A/N: Another entry in my ongoing crossover oneshot challenge with Jeemers and Devryn (links in my bio).
YOU CAN'T PLANET ALL
Leia Organa heaved a sigh of relief as the sound of loud snoring came from the living room.
"Finally!" she breathed. "I thought he'd never drop off!"
With a groan of frustration she shoved another plate into the dishwasher. She remembered her reaction when she had first found it in their new house.
"Isn't this a little, well, environmentally unsound?" she had asked him. "It uses an awful lot of water."
He had flashed the sparkly grin that had so charmed her back on Endor. "Well, unless you want to be scrubbing all these dishes yourself, this'll have to do."
She should have seen it coming. He had told her the Hummer was just a special splurge in honor of their honeymoon, but pretty soon she noticed he was driving it to work every day. He had told her the aerosol bottles in his bathroom cabinet were confiscated from supervillains, but on a whim she had investigated them and discovered them to be cans of neon blue spray-on body paint.
The last straw, though, was when she caught him dying his hair.
"MOTHERLESS BABY SEALS?!"
"Honey, they're not gonna need these tears. And don't worry—they won't cry much longer. The Planeteers and I will put them out of their misery."
"Put them out of— What do you mean!"
He pointed out the back window to a baseball field behind their house.
"Ma-Ti! Over here!" shouted Wheeler from right field as the small Machu Picchuan stepped up to home plate.
"Silence, Yanqui whore!" Ma-Ti cried, his monkey screeching and hopping around on his back. "I shall win this game in spite of your jingoistic distractions!"
To Leia's horror, instead of a long wooden bat, Ma-Ti raised a despondent baby snow seal to his shoulder and widened his stance for balance. On the pitcher's mound, Linka laughed and juggled a large round softball expertly between her hands.
"I hope you are ready, leetle animal!" With a final giggle, she tossed the ball up into the air and then served it volley-ball-style in the direction of Ma-Ti.
"Aaaahhhhh!" Leia screamed, covering her ears and turning away from the window. Even then, she could still hear the thwump of the collision as the seal hit the ball.
"All right, Ma-Ti!" yelled Kwame. "A double!"
Leia thought she would be sick. Where was the man she married? The man whose staunch idealism had reminded her of the hero her father might have been? More importantly, the man for whom she had given up HAN SOLO?
Han hadn't been happy when he heard about her relationship with Planet.
"So he's trying to save the world, huh? Well, what about the world I just helped save, Princess? More than one, I might add! And on top of that, I kept you from porking your own brother! Doesn't that count for something?"
Leia sighed. What a fool she'd been. It hadn't been long before she found out she wasn't even Planet's one and only.
She had come home from her counseling job at Allies Anonymous (a support group for men and women suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the late galactic war) to find a strangely quiet house. Usually the noise from the 42-inch plasma television greeted her, accompanied by the frequent loud belching of her husband chomping on a jumbo bag of pork rinds.
But this time, the TV was off and the only sounds came from the bedroom.
That's it, she thought. I've had it with you, Mister. She stormed down the hall to their bedroom, flung open the door, and cried, "WHAT AM I, CHOPPED LIVER?!"
The two figures in the bed screeched and tumbled onto the floor, dragging the coverlet with them. Peeping over the top of it was a shock of green hair and two golden buns with shiny red hairpieces and at least six white barrettes.
"I'm sorry, Leia," Planet stuttered, "but…her hair is even more incredible than yours! And it can be used to fight evil!"
The girl under the bedspread giggled and poked her enormous blue eyes out from underneath it. "He just couldn't resist…MOONING AROUND!"
Leia screamed and grabbed the girl by her yard-long pigtails, yanking her forward and onto the floor. "Take your slutty—underage—schoolgirl—ass—out of my house!"
The girl's eyes narrowed and she drew her head back with a defiant glare. "In the name of the Moon, I will punish you!"
But she was knocked immediately unconscious by Leia's powerful right hook.
"Any other takers?" Leia seethed. Crickets chirped.
She was snapped back to the present by a sudden crash in the front yard. Throwing open the front door, she rushed out to see what had caused the horrible noise. If she hadn't seen Planet lying on the couch in the living room as she passed, she would have thought the man lying in the bushes was him. He had the same blue skin, the same red briefs, the same electric green mullet.
"Uh…sir? Are you all right?"
The man groaned and rolled over onto his back. "The shower…"
"What?" Leia asked, thinking she had misheard him. "Could you repeat that?"
"The shower…" the man gasped, "…ain't…yours!"
Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he spoke no more.
In shock, Leia reached into the pocket she knew would be in the man's belt and found a small rectangular card with the following inscription:
Captain Janet and the Janeteers
"Taking Ablution Down to Zero"
Now Recruiting
A glazed, wistful look came into Leia's eyes. Saving the world…from wanton cleanliness. A noble mission. A well-nigh impossible one. She glanced down at Captain Janet.
No…no. Captain Janet was most definitely not a woman.
A/N: Apologies for the ending as it's a bit of an inside joke. But for those who are wondering, the other Janeteers, besides Leia, are:
-Sherlock Holmes
-Captain Nemo, from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
-Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis & Clark expedition
-William B. Travis, commander of Texan forces at the Alamo
Leia is, needless to say, the Janeteer with the power of Heart. I reserve the right to be blatantly sexist toward my own gender.
Mr. Holmes possesses the power of Earth, as indicated by his notable dexterity in crawling across the ground and relieving it of its secrets, e.g. footprints, tobacco ash, etc.
Capt. Nemo is, all together now, Water. He lives in it, moves through it, and plumbs its depths, using it simultaneously as a hideout, a prison, a playground, and a base of operations for his numerous philanthropic and genocidal schemes.
Capt. Lewis is, for reasons unknown, Air. Current scholarship suggests that his miraculous-for-the-time air rifle may play into this; how Mr. Holmes feels about working with an expert airgunner can well be imagined by those familiar with his exploits.
Col. Travis, finally, is Fire, for multiple reasons: First, he and his men undoubtedly did a lot of it in the fortnight they spent holed up in their San Antonio mission-fort. Second, he is often depicted as having a "fiery" personality. Lastly, to put it as delicately as I can, his remains were consumed by a blazing funeral pyre constructed by the Mexican Army after the extremely one-sided battle. One can only assume that all three of these details were taken into consideration by Capt. Janet when he parceled out superpowers, but the last was probably omitted in his justification to Col. Travis, whose sense of humor has frequently been described as "tetchy".
Not to be outdone by their pollution-fighting compatriots the Planeteers, the Janeteers have a catchy theme song and slogan, and are currently negotiating a comic book series and tie-in merchandise line. According to press releases, some possible titles in this adventure series are: Captain Janet Takes a Bath, Captain Janet and Mr. Clean, Planet Schmanet Janet, and Captain Janet Is Not a Woman. If the series is a success, there is the potential for further adventures featuring various other hygienic nemeses and the exploration of inter-Janeteer relationships, such as Holmes' animosity toward Nemo's pet oysters and Lewis' mental health issues, which among other things include a persistent phobia of Leia's hair. The Janeteers' magical rings were modeled after Col. Travis' famed cat's-eye ring, which can be viewed in the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Museum adjacent to the Alamo shrine and gift shop.