A Parody - as if you haven’t already guessed
Created July 13, 2010
PROLOGUE: This parody series is entertainment only and not meant to imply that the following actually takes place in the mind of my friend... Although I will admit that I am speaking of the person who wrote RIOOK and A LITTLE NUTMUZAK and the like... Okay, disclaimer: This series is not attempting to be anywhere near accurate with the assessment of Rio. It would be extremely frightening if I really came anywhere close. Anyhoo, We will attempt to sneak into her brain via the left eardrum... Uh, just watch out for that miniature submarine that has Raquel Welch in it, and please ignore the 'YOU ARE HERE' signs. You follow those maps and you'll end up in the petuitary gland ...
GREEN ROOM 2010
SOMEWHERE IN RIO’S LEFT PARIETAL LOBE
Periodically, the occupants of the Heathrow Greenroom sent out a scout to ascertain the conditions of Rio’s brain. Like much of the Nations, the synapses within her cranial sphere allow a great deal of travel, and, like the National Rail and Motorways, sometimes have problems. Thus, this account begins at the point just before the arrival of the scout, who happened to be Domino…
Silvermane, who was back in his guise as Ankhamun, and therefore the quintessential schizoid because of Sebastian’s duo occupancy of his mental facilities, looked up at what passed for a clock in the Greenroom. The big hand was pointing to the 11, and the hour hand was missing. Thus, it was ten minutes to…
“I know, I know, I know,” Presley complained as he saw the scrutiny of the Silver Tabby. “As soon as Faust and company quit playing darts, I’ll get the hour and second hands back.”
Fawn shook her head. “I kinda like it that way. You can never be late…”
“Or early, for that matters,” Sacramentor quipped.
There was a knock on the door.
Normally, someone of the Heathrow Tribe would have gotten up and gone to answer the door. After the last encounter with a literal riot squad of flame-red-haired humans, a geek wearing geek glasses, and a old dude wearing a fez, granny glasses and granny nightgown; most of the denizens of this Greenroom were leery of performing that act.
“Silv?” Nicole asked acidly. “Open the basement-ridden door.”
“I prefer the sacrificial approach.” The Silver Tabby replied. “Pres? Go see who it is.”
“ME?! Why Me!!??”
“Because at last glance, you are still the smallest member of this Tribe. And, I can wave my hand, and you will find yourself roller-skating on the rings of Saturn.”
Presley nodded. “That’s a very good reason. Okay… Grab the knob, turn it, pull open the door and hide behind the panel…”
“JUST OPEN THE DOOR!!!” everybody shouted.
He did, and forgot to do anything after that…
“Get outta the way, Pres…” Domino said ominously.
“What happened to you, Domi-girl?” he finally got out. “You look like you got too close to the Madame Butterfly greenroom…”
Sure enough, Domino came into the greenroom in the traditional dress and mane arrangement of a Jellicle Geisha. Her kimono was bright yellow with sword-wielding lions, woven in red, bending around her slender feminine form. The sash was white and her mane was decorated in royal blue beading. Unlike the true Geisha, her face was not totally white. Above all, the harlequin Queen was NOT happy…
Silvermane looked her over from head to toe, a move that normally made her pose like a Playcat centerfold. This time, all it got an angry glare from Domino… “Uh, let me guess… SHE went to Japan…”
“Excellent, Silv,” she snarled. “Sherlock has nothing on you…”
Sacramentor canted his head to one side. “I would have thought you would have entered more in the dress of a Samurai warrior, and equipped with a katana or maybe two.”
“That’s Altaica’s gig, Bonesy,” she said as she started undoing kimono after kimono.
Presley’s eyes bugged out after counting twenty of the silk garments. “How many of those dresses are you wearing?”
Domino rolled her eyes. “I swear this isn’t me saying this…”
“Why is that?” Presley asked.
“HE is writing this, right?”
“Yeah…” Presley said, looking up at the title of this worthy literary masterpiece.
“I’m wearing 42 kimonos…”
Everyone nodded, and Mentor furnished the explanation so that readers could understand the reference… “HE does like that number from the Hitchhiker, does he not?”
“It is the Ultimate Answer,” Silvermane agreed.
