Tara gaped over the edge of the hovercraft. Wow! They were super high up!
At the moment, they were flying at a super high speed over the Atlantic Ocean. It was crazy! She'd never experienced anything like it! Doctor D could've made a fortune giving rides at amusement parks! Or oh! Maybe selling it to a car company and revolutionizing the transportation industry!
...nah. There's no way he wouldn't have already thought of that. Probably scoffed at him or something when he tried.
"Almost there," her boss grunted beside her. He'd opted to go with his basic ol' outfit 'because it's more science-y'. It made Tara feel weird; she was majorly overdressed compared to him.
Looking ahead, Tara could see the island that Bonnie's father-in-law lived on. It was actually pretty big for a private island! The house - mansion, really - took up most of the island, though, save for what looked like a large veranda on the side. Instead of a garden or anything fancy like that, the ground in front of it was disturbed and turned up, leaving it a dirty rough mess with pieces of machinery and metal sticking up in random places.
Weird. Tara hadn't heard about that being the new craze for lawns. Bonnie must be trying to set a trend. There was no other reason her yard would be like that.
As they closed in, they could see people milling around on the veranda and wandering in and out of the building.
"Nnnngh… There're so many people… And so few parking spaces," he grumbled sharply.
"Yeah!" Tara giggled. "She must be throwing the party of the year!"
"You go on ahead. I'll find a parking spot," he said grumpily once they got to the front door and set down right outside it. She hopped out with the help of a guy waiting by the entrance. The guy made to go to the other side of the vehicle, but jumped back with surprise as it floated back up and out towards the sea of tightly-clumped hover cars.
Happily, she skipped over to the front door where a bouncer was standing with a list.
"Name?" The gruff guy at the front doors asked, his cute little fez flopping as he looked down.
"I'm Tara! Tara Blie!"
"Terribly?" He looked mystified.
"No! Bleye!" She waved behind her where the doctor had flown off as the guy seemed to mark off her name on the list. "The blue guy in the lab coat is my plus one."
"Drakken?" His eyebrows rose in surprise.
"Nono, Doctor Lipsky," she insisted. He must've known her boss from the news. "He's not a villain guy anymore!" Proudly, she noted, "He's my boss."
"Doctor Dra-.. Er, Lipsky, was invited to this party? And you're his new assistant?"
"Yes…?" What was so bad about that? He was saying it like it was a bad thing!
"Oh boy…" He rubbed his head like he was getting a headache. "I'll put the guards on standby…"
"Oooookay…?" Tara shrugged. "Can I go in?"
"...yes." He stepped aside.
Once she was in, she was nearly overwhelmed. Wow! The entrance led straight to a large room. Against two of the walls were tables set up with a variety of food. The scents enticed Tara in a way that she couldn't remember having ever been in the past: hor d'oeuvres of cucumber, garlic, and fine herbal cheese with smoked salmon & capers on top; fancy-looking lasagna with expensive-looking cheese sprinkled on top (another odd choice on Bonnie's part); a tower of tiramisu; and, at the end of the second table, a whoooole bunch of fancy etched glasses, many filled with differently colored liquids. Knowing Bonnie, at least some of them would've been some really good sparkling grape juice.
Where was Bonnie? Before she should dive into the food she should greet the host!
As she looked around for her friend, snippets of conversation danced in her ears.
"..-never lasagna! How dare you!?" A one-eyed man with a mechanical hand was shouting at the poor man serving foodstuffs at a table at the front of the room. "I don't care if it's gourmet! NEVER! SERVE! ME! LASAGNA!"
"..-nating my time has been superb!" a blue woman with wires for hair was cheerily telling a rather large woman with a big gap in her front teeth. "The children are so precious…"
The not-fat-because-fat-was-rude woman tsked, "Oh deary, you need to get some help for the reverse polariz-.."
"..-exit is just behind the refreshments," the old guy that Tara was pretty sure was Bonnie's father-in-law was assuring a man with a giant helmet on his head that was covering all but his mouth. He looked like a costumed character from a comic or something!
...now that Tara looked around, there were a lot of people that looked like they came straight from a comic book.
Suddenly one of them jumped right in her way. He was a strange-looking man, with a large beaky nose, a faux-hawk like her boss, a weird mask, strange costume boots, and wearing a leotard with a feathery cape thrown over top.
"Did the fall hurt?" he asked her, combing a hand through his hair.
"Huh?" Tara stared. "I didn't fall."
"When you fell from heaven," the man supplied.
"I didn't come from heaven. I came through the front door."
He looked a little confused before shaking his head and creepily smiling as he said, "Don't tell me if you want me to take you out for dinner. Just smile for yes, or do a backflip for no."
"Uh?" She frowned. Dinner? Why have dinner when everything was already supplied for the party? The blonde wasn't even close to wanting to leave. It'd be hard, but…
She took a breath, then summoned all of her cheerleading prowess and did a backflip that didn't even displace her from her spot. The form was a little sloppy, but there just wasn't enough space to straighten it out!
The crowd around her noticed for a second, with a couple of them laughing and a few clapping in appreciation.
The man in front of her, however, snarled. "So, you think you're too good for me?"
"Too good?" What?
"You think that I, Aviarius, isn't good enough for the likes of you?!"
"Back off, birdbrain."
Tara looked behind her to her right. Standing next to her now like a ghost was Bonnie!
Her friend said warningly, settling an arm on Tara's shoulder to which the blonde squeed internally. "She's not interested, if you couldn't tell. Like, go get lost or something. You should feel lucky I even invited you. Like, you're only here because Papi loved your work with the Go glow theft."
"I will REMEMBER this!" he cried dramatically before flipping his cape around him and disappearing into the crowd.
"Yeah, yeah," Bonnie said dismissively, waving her hand like the threat was nothing. Tara just about hugged her friend, but was stopped when she noticed what the tanned woman was wearing.
Bonnie was dressed a little weird too! She had on a knee-length shoulderless plum dress with a slit in the side up to her hip, with a loose chain belt around her waist and a nice silver spiky crown settled on her head. Was this secretly a costume party? Why didn't Bonnie tell her that?!
The tan woman scowled. "Like, I told you not to overdo it," she chastised in greeting. She read her mind just like James! Was she developing psychic powers too? Or was Tara projecting her thoughts? "Do you see anyone else dressed up like you?"
"No…" Tara pouted. "But I wanted to look super good for your party."
Her friend sighed patiently. "T, you need to learn the art of subtlety."
The blonde flopped a little. "Maaaaan…"
"So…" Bonnie looked around the room in a bit of a show. "Where's your boss guy?"
"Doctor Lipsky?" She wouldn't have known who Doctor D was, so Lipsky it is! "Last I saw him, he was parking his hovercar thing."
"Hovercar?" Bonnie tilted an eyebrow. "Did he know we have a chauffeur? You did tell him, right?"
Uh-oh. "Uh, no? You didn't mention anything…"
Bonnie shook her head sadly. "T, ever since J and I got hitched, I've been living the finer life. Like, you should've expected there to be a chauffeur."
"I'm sorry…" Tara already felt like she was wrecking the party.
Surprisingly, her friend smiled. "Don't worry too much about it. I've seen worse just tonight!" She scowled and noted, "We already had to deal with these people called 'the Underminers' trying to crash the party. Drilled straight through the garden!" A hand waved out the window to the veranda outside. "We tossed them out, machine and all!"
Oh! So that's why all the dirt was everywhere! They must have really good security to stop a villain attack like that! The guy up front must've just been nervous.
"Party crashers suck," Tara said. "Remember that time when Ron Reger tri-.."
"Please T, don't bother me with lame stories from high school," Bonnie said with a fake yawn. It was easy to tell her fake yawns from her real yawns; she closed her eyes when she fake yawned.
That had only been a few months ago… Tara didn't understand, but complied. Changing the topic, she asked, "So, B, whatcha been up to?"
"Oh, this and that." Bonnie sipped from a glass she'd been holding that was full of a rich brown liquid. Strange; that didn't look like sparkling grape juice… Raising an eyebrow, she asked, "So, T, what have you been up to in that space center of yours? Cracked any Lorwardian tech?"
"Well, since you mention it…" Tara bounced in her spot, super excited to be able to talk about her science stuff with Bonnie at last! "We've managed to mostly deconstruct a Lorwardian quadropod."
That set Bonnie's eyebrows into orbit. "Really?" she asked in a very not-Bonnie way. She was loud enough to draw the attention of a couple of nearby discussion groups.
"Really really!" the blonde chirped. "We're working on making a physical and electrical mapping of the interior of the mech. We're soooooo close to finishing that it almost hurts! Me, Doctor Lipsky, and Doctor Vivian Francis Porter - of course you know her, who doesn't? - have been combining our efforts to really understand the technology involved."
