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While she was adjusting her bikini over her fake boobs, Maurana Banana felt a sudden pang of panic. Nothing that could be lipsynched away with bursting into some Name Game song

Everything was here, yet she didn’t feel fleshed out enough. She wasn’t talking about gaining some padding, she had plenty enough of that, but more about depth and character. At times, she even felt highly suggestible.

The sound of the waves crashing down the rugged black volcanic stones under the white sand was soothing. The others’ shrills of delight could be heard miles away, they were hoping for a dolphins’ pod sighting and had even abandoned the Goochi platform shoes to be more comfortable.

Sadie was very quiet, and at times felt almost like she was about to say hello and run out of conversation. However, she told something that had struck the Reggie inside the Maurana’s persona. That she should act on her highest excitement, and that there was no more to life than that.
Easy enough when in drags, but when out of the wigs, make-up and fake eyelashes and acrylic nails, it was like being an out-of-water dolphin. Nothing but a big fat stranded sardine without appeal, just good for an extra pouring of olive oil.

Before being a drag queen, Reginald worked a few jobs since a young age, mostly deliveries. The last one he got was more stable, a job as a security guy. He’d almost blundered at the interview, he laughed at it now, when he’d forgotten to remove the Gothic styled nails from the night. Instead of hiding them and look stupid, he had the good sense to invent those crazy stories like the ones he would tell his teacher when he forgot some homework deadline.
Security was better than delivery, there was no denying. Being in a position were people were not quite paying attention to you, but still eyeing you from the corner, as if you could do something vicious or bully them out of the building. She liked that.
There was always excitement as there were plenty of crazy people each day to be escorted out, so following excitement wasn’t difficult. Following yours was more of a catch.

She’d joined the drag contest to win her own highest excitement. She already got points for being the first pick-up of the jury before Consuela and Terry, and also for being the one to snatch the key.

She put the last touch of green on her eyelids with a hand flourish. She was perfect. For now, that was something to get excited about.

“Well, that was almost too easy…”
Despite his weight and the various layers of clothes, Reginald who had struggled to get back into Maurana Banana’s tight costume was the first to realize what had just happened, and had rushed to the statue to snatch the prized crocheted ferret, beating Consuela and Terry by a short hand.
Sadie looked with a slight hint of disapproval at his XVIIIth century apparent undergarments, but was glad that this was resolved so efficiently.

“The prize is inside the ferret, ladies.”
“Off with your grabby hands, you tart!” shouted Maurana batting her eyelashes ferociously at Terry Bubble who wanted a closer look at the intriguing tear in the fabric.
“Oh leave it there, you silly bitch, now you can gloat with your tarty breeches, you haven’t get half your costume ready” Consuela was starting to enjoy the argle-bargle.

“And what should we do now? Wasn’t there supposed to be another one?” Maurana turned to Sadie.
“We’re in luck. Obviously there always has been a plan B, dear. The second one was a decoy for the Russian team, I just got it confirmed from the tagging chip of the toy.”

Everyone was hanged to her words, which was a satisfying moment, not so much for the riveted attentions on her loving person but for the temporary silence. Sadie milked it for a few more seconds before adding.

“Let’s open it up carefully, there is a key inside we need. Then, you only need to do one thing before we go home. Get on that scene at the Opera, rock the audience, and we’ll get down the Time Sewer off to our time and your prize.”

She pause before adding, looking down at Maurana’s breeches. “There is obviously some prep’ work left to do.”

Trove wondered if she threw away all her stuff and went severely minimalist, the endless packing stuff to move dreams would stop. There was an unusual twist to this dream though: they had been living in Kove’s rambling house, presumably on the south coast of England (Kove was Dude’s ex) and when Kove came back home it became clear that it would be a good idea to move out (although there was nothing about the ex part of the actual story in the dream). Trove didn’t know whether to move back to Spain, or back to the Midlands. She wanted to see her grandfather again in the Midlands (even planned on going back there at least for a day or two to see him ~ despite that he had died years ago), but the thought of living there again was like an enormous black cloud. We have to go back down south again, we have to, she thought, and then realized painfully that she was too grown up now or too old to have anyone to move back home to, they would be “on their own” which was not without difficulty for some reason. Then, the packing started. The endless sorting out of mostly rubbish. One of the bedroom cupboards had an oven in it, a filthy blackened hole of grease and debris.

“Finally the answer we need! Let’s release the damn bird and get back home now! Besides its cage needs cleaning and it’s starting to smell, and I can’t stand this place any longer…”

Funnily enough, she had wanted to post the daily random quote too because it seemed so significant, and in point of fact, it was awaiting in the comment box when she woke up. The previous night she had been about to post it, and then wondered if she’d posted enough already.