The Silver Tabby got the ultimate raspberry from everyone in the Greenroom. Presley provided him a towel to dry off…
At that moment, the Clock pointed to the top of the hour… whichever hour that was… By this time, Domino was somewhat back to normal.
“How was it out there, Domi?” Fawn asked.
“I’m not sure. I only got as far as the forward Temporal Lobe. All I can really say is that the greenhouses are now in even rows and smaller than usual. Even the stories built on them are measured to governmental standards.”
“That’s odd…”
“And creepy,” Presley agreed. “Since when does SHE have governmental standards?”
“There is also a blue flag with a fair-sized 'X’ in white hanging off the Frontal lobe.”
“That would be the flag of Scotland, and the cross is the Saint Andrew’s cross,” Mentor intoned. “It is also known as the Saltire…”
“Mentor, shut UP!” Fawn said caustically.
“Rumble gets to do that all the time…”
“YOU’RE NOT RUMBLE,” everybody said together.
“He gets all the good obfuscation,” the gray-white Tom said petulantly.
“And not only is that flag out there but there’s also a white flag with a big red dot in it.”
“The would be…” Mentor started to say, but was muffled by the appearance of a wadded up sock in his mouth.
“The Japanese flag, we know,” Silvermane said. “Why the flags, Mimi-chan?”
“Don’t start on me, Silv. My guess? She’s plotting to take over the world.”
Nicole made a noise that sounded like a horse getting much needed relief. “Domi? SHE has been doing that since before Uni. Why is this any different?”
“The Scottish flag has a thistle in the central upper triangle with lettering in gold outlined in white to make them readable,” Domino said. “It reads, RIO REGINA.”
“Okay, I did not hear any atomic bombs going off…” Fawn said.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Does SHE do anything normally?” Nicole replied.
“Now that you mention it, extremism is her thing. She tends to make Al-Qaida look like a Boy Scout Troop,” Domino nodded. “Oh, Rumpus… She finally did it…”
Mentor, Silvermane, Fawn and Nicole all looked at each other. “Whu?”
“Elementary, kiddies,” Presley piped up. “Our bizarro matriarch here figured out how to take over things the proper way. You don’t attack it from the outside…”
“You work within the system,” Domino nodded again. “That would explain why everything is being draw to specs out there. She finally pulled Scotland away from the English completely and totally…”
“That oughta freak out Queen Liz a tad,” Onyx chuckled.
“Isn’t calling her that bordering on Treason?” Miyo said.
“You forget one thing, sweets. Just remember that a YANK is writing this…”
Presley snorted. “And they’ve been separated from the Crown long enough to call her anything they like. Just let that guy, uh, Biteme or something…”
“Biden,” Mentor corrected. “Last term, the one known for their taste in shoe leather was Dubya instead of the VP.”
“Yeah,” Silvermane chuckled. “You call him anything wrong, and he takes the shotgun off the wall…”
“Silv…” Domino warned.
The greenroom quieted long enough for an eerie but vaguely familiar melody to play softly through the speakers. After a while, Presley voiced the obvious.
“So… Why are the musical selections being piped into our establishment entitled 'Broadway Melodies on the Shamisen’?”
“I’m impressed,” Silvermane said.
Presley regarded the Silver Tabby suspiciously. “What? At my knowledge of Japanese musical instruments?”
“No. That you actually realized they were playing Oklahoma…”
“You mean Okrahama…” Presley said before Nicole whacked him one, sending him head over teacups…
“Okay, so why the flags and now the Japanese music, Mama Domi?” Onyx asked, massaging the bridge of his nose.
“Her avenue of world domination,” the harlequin Queen said. “She managed to overthrow the English Rule of Scotland, and Japan is next on her list.”
“Why Japan and not something closer like Northumberland?” Gintora asked.
“Maybe she has a taste for sushi,” Robin said.
“If that’s all she wanted, she’d just learn to be a chef in the Teppanyaki restaurants in Edinburgh and begin her conquest from there,” Mentor supplied. “No, her domination plan is simplicity itself…”
“Oh, this is definitely something I wanna hear,” Fawn said sarcastically. “Silv? Can you conjure up a bottle of Dewar’s White Label?”
“Strictly for medicinal purposes?” he asked as the bottle and a set of glasses appeared next to her elbow.
