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WHAT'S IN A NAME?
by Scott Barton
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"For those of you who've just joined us, the topic of today's show is 'Out of Control Daughters'," the blonde-haired, bespectacled host of the Sandra Leonardi Show announced to her home viewers. "Our next guest says her older daughter Sindi is so out of control, she's been running around Pittsburgh practically naked, claiming to be some sort of vampire. It's gotten so bad, her younger daughter is even starting to believe it. I'd like to introduce you to Akiko Russo, and her younger daughter, Wendi."
The camera focused on a small, petite Japanese woman, wearing a simple blue dress, and a taller twelve-year-old who strongly resembled her mother, yet was obviously of mixed ancestry. The pretty adolescent smiled and waved at the audience, while her mother sat stiff as a poker, a very stern expression on her face.
"Mrs. Russo, could you please
tell us when Sindi began acting up?" Sandra inquired.
"It was several weeks ago," Mrs. Russo
began, with a mild accent indicating that English was not her native tongue,
"about a week before school started. Sindi came home from a trip with
her friends; she had turned her hair blonde, and pierced her...well, parts
a nice girl wouldn't show off. I could tell because all she was wearing
was stockings, gloves, and a cape."
"And she runs around the city like this?"
Sandra asked, incredulous.
"Yes, at night. She says that she is some
kind of super hero, but I am afraid that maybe she has become some kind
of prostitute."
"I see. What do you think of your sister's,
um, new look, Wendi?"
"I think it's great," Wendi smiled. "Sindi
used to be a lot heavier, and kinda had buck teeth, but since they were
transformed, she and the other girls are real knockouts. And she's got
the neatest powers!"
"Do you mean to tell us that you believe her
stories about being a vampire?" Sandra demanded.
"Oh yes. Sindi has to have
a little blood every once in a while, and she has to, well, uh, you know,
do it, with boys, I guess every day." Wendi looked a little flustered,
not sure how to properly address her sister's nocturnal habits on television.
"But your sister is waiting backstage, Wendi,"
Sandra smiled, smugly. "If she's a vampire, she should be asleep in
her coffin right now." The studio erupted with laughter, as Wendi
frowned at Sandra.
"Why don't we bring her out and let her tell
us herself why she's concocted this story?"
There were lots of yells and cat calls as a tall,
very well-built woman, possessed of wild, waist- length blonde hair and
a somewhat Asian-looking face, strutted out onto the soundstage. She was
wearing a pair of cut-off jeans that were closer in size to a belt than
to pants, and a denim vest over a fishnet tank top. She smiled at the audience
as she took a seat next to Wendi.
"Sindi, welcome to our show," Sandra
greeted her. "I understand that your mother is not very happy with
the way you've been behaving."
"No, she isn't," Sindi admitted. "But
it is my body, and I'll dress as I see fit."
"But why do you want to dress like this?"
"Because it makes me feel good, and now that
I have the figure to wear this stuff, I'm going to."
"And you're using this story about your vampirism
as an excuse to go out all hours of the night, having sex with anyone you
happen to take a fancy to?"
"I am a vampire, of sorts," Sindi defended,
"and I have to have sex, even more than blood, or I'll get weak and
die."
"I strongly doubt that," Sandra chuckled.
"I'd like everyone to give a big welcome to Evelyn Kost, a woman our
regular viewers are very familiar with. She is a professional psychologist
who teaches here at Pitt; she'll help our guests try to deal with their
family problems."
A woman in her mid-thirties, with short black hair
and wearing a powder gray suit, walked out, shook Sandra's hand, and graciously
accepted the microphone from her. She smiled at the audience and turned
towards the guests.
"I'd like to address Sindi first. Miss Russo,
I find you very disturbing. It's bad enough that you have to upset your
mother with your promiscuity and dressing like a tramp, but then you concoct
this story about becoming a vampire to try to excuse your behavior, and
you've even got your little sister believing you! We don't have the time
today to explore your problems in depth, but I am going to strongly recommend
to your mother that you get professional help, as soon as possible."