She recalled some dream snippets too, which was most uusual, and woke up almost smiling. There had been a big house and people, but the only clear recall was dropping an ecstasy pill on the floor, and it bounced this way and that and disappeared into another room, and everyone was looking for it everywhere. All of the dogs were bright cartoon colours and were all sitting patiently upright in a tree, a cartoon type tree.

She thought it quite amusingly significant that everyone was looking for the ecstacy, and just remembered that they did find a pill on the floor, a white one, but that wasn’t the pill they were looking for.

One could very well wonder why, when thoroughly appreciating a most exceptional ramble along uncharted or at least long forgotten territory, one would experience a back ache. That is, until one realized that without the back ache, one would have perhaps continued the walk, or, upon arrival home, engaged a few of the usual morning activities; instead of picking up a cold cup of tea and sitting down immediately at the computer to recover, enabling the perfectly magical incident of a perfectly timed conversation, far from unconnected to the initial ramble.

After a few months travelling from Spain to France in their quest for the dragons, with already two visa applications for China rejected, endless unkind mocking laughs or condescending looks from strangers, and having had to pawn temporarily the sabulmantium to buy Vincentius a shirt, Arona and her motley family were thinking it was time for a turn of fate.

It didn’t take them too long hopefully.
Of course, the sabulmantium was recovered as soon as they had realized it was actually more lucrative in this dimension to have Vincentius take off his shirt in shady bars at night for a few meals and lodging, and some little extras. Mandrake had been kind to provide ample squeaking mice supplements, which Arona had politely declined, for which Mandrake faked each time the saddest of disappointments. All in all, so far their life on the roads had been easier than she would have thought.
Of course, they’d lost Sanso a few times as he couldn’t stay at one place for too long, and keeping track of his movements was near impossible. So they relied on trust that he would always find his way, which surprisingly enough, he did every single time.

He had been the one to provide them with the way to the island actually. One day, after weeks without news, he’d reappeared, hammering at the door of their little room at the top of their 9 storey hotel in Paris, near the St Honoré Market Place. He was wearing the quaintest bright violet velvet surplice, and was carrying a bottle of glowing green liquor.

To settle in a lovely island of the Ocean they called Pacific… It didn’t take too much convincing: Paris was starting to get boring, and far too cold. Arona missed the moist glowing warmth of Leormn’s cave, that was so good for her skin. She didn’t miss the riddles though.

The entry point of the tunnel was inside the catacombs, and they’d almost got lost a few times, she could have sworn, although Sanso was ever confident they were on track, even when a few dead-ends were staring at him in the face with toothless skulls grins. But after a few hours, the tunnel actually broadened, and glowed a lovely shade of orange.

It was funny, traveling through the Earth’s crust, made her almost feel at home. If all the dragons of this realm had left, and were hidden somewhere, she was certain it had to be to such a place. It gave her hopes again to meet one in this strange land which had forgotten magic.

“Blimey! The Pope, eh? Are you teasing me again?”
Vera didn’t answer.
“Oh come on! Don’t give me that need-to-know-basis treatment, as much as I love a good riddle, I hate secrets! Are we going to look for the reincarnation of a famous Pope à la Little Buddha? Tell me, tell me!” Bouncing with excitement on the rolling Eggsway made her almost fall head over wheels into a flangeway carved into the muddy track that went deeper into the forest.

Regaining her balance, she looked ahead to see Vera was already a few meters ahead — and navigating the Eggsway was becoming difficult. She knew she should have opted for the 4×4 model…
So… Vera wasn’t really paying attention, she would have to try another approach to worm answers out of her. What was so special about this place anyway? Lost continent of Mu, ancient architecture, maybe underwater tunnels… Nothing that would lead directly to the Vatican she surmised… Unless…

They arrived at a clearing in the forest, where blue glow sticks had been placed in a round pattern. Vera was standing there, after having carefully placed a glowing green rote at the center, staring at the middle of the light circle, and without turning her head to look at her, told Lulla “Here’s your answer coming.”

A huge buzzing throb started to fill the air, sounding to concentrate at a focal point not higher than 10 inches above the ground, at the exact center of the blue circle. It begun sparkling and * BooM *, in all its slimy tentaculeous glory, a spaceship was there.

“Special delivery from our alien friends” Vera said, finally deigning to look at Lulla.

The rather small spaceship started to slowly expand, becoming larger, until an opening appeared, letting a form emerge from the membranous appearance of the hull. The form which looked like some person was suddenly dropped unceremoniously with a * Plop! * while the spacecraft elastically recovered its initial shape.
Moments later, it was gone, and with it the buzzing sound.
The green rote payment was gone too. Greedy aliens.

“Come on, let’s bag this guy and bring him home for phase 2. A red convertible SUV is waiting for us at the portal’s entrance.”
So, that’s where I come in… Lulla was starting to wonder what was the use of her being here, since Vera was so bossy and secretive. But now,… Of course she was better at hatting, but she could call herself without bragging a real bagging specialist.