“Yeah,” she replied, pouring herself three fingers worth and a bit of dewclaw… “I wanna drink enough to be anesthetized…”
“Hear, hear,” saluted Silvermane, Oynx, Domino, Nicole, Miyo, Gintora, and even Pandemonium…
“Peasants, plebeians and unwashed peons all…”
“Hey!” Presley protested. “I wash!”
“Okay, Mentor,” Silvermane said after downing his second glass. “Why does HER Majesty’s ploy to take over Scotland and Japan in her quest for world dominance work, when Imperial Japan and Nazgûl Germany failed to do that in WWII?”
“Those two countries were working separately,” Mentor said after donning his mortar cap and Professor’s robes, and pulling out his podium. The microphone gave out a momentary squeal of feedback, and was corrected before too much fur was standing on end. “Ahem… By using two points of the globe almost equidistant from each other, and being in control over the resonance of her presence in either location, SHE will generate a subliminal network that will slowly take over the world. SHE almost took over Bulgaria, but they had just managed to get Soviet Russia to leave them alone.”
“That and the vampires went big screen…” Fawn added.
“Shhhh,” Presley said with a finger up his nose. He pulled it down to his lips and thought better of it… “We aren’t supposed to mention that.”
“What about the States?” Onyx asked.
“Hard to say,” Mentor replied. “SHE has plenty of minions in that country, and it might fall without too much influence from her Highness.”
“Okay, Mentor, bottom line… What about us?”
“Unless she goes to Yokohama to see the show, I doubt we’ll even be thought about.”
Fawn looked at some of the 42 discarded kimonos. “What if we dressed up in some of these, used makeup to stylize our faces a little and join the Takarazuka. Maybe we can get them to do CATS and we get HER to think about US again.”
“Hey!” Presley said, jumping up and hitting his head on the coffee table. After the third try, he finally makes it out. “That actually sounds like a great idea! Uh, isn’t there something for the guys to wear?”
“Bog Brush?”
“Yeah, Mentor?”
“The Takarazuka is performed entirely by Queens.”
“What about the Tom parts?”
“Queens as well.”
“That must make the love scenes really interesting… So… that means what? SHE would take Bomba’s part, right?”
Silvermane nodded. “And I believe we’ve seen the High Overlord of the Universe dress up in Silver and Black.”
Onyx shuddered. “You know that’s scary when you think of Her Eminence and Her Lava-Lamp-Eyed Majesticness being within air distance of each other.”
“Fortunately, they have not been together on the same continent for some time,” Domino said. “Otherwise, I would say that 2012 being the end of the world has something to it…”
Silvermane conjured up the Mayan stone tablet that contained the glyphs and nodded. “Yep. December 21st in 2012 at 2311 hours Greenwich Time…” The stone tablet disappeared.
“Silv…”
“Come on, Mimi! I put it back where I got it! By the way, they were off by eleven seconds on that time factor.”
Mentor used his fingers and toes to come up with the answer to that one. “Very droll… That would be 12-21-12 at 23:11:11… By the Rumpus… if that figure uses numerology, then we have 3-3-3-5-4, which totals 18, and the Yahtzee version of 18 is 6-6-6…”
A Black and White figure slammed the door open. “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!” After that announcement, the figure backed out, slamming the door closed.
After everyone examined the door for a few heartbeats, they all looked at Silvermane.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, playing a game of chess by switching between Silvermane and Sebastian. “By that time, we’ll be with Straps Senior on the Homeworld where we only have Pollicles and Charumcah to worry about.”
Now everyone but Silvermane and Seb were looking at Domino.
She, in turn, looked at the bottle of Dewar’s White Label, and then at the red-haired Heathrow Healer.
“Fawn? Do you have any more of this?”
“I think I stocked a couple of crates behind the end of the Corpus callosum over the Cerebellum,” Fawn answered. “Starcatcher? Be a dear and go get the case…”
“I’ll get a couple of extra bottles,” Presley said.
“Just watch out that you don’t take the wrong turn coming out,” Domino said. “You’ll end of in the Thalamus, and we might never find you…”
***** Finis *****
***** Thank the Eternal Cat *****
***** END OF ROOM FIVE *****
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