"Oh?" The guy with the giant helmet butted into their conversation. "Und ze teknology, hyu haff it cracked, ya?"
"Well, not yet…" Tara supplied helpfully, "But we've got the groundwork set up! We're hoping that we can use the electrical mapping to find more efficient means to-.."
"Back off, Chromedome," Bonnie sneered. "This is my intel."
Huh? Intel?
"A gracious host vould share vith her guests, vould she NOT?" he replied with a weird cadence, a smarmy smile on his face.
Tara's friend gripped her glass with the strength of a thousand divas. Tara was surprised it didn't break! "And a good guest would know when not to push their luck… Unless they don't want to be there anymore."
"If you're wondering about our project, Doctor Lipsky's going to be here soon." Bonnie glared at Tara. She didn't understand why.
"Oh really?" The curious edge in his voice increased tenfold. "Und dis Doctor Lipsky, he is…?"
"My boss! I'm his assistant."
"How interestink," the helmet guy murmured. "Truly, a WONDERFUL HOST to wrangle ze most interestink guests…"
"So you can hightail it over to the other 'interestink guest' and leave us to ourselves," Bonnie said with narrowed eyes. "Like, he went to park his car so he'll be here any minute."
"Zis Doctor Lipsky… Vat does he look like?"
Tara thought hard. What would be a good description of her boss? "Uhm, he likes wearing blue… His lab coat which he wore because it's more science-y is all blue, with black gloves and boots. He has a really small ponytail, and a really big floofy mohawk thing…"
"Und he is blue." The statement was flat, disbelieving.
"Oh!" Duh! "Yeah, he is!"
The man with the helmet slapped his head. "Und ze UNIVERSE laughs at me…"
"You're talking about Doctor Drakken." Bonnie's voice was also flat.
"What's so weird about Doctor Lipsky?" Tara asked, pouting.
"Zo hiz name beink 'Lipsky', it is mocking GOLD!" He laughed at it.
"That's pretty mean," the blonde said.
"I am a MEAN MAN!"
"Oh, shut up Dementor! No one cares about what you have to say."
"Doctor D!" Tara turned to see her boss walking up. For some reason, people were parting way and whispering.
"Und she calls you 'Doctor D' too?" the man apparently called Dementor - and he's making fun of Doctor Lipsky for his name? - clicked his tongue. "I vould tink zat you vould like to make a hasty retreat, ya?"
"Cram it!"
The wire-haired woman was following closely behind her boss. "Doktor, ze conversation ve vere haffing on ze variability of ohm's law-.."
Doctor D turned to Tara and spat, ignoring the scientastic woman, "Vivian was right! This party's nothing but bad all-around."
"Hey! My parties are never bad," Bonnie interjected, offended.
"I don't think that's what he meant," Tara said, now understanding. This wasn't a costume party, not the way she was thinking. With a name like 'Dementor' and the way everyone was dressed and acting... "B, I think you're right. I don't think I fit in with your new crowd…"
"I am tinking zat same thing," the woman murmured. "Und here I vas excited to share my good fortunes vith comrades…"
"Don't leave!" Bonnie said, grabbing Tara's arm. She almost desperately added, "Like, you just got here. Just because you came with a lame-o doesn't mean you should leave."
"He's my ride," the assistant pointed out defensively.
"I'll drop you off!" Now Bonnie was pleading with her. Since when did Bonnie plead like that?
What was going on?
"I, ah…" Now she was feeling torn. Her friend clearly really wanted her to stay… But these people were bad bad news. And the comment about intel earlier… Was Tara just invited to be pumped for info? Why did people wanna know about the Lorwardian project?
"She already said she was leaving," her boss snipped, grabbing her other arm.
"She's an adult. She doesn't need some, some failed villain with an ego problem to tell her what to do!" Bonnie pulled her arm a little, trying to pull her closer.
"She doesn't need some drama queen telling her what to do either!" He pulled harder, dragging Tara closer to him.
"She's my friend!" Bonnie pulled on Tara's arm to no avail. Apparently Doctor D was a little too strong for her. "You can't have her!"
"Bonnie…" Tara wasn't sure who she thought was right. They both had points.
...what did she want to do?
Before she could make a decision, her boss' head snapped to attention. Doctor Lipsky tensed as he looked behind Tara, then scowled. Tara tilted her head in confusion… Until she heard a voice behind her...
"Hello, doc…"