> The Baroness, Part 52b
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> [Our story so far:
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> [Picardy Pikes, the pop tart rock star whose name had become a byword for mad escapades, had been cornered by paparazzi outside one of her favorite Beverly Hills clubs late one fine Arachnight City morning. Her bizarre language, unsteady gait and general air of confusion had convinced the crowd that her next stop would have to be a well publicized rehab session. One reporter was already writing speculations on who would perform an intervention to save the songstress from herself.
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> [In fact, only part of Ms. Pikes’ bewilderment was due to the alcohol, pills, powders and home made cigarettes that she had ingested instead of breakfast. Computer error had interrupted Baroness Elizabeth Zemo’s plot to escape the Safe once again by mind transfer and had diverted her consciousness to Picardy’s well-soused sensorium. Adding mind travel disorientation to that totalled up to another celebrity who looked like a sure candidate for the Betty Ford Clinic or a long stay in the Utah mountains.
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> [Meanwhile, Picardy’s mind was slumbering dreamlessly in the highest security cell of the Safe, thanks to a double dose of sedative that Beth Zemo had injected into her own body just before activating the mind transfer.]
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> The Safe was now Elizabeth Zemo’s favorite place. The second-most place she wanted to be was anywhere else than here. Her wish seemed to be granted when a bystander gestured toward a hulking, white Ford Extravagance SUV.
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> "Over here!" came a shout from a vaguely familiar blonde face.
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> "Dwr . . . blmr . . . gaack," came the Baroness’ response, as Picardy’s head wobbled and her arms waved in opposing directions.
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> "We're your friends, Picardy!" came another shout from an identical visage.
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> The addled pop star's head jerked back and forth, trying to resolve whether she was seeing double or whether two fuzzily blonde figures were beckoning her toward an SUV.
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> "She's ignoring us. How rude," pouted Trudi Wooster, stamping her Manolos on the sidewalk. "You'd think we were just a couple of ordinary gawkers or something."
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> "What's a gawker?" her twin sister Jenni replied. "Sounds like some kind of seagull."
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> "It's a snarky fashion blog that Fashion Accessory hates, so we have to hate it too. Now shut up and help me grab Miss Zoned-Out there," the slightly more capable of the heiresses snapped at her twin as she began pushing through the chattering onlookers.
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> At the same moment, Beth Zemo woozily decided that a familiar-looking mirage, even if it was the product of a pharmacist's nightmare, beat standing around as a papparazzo's dream. Her attempts to use her hard-earned martial arts skills against the crowd of hacks and attack photogs were embarrassing fiascoes. Not only was she in the wrong body, a body much slimmer and more lithe than her own, but she also was fighting a large portion of the substances on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Schedules I through IV plus an appreciable volume of the Stolichnaya distillery’s daily output. It was no surprise that her initial elbow chop and hip thrust directed at the senior correspondent of the Weekly World News (last week’s top story: Talking Turnip is Reincarnation of Elvis!) made her look like a 13-year-old nerd trying to dance to Picardy’s mega-hit “Toxics†instead of the able fighter of the Parody War.
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> Nonetheless, with more feeble elbow strikes and hip blocks, she urged Picardy's body forward in sort of a two steps forward, one to the side, stagger left and stumble backwards gait.
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> "OUCH!" Picardy Pikes' head snapped upward and she grimaced. Her hand then dropped to the weapons belt that should have been there. It wasn't. Her fingers scrabbled for the Baron Zemo Mark 11 Omni-Destructo pistol that was Elizabeth Zemo's constant equalizer. It wasn't there either.
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> "You pervert!" she snarled, whirling (actually more like a wobble) at the scruffy photographer who had given her the pinch on her rear.
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> "Smile, darlin'," he riposted as the flash went off to score the cover picture for the next week's National Informer. The right uppercut that Picardy's fist landed a moment later didn't bother him a bit. That photo would make page 10 of People.
