Hawkgirl in Wonderland
Part Three
It's taking me a while to get these Chapters out, but I promise to be as quick as I can. I may add a Mary-Sue later, but I promise it will be as demented as the rest of the fic up until now. I own nothing.
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After a few minutes of blind flying around the corridor, Shayera decided to walk instead. With all the weirdness going on in this place, it would have been wise to conserve energy.
Now, she was in a danger zone. All the army training in the world couldn't prepare her for a showdown with over affectionate women whilst scantily clad. Oh well, at least she still had her…
Oh Christ.
Her mace was gone.
"What the…" she exclaimed, horrified. It was like losing a limb. And the weirdest thing was that she remembered having it while leaving the strip poker room.
"Okay, don't panic," she told herself sternly, "If you did have it, it'll turn up. Concentrate on getting some clothes, okay?"
That was the most important thing, after all. She felt ridiculously vulnerable dressed only in a strapless bra and French knickers. She walked on through the corridor, all the while trying desperately to cover herself up with what little clothing she had left. At last, a building loomed into view. Shayera approached it with caution. A building could hold many lesbians.
Thankfully, there appeared to be only one woman. Her dark blonde hair was tied up into two little buns and she wore a long red Chinese style dress. She was clearing tables on the outside of the building, so perhaps it was a restaurant. Shayera was relieved; how much trouble could one woman be?
"Excuse me?" the superhero called as she approached the woman.
"Hello, dear!" the woman called back, suddenly standing up. It was only when she was standing up straight that Shayera noticed the woman's enormous…chest.
"Uh, hi," she said, trying hard not to stare at the woman's mammoth bosom. "I'm kind of lost, and as you can see, I seem to have lost my clothes." Her cheeks burned as she listened to herself talk.
"Oh my!" replied the woman. "That is unfortunate. Be more careful next time, okay dear?" She turned back to her table.
"Well, I was wondering if you could lend me something to cover up. A sheet would do…" Hawkgirl was only a few seconds away from getting down on her knees and begging for cover.
"Hm." The woman looked deep in thought. "I'm afraid I don't have any sheets I can spare dear, but I do have a lot of uniforms…"
"Great!" Shayera almost screamed. "Can I borrow one please?"
"No!" the woman answered simply, and went back to her table.
"What do you mean, no?" If there was ever a moment when Shayera desperately wanted her mace, it paled in comparison to this moment.
"The uniforms are for employees only, dear. It's a dimensional rule."
"Christ, not another one. Who makes up these bloody rules?"
"Why, the Authoress, of course! She is all-powerful!"
Shayera blinked. The Authoress? Maybe there was someone here Hawkgirl could fight, if only to steal her clothes…
"Is she some sort of supervillain?" she asked. The waitress looked surprised at the question.
"Supervillain? Well, I don't know… she's certainly not evil, if that's what you mean…" the waitress looked down at her impressive assets. "Although she did give me awfully big boobies…"
"Okay, so if I worked here, you'd give me a uniform?" Shayera interrupted before the other woman could get distracted.
"Yes, but you'll have to work for a very long time, dear. Those are the rules, and the Authoress can be awfully strict." The waitress clasped her hands together in a show of nervousness.
"How long would I have to work?"
The waitress put a hand on both of Shayera's thin shoulders and looked her in the eyes, her expression sober.
"You'll have to work almost two hours."
"Oh, Jesus Christ! You can't really expect me to…." Shayera stopped screaming as she realized what the woman had just said. "Two hours? That's it?"
"I'm afraid so, dear. It's unfair, I know, but we must obey the rules." The waitress held her head in her hands in a dramatic display of remorse.
"Well, I can't deny that it's bad," said Shayera, humouring the woman, "but I need that uniform. I'll just have to suffer through it."
After all, how bad could two hours in a restaurant be?
The waitress led Shayera through the restaurant, which was inexplicably decorated with giant neon squid sculptures and copies of Michelangelo's David with polka-dotted y-fronts covering his famous anatomical feature. There weren't any tables, and only sofas were provided for seating. At the back of the building was a large room that should have been a kitchen. Instead, it held thousands upon thousands of waitress uniforms. Every aspect of the food service industry was catered for; Playboy bunny costumes, Chinese dresses, Hooters t-shirts, McDonalds hats etc. The waitress dug into the pile immediately, only stopping to gauge Shayera's figure.
"Oh dear," she moaned, "Most of the women in this dimension are a size ten or twelve. I'd say you're a six, dear."