"Excuse me?" Sindi demanded, now
exhibiting fangs where none had been earlier. "You've got a lot of
nerve, coming here and telling me that I need help! My friends and I have
gained super powers; they're sitting up in the audience, if you'd like
more proof!"
"Are they, now?" Evelyn grinned, certain
that she'd prove Sindi wrong. She turned and looked where Sindi was pointing;
five good-looking young women were sitting together, several of whom looked
even more unusual than Sindi.
One girl, even more well-built than Sindi, had
thick, waist-length neon pink hair; thick glasses didn't distract from
a very pretty face, and she wore jeans and a cropped T-shirt that revealed
a flat, muscular stomach, where a gold-and-sapphire ring glistened from
her navel, contrasting with her fair skin.
Next to her was a normal-looking, albeit gorgeous,
Latino girl, dressed in black slacks and a plain white blouse. She had
the look of a woman who belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine. Next
to her was another girl with black hair, worn in a long ponytail, in jeans
and a Pittsburgh Steelers T-shirt.
The last two girls were holding hands; one, a beautiful
Black girl with an hourglass figure, had long, curly, dark purple hair,
and was wearing a white tube top and stretch pants that did nothing to
conceal her shape. Her companion, in a tiny pink micro-miniskirt, thigh-high
white stockings, and a low-cut white tank top, had hair, eyes, and skin
a pleasant shade of mint green.
Evelyn stepped up the stairs to the row that Sindi's
friends were sitting in, as the cameras followed her. She stopped when
she reached the pink-haired girl, who was sitting by the aisle.
"Your friend Sindi claims that you are all
super heroes," Evelyn asked sarcastically. "It looks as if you
may be playing the same charade she is."
"It's no charade," the pink-tressed girl
assured her, in a pleasant voice whose tone hinted that she was uncomfortable
with all this attention that she and her friends were getting. "An
explosion in a lab where some experiments were being conducted into the
nature of reality turned us into real-life versions of the characters I
was drawing in a comic book."
"You really expect us to believe that? How,
miss...?"
"Cates. Cassie Cates. And I'm not really sure
how the explosion transformed us," Cassie said evasively. "I'm
an artist, not a scientist."
Evelyn turned to address Sindi. "Your friends
seem to need counseling as much as you do, Sindi. I've seen no evidence
of anything super in you or your friends; except maybe some very super
egos."
"Then watch this, you self-righteous know-it-all,"
Sindi muttered under her breath. She stood, and before the audience's startled
eyes, she faded, turning into mist. A moment later she reformed, but now
she was wearing the cloak and body jewelry that gave her mother so much
consternation. Sindi slipped her arms through two slits in the cloak that
were nearly invisible, pulled it around her, and sat back down, crossing
her now-stockinged legs.
"I guess she showed you," chuckled the
green girl. She gestured toward Evelyn, and flowering vines erupted out
of nowhere to envelop her.
Sandra, not one to miss an opportunity, and realizing
that she had something very exclusive happening on her show, instructed
her stagehands to clear the other guests from the stage, then walked up
the stairs and plucked the microphone from Evelyn's shaking hand.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to take
a short break, and when we return, we will take some time to get to know
these, um, interesting young ladies." Sandra turned off her microphone,
and turned to the girls. "Do the rest of you have costumes, like Sindi?
It would help if you all look like comic book characters."
"Not with us," Cassie said. "What
do you have in mind?"
"An exclusive introduction of you girls to
the world."
"I can get our costumes," the girl in
the Steelers shirt offered.
A hole appeared in the air in front of her, and
she reached through it, withdrawing some folded clothing made of yellow
material. "Should I get the rest of them?"
"I've got mine in my purse," the green-skinned
girl said. "Go ahead Rachel, get Cassie and Jody's clothes; this'll
be fun!"
