I wish I could say the following has never happened in reality...but if wishes were horses...
In case you are unaware, one of the best places to people watch is a city bus. People from all walks of life ride the bus, from those who can't afford cars, to those who don't want to contribute to the pollution problem, to those who simply like public transportation. The Captain and Techie fit neatly into the last category and Al, bless her, was learning. There were games to be played on the bus in whispers—games like "Guess What That Guy Does for a Living" and "Spot the Out of Work Actor"—as well as the standard, "Make up a Life Story for Everyone You See".
Sadly, none of these games were destined to be played today. Today, the city bus had something else in store for the Scarecrow's henchgirls. Something far, far more sinister and far, far more blackmail worthy.
It should be noted that the Captain was what one might be tempted to call 'an easy mark'. Now, it isn't that she was actually an easy mark, it was instead the fact she seemed tobe. The Captain, with her slight build and falsetto voice, appeared sweet, innocent and usually carried herself in such a way that her slight shoulder slumping could be interpreted as a distinct lack of confidence (when in fact it was nothing more than evidence of a bad back). It followed, then, that she had a bad habit of attracting the entirely wrong sort of man. Not that her friends were any better at it, but she got the fuzzy end of the lollipop at nearly every turn.
At their worst, Al attracted the under seventeen set, Techie attracted a sleazily charismatic douche-bag element, and the Captain…the Captain attracted men who saw her as easy pickings.
The man with the awful rust-colored bowl haircut in the emerald green leather jacket—which the Captain's eyes had ogled on autopilot the moment they set foot on the bus—gave off the stench of 'Opportunistic Asshat' in waves. He sat at the back of the bus, where the three remaining empty seats were, with his legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles, and his hands folded behind his head. His face was set in a perpetual smirk and he didn't bother to conceal the way his eyes traveled up and down the Captain's frame. He didn't even seem to register the fact that her jacket was overstuffed and made her look padded out in places that she wasn't—he undressed her with his eyes just the same.
Both Techie and Al noted how the Captain's stance shifted ever so subtly, indicating her discomfort with the appraisal. Other people might not have noticed it, but to her best friends, it might as well have been a red alert, complete with blaring Klaxons and flashing lights. She crossed her arms in front of herself, clasping them lightly around her middle and then, as though remembering herself, dropped her hands and straightened up. She was a henchgirl, dammit, wanted by the authorities in no less than four states: she could handle a scumbag on public transportation easily.
She squared her shoulders and marched right up to the skeeze, taking the seat directly next to him. Techie and Al shared a look and then sat down in the remaining two seats. Leather Jacket naturally made short work of introducing himself as roguishly as possible.
"Well, well, well. Hiya, Legs," he oozed—there was no other word for it—resting his palm on the Captain's knee. She flinched a little, but didn't do anything to remove it. She honestly didn't know why after all this time she was reverting to old behaviors that she'd thought she'd shaken, but there it was: the old say-nothing-and-take-it Captain was inexplicably back.
Al came to the rescue. "Back off, scud, unless you want me to rip you open and wear you like a hat."
He turned in his seat, pinched Al's cheek and gave her a grin. "Aw, shucks, don't worry, sweetcheeks, there's plenty'a me ta go around. No need ta get yer panties in a bunch."
"Sweetcheeks?" Al repeated, completely bewildered.
He chucked her under the chin. "You'll get a crack at me, babe, once I'm done with yer friend here. Hell, maybe you'll wanna join in. I'm open minded like that."
"Sweetcheeks?"
"The name's Guy," he continued, turning his attention back on the Captain. She didn't shrink away from him, but she did avert her eyes, fixing them on a piece of purple bubble gum stuck to the floor of the bus.
"Guy?" Techie snorted derisively. "What's the matter, your parents couldn't afford a baby naming book?"
"Perfect name for somebody who's all man, babe," he replied, letting his eyes travel from her face to her chest, where they stuck. "Great rack, by the way. ' Less I miss my guess, that's at least a pair of Fs you're sportin'. Ya shop the same place Power Girl does?"
