"Right, okay..." Visionary muttered nervously, clenching and unclenching his hands. He'd much rather be pacing right now... it seemed the proper thing to do. However, he was rather firmly anchored in spot by the green-skinned woman fussing with his tuxedo. He settled for patting the pocket containing the notecards with his speech on them for the fiftieth time. "How's my tie?"
"Magnificently clipped, Master Ambassador" Odoona responded, tugging and straightening it with efficiency. "Although I wish you had allowed me to procure the grindloc pelt that the Wootarans traditionally wear for these ceremonies. You would look quite commanding in gringloc."
"I'm not supposed to command" the Legionnaire emphasized. "In fact, Chauncy threatened to disembowel me with a shrimp fork if I ever come close to starting another misunderstanding like we had in Ausgard..."
"But Lord Donar was delighted that you agreed to captain the longboat Wombat's Wrath into fiery combat with the Austernal Ambassador" she protested. "He said it was truly great sport, much better than the usual birthday entertainment of pin the tail on the Hrothwobble."
"Well, even so..." Visionary answered dubiously. He had no doubts as to the young Caphan's skills in prepping him in social protocol... after all, she was literally raised to, ah... "entertain" important guests to the house to which she belonged, and had done a considerable amount of interstellar travel (unwillingly as it may have been) before Vizh had ever set foot off of Earth. Still, he often had the sneaking suspicion that she just might be making up customs (not to mention fauna) off the top of her head. "I probably shouldn't wear gringloc anyway. Maggie would be upset to find out I wore... fur?" he guessed.
"Oh, the gringloc isn't skinned..." Odoona assured him. "Only lightly stunned. It's the twitching that makes it such elegant formal-wear."
The thought was enough to make the Regular absently scratch at his chest. "Right. Okay..." he repeated, coming full circle. "Thank you,Odoona."
She beamed at him in a way that reminded him a great deal of Asil. It wasn't the first time he had made that mental comparison since Miiri had pressed her slave-sister into his service (again.) "You are a very important man, with a very important position" the mother of his children had insisted. "I am told a Great Man should have an amanuensis." Of course, he didn't call the former slave-girl that... he had too much trouble spelling it to ever be really comfortable with the term. He hadn't really settled on a proper title for her... although simply saying that he was finding Odoona a place on his staff had made Dreamcatcher snicker way too much. For now, they were just going with "personal assistant".
As to what kind of "assistance" a twenty-something woman most often dressed in a metallic gold bikini offered to a decidedly-late-thirty-something Ambassador, well... that apparently made for quite a bit of gossip around the State Department.
"Dial's set, boss" a mechanical voice called out, accompanied by footsteps that sounded like oil-tanks being dropped onto concrete. "We're ready to go when you are."
"Thanks Joan" Visionary nodded to the steam-driven head of his security team. The ten foot tall robot looked like someone had tried to re-sculpt a locomotive into a Valkyrie, finding an inventive position for the twin boilers. "Are we quite sure we got it right this time? I'm still getting memos about the time we rooted the Lighthouse in the reflecting pond outside the Washington Monument. Although some of them have to do with the water I tracked into the inauguration dinner..."
She shrugged and looked over her massive shoulders, back down the stairs to the elaborate interwoven dials that were set into the wall of the Lighthouse's basement. "I followed the settings worked out yesterday by Harper. He said that the problem is probably that the Shaggoth didn't fully reintegrated the dimensional longitudinal dial when he returned the Lighthouse's control mechanism, but the Shoggoth says that the problem is simply that the meaning of the number "5" hasn't been redefined yet, and that once the gravitational force of the color green is discovered, then the math will work much better." She snorted a jet of steam. "You got some weird friends there,Vizh. Either way, we're where we're supposed to be right now. I'd stake my flywheel on it."
"Right. Okay..." he repeated again. He did have some weird friends, but then he lived in a Lighthouse that wasn't rooted to any particular spot in space, so he probably wasn't one to talk. "I guess this is it. Big smiles... keep eye contact... don't scratch your left earlobe for any reason... apparently that's a way to make some rather undiplomatic suggestions about a Wootanari's brood-mother..." He took a deep breath as he grasped the Lighthouse's entryway doorknob. "Let's go" he announced as he confidently swung open the door and stepped through.
Instead of finding himself on the famed blue sand of Wootanari under a red sun, flanked by an honor guard of 50 warriors astride gangly lizard-thing steeds in front of a towering obsidian castle, he found himself on a scrubby bit of lawn in need of a good trim, with a stone walkway leading up to a crooked mailbox under partly cloudy blue skies. It was a testament to how strange his life had become that this landscape was the one that confused him greatly.
"Hi Honey..." Hallie greeted him, blinking into sight in front of him. "...You're home."
"I... what?" Visionary asked, confused. "You're not the Wootanari princess" he noted wisely, hoping he was right on that count. One could never be quite sure when it came to the Lair Legion's activities... "Status Quo" in regards to the team was about as easy to define as the weight of green. "Did we get the Lighthouse's inter-dimensional dials screwed up again?"
The holographic woman whom he had been dating for the last 8 months gave him a tight-lipped smile. "Guess again, Mr. Ambassador. Joan put you right where I wanted you. You can just think of this as a long overdue intervention..."
"A what now?" Earth's Ambassador blinked.
"You've been a rarity around these parts for far too long, and we're putting an end to that today. It's time for you to take a break from all of your super-important new duties and come back to the mansion to do all of the super-important old duties that you've let slide for too long. You know... like sit on the couch and watch some bad television with your teammates... or maybe take in a few games at the bowl-a-rama. I'm not taking "no" for an answer, so don't even bother trying."
Visionary looked at the determined Legionnaire in front of him, took a moment to look down at his freshly pressed tuxedo, then turned to Odoona. "Just imagine how over-dressed the gringloc would have been."
to be continued with details from Vizh's life, as we explain what he's been up to for the better part of the last year!
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