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> Stepping over (and partly on) the prone photog, Picardy Pikes' figure lurched toward the Wooster twins like a parody of a low-budget film zombie.
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> "She's coming!" exulted Jenni, jumping at the prospect.
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> "Yeah, yeah, now give me a hand with these," Trudi muttered, kicking one particularly sluggish gawker in the shin to clear the way for Picardy. He stumbled backward.
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> Jenni burst through the hole like a Penn State linebacker after an indecisive quarterback and snatched the pop tart's arm, shouting "Picardy, I've saved you! Come with me! Your hair is scrumptious!"
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> Trudi, nursing a bruised rib after the insufficiently incapacitated tourist from Bug Lick, Arkansas returned her shin kick with a rabbit punch, groaned back, "What about ME?"
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> Moments later Jenni led two other stumbling blondes past the remaining spectators to the dinosaur-like Ford Extravagance and dangled the keys proudly. "Isn't it grea--."
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> Picardy seemed to be in a bit of a hurry. She snatched the keys from a flabbergasted Jenni, thumbed the remote lock button, threw open the driver's door and launched herself into the driver's seat.
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> By this point, a few of Beth's faculties had returned hesitantly and she had concluded that all her higher brain functions might not flee right away if she tried to use them. She also had a vague sense that Franz was somewhere to the east and a less-well-founded thought that her companions knew Arachknight City well enough to lead her there.
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> Jenni had skipped over to the right of the SUV and popped into the other front seat. "'Let's rock," she shouted inanely. Moaning, Trudi pawed at the rear door, hardly able to stand.
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> Picardy gunned the engine. "Get in," she snarled. "Don't slow me down."
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> "That's my sister," Jenni mewled without conviction, torn between loyalty to her twin and the prospect of a one-on-one with America's most notorious female singer. I'll get an exclusive interview on Entertaining Tonight -- or maybe even Agrah! she thought.
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> Impatient to get away, Beth Zemo had Picardy's body throw the truck into gear at the second Trudi wrenched the rear door open and threw herself prone into the middle seat. The Extravagance roared out of the parking space, narrowly missing a motorcycle, and weaved its way toward Hillshire Boulevard.
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> Picardy's lawyer, Allan Centipede of Sneek, Sneek, Grabbit and Thuggery's A. C. office, watched in alarm as the lumbering SUV lurched away. His client was due in Judge Millstone's court in a half hour and the old tyrant (Centipede's unconscious had suggested a much more scatological word, but a $1,000 an hour celebrity counsellor instinctively auto-censors) had already promised to take away the rugrats if she even tapped her toes in court.
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> He opened the door of his own Testarossa to give chase and halted.
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> - A crisis would make enough work for me to break the firm billed hours record.
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> Even Millstone won't keep a mother from her kids forever, and I'll look like a legal genius when I get any visitation for this lush.
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> I'll get airtime. Lots of airtime!
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> Allan Centipede fished out his custom cellphone (diamond-faced keys, a real danger in direct sunlight) and called KARC-TV's helicopter news team. He had it on speed dial, just before his mistress's number.
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> Playing the part of Baroness Elizabeth Zemo (and she should get a better title one of these eons):
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> J. Jonah Jerkson
> VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
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> A Confession
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> I can't plot. I've passed up a lot of opportunities to follow up suggestions by HH, Shrike and Vizh because I couldn't imagine a plausible story line. But if some random prompt arises, such as a news story about Britney or an old BBC sitcom, I'll drop my characters in and start them talking, and often I get a story.
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> The lack of a mapped-out plot can lead to meandering. This entire post covers perhaps 90 seconds of narrative and no big gags, although I hope it's droll. But, I can't imagine the good
> stuff until my characters take me through this scene.
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> Rather than wait till December to write the next scenes and go back and trim half or more of this one, I'm posting this as written in hopes I can now write something with more punch. Thanks for your patience.
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