Air hissed through Techie's teeth as she inhaled sharply. If looks could kill, he should have been on fire. "Why you muck-mouthed, mannerless—"
"Sweetcheeks," Al muttered, still trying to process the term and coming up empty.
"So, Legs," he murmured in what he must have thought was a seductive fashion, finally tearing his eyes away from Techie's chest and latching them on the Captain's. "You gonna let me make all your wildest fantasies come true?"
"—sorry excuse for a hominid, I oughtta cram my boot so far down your throat you'll be tasting shoelace for a—"
"Seriously, sweetcheeks?"
Taking a steadying breath, the Captain fixed him with a look of utmost dignity, cleared her throat and said, without a trace of humor, "Why, have you got some fish heads and dynamite lying around?"
If anyone noticed that Al unconsciously started humming, "Fish heads, fish heads, roly-poly fish heads…" under her breath, they didn't say anything.
To his credit, Guy didn't register the amount of shock that an ordinary person might have when confronted with the sort of mental image the Captain had just presented. He just leaned closer, his tone taking on a scheming quality. "You've seen Volatile Fish Vixens From Venus, too? Hot."
The Captain looked mortified. "Oh, ew."
"Look, Guy, she's clearly not interested," Techie growled with evident hostility, "so why don't you take your Moe Howard haircut and make like an egg?"
The moment the words left her mouth, his eyes snapped to meet hers, his expression changing from smug, wolfish grin, to captivated little boy. His entire demeanor changed and his eyes lit up with unveiled excitement, leaving no trace of the sleazy, slimy scumbag he'd been mere moments earlier. Well, not much of a trace, anyway…
"That means beat it, buster," she continued, giving him her best haughty glower. Showing absolutely no sense of self preservation whatsoever, he remained unaffected and stared at her in gap-jawed awe.
"Did you say Moe…Howard?" he asked, thunderstruck, his voice small with wonder. "You actually know his last name?"
"What?" Techie glanced at the Captain and Al, both of whom just shrugged. "Of course I know his last name, doesn't everybo—"
Guy practically leapt over the Captain, shoved her aside and situated himself next to Techie. She recoiled on instinct, pressing herself as close to Al as humanly possible and the Captain breathed a sigh of relief. "Name all five stooges."
"Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, Curly Joe," Techie responded automatically, as though it were against her programming to do anything else, but with a clear note of suspicion coloring her tone, "Ted Healy, if you're feeling charit—"
"The Marx Brothers!" he challenged, bending towards her.
This action caused her to press even closer to Al, very nearly winding up in her lap. She eyed him warily, but railed off the names anyway, curious about where this absurd line of questioning was going to go. "Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo—"
He cut her off before she could finish. "Friz Freling's real name?"
"Isadore," she answered guardedly.
His eyes were ablaze with pure, unadulterated joy. "Tex Avery?"
"Fred."
Guy grabbed Techie by the shoulders in a bruising grip. "Baby, where have you been all my life?"
"Oh, not another one."
"Are you going to make me get the pepper spray?" Techie asked in all seriousness. "Captain, get the pepper spray."
"We…don't have any pepper spray, Ops," the Captain replied, smothering a sudden, completely inappropriate giggle with her hand.
Techie glared at her and attempted to peel Guy's hands off her shoulders. Unfortunately, he was much stronger than she'd anticipated and she failed. "Don't you dare laugh. I'm in this mess because I was defending your honor."
"Yes," the Captain admitted, "but it's actually funny when it happens to you."
She looked to Al for support and, unsurprisingly, found none. "Hey, when she has a point, she has a point."
Ignoring her friends, Guy growled low in his throat and gave Techie a predatory grin that was all teeth. "If ya know the four public domain Stooge shorts, I'm swear I'm gonna—"
Techie made a pathetic noise of distress. "Let's not make any promises we're going to regret!"