In Ed Steam’s old office, Lord Lemon was like in a mausoleum full of ghosts.
Mostly computer illiterate, he favoured greatly goose feather and dark Chinese ink soft purr on the paper over the annoying clickety racket of the keyboards. So he wasn’t exactly feeling at home in Ed’s old shoes.

The team’s greeting party had been cordial, but he didn’t feel an overwhelming welcome either, not that he expected it. It was Ed’s team after all, he was the Rooster of the chicks of roast, whatever they liked to call themselves. He was not found of monikers and preferred to be addressed simply as Sir.

The call he received on the morning was perplexing him. They’d found an auditor dead with a Surge Corp. business card in his jacket in the streets of a Spanish city, he couldn’t really remember which, the accent on the phone was as dreadful as that of a Chinese civet, but… What was that about already? He’d thought his memory was improving, getting back on the field, but there were relapses again, he had to concentrate. Afternoon Scrabble games were not that bad after all.

He’d perfected a neat technique to remember things, placing vivid images in memory palaces constructed in his mind were he could retrieve them later, but the thing was that his memory palaces sorely lacked a cleaning lady, and images sometimes blurred together or went missing, fading away. He sighed.

His gaze on the phone brought him back to his stream of thought. This would have been stored on the Suspicious Clues Palace, in Ed’s corner. His mind raced back in the atrium of his palace where he could see the various corners, and he went back into the Alley of Dark Secrets, then turned to the Corner of Lonely Puzzle Pieces. There were actually a lot of them, but the topmost one was vivid enough. It was a red blood hearing-aid spewing out a mean Larsen and bathing in paella. For “auditor murdered in Spain” obviously. He turned down mentally the volume of the hearing-piece. This was not a very elegant image, but he was in a hurry, and crude preposterous images always were remembered better he’d found out. The lewdest even more so. Which was why his Palace of Past Precious Moments was starting to look like a brothel he was loath to admit.

He was starting to wonder if Ed’s demise was not some sort of inside job. Circumstances were not really orthodox, but nothing was in their line of duty, so he had to look for something else. He’d already started to make an inventory of the storage room, just before the break-in, but computer handicapped as he was, between paper and memory palaces, he couldn’t figure it anymore and had to start it over with some help from Cornella.
At least, he’d sent Hyphen and Dash to discreetly investigate on the break-in and now, he will probably send them to investigate on… he faced a blank. All he could remember now was he was having the meanest craving for mussels and prawns.

“Looks like Ed Steams’ own impetus was his downfall Janet said solemnly after she covered the mustacheless body with a white bedsheet.
“Damn right you are, Janet.” Riff Raff nodded. “I wouldn’t have recognized him without his mustache though…”
“I think it’s safe to say that Pearl and Mari Fe’s plan was nearly a fiasco, but in the end, he took the surge full blast. Not quite the end we had in mind for him, but what’s done is done.”

The zombies hadn’t been difficult to subjugate however, and although Riff Raff nearly had his brain eaten out, there had been no spread or civilian loss to deplore. That much was good, Janet didn’t like the whole body moving business one bit. The Moreguest Facility was such a drab place, at least she could go straight back to her post in beautiful sunny West Coast.

On the table, an egg-shaped translucent gem was beaming bright green. Janet took it thoughtfully, carefully placing it in the diplomatic case. “Strange that Ed died from the surge while the others recovered once the zombie energy had been sealed into the rote.”
Riff Raff was more pragmatic. Or maybe eager to get back home too. “He was a man consumed by his quest for artifacts, let’s not dwell on things past.”

Using the portal from the bathroom once she decontaminated and recalibrated it, she’d sent everyone, their clothes doused in moonshine to some dark alleys in Granada, where they would probably be picked by local officers alerted by the usual racket made by the transspace portal, with no memory at all and alcohol breath. At least the nosy auditor would be in for a trip.

“Hey Riff, give my regards to Midgenta” Janet bear-hugged her friend, throwing the diplomatic suitcase with the pocket-sized forklift into the glove box of the red car, and disappearing in a trail of fine caliche billowing behind the vehicle wheels.

His razor blade in left hand (he was ambidextrous with a slight favour for the left side), Ed suddenly remembered his future struggle with the daft cumbersome vermillion man, so he quickly turned off the portal. Then, against all common sense and years of procedures, decided to put it into his pocket.
Everything following came back at once, interspersed with bits of smashed objects and blurs. But something he distinctly remembered was that Mari Fe was in the apartment, although he didn’t remember bringing her home from last night. It was against company policy to sleep with subordinates, so it had to mean something fishy.
Recalibrating the portal using the failsafe code, he directed it to the secret headquarters where he had started to stockpile dangerous artefacts collected from previous surge control operations, deciding it was the best course of action before assessing who was to be trusted or not in his Chicks team…