It was all part of the measured transformation from a perfect military leader into a photogenic President. They had been about to broadcast a speech carefully prepared by the Patriot's greatest spin-doctors and memorised entirely by Solidus regardless of the autocue he would have, when the frazzled makeup lady gave up poking around Solidus's eyelashes with a pencil and said that the makeup would look far better on if Mr President would go for a sunbed occasionally, and while Solidus hadn't got as far as he had done on obeying people's suggestions, the papers the morning after speculated that Sears was ill, or lying, and Solidus conceded.
Marching up and down the row of Dead Cell members, Solidus rejected Chinaman (already tanned), Oldboy (at risk of melanoma), Jackson (fiercely unwilling), and Fatman (too fat), and settled on Vamp as an escort. Solidus had shuffled naked into the spa's stand-up sun capsule, guarded by nothing besides a pair of silver cones wedged into his eye sockets. Blind, baking and without dignity, and praying the tabloids, if they found out, would be stopped by Them from printing anything, he attempted awkwardly to lift both arms to maximise UV coverage and found his left one bump into a hairy chest. Somehow Vamp had managed to get in here too.
Tearing the cones from his eyes, he opened his mouth to order Vamp to get out, but it remained hanging open, and the faintest gasp rose involuntarily from the back of his throat. In front of him stood Vamp, naked, and sparkling like a million tiny diamonds in the UV rays. Disorientated and awed, Solidus staggered back and felt the hot lamp of one of the UV tubes sizzle against his right buttock. He dropped forward half a step by reflex, and swore. The light from Vamp's dazzling naked chest played over his forearms, casting tiny rainbows.
"So killers have skin like that?" Solidus said, using sarcasm to hide the kneejerk feeling of having witnessed something absolutely, impossibly beautiful.
Vamp arched his spine nudely.
"A natural quality of mine," he explained. "We have all the nanotechnicians working on suppressing it. Until then," - and his mouth arched into a wicked poisoned-apple smile - "I will just have to dazzle you."
His hand reached out and touched Solidus's hip.
Solidus, unable to bear this any longer, forced the door open, and tried to force the image from his memory while hunting for his clothes.
Regardless of the tabloids, he never went back.