Intermission III

"Oh I get it, these one of those Ether girls. Mr. Alfonze must have sent her over as a gift." The tall deeper voiced thug moved from his seat to stand in front of the girl.

"Yo, Tony, Spaneli, you gotta check this thing out." With a swift movement, he picked her up from under her armpits and stood her on the table, the girl was no more than five foot even with moderate curves, the mask hid her face so her age was to be guessed.

"Is it human?" Tony said shaking from the cold that just set into the room.

"Haven't you heard? Ether girls are the new marketed companion for the lonely losers of this world, but I heard they came less... Wet." The heavier guard said in disgust shaking the water from his cards.

"So they're androids hence the mask on account of those fugly faces." Tony said laughing at his own joke.

"Wrong and wrong, they are real girls."

The two Tony and Spaneli exchange looks before in unison responding.

"How you know?" The tall thug chuckles.

"Show us something sweetheart." Right then the lady on the table twirled her hands, each orb flowed as if tethered to the girls' hands, the steam in the room from her melting the snow swirled with and around the orbs as if they were dancing in a fog together.

"I ain't never tell you how Alfonze found me, I was thirteen parents dead and I was living with my sister. This is back when girls who could manipulate ether were rare, I was proven myself to him by holding some product for him when our house was lit up." The lanky thug mimed machine guns over towards Tommy who was gawking at the show the girl was putting on, he nearly jumped out of his skin and scurried over towards the door out of the line of imaginary fire.

"Right then my sister did it, she manipulated ether for the first time saving our lives with this beautiful fluorescent light shield, one of the rarest forms you know the ability to move it and condense it, but the product was ruined sooo." The thug shrugs his shoulders as the other two catch up to what he was implying.

"Jesus Franky you gave him your own sister." Spaneli said putting out his cigar and shaking his head.

"She was one of the first, prototype Ether girls." Franky sat down in the chair watching the rhythmic twirling of the orbs, girl, and vapor.

"He he cold-blooded Franky." Tony chuckled some more then blew warm breath into cold hands.

"Hey now, the military back then was snatching girls up like this left and right. If they had no combat potential and the training had ruined them mentally, they were sent to people like Alfonze to make sure they disappeared, at least our girls just get blissfully wiped and collard." Franky takes a sip of the synthetic whiskey and leaned back in his seat.

"Collard?" Spaneli asked less disgusted and more distracted by the girl now.

"Yeah, it's an obedience collar, keeps the mind clear and docile no matter what." Franky picked up a chip and tossed it at the girl's head, it hit bouncing off the mask and onto the floor, she had zero reaction and continued her rhythmic twirling.

"But uhhh, there's no collar Franky so don't piss her off I heard Ether manipulators are hellish in a fight." Franky leaned in closer for a bit.

"Yeah now that you mention it..." Franky carefully looked the girl over inspecting the angry mask on her face.

"Don't worry the mask must be something new the boss and his team is trying out." Franky leaned back in his chair, the room was filled with more vapor the dancing orbs and the naked girl almost fully entranced them, but a slight chill brought Tony's attention to the other side of the room. During the show, no one notices the door open and close, or Tommy who was knocked unconscious in the corner. The figure who now stood behind Franky looked like the girl on the table, fully dressed wearing a half smiling half frowning mask, and holding a toy-looking bat.

Before he could say anything the masked intruder brings the bat down on Franky's head with such force it whipped off the table with a fearsome boom. The sound the contact made was unbelievably metal on augmented endo-skeleton, it made Tony think of a baseball game, a gasp was all he could manage before the two orbs that were dancing were now in Spaneli's faces. The blue ball let out a flash of aqua light and before Tony could do anything his face was frozen he sat stiffly a look of fear held permanently in place, the green orb let out a greenish gas, and Spaneli slowly drifted to sleep.

Everyone in the room was now unconscious or frozen in place. The naked doppelganger on the table made their way next to Riley.

"Would you kindly change back..." The Doppelgangers form slowly shifted back into Ivo.

"Sorry babe."

"I hate that plan just for the record."Riley swings the bat so the tip barely touched Ivos' nose.

"Noted." Ivo slips past around the bat heading to a door across the room. Riley followed as they made their way through the door into a catwalk, bellow several women wearing aprons, collars, and hazard masks and not much else sifted through and packaged a radiant blue powder.

"Cosmic Dust and a lot of it." Ivo said pressing the center of his mask where his nose would be.

"That'll help mellow everyone out aye?" Riley followed suit pressing the same area the mask glowed around the edges.

"Our mask will filter everything, but what we need so really spread it around."  Ivo says checking the specs.

Riley gives a full hearty salute as she hops off the catwalk into the middle of the warehouse.

"Riles!" Everyone's attention shot to the new voice in the room and Riley plummeting towards one of the tables, smashing the bat down on a pile of Cosmic Dust dispersing it into the air around everyone like a smoke screen. Some of the workers with lower-quality masks began swaying on their feet while others full-on began dancing and laughing. The armed guards with higher-quality masks were less entranced and converged on Riley, guns cocked and raised.

"Always maximum effort with you." Ivo grunted to himself as he took out a metallic-looking slingshot and three sparkling marbles, before taking a few steps back on the catwalk and jumping from the railing.

Riley sat her hands up as three guards surrounded her.

"You boys wouldn't feel like taking those masks off by chance?" The three guards lowered their guns, exchanged looks, and laughed before raising them again. Before they itched their trigger fingers each one had a mini explosion of what seemed to be a glitter bomb to the face breaking their hazard mask. Ivo lands on top of a table near them picking up a packaged bag of Cosmic dust and exploding it over everyone.

One guard found his way over to the group of workers lying on the floor giggling, while the other two with higher tolerances ripped off their masks took deep breaths, and let their augmented muscles bulge past their pain threshold.

"You had to break their mask before you spread the drug's Luv." Ivo dropped from the table to get back to back with Riley.

"I figured you had a plan." She chuckled readying the bat.

"Heh, I always do." Ivo pulled two more marbles out for his slingshot.

The drug-fueled thugs charge them both, Ivo hits the thug in the chest with the first marble, it splats with a sticky liquid that confuses the thug for a moment who continues his charge until the second marble hits the same spot and foam begins to form, the thug swats and tries the rub the foam off as it grows and spreads all around him until he's a sticky ball unable to move.

Riley's thug rushed in throwing a heavy punch that misses leaving a crack in the concrete floor, another wild punch is dodged as Riley counters with the bat to his leg. The thug crumples to his knees and Riley sets up for a swing as if his head were a teed-up baseball, again the same unforgettable noise of a metal bat rings out.

"None of these guys look like they could have done the upgrade job outside, he must have just left it for Alfonze." Ivo said scanning the last thug before returning to Riley who was poking the giggly thug with her bat.

"Shame, wanted a good row this time... So what's the plan?" They exchanged looks through the mask before talking in unison.

"Start a small fire and call the cops!"

"Jinx!" Riley said before Ivo could even think to.

"You owe me a foot rub when we get homes." Ivo rolled his eyes and chuckled at her demand.

"Fine, help me move everyone." They got to their plan stacking cuffed giggly people near the warehouse in the snow, went back in found a tiny office room, and set a noticeable fire before calling the police, because there isn't much news in this town the fire Department showed up pretty speedily, along with the police and news reporters who caught an anonymous tip an Alfonze owned warehouse was currently burning. By the same time the next day everyone would know about the illegal drugs and obedience collars being used by Alfonze.

Riley and Ivo watch as the small fire turned into a sort of medium fire from a distant ridge, they will congratulate each other high five and immediately be shocked by four thousand volts of electricity and drug away by the hacