Talking About Old School And Older

Synchronicity lives at Beyond the Veil.  Who knew both Anya and I would both be taking a trip in the Way Back Machine this month?  Instead of Mills and Boon, however, my  engine turned out to be Bob Osborne on TCM and this month's festival of great movie adaptations.

Great books seldom make movies as great as John Huston's version of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon.  They're even more rarely true to the book and and its larger than life female characters.  Hammett's Brigid O’Shaughnessy displays all the necessary qualifications for a classic old school heroine.  She’s twenty-three, possessed of porcelain skin and big blue eyes, and prefers to talk in a breathy, girlish voice.  Mary Astor was ten years older than the literary Brigid when she played the role, but everything else about her portrayal comes straight from Hammett.

I’m watching her now.  Our classic old school heroine just kneed a guy in the nuts less than two minutes after pistol whipping him.

Welcome to the world of real old school heroines.  Brigid might have been the ultimate bad girl, but Dashiell Hammet didn’t write wimpy women.  Even good girls like Nora Charles could handle whatever the plot dished out.  As one of The Thin Man's gunsels pointed out, she was a woman with hair on her chest.  But what would you expect from a man who's life partner was Lillian Hellman?

Shakespeare wrote some notable drips (Ophelia, anyone?  To say nothing of Juliet, the original Little Miss Too Stupid To Live).  But he also gave us Viola and Beatrice, who famously yearned to a certain cad’s heart in the marketplace.  And they were Shakespeare’s good girls.

Homer gave us Penelope.  The Arabian Nights gave us Scheherazade.  You can’t get much more old school than that. 

My point is, you can’t equate “old school heroine” with weak or ineffectual.  You can’t even use those words to describe virginal heroines.  Elizabeth Bennett is unquestionably a virgin, but no one could question her tough-mindedness.  No one could say she lacks agency. 

Most of the weak-minded lack of agency we associate with old school heroines was in fact a product of mid-twentieth century genre publishing tropes, specifically the belief of certain publishing executives that the women who helped win World War II didn't want to read about women as multi-faceted and capable as they were. 

It would be tempting to blame this view on the 1950s' desperate search for normalcy amid the Red Scare and very real fears of nuclear annihilation.  After all, this is the era which gave us the insulting neuroses and emotional fragility of Doris Day’s portrayal of Jo McKenna in the 1956 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much.  But three years earlier, in Otto Preminger’s The Moon Is Blue, Maggie MacNamara played good girl Patty O’Neill—a girl who states right up front that she’s a virgin and plans to stay that way—as a smart professional woman who confounds dedicated playboys William Holden and David Niven.  Not only that, she does it dressed like an old school Barbie—tiny waist, pony tail, Mamie Eisenhower bangs and all.

In fact, the attitudes of publishing executives on the subject of “acceptable” heroines lagged far behind what was happening in American and European society, especially as the Seventies gave way to the Eighties.  In Reflections on the Magic of Writing, a new compilation of Diana Wynne Jones’s essays and lectures, Jones writes about how she had to “sneak” a strong female hero into Dogsbody by telling it from the dog’s point of view.  It took her years to work up to writing Polly in Fire and Hemlock and (my personal favorite) Sophie in Howl’s Moving Castle.

If one of the most well-respected literary fantasy writers of the late 20th century had to tread carefully in her fictional depictions of girls and women, imagine what it was like trying to work in the hothouse environment of series romance.  Yet series romance writers, as much as Jones and romantic mystery writers like Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters, were working to change perceptions of women and women characters from the inside out.

Personally, I’m thrilled the most insulting aspects of mid-century romance heroines have gone out of literary fashion.  I like reading books that reflect the realities of my life as a woman, about heroines who can kick a guy in the nuts for lying and still qualify for an HEA.  But that doesn’t mean the realities of my life are the only valid realities out there.

As far as I’m concerned there’s still room for old school good girls.  After all, there’s a lot to be said for women who triumph over the constraints of their circumstances like Beatrice and Elizabeth Bennett, Scheherazade and Patty O’Neill.

To say nothing of Sophie.

Jean Marie Ward

(And if you want to read more about Reflections on the Magic of Writing—and how could you not?—I strongly recommend Ana’s review at Things Mean A Lot.)

Aunt Noony’s Five Tips for Worldbuilding

1. Decide in which world you want to set your story. As Xakara mentioned in her post, ANY world in which we write, be it the “here and now” or the “once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away” has its own rules and customs. Once you’ve decided where you want your story to be set, ask yourself some questions on behalf of your main character:

a. How do they make their money? If they are supported by someone else, how do they make the money that supports your character? Are there taxes? Tributes to pay? What skills do they need to make a living?

b. How do they live? Do they have a house in a residential area? Are they on a ship with hundreds of other individuals? Underground?

c. What do they eat? If it’s not set on earth, how does the food get there? Who produces it, and how is it transported from producer to table?

d. How do they deal with the climate? What is clothing like? What are the buildings like? Human beings are fragile creatures but have many ways of mitigating environmental impacts. Describe how your character deals with them.

2. What rules govern relationships? Is there marriage? How does it work? How do kinship paradigms work? In some cultures, for example, adult siblings of the opposite sex are allowed to be friends with one another but with no other individuals of the opposite sex outside the family. What about rules regarding children? How are children treated in your world?

3. What kinds of organizations have sprung up? Is this a simple society with clan and maybe village government? Is this a megalithic society with governments and complex politics? How do roads get built, taxes levied and collected, money produced and invested?

4. As you develop the answers to these questions, it’s useful to create a document that accompanies your work but that can be used as an encyclopedia of rules for you. You can call it what you like, but make sure it includes lists of characters and their details, relationships, government notes, and notes on anything else that you need to keep in mind. For example, if you are building a werewolf society, then you might have a section in your document called “Werewolves” that details who’s in charge, how succession is handled, what colors the wolves are, etc.

5. Do people swear? This can tell you a lot about a society and culture. For example, if you set your world on a planet that doesn’t have a Euro-American Christian majority as the dominant paradigm, then “God” or “Dammit” probably aren’t common swearwords. If you create an Egyptian society, you might use “By Anubis’s teeth” or something similar. It’s useful to come up with several options, from equivalents to the “F” word all the way down to something minor like “crap” or “darn.”

If you’re still stumped, try answering the questions above using your favorite worlds. Some places to start would be Star Trek or Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series.

Have fun!

Ideas: Concepts and Generation

(or:- What would happen if the buttered toast landed edgewise down?)


Welcome to the literary crucible.

Today we consider one of the most basic elements of fiction writing—The Idea. The other basic elements being, The Plot, and The Writing.


First off let’s start with two definitions of Idea

Idea:- Conception, plan of thing to be aimed at, discovered.
Oxford English Dictionary

Idea:- That concept which, after indeterminable hours; gallons of coffee and
sleepless; sore-eyed; computer staring nights; still evades the probing
mind of the frustrated author.
Author unknown

The frustration of an elusive idea is intense. The need to create and produce a specific piece of work is tantamount to an author’s psyche. Plus it has been known in certain circumstances to provide the check to pay the bills. It is at these moments that the true nature of an author is refined, the literary crucible that will either forge a true all weather author or break the writer down into a motionless, staring mass of idealess jelly.

So how, as authors, can we keep up an almost endless supply of ideas to feed into our clicking keyboards. There are as many answers to this as there are authors on full time pay roll at Greasy Joe’s Sludge Bucket Café, and no one way is particularly right. As part of the nice, helpful guy that I am I’ve gathered together and expounded below a system that I developed over roughly forty years of writing. This system is guaranteed to, with a dose of tremendous luck (and an even healthier dose of stealing other people’s ideas,) to generate your own ideas for any given fictional situation.

Of course what it doesn’t guarantee is getting the ideas in time for that elusive contract…

I’ve concentrated my examples here for fantasy work, fantasy being my main love and my fascination. But the system is transmutable and can be adapted for practically any form of writing you choose. Even Non-Fiction—the system was used in the production of this article itself.

Also, although I tend to discuss the issue in terms of a new idea for a fresh story, the system can be equally applied to sections in the middle, and or end of novels and other long pieces.

I hope you find this process as useful, and as enjoyable, as I have over the years. And use of the system is entirely free provided you deposit in my bank roughly a million dollars per hour usage…


Spend some time in the mad cafe

Regardless of who you are the creative human brain works best when alert but relaxed. Music often helps as some people find it tunes in the creative nature of the brain, though this is indeed a personal thing. It is possible to find many authors who will listen to music as they write for just this reason.

A similar kind of tuning needs to be done for finding and creating ideas. It is very important to find somewhere where you feel relaxed. I've always found that being uptight and fighting through piles of words and papers and forcing myself to find an idea for a particular piece is the most counter-productive thing I can do. By focusing on the fact that I can't find an idea, the solution appears to rapidly become more and more distant.

Where to relax is a personal thing. An armchair in a small room is common, maybe in bed if you can resist the urge to watch TV or sleep. My personal favorite is to go to a local cafe or bar and amidst the bustle of people find a small corner table and sit. Armed with a hot brew or pint of beer, and a cheese Danish I sit and face the throngs. With a pad and paper ready I just let the atmosphere of the others around me draw out the tensions and open my mind to any incoming thoughts.

There are writers I know, who will sit with friends and chat freely about their ideas and plots. This kind of chatter can help tremendously but do take a pad and write the ideas down frequently. Otherwise the majority of the stuff spoken about will be forgotten by the time you've left the bar, kitchen or whatever. Be judicious though, one friend of mine was animatedly discussing various ways to kill off the husband in her companion’s novel whilst treating themselves to a pizza at the local restaurant. Half way through the exercise where they'd been through the list of poisons and found them boring, tried arranging an accident and found it too risky and were working on murdering him in his sleep when an elderly lady from a nearby table stood up and began speaking very loudly and angrily.

"You cold hearted bi...."

The object lesson is, if you will discuss techniques of murder in public it pays to either let your eavesdroppers know it is fictional now and then, or keep a loaded gun in a clearly visible place.

Wherever it is or whatever you do the universal factor seems to be the need to break away from the computer/typewriter and to let your mind clear from the physical act of writing. This spring clean of the mind allows new ideas to form where the old cobwebs used to grow.

To see or not to see

This may have given you the impression that I'm advocating you do nothing to generate ideas. This is not true. I do believe though that ideas are all around us and what we need to do is to train ourselves to see them. Terry Pratchett, famous for his Discworld, was sitting in the airport lounge one day and saw what many of us would see. A tired and haggard tourist pulling one of those suitcases on wheels. This suitcase, like so many, kept going off in the wrong direction as if it had a life of its own.

On the strength of that observation the inimitable Luggage was born. That living travel chest known to eat wizards for breakfast…

So ideas surround us and we need to observe more. How many potential story ideas have we passed today but failed to see because we haven't actually looked to see if they were there.

For one poignant fantasy I remember driving the coast road close to my home. I drove this particular road every day to work and generally thought nothing of it. Yet on this unusual day they'd been an accident and I was forced with all the other drivers to slow the car to a walking pace. It was one of those particularly dreary cloud covered days which gave the sea a kind of grey hue. It occurred to me then that the sea looked lonely. Developing that idea led to my short story The Lonely Sea.

I am embarrassed to admit it took five years and an accident to make me observe, for the first time, the sea in that condition and to recognize that it had an emotion that could be used in a fiction tale. (The Lonely Sea was published years ago in a small press publication in England that I am now far too old to remember the name of.)

The thing is, we see so many things each day that are fuel for a writer’s imagination. And that is why taking a notebook with you and making copious notes is a godsend. Looking at my notes today, I saw the young couple having a tiff in the town mall with girl leaving rapidly, the young man following. There was a lost children's balloon scooting along in the wind under the eaves of town buildings. The strange, dragon shaped incense burner in a local store and the almost worshipful way that customers admired it.

Each of these have potentials for story ideas embedded in them. For example. The young man could chase his lover to apologize and they find themselves stepping through a portal to different parts of another world where they struggle to become reunited. The balloon is blown into the presence of evil and glares on the people below. The incense burner when wielded by the hand of the “faithful” becomes a creature of power and beauty, but little trust.
These germs of ideas would easily become short stories and possibly even novels.

Meet the media men

The media men can be the fantasy writer's greatest friends. Nine times out of ten if you are stuck for an idea for a fantasy story you need turn no further than your daily newspapers, news report or magazine.

Although any newspaper will do I tend to go for the ones which are less up-market. Tabloids would be wonderful if they didn’t appear to be mainly fiction from the get go. The newspapers I love are the ones which contain little paragraphs with snippets of information. These I regularly cut and stick into a scrapbook. Short pieces like:

'Police were baffled today when the missing housewife, XXXXX, was found drowned in her car on a bend off the A45, she had apparently driven through a hedge and trees into the river beyond. The reason that the search took so long [three days] to find the body was that the car had apparently passed through the hedges and trees without harming or breaking even a twig.'
—Now this is definitely fantasy stuff.


Then there's the not quite so obvious news item:

'Police today were praising the bravery of a young stranger who prevented the abduction of a child from the local play park. The assailant, described as in his late thirties, wearing a blue duffel coat and dark green trousers was scared off when the young man accosted him and refused to let him put the child in his car. Police are anxious to find the reluctant hero who disappeared soon after the assailant had driven off in a white....' Bingo! Ideas come tumbling down. Where did the young man come from? Where did he go? Why on earth did he confront the man who could have been the child's father?

I always look closely at everything, even the adverts can spark the odd crazy idea. Take this advert for example (the first one I found in a woman's magazine):

Advanced skincare with the Johnson's Touch.
Thanks to Johnson's you can now boost your skin's natural renewal
with new pH5.5 Healthy difference Cream.....

Advanced skincare? Skin renewal? Possibly a good starting place for a fantasy story and or science fiction. Perhaps even envisage a scifi/fantasy where the space ship is a huge intergalactic creature and a young energetic wizard-scientist discovers a cream which seals, heals and renews the flesh of the huge creatures. An aid to keep them alive in battles and sustain them in adverse space conditions.

Well, it's just a thought....


The question's not in how to try but more in who, how, what and why?

Seeing things and making notes isn't the end of the exercise. I can collect and collate observations until they fill books and books fill boxes. Which they do until I throw them all out, then start again. That doesn't make them a fully fledged idea though. Once the basics have been collected they have to go through a kind of inquisition which will make them burgeon into an idea.

So what if you have a cream that will renew flesh, a balloon which reflects the image of some evil entity it temporarily meets. The next process which these observations undergo will mould them into a basic fantasy plot. The technique is very simple and one that any parent of young children will tell you they recognize with frustrating clarity. I simply ask myself the W questions. (Note How is a W question, it just happens to be written backwards!)

Take the balloon. How does that become a true story?

I’ve already undergone a few questions and answers to get to the image idea any way. So add a few more to flesh out the story idea. Straight forward questions like. What could make the balloon special to be noticed? Would it be the balloon or something else? Would it be something in the building it was clinging to? What could be in that building? Where did it come from? How does it live, feed, contact with humans? This obsrvation became the basis on my wip Red Dragon, Blue. It is a horror tale where a father sacrifices everything in order to summon five revengeful spirits to destroy those who have murdered his daughter.

And this wasn’t the only tale I could fabricate from one observation. As I sat with my handy lil’ notebook and asked myself all of these things. I wrote down all the following answers to my constant interrogation. (Always remember to work within your created, or real world, limitations as you do this)

The balloon is a child's toy. The 'spirit of evil' was attracted to the balloon because it was a child. The spirit is evil because it is in torment. It is in torment because the child it was, was beaten and tortured to death. It feeds off the fear and souls of the living. It seeks revenge. When the story ends it will be avenged. It uses what tools it is familiar with (e.g.. balloons and toys) to create fear and death (balloon taking horrific face. Skateboard placed at top of stairs for someone to step on and kill themselves.) The house it inhabits is a block of apartments and everyone within it lives in a kind of fear without knowing why. No one can move out because they trapped by something indefinable. The child spirit must be appeased and 'destroyed/removed' from this plane of existence. Use the 'Love conquers all' ploy. Who would love the child spirit. A child. How would that child meet him. Originally in his/her dreams....

I won't go any further as I hope this gives a full enough description of how the questioning process works. In fact it is essential to know when to stop the questioning. For a short story it is unnecessary to go into the detail that would be required for a novel. For something the length of this article I used about two 8” by 4” sides of sparsely handwritten notes taken from this process.

I find also that the questioning process helps to weed out story inconsistencies. For example, assume I'm writing a story where the unsung hero suddenly rises from herding his father's pigs to kingship and glorious victory as a famous warrior. The questions would remind me that a pig farmer wouldn't know how to use a sword. In fact all he would know is pig farming. The questions then teach me how to create a character from him that influences those he needs around him, and together they achieve the goals which the plot has set for him.

See the stranger with the glazed stare

This is the process I generally follow:

1. Allow steam from coffee cup to fog up my glasses.
2. Allow sighing waitress to remove yet another untouched coffee mug
3. Wonder if my butt’s been glued to the seat.
4. Is my pen frozen immovably to my hand?
5. Allow thoughts, observations and ideas to mix and meld.
6. Write them down!

Maybe it's a personal thing, perhaps observation/question method is one that only I can use. If that was the case I wonder what would have happened that day in the airport lounge if Terry Pratchett had said,

“Oh, another one of those hard to control suitcases...."

I believe it is the nature of an author to learn to ask questions. In the belief that eventually we’ll ask the right one which will produce that gem of an idea.

Whether you have trouble generating ideas or not, I hope that in the long, dark idea-blanked night of your soul this small monologue has been of some assistance to help speed you on your way.



S.J.'s Third novel Dante I, third in the PIACT undercover agent series will be out sometime in the summer.

Now isn't that exciting news! More details later.

S.J.

Another Free Read from the PIACT Agent Archive. (Not work friendly)

Don't forget if you want to win a super duper Secret Agent ID card like this one



and your own presentation packaged archive superspy mission for yourself, or a loved one, all you have to do to enter the free draw is comment on this thread. Stories can be written in four styles, sex free, romantic, spicy and erotic. Just let me know what you want.

Come along and join us, your superspy comrades are eagerly waiting...


Lethal Lion Leaps into a Lavish Lair

“Now, make sure you wear your underwear.”

Lethal Lion cringed as Omniscient Otter gave him her final orders over the telephone. She was hip deep in a mission in the Middle East while he was preparing for his, in a villa standing on a Greek beach next to the Mediterranean. And all she could think about was his underwear.

“Oh God, you’re going commando aren’t you, I can tell. We’re doomed!”

“No, I’m not.” Lion countered churlishly. He wasn’t doomed, at least. He certainly wasn’t going to admit to going commando.

“Just ask Warrior Wolf,” she told him. “Ask her about the dangers of not wearing underwear. Clean ones at that. Ask her about the YouTube videos, the ones she’s always hacking into and trying to hide.”

“Aw, hey babe, you know that isn’t going to happen to me. Besides one guy looks like the next when it comes down to that.”

“Trust me, bozo.” Her tone of voice held dire warnings. “I’d recognize that penis anywhere, so don’t let me see it somewhere other than our bedroom. Don’t forget, I bite.”

Lion winced again. Otters, he knew from experience, had sharp teeth.

“Trust me dear, wherever I go the underwear goes with me.” Just to keep to the truth Lion shoved a pair of cotton plaid boxers down the front of his pants. The padding gave him an impressive bulge in the front of them.

“Going commando again?” Formidable Fox stepped out of the shower naked except for a shower cap, grabbed a jug of coffee, then sauntered back into the shower.

“And I hope those women aren’t sauntering naked around you,” she growled. “I gave them express orders— “

“Breakfast is here,” Lightning Lynx came up the stairs carrying a huge delivery box from the local bakery. The smell of croissants, Greek bread, feta and baklava along with even stronger coffee made his mouth water.

She lay the box on a small breakfast bar on the balcony just outside Lion’s bedroom, dropped the sheer nightgown she was wearing, shook, her hair in the slight breeze, giving him the perfect view of everything she had before she delicately crossed her legs and nibbled, very teasingly, at one corner of croissant.

“—they are perfectly well behaved,” Lion assured her. “There’s not a single inch of flesh to be seen.” Nope, not an inch, bloody yards of it maybe but not a single inch.

“Okay,” Otter appeared to be mollified by his continued assertions. “Okay then, but, well take care. I hear the twins are deadly with their bazookas.”

“I will dear, I promise, now don’t go flying into any male harems will you. I hear they’re ferocious with a lone woman once they get them in the pool.”

“Don’t be silly dear, nothing happens like that here.”

“Love you, Bye.”

“Bye, Love you!

Hearing the phone hang up brought Lion’s blood pressure out of the fatal heart attack range, which Fox pumped right up again when she came out of the shower, naked again, and passed him a towel, asking him to rub her dry, and do it really quickly at the bottom because it was always wet.

Lion was plucking up the courage to get started when the outside door opened and the unmistakable stomp of Wolf came in. She quickly traced the gang, and the breakfast, to the upper balcony and caught the three of them in a flagrant á trois.

Lion looked at her and relaxed. Calf high skirt, long sleeve and full collar shirt, a hat that covered most of her face. Other than being a very attractive woman, Wolf hadn’t brought anything naked with her to add to the plethora of temptation.

“Really girls,” Wolf chastised them. “You shouldn’t be walking around naked while a man is watching you.”