"—so hard you'll forget yer own name." He pulled her torso flush against his and his eyes opened wide with pleasant surprise. "Hot damn! And they're real, too!"
If the Captain wasn't terribly mistaken, Techie was turning a shade of green that very nearly matched her admirer's jacket.
"Hey, look!" Al interrupted, tugging on the pull cord that would instruct the bus driver to stop at the next light. "This is our stop! How convenient!"
The bus ground to a halt in front of a playground and Guy looked dismayed. "But …"
"Sorry, pal, she's got an appointment." Al stood and patted her midsection. "For…girl stuff, you know."
"What's yer name?" he asked, desperation creeping into his tone, even as Techie was trying to claw her way out of his arms like a squirmy cat. Then, as though realizing how frantic he'd just sounded, he lowered his voice to a gruff rumble. "I gotta know who's gonna be screamin' mine later."
Techie was horrified. "Oh, God!"
"Close," he corrected.
"Her name is Pola Kavalchick," the Captain answered with startlingly little delay.
"Gimme yer number," he demanded.
"It's in the book."
"Pola Kavalchick," Guy repeated. "How's it spelled?"
"With letters," Al supplied, yanking Techie out of his grasp. "C'mon Pola."
In an outburst of movement, the Captain and Al ushered Techie off the bus with such haste that they stumbled in the two foot high snow on the curb and landed in a heap of jumbled limbs, Techie winding up on the receiving end of the dog pile. By the time they'd untangled themselves from each other, the bus was long gone.
Al helped the Captain out of the snow and they brushed themselves off while Techie just sat in the fluffy white powder, regaining her bearings.
"Now that your virtue isn't in immediate danger—" Al brought up her index finger, pointed at Techie and released a cackle that would have put the Wicked Witch of the West to shame. She threw her head back and laughed with reckless abandon. "That was hilarious."
"That was traumatic!"
"Hi-lar-i-ous," Al contradicted.
The Captain grinned, her own experience with the jerk forgotten in the face of Techie's suffering. "I'm going to have to agree with Al on this one."
"You're both dead to me," Techie grumbled. "Hear me? Dead."
"Come on, Techie. It's not funny when this sort of thing happens to the Captain or me," Al continued, grabbing one of Techie's hands and hauling her out of the snow bank, "'cause she just sits there politely and waits for it to be over and all I do is make death threats. But you? You make all these little faces…"
"Yeah, your eyes go all buggy—" the Captain made a set of goggles with her fingers and held them up to demonstrate "—and your whole face contorts in abject horror. It's really cute."
The Captain didn't even see the snowball until it smacked her in the kisser. "I am not cute!"
"Guy certainly seemed to think you—oof!" Al hit the ground and Techie used her knees to pin her elbows to the grass. She grabbed up a handful of snow and smashed it into Al's nose.
"You take it back or so help me—"
The Captain tackled Techie from behind and sent her sprawling. All three rolled in the snow, but it only took seconds for the Captain and Al to gain the upper hand, each pinning one of Techie's arms to the ground.
"St—" Techie squealed as they mercilessly poked her sides in unison, "Stop it!"
"Girl fight! Girl fight!" The Captain bounced on her knees. "Techie's lost a girl fight!"
"Beg for mercy!" Al shouted, packing her glove with snow and holding it over Techie's face. "Beg for mercy or the snowball gets it!"
Techie stopped squirming and glared up at her captors, lifting her head as far off the ground as her neck could manage, given her position. "I don't negotiate with terrorists. Let me up."
"What's the password?"
"Do we even have a password, Captain?"
"No, not really." The Captain shrugged. "Say uncle! Heh. I've always wanted to say that."
"No, no! I've got a better one." Al interrupted. "Say, father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate!"
Techie flopped back in the snow, defeated. "Father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate."
"It's not a plea for mercy," Al said, releasing Techie's arm, "but it'll do."