"Now, just a minute," Cassie began, as
Rachel handed her her uniform. She turned to Sandra. "You expect us
to go on TV?"
"Of course. If you girls really have super
powers, people need to see them." Sandra turned to a stagehand. "Make
sure one of the dressing rooms is clean; we're going to introduce the world
to...what's your team's name, Cassie?"
"We, uh, don't have one."
"Well, don't worry, I'll think of something.
Now come backstage and get changed; we have to go back on the air soon."
Cassie, Rachel, Jody, and Tina, the green girl,
went backstage to change, while the Latino girl stayed with Sandra, apparently
not a member of the team. Sandra looked at her, puzzled. "Aren't you
going to change?"
"No, I don't have any powers," she smiled,
extending her hand. "I'm Marissa; I'm just a friend of the others.
I'm just an ordinary girl."
"With your looks, I'd hardly say that ordinary
is an appropriate adjective. You could be a model."
"Well..." Marissa was interrupted by
Sandra being signaled that it was time to go back on. Sandra turned on
her mic, turned towards the camera, and smiled.
"Ladies and gentlemen, if you were watching
a few minutes ago, you were witness to an amazing display of what we all
thought was only possible in a comic book." Sandra motioned toward
Evelyn, who was struggling to remove some vines from across her mouth.
She was unable to speak, but it was obvious that she was livid. "Now,
I would like to present to the world...the Bod Squad!"
Backstage, Cassie grimaced at her companions. "The
Bod Squad!!" she whispered. "What is that lady thinking
of!"
"I kinda like it," Tina told her. "Now
get out there, our adoring fans are waiting! And please remember to smile!"
Cassie, now wearing contact lenses and a miniscule
pink-and-blue thong bikini, stockings, and high heels, led her companions
out onto the stage. She smiled, acutely aware of how exposed she felt,
a feeling that was not diminished in the least by several cat calls from
the audience.
Tina was wearing nothing but a yellow flower lei,
a necklace with a peace sign dangling from it, and a green applique' shaped
like a sea shell over her crotch. Her hair covered her chest, but it was
quite obvious that she wasn't wearing a top, and was shaped quite nicely,
if perhaps not as extremely as Sindi and Cassie.
Jody had on a white collar, with two narrow white
straps travelling from it across her chest to meet at her crotch; the back
was a string of small white beads. Green gloves with circular cut-outs
reached to the middle of her upper arms, with a matching legband on her
right thigh, green shoes, and a green necklace with a round pendant made
of a variety of materials.
Finally, Rachel was wearing a vertical yellow strap,
trimmed in blue, from her neck down between her legs, and up her back to
her neck again. A second strap, horizontal, was worn across her breasts.
She had high yellow gloves, similar to Jody's but without the cut-outs
and with blue trim, and a short yellow cape and ankle-high yellow boots.
Sindi's four friends sat down, and Sandra approached
them, grinning like a Cheshire cat. "Why don't you each tell
us your super hero names, and give us a rundown on what your powers are?
Sindi, why don't you go first?"
"I'm called Nosferata, and I've got all the
basic powers you would expect a vampire to have, with a little bit of succubus
thrown in for good measure. I can fly, well, actually, all of us can, and
I can summon monsters and such from somewhere with my cape. It's kind of
like Tina summoning plants," she giggled, glancing up at Evelyn, who
had not yet succeeded in extricating herself from Tina's vines. "She
should be glad Tina didn't use roses."
"I wouldn't," Tina assured the audience.
"By the way, I'm called Eden, and I have control over plants, animals,
and the weather. And if any of you villains out there are watching, just
remember that it's not nice to fool with Mother Nature. Or with Mosaic,
here," she smiled, giving Jody's leg a playful squeeze.
"What can you do, Mosaic?" Sandra
asked, curious about Jody and Tina's relationship, but not wanting to get
the subject off of the girls' superhuman abilities.