“A man…?” Fox squeaked.

“…watching us?” Lynx chirped.

Both women dashed to the balcony and dangled over it, searching for their elusive voyeur.

“He’s in here, silly.”

Still excited the two girls turned around and began searching behind the curtains and in the cupboards.

“He’s standing right in front of you.” Wolf added, exasperated.

Fox and Lynx paused to look at Wolf.

“Oh!” Lynx said at last. “I think she means Lion.”

“Lion?” Fox stuttered. “He’s not a man, he’s married.”

“To Otter,” Lynx agreed.

“Damn,” Fox flumped down at the breakfast bar, disappointed.

“Damn, too” Lynx joined her.

Lion swallowed, glanced down at his perfectly athletic body, muscles to die for, and felt about as useful as a butt plug at a gay bar.

“Well, just keep your clothes on around here, okay. The poor fellow is already having fits by the looks of it.”

Lion felt himself blush as Wolf pointedly looked at the front of his pants.

“Don’t worry about that,” Fox stage whispered, “It’s only padding.”

Blushing even more Lion pulled the offending boxers out of his pants to reveal a perfectly smooth, bump free profile. He sank on the edge of the bed, defeated.

“Whatever,” Wolf rolled her eyes. “Don’t forget Furball insisted we keep a low profile on this mission. We’ve finally found a place where I can work without being recognized.”

“Hardly.” Lynx countered. “Why else would that seventeen-year-old look up your skirt at the bakery and yell to his friends. αυτή είναι η μία στο YouTube.”

Lion watched Wolf squirm uncomfortably. “We have no idea what he said.” She told them. “He’s probably one of them kids that gets his thrills from peeking up girls skirts.”

“He said, ‘this is the one on YouTube,’” Lion translated for her.

Wolf blushed bright red, before collapsing on the edge of the bed beside him.

“Damn,” she said. “It looks like you’ll have to do this mission without me after all.”

“Well, what is the mission?” Lynx asked. “Besides sunbathing on the beach and chasing down the local hunks?”

“Okay, come inside and close the curtains,” she told them. “Let’s get this job underway, I want to go home.”

“Yeah, but are you wearing your underwear?” Fox teased, then fell silent as Wolf pulled a huge, pulsating life-like vibrator out of her purse. “How did you get that past customs?”

“I have my ways,” Wolf smirked.

Lion felt even more inadequate as Wolf placed the monstrosity, suction cup to the wood, on the dressing table in front of them. Even the close proximity of two delectable, naked women had no effect on him after the confidence bashing he’d had today.

The vibrator did a little jump, startling him, then three beams of red light burst out from its tip. Laser beams. He watched, curious, as within seconds there was a keyboard, mousepad and monitor drawn in red light on the wall and top of the dresser.

Wolf leaned in and quickly typed in a few passwords and codes. The monitor screen flickered to full hdtv color life.

Furball, in all his bearded wonderfulness, was peering out at them.

“Ah, I’m so glad to see you all in one piece,” he said. “I was worried the Twins might have already caught onto you and eliminated at least a few.”

“You’re expecting us to get killed?” Lion asked. “And you didn’t tell us.”

“Now, now, don’t worry.” Furball reassured him. “I mean we have the best there is in resuscitation. Just as long as you’re not decapitated we have a pretty good chance of piecing you back together. Why agent Persian Pumpkin was found in the sewers, dead for fourteen days, and she’s now walking around with us with no problems.”

“Persian Pumpkin?”

“You know, the girl in our office here, walks with a limp, looks like her eyes are rotted, keeps falling to pieces, that one.”

Lion remembered now the Halloween mannequin he’d seen when he’d visited HQ recently, except it apparently wasn’t a mannequin…

“But regardless, you’re all there in one piece and that’s how we like you. You want to hear more about your mission?”

“Please do,” Lion spoke dryly. “The suspense is killing me.”

“These two girls,” the screen switched to show some video footage of two blond, very well endowed, twins heading into a pedicure parlor. “Are top executives for the Secret Party Looking to Annihilate Terra. Otherwise known as SPLAT. They are currently working on a super secret project here…” a shot of a remote, massive villa in the middle of the deserted Greek countryside. “…known as the Gemini Matrix.”

The holder of the video camera managed to zoom in to focus on some of the people walking around the grounds of the villa. Everywhere the camera focused, there were twins. Male twins. From the corner of his eye Lion could see Lynx and Fox licking their lips.

“I need you Lynx and Fox, to take out the guards, while Lion heads for the ultra-secret laboratory here.” The camera zoomed in to what looked like an elaborate harem style bedroom full of silky chiffon hangings, ceiling decorations and a massive uber king sized circular bed. “Hopefully he’ll be able to locate and destroy the secret research. At the least we’re expected to have the Twins incarcerated by the end of this mission.”

Something big, heavy and fast flew up from the villa and suddenly the picture from the camera consisted of a short tumbling sequence before simply going black, accompanied by a blood curdling scream which was cut short at the interesting bit.

“Ah, Two-Toed Turtle always was a little slow.” Furball sighed. “Anyway, are you all clear on your duties?”

There was a rather subdued round of “Yes.”

“What about me?” Wolf sniffed, miffed at being left out of the mission.

“I’d suggest plastic surgery,” Furball said. “Failing that get your lower half a hair dye, have it trimmed into interesting shapes and make it totally unrecognizable from a certain YouTube video… Hey, have you considered shaving?”

“Uhm…”

“Good, good, I’m sure you’re the master of disguise, and that you’ll find some way to make yourself unrecognizable to the world’s masses.”

“Uhm…”

“Excellent! Now go for it guys and gals. Good luck, and don’t forget, this message will self-destruct in ten seconds.” Furball grinned. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

The image on the screen faded and the vibrator squeaked and hissed a little, deflating slowly until it looked like one of those dinky penises you find on cherub statues in stately gardens.

“Now that was a waste,” Lynx pouted.

##

“Okay, satellite indicates you’ve got four heading your way girls, two from the west, two from the north west. ETA five minutes. You know, I’m getting some really weird electronic signals from that place. You all take care in there, you hear?”

Wolf, dying to get in on the act somehow was monitoring the whole process from satellite and adding her little bit now and then. She was staying firmly locked inside the vacation villa, hiding from the small crowd of sightseers that were now camping on the beach outside it and which was growing larger every minute.

Lion looked towards the predicted contact area, and closed his eyes as Lynx and Fox stripped down to some very skimpy underwear. He had to concentrate on the job.

Peering towards the nearby wall, the whole villa was encased in a ten feet high privacy wall, Lion tried to assess the easiest place to climb it.

There wasn’t, wherever he climbed it was going to be just as tough. Oh well. Here’s hoping some of that million dollar spy equipment Querulous Q gave him actually did its stuff.

“I’ll take these four,” Lynx sauntered sexily forward as the first men came into sight. “You guys get on to the inside and get the Twins.”

Lion could tell Fox wasn’t too happy with that but at least she didn’t complain.

“Are you sure you can handle four of them alone?” Lion asked.

Lynx licked her lips, waggled her tush and waved her hands. “One less than maximum capacity,” she grinned.

Lion didn’t stay to argue. Instead he moved quickly to the cover of the wall, hoping the coming men didn’t spot him. Going by the grunts and groans that soon emanated behind him, the coming men was a very apt description.

Once next to the wall Lion took out the Invisible Breach Ball QQ had given him. “It will enable you to pass through three foot of rock, brick and mortar as if it never existed.”QQ had said. “Totally invisible!”

“Light blue touch paper and retire,” he read the brief instructions as he pressed the ball against the wall.

Well, he was far too young to retire. Squashing the soft metallic ball against the white mortared wall until it stuck and taking his super duper cigarette lighter, he lit the blue paper which was poking out of the top.

The paper sparkled, glowed, pulsed, then went out.

“Always happens with the cheap ones,” Fox noted. “Try sticking a match in it.”

Feeling a bit wary of that suggestion, he tried to light the blue touch paper again. This time the fuse flared, and zipped all the way into the ball before he had time to pull his hand away.

The ball burst into a glow so bright, it took five minutes before his constant blinking allowed him to finally see again.

“That’s it!” Wolf announced. “You’ve made your way in. Don’t take too long, Lynx looks like she’s floundering.”

“Oh? Is that what they call it nowadays?” Fox muttered.

Lion pushed his hand against the wall. Or more precisely pushed his hand against where the wall used to be. All that remained now of the small section where he stood was a large pile of rock dust on the floor.

Well, he had to admit, it certainly looked like the wall was invisible—he couldn’t fault QQ’s description there.

“Okay, I’m going in,” he announced.

“And not a moment too soon.” Lynx’s words sounded garbled over the headset.

“It’s rude to speak with your mouth full,” Fox chided.

Lion stepped through the more-than-man-sized hole, into the garden of dreams itself.

It was like stepping from the Mediterranean and appearing, well, into a very well-kept part of the Mediterranean. The soil here was still sandy, dry and gritty, but it was a well-watered dry and gritty. And the plants and shrubs grew like they knew they were the rich kids on the block. Lion reached up to a nearby olive tree and plucked a few ripe olives to test them.

“Hmm, not bad at all,” he said, savoring the astringent taste.

“No, I’m not going to pull up my skirt for you to peek at me!” Wolf’s protest shattered Lion’s musing. “Sorry everyone, the local TV station sent a news crew around to interview me. Do you think you could maybe hurry this along a little bit. The local police have started selling tickets for their annual ball and carting off the ones refusing to pay. The jail’s already overfull with two men to a bed and I hear they’ve booked an around-the-world cruise for all their eighty odd employees.”

“Uh, yeah, sorry Wolf, just enjoying some of the dainty delights the garden has to offer.” Lion apologized.

“Just get into the bedroom and savor your dainty delights there.” Wolf said, then under her breath, unaware that he could hear her. “I knew I should have worn underwear…”

“This is the best route,” Fox told him, when he’d almost finished his handful of olives. “Follow the pergolas, the squash growing up the sides will give us enough cover until we nearly reach the house. From there you’ll have to make a short dash to the villa.”

“What about you?” Lion asked.

“I think I saw some twins towards the far end of the pergolas. I’m going to have to go first and distract them.” She licked her lips, adjusted her top so her boobs looked more perky and fussed with her hair. “Give me ten minutes head start okay.”

“Okay,” Lion agreed. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

“Eh, what’s a few twins on a mission eh, Lynx? We’ve handled worse that that right?”

“Mmmphh mm phmmm.” Lynx acknowledged.

Worried about his colleagues Lion nervously paced about the olive tree, constantly checking his watch to see if the ten minutes were up. An agonizing eight minutes had passed when Wolf piped up on the headset.

“Incoming,’ she said. “Can you see them to your east and south west Fox?”

“Oh yes,” Fox sounded rather breathless. “What? Only three?”

“Something’s wrong,” Wolf declared. “Everyone here has a twin, and moves as a twin. Keep your eyes peeled Lion, this could be a trap if we can’t see his twin.”

“Oh man!” Fox exclaimed, her voice buzzing over the headset, followed by a sound similar to a panty thong snapping. “Ooooooh, Maaan!”

Lion, trying not to let his guilt at Fox’s deep pain distract him, quickly surveyed the land just beyond the pergolas. It was wide and open. Off to the left, behind some bushes, he could hear Fox’s desperate attempt to keep the guards away from him—the poor lass stifling her cries of agony.

Knowing he was wasting precious time, Lion took a chance and made a dash for the villa, hiding behind a largish Juniper bush he looked up at the wall. A fifteen foot climb onto the flat roof, head east, another ten foot climb and he’d be able to sneak into the bedroom on the third floor.

Easy.

Except there was a hand on his shoulder which definitely didn’t feel like it was going to let him go.

Lion turned casually, acting as if he had every right to be trespassing in someone’s secret base garden and hiding behind a juniper bush.

“Hi,” he said, waving to the missing twin guard. “Lovely weather for a walk isn’t it?”

“Πρέπει να σας σκοτώσω.” The twin said.

“Erhm, pardon me for asking but did you just say, ‘I must kill you?’”

“ορθή”

“That’s ‘correct’, huh?”

“Ω, ναι, σίγουρα.”

“Oh, yes, definitely?” Lion rubbed his chin. “Well, that’s kind of awkward isn’t it, since I don’t really want to be killed.”

Moving at a speed of lightning mud, Lion punched out, striking the man squarely on the chin—then howled in pain as he nursed his hand between his legs.

“Damn! Well I can tell you don’t have a glass jaw. What did you do? Implant a sheet of steel in your chin?”

“I’ve, er, figured out what those strange signals are guys,” Wolf sheepishly admitted.

“Don’t tell me,” Lion joked. “All the twin guards are robots.”

“Well, androids.”

“It’s okay Wolf, you don’t need to humor me. It was just a bad joke, really.”

“Well…I wasn’t really humoring…”

Lion ducked as the twin threw a punch, the man’s arm ending up buried to the elbow in the wall, and he didn’t even wince.

“Androids,” Lynx gasped. “That explains why they’re so good. I mean, uhm, they don’t seem to be getting tired or slowing down.”

The twin threw another punch at him with its other hand, Lion slipped to one side, feeling the breeze pass his ear as the punch almost connected. The man, android, now had two arms elbow deep in the wall.

“How can we defeat them?” Lion asked, taking the opportunity to beat on the machines head while it couldn’t respond. All he managed to do was make his fists hurt.

“I dunno,” Wolf said. “Maybe you could shove a hand grenade down their pants or something?”

“Right, thanks,” Lion answered as politely as he could. “But I didn’t exactly come all this way just to cop a feel of an android’s wiener.”

It did give him an idea though. The android had almost pulled its arms out of the wall, along with a fair chunk of the wall itself. Pulling out his spare IBB he squashed the soft metal ball to the back of the androids neck. This time he put his free arm over his eyes and thrust the lighter as close to the ball as it could get. Retiring, on this occasion, could be a rather long and fatal affair.

Even with his arm over his eyes it took several moments blinking to be able to see again. Fortunately his plan had worked and all that remained of the android was a pile of metal and plastic dust.

“Oh God, they’re so hard,” Fox moaned. “Difficult, I mean. They’re so difficult!” She squealed.

“Wimp!” Lynx taunted.

“Quickly Lion, you have to get to the Twins and subdue them. They probably have a master control which will turn all the androids off at once.”

“Right.”

Lion looked at the crumbling wall. At least that was one problem solved. Using the convenient hand and foot holes the android had provided it took just a matter of minutes to swing himself up onto the roof and start making his way to the Twins bedroom.

It took just a few more moments to reach the wall just below their bedroom window. Quickly pulling the Clingers onto his hands and feet, he used their super suction ability to help him climb the short ten feet to the window sill.

The whole process went very well. Incredibly well in fact. Except for the last few inches when two sets of hands grabbed his wrists and yanked him the last few feet into the bedroom.

When he managed to get his breath back, and look up from the floor, he saw two very attractive pairs of breasts. No, he meant an attractive pair of twins, honest!

Both of them were dressed in see-through baby doll negligees that just about covered their navels and left little to his imagination—which was currently working overtime, as was another part of his anatomy.

“Oooh,” said Twin number one. “A real, working, human male, Dupli.”

The other Twin licked her lips as she sidled over to Lion.

“You’re right, Kate. Let’s see what he really has to offer. You know that last one had just padded himself out with his boxers.”

Dupli and Kate, Lion wondered what sick parents came up with those names.

As the Twins grabbed the legs of his pants Lion fought vainly to keep his modesty as the girls tried to pull them off. Very reluctantly, he instantly unbuttoned and unzipped before they tugged too hard and damaged something permanently. After all, he did want to have something to take back to Otter.

“Oooh,” Kate said, grabbing him in a place too rude to mention and stroking him up and down. “It’s so hard and smooth, it’s better than the real thing.”

“It is the real thing,” he told them grouchily.

Dupli dipped her head down for a quick lick. Lion decided to take some time out before arresting the poor, pretty things. After all, they probably were innocents in all this.

“Hmm, tastes like the real thing.” Dupli said. “Let’s try him out for a bit.”

“Yes. Lets.” Kate agreed.

#

A couple of hours later Lion looked around at the chaos in the room. The bed was messed up with the covers all over the place. Half the hangings and the chandelier were dangling in pieces from the walls and ceilings. Worse still the Twins were still going strong, insatiable for more of him.

He was exhausted.

“Has it been good for you ladies?” he asked, desperate for a break. God knows how Lynx and Fox were doing, They’ve been captives to their robot twins even longer than he’d been to these two human ones.

“They’re barely hanging on,” Wolf told him. “They can’t keep it up much longer.”

Neither can I. Lion wanted to add.

“Oh, don’t worry about us,” Dupli told him.

“No man has even been able to make us come,” Kate told him. “We just like to play because its fun.”

“Ugh,” Lion groaned. I’m doomed. “Okay, maybe I have a little toy which will help.”

“Ooh, we like toys.” The Twins said together.

Reaching for his pants Lion pulled out the last device QQ had given him. The Desperation Pill. About the size of a quarter he pulled it out, and following the instructions, squeezed the tube at the two blue marks.

Immediately the capsule popped open and a pink thing flew out.

“Wow,” Dupli cooed.

“Double wow,” Kate aahhed.

“Phew,” Lion agreed.

Grabbing as much rest as he could Lion watched along with the girls as the pink thing expanded and slowly took shape. He had no idea what QQ had created so he was as surprised as the Twins when they ended up with a blow up copy of himself.

“Well, hello girls!”

A moving, walking, talking blow up copy! He was saved!

“Wowowow!” Kate said, reaching forward and grabbing the copy’s extended male member. “And it vibrates too! I’m taking this one.” She told Dupli. “We can swap later.”

“No fair!” Dupli complained. “You always try the new ones first.”

Still, she turned to Lion, determination on her face. “I’ll have to finish you off quickly,” she said.

Lion didn’t think she meant it in a pleasant way either.

“Unless I finish you first,” he gave her what he hoped was a sexy confident smile back. “Now that I can concentrate solely on you, you have no chance.”

“I love a good challenge,” Dupli grinned back. Then gasped as Lion flipped her over and took her doggie style. “You can’t, beat me, like this.” She groaned.

Yet Lion could tell from her tone that he was finally beginning to affect her.

“Then let’s try a little of this,” he teased.

Switching on his fingertip implanted vibrators he reached underneath her and began stroking her clit, she bucked as if he’d just sent a million volts through her.

“No!” she cried. “No!”

Lion glanced over at his copy and saw it was doing the same thing to Kate who was moaning, glassy eyed. He grinned with satisfaction. They were going to do something to the Twins that no man had done before.

“No!” Dupli screamed. “It can’t be! I’m, I’m, c…c…comi…..!”

It wasn’t until he saw the smoke pouring out of her ears that Lion started to get a little bit disconcerted. But when she screamed out at her climax, and her eyes popped out to dangle on springs, and the top of her head blew off to reveal a complex set of circuit boards and electronics he really started to worry. He distanced himself as quickly as he could from the disintegrating machine.

He glanced over at Kate as her orgasmic cries ended in a similar, and very alarming fashion. Unfortunately his copy wasn’t as quick and ended up in various pieces beside her.

“Be careful!” Lion yelled into the headset. “The androids aren’t programmed to deal with an orgasm, they kind of—“

“Wow, talk about popping your cork!” Lynx said.

“Well, I’ve heard about blowing someone’s brains out…” Fox added.

“This whole place,” Lion looked around the bedroom, debris from one of the exploding twins had loosened a panel in the wall to reveal a complex control board behind it. “It was run by androids.”

He hit a few buttons just to see what would happen. The control board lit up like a Christmas tree. Maybe he’d hit the one which switched off the androids.

“Warning! Warning! This base will self-destruct in five minutes.” Lion stared at it in shock for a few seconds. “I’ve always wanted to say that.” The machine added.

“Uhm, ladies…” Lion said forgetting about his clothes and running for the window and the quickest way out of the villa.

“We heard.” Lynx and Fox said together.

“Calling in the escape chopper now.” Wolf told them.

Lion just hoped they’d make it out in time

##

“I warned you about going commando!” Lion winced at Otter’s tone and held the phone a little further from his ear. “Now where the hell did I put that skinning knife?”

“Baby, really, I have no idea how I ended up on YouTube.”

They were all sitting in Ferocious Furball’s ‘couch’ room waiting for a debrief. No, he wasn’t going to think of that term. Fox and Lynx had both arrived wearing long mackintosh coats, dark glasses and fedoras.

“I haven’t been able to go anywhere without someone asking if I want to try it with five.” Lynx complained.

“My mother keeps talking about my choice of underwear,” Fox moaned. “And the ladies of her church group have started a panties collection for me.” She wrinkled her face in disgust.

“Isn’t it disgusting,” Wolf agreed, innocently twiddling with the satellite controller she’d used to follow and record their mission. “And here we were, thinking you were all safe. Someone who was following me must have tracked you all down to the villa. Well, look on the bright side. At least they’re not all following me around anymore.”

They were all about to comment when Furball announced his arrival by dimming the lights and backlighting the screen so that his silhouette appeared.

“I’m afraid, ladies and gentleman,” he began immediately. “That it looks like we have stumbled on an immensely large group of bad guys we need to trounce.”

They all stared at the screen, riveted by the news, personal problems temporarily forgotten.

“Let me tell you,” Furball continued. “What we have learned about SPLAT.”

Ends


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