pizza and all the bishonen Panty can eat!'"
"..And people send me cake! I can't eat all the cake I get sent! Do you know how much cake that is? A lot!"
"But this green guy - He a relation of yours? No? Well that's fucking surprising because he's all about the ru-ru. And man does he whine."
"And then again the next week. Like we were supposed to spend hours solving all that weird guy's riddles just because he had taken a couple of bus loads of nuns hostages?" Stocking shock her head. "Like that just won't encourage the next guy to do the same. And then where are you? Not even actresses playing bit parts in the Sound Of Music would be safe! Do you want to live in a world like that? A world with no religiously themed musicals? I know that I don't!"
"And after that, when they run out of nuns, you know they're coming after the penguins," said Panty. "No one's taking those cute little guys hostage on our watch, no matter how many buses of nuns they blow up. That would be giving into the supervillains!"
"Although probably we shouldn't mention penguins," said Stocking. "They seem really upset about what we did to that guy with the top hat, the one who talked like a cross between Winston Churchill and Donald Duck."
"I don't see why: it was his umbrella." Panty shrugged. "Then there's that weird ass ethics clause. Lawyer Monkey says that some of the freaks up here might claim that means no porno -"
"- Which makes no sense the way most of these weirdoes dress -"
"- And they're pissy about the phone sex lines -"
"- And the ebay sales -"
"- It's like they don't even care about the economy -"
"- That's completely it! They're like anti-economatarians. They should just move to Russia or Somalia or somewhere -"
"- And what's the *point* of being a fucking superhero if you can't make some coin? And did you see the reviews that 'Heavenly Sin Sisters 2' got? This is art, damnit! We owe it to our fans to make Sisters 3. So we can't really see this League thing working for us."
"It's sad to hear
That from us you'll be estranged.
But truly it is said
That the sweetest flowers
Blossom most fragantly when free range."
The demon paused. "Anyhoo. If there's no chance of a deal, why did you two chica locas visit today?"
"Oh, Gotham's pretty quiet now we've 'helped' all the Darwin Award wannabes. And we wanted to reach out and show goodwill," said Panty. "Which is why now I'm reaching out and taking one of the League's shyer members out to dinner and, you know, socializing. To teach him a few things. Make him more... active."
"More socially active, you mean?" asked Etrigan.
"Maybe that too: I've nothing against threesomes. You know us: we're all about the helping. Help, help, help. Charity and whatnot."
"And this lucky but shy fellow you intend to Pygmalionize-" Etrigan was very much Scanty and Kneesock's brother "- Would be..?"
"Just this big geeky lunk from the Mid West. Kal somebody or other. Demon at disguise though. Which I mean in a totally non-speciest way, except that Kneesocks is completely the Moustache Queen. She's like the Scarlet Pimple of, umm, red people. Or something. Tell her I said hi and that she and Scanty should totally come over if they want to be our nem- nemmy -"
"Nemesises."
"Whatever. Anyhow. Kal does this amazing thing for a disguise -"
"Ah. The glasses."
Panty nodded enthusiastically. "Genius!"
"And Stocking?"
"I have a date with Bondage Lassoo woman," said Stocking, emitting pudding chills. "Whatever her real name is. I couldn't concentrate at the time because when we were introduced I was already eating cake. And then there were just like these *globes* level with my plate. And then I saw she was carrying this golden rope around with her. It almost disrupted my nibbling rhythm. And you know that never happens."
"My sister: the deep one," said Panty, glad to score a point on the overly causal sex front of the eternal war of sisterly rivalry for once.
"Seriously? With cake, major rack and bondage equipment all at the same time? How was I supposed to do stuff like remember names? I was concentrating on moisture control, damnit! Plus I was still weirded out by that Raven chick. What the hell does 'Let's play Twilight Sparkle together' even mean?"
"It's a Pony thing," said Etrigan.
"Pony play? Why didn't she say?" Stocking looked distraught. "Do you have her cell number, Etsy?"
"At least I bother to learn who my date is," said Panty. "So you ready, Kal? Or should I call you Kal-Vin until after we've had sex? How is that cute little devil Hobbes these days..?"