"I can take on the traits of anything I touch
and concentrate on," Jody smiled, as her skin, hair, and miniscule
clothing took on the texture and color of the upolstery of the chair she
was sitting on, a rather dark blue with several narrow white lines in it.
"If I touched steel, for example, I'd be real strong and tough, like
Cassie."
"You certainly look, well, fit and healthy," Sandra
observed. "What are you called, Cassie?"
"Persona. It was the only thing I could come
up with, and since my comic book character was supposed to be sort of an
alter-ego, it seemed to fit, even if the name doesn't really give a hint
about my abilities."
"Which are...?"
"Well, I'm more or less invulverable, I mean
I can bounce bullets and can't be cut, an'at. I'm also real strong, and
I have a variety of psionic and electromagnetic powers. I can even communicate
with machines and computers and stuff. It's nothing really, when you think
about what Rachel can do."
"Flatterer," Rachel told her. "I'm
called Riftwitch, 'cause I can make holes between here," she stood
up, created an opening in the air, and stepped through it, exiting an identical
hole that opened next to Evelyn, "and there."
Another, smaller rift opened above Evelyn's head,
and water rained down on her for a moment, before Rachel closed it. "As
you can see, I can open up rifts to just about anywhere; this one was just
off shore in Tahiti."
"Incredible," Sandra said thoughtfully.
"Are there any more people like you five?"
"Well, in the comic, Wendi was a sorceress
named Snapdragon," Cassie offered, "but she hasn't changed. One
of our school mates has become a villain named Pylon, and we know of many
other people who are turning into real-life versions of other criminals
from the book. I'm worried that one of these days, we're going to be invaded
by aliens."
There was some laughter at that, but not as much
as there had been before the demonstration of some of the girls' powers.
Sandra turned and addressed the camera. "It's time for another break,
but when we come back, we'll see some more of what these lovely ladies
can do, and take questions from the audience. Don't go away."
Cassie turned off the tape of the show she and
her friends had inadvertantly become the stars of a week previous, and
sighed. She looked around her bedroom at her friends.
"Well, I guess we're the Bod Squad now, for
better or worse. What do yunz girls think of all the attention we've been
getting since this aired?"
"It's great!" Rachel exclaimed, between
bites of a very large submarine sandwich. "I've gotten more compliments
in the last week that I ever did in my entire life, up to that point!"
"We've also gotten offers from three men's
magazines and two fitness magazines to do pictorials and interviews,"
Cassie said warily. "I'm not sure about that, especially the nude
ones."
"I wouldn't mind doing it," Tina said,
pouring a liberal dose of ketchup over her fries. "It would really
upset my father, too. That would be a bonus. I bet Jody and I could do
a real nice pictorial together."
"I bet you could," Sindi assured her,
"but since our television debut, something has been bothering me.
Two somethings, actually."
"What's the matter?" Jody inquired,
putting down her cheeseburger and picking up her drink.
"Well, why didn't Wendi become Snapdragon? I
know she wasn't at the lab when we were transformed, but neither was Archetype,
or the members of G.A.I.A., and they gained powers. And I'm worried that
now that we've gotten all this publicity, and I'm sure we're going to get
more, we're probably going to have more trouble with the villains than
ever before."
"I'm not sure what the story is with Wendi,"
Jody offered, "but I have a feeling that we're all weirdness magnets,
and we'll run into super-powered baddies no matter what we do."
"I think Jody's right," Marissa added.
"Now be honest, would any of you go back to being the way you used
to be?"
There was an almost simultaneous chorus of yeses
from the other five girls. "And give up this svelte figure?"
Rachel chuckled, grabbing a piece of pizza out of the box in front of Cassie.
"Then I propose a toast," Marissa
announced, raising her ginger ale. "To the Bod Squad, may they always
get their man!"
"To the Bod Squad!"
