WAR: Cousins: Cousins Just Wanna Have Fun By: Cousin Becky and Shelley, the Cousinly Janitor Where: CERK and the DP Mansion When: Wednesday morning (briefly) and afternoon, around 3 PM The Cousins sat around a table, considering what they knew about the rock they were looking for -- which unfortunately amounted to not much. Cousin Becky swirled her coffee around in her cup and contemplated how they were going to spend their time until they knew where to look and what to look for. Coffee... reminded her of something... wait, it was coming, it was coming... "Hey!" Becky sat straight up in her chair with a huge grin on her face. The other Cousins stared at her as if she'd lost her mind (which they were fairly certain of anyway). "I'm in the mood for fun... Sitting here doing nothing is driving me insane. And if I can't be nesting and cleaning things, darn it, I want to make other people have to be cleaning things. Or at the very least, have things be a little disorganized." "And what does this have to do with our mission?" Brandi raised an eyebrow at her. "Oh, nothing," Cousin Becky said cheerfully. "It just sounds like fun. And I'm on vacation. Vacation and fun go hand in hand, dontcha know? I was thinking about my coffee here, and it reminded me that I've got very close family in the Dark Perks this War. It would be *such* a shame to let this opportunity pass. Don't you agree?" The other Cousins grudgingly nodded their heads and listened carefully as Becky outlined her blossoming plans. "Hey, Arletta had to hypnotize me in war 10," Shelley said, recalling her pink lederhosen days with a shudder. "I think I know just the thing! We had this book, 'How to Hypnotize Anyone to do Anything' that was great! But, you'll need to get a new copy of it...." "Ahem... Shelley?" Brandi sounded a little worried. "Maybe you ought to stay as far away from this as possible. You... we... uh, well, I just don't think hypnotism is anything you should mess with." "No way! I'll be fine!" Shelley wasn't going to miss this for the world. But first, the book. Had to find a copy of that book. Book. Book *store* "Hey, where's McLisa??" *** Bri and Will stormed into the World's Biggest Bookstore, and headed straight to the ghost stories. To no one's surprise, there sat McLisa, nose firmly entrenched in a book. The two Cousins looked at each other, nodded once, and each lifted McLisa up with one arm under each of hers. Her protests went unanswered until they had reached the kiddie section. McLisa looked around, vaguely discomfited by the surroundings. "Any reason why you guys chose this particular section? I'm sure we could talk in another section just as well... you know, the History section is right there... next to the ghost stories, of course." Bri cut her off. "Nah, we figured you'd pay more attention here." She grinned and pulled out a slip of paper. "We're looking for this book..." *** Back at CERK, Cousin Becky was fervently sewing. Thank the gods she'd had some sewing to finish and had brought her serger along. It truly did come in handy at times, like now. She hummed as she added a bit of trim to the edge and was grateful to Will for taking them on a tour Monday, and that she had noticed the crafts store there. And then there was the electronics store that they had needed a few tiny parts from as well. She held the piece of material up and smiled in satisfaction. "Ahhh, perfect!" Becky carefully folded the garment and placed it in a duffle bag. Inside the bag was a curling iron, hair spray, and quite a bit of her makeup. She tossed in the pincushion and her Handy Stitch Handheld Sewing Machine© on top and zipped the duffle up. *** "Okay, people, we need a few volunteers and a large vehicle. Any takers? Who's read the appropriate chapters in that book so far?" Cousin Marci raised her hand. "This has such amazing possibilities! I never knew it was so easy to do this..." Her voice trailed off as she started reading again. "Okay, that's one... I need at least three more people, maybe four. And Talon, are you ready to do your job as well?" *** The van pulled to a stop about a hundred feet from the fence enclosing the DP Mansion. Becky slowly got out and approached the fence. A cacophony of barking met her ears as Havoc and Chaos bounded up. Becky waved the van forward, and Cousin Will turned the headlights on. As if on cue, Chaos stopped barking and started madly running back and forth, hugging the fence. Havoc sat down and watched Becky and Chaos quizzically. Cousin Kezia handed a package out the window of the van to Becky, and she slowly unwrapped it. Both dogs came as close to the fence as possible, wagging their tails madly. "Here you go girls, you can have these lovely rawhide ears... but you gotta come play with me. Come on girl... you can jump the fence." "Now why would they want to jump the fence when one of us could open it for them instead??" Becky looked to her right. There stood JL, owner of the dogs, flanked by Robin and Wolfy, two of her fellow Dark Perks. "Nice to see you here, sis.... those *are* my girls you're tempting, you know." Chaos suddenly lunged forward, out of the gate and towards Becky. Havoc was not far behind. Becky dropped the rawhide and then smiled at JL and the others. At that, the Cousins in the car got out and stood close by. "Well, yeah, duh, that's the point. Thought they could use a treat. Oh, yeah, and so could we." She smiled cheekily at JL. "You want our coffee?? Are you nuts?" Robin scoffed at them. In response, Bri came up behind her and held her arms tightly in a restraining hold, courtesy of the military teaching Becky had received from her husband. Will did the same to the other one, and Becky hooked her arms through JL's, effectively keeping them from running away. Marci stepped forward, clutching her book and talking softly to the two Dark Perks. Once they were placid, she reached forward and took their access cards away, and handed them to Talon. He saluted and snuck away. Cousin Marci gave Becky the thumbs up and went back to giving the two Dark Perks instructions. JL's eyes were round. "Quoi?" "Oh, don't you worry, JL. We've got plans for you too." JL was not reassured by Becky's falsely cheerful voice. Marci stepped forward, done hypnotizing the two DPs. "Would someone pass me that duffle bag, please?" While Marci brought JL into a receptive trance, Becky started pulling things out of the bag. *** Moments later, the two dogs were safely loaded into the back of the van, still chewing on their precious rawhide ears. Wolfy and Robin were sitting on the ground, on the other side of the fence. Cousin Kezia carefully placed two collars around their necks. Each collar had a sign -- one reading "Hi, my name is Havoc" and the other reading "Hi, my name is Chaos". Satisfied, Marci snapped her fingers, and the two girls bounded off on their hands and knees back towards the Mansion. Talon returned, looking satisfied, with a lighter bag than he had gone in with. Becky came back from the bushes, leading JL. Instead of the long black skirt and dark red peasant top JL had been wearing, she was now clad in a bubblegum pink satin gown. Her hair had been curled and piled on top of her head using the chopsticks she had been using before. Her eyeshadow and lipstick matched the pink of the dress. If her hair had been blond, she could have passed for a life sized Barbie doll. Only the glazed look in her eyes didn't look quite as "Barbie-ish", but that was about to be remedied. "Just a couple more things before you let her go...." Becky rummaged around in her bag and pulled out her handheld sewing machine. She carefully sewed a piece of material over the zipper on the back of the dress. "There! Now you're gonna be stuck in this dress for a while." She stood back and admired her handiwork. "It'll be too easy for one of the other Dark Perks to just take a pair of scissors and cut the dress off of her," Will remarked. Becky thought about it for a minute. "Hey! Why not hypnotize her into not wanting to take it off, either? She's already going to think light pink and frilly is the only way to dress, but maybe we could reinforce that? She won't let anyone take the dress off of her without some serious force. And I can tell ya, it'll take a LOT of force." She smothered a laugh. Cousin Marci obliged. "This dress is the best thing you've ever worn, and you don't want to ever take it off, no matter how dirty, soiled, torn, or fashionably challenged it may be. Doesn't matter who says it looks horrible, it stays on. And if they try to forcibly remove it, fight them tooth and nail and do NOT let them take it off! Do you understand me?" JL nodded mutely. Talon handed over the two access cards to Becky, and she in turn tucked them into the little frilly handbag JL was now carrying. Marci snapped her fingers, and JL shook her head slowly. "Now, where were we? Oh yeah, what the heck are you people doing here? You can't have our coffee, or our brownies." JL was getting suitably worked up, and starting to lapse into an entirely different language altogether. The Cousins slowly got back into the van, trying not to wake the sleeping dogs in the back. The rawhide ears weren't quite finished, but apparently the dogs had managed to eat enough of the carefully placed sedative to do the job. "Oh sis, it's okay, we were just... uh.... scoping out the place. But since we see you guys have to have card access to get in... well... uh, we see how useless it would be to really try anything. So yeah, I'll be going now." Becky hurried to get into the van now that JL's tirade had ended. As she was getting in, she stuck her head back out. "Oh, and hey.... nice dress!" *** Back at CERK, Havoc and Chaos were wandering around in an extra room while discussions were held to decide what to do with the dogs. The Cousins sat around the table again, waiting for the camera image to pop up on their respective laptop computer screens. It didn't take long. Talon had installed a tiny camera in the kitchen, and wired it to send pictures to all of the Cousins' laptops. Becky turned the volume up on hers and rubbed her hands together gleefully. In her excitement, she knocked over the salt shaker that just happened to be too close to her elbow. Trying to wipe it up as quickly as possible, a thought occurred to her. "Hey, where's our Cousinly Janitor? Shelley? Hey Shelley....??" *** "I need some coffee right now!" JL was insistent. She'd found that her two girls were missing, and Robin and Wolfy were insistent on acting like them. At the word "coffee", both Dark Perks scurried over to JL. There was an outraged screech that could have been heard a mile away. "Did you just urinate on me????"