Shayera bristled. Her figure, or lack thereof, was a sore point, especially with her own worrying tendency to compare herself to Princess Massive Knockers aka Wonder Woman. Was she doomed to be surrounded by well-endowed women for all eternity?
"Too big, too big, way too big…" muttered the waitress as she examined various outfits. She stopped her examination briefly to reach out and pinch Shayera's hips, wrenching a surprised yelp from the superhero.
"You could do with putting on some weight, dear," the waitress clucked cheerfully, oblivious to the angry glare Hawkgirl was shooting at her. "You're not on some sort of diet, are you?"
"No," Shayera snarled, "I've got high metabolism."
"I see. Well, everything has its ups and downs, I suppose. Oh, far too big." The waitress tossed another rejected costume to the side.
"So, who created this place?" Shayera wanted to get away from the subject of her scrawny build and start getting some real answers.
"The Authoress did."
"Why?"
"I don't know. She can be hard to understand sometimes. It may have been a request job, or maybe she just wanted to create a place she could fill with lots of pretty girls. It works well, don't you think?"
"Yeah, just perfect," Shayera groaned. This Authoress sounded like a real nutjob.
"Ooh, I think I have something! One of the girls who worked here had a thirteen year old daughter… it must be one of hers!" The waitress finally pulled a uniform that would fit Shayera.
Well, fit maybe wasn't the best word to use. The dress covered about as much skin as a regulation swimsuit. It was a Chinese-style mini-dress, purple with gold embroidery and slits up both sides. The neckline, though high, had only one button which meant it gaped slightly at the bust. The shoes that went with it were flat cloth slippers, and the waitress had somehow managed to wind Hawkgirl's hair into two buns while the superhero was distracted.
"Oh, you look so cute!" the waitress squealed.
"Thanks," Shayera muttered, trying to pull the skirt down a little further. It was ridiculously short, meaning that the slightest movement had her French knickers on display for the entire world to see. Oh well, at least it was clothing, of a sorts.
"Now I'll show you the kitchen, dear!" simpered the waitress, still starry-eyed at her creation.
The kitchen, as it turned out, wasn't so much a kitchen as a storage space for rows of potted Instant Noodle and a kettle. There was a cauldron in the middle of the floor. The waitress launched into the cooking instructions.
"Empty the noodles into the cauldron, then cover with some boiling water. Cook for about two minutes, then stir."
Shayera looked around the kitchen, but found no stirring implement.
"What do I stir it with?" she asked.
"Oh, I'll get my big spatula," answered the waitress, with a totally unnecessary wink. Then, she plunged her hand into thin air, where it disappeared up to the elbow, then suddenly reappeared with a shiny metal spatula. Shayera gaped.
"How the hell did you do that?" she bellowed.
"Do what, dear?" the waitress replied, cocking her head to one side in a confused manner.
"How did you drag a spatula out of thin air?"
"Oh. It was in Hammerspace™," said the waitress, as if that answered the question.
"And what's Hammerspace™?" Shayera asked impatiently.
"It's a device most often used in anime to store useful objects for future necessity. For instance, if I was accompanied by someone very annoying, I could use Hammmerspace™ to store my hammer for whenever I needed to hit him! I store cooking utensils in it these days, though."
Shayera thought about her disappearing mace.
"Could my mace be in this Hammerspace™?" she asked.
"It's possible. If it's too heavy and unwieldy to carry about, it goes into Hammerspace!"
"How do I get it back?"
The waitress stopped bustling about to think hard. "Well, I don't know, dear. I've never given it much thought before. The Authoress just made it up to make life easier. It's not my place to question the Authoress."
"Perish the thought," muttered Shayera. "Say, if I go see this Authoress, do you think she could send me back to where I came from?"
"I suppose so, dear! She is all-powerful."
Hawkgirl had a bunch of other questions she wanted to ask, but just then some customers appeared. The noodles were served in the cardboard pots they were cooked in, and all the customers seemed happy enough with this. Despite all the goosing and pinching and general squeals about the cute waitress in the ultra-short skirt, the two hours managed to fly by. Shayera got to keep the skimpy costume, but before she left for the next stage of her journey, she had one last question to ask.
"So how do I find this Authoress?"
"Hm." The waitress stopped to think again. She wasn't too good at answering questions. "I do believe that she's three doors down, dear. Good luck!"
"Thanks!" Shayera marched away towards the door.
"But dear," shouted the waitress after her, "Keep an eye out for the Jabberwocky!"
"The Jabberwocky? What's a Jabb…" The door closed on her before she could ask her last question.
"Oh well," she thought, "How dangerous could a Jabber-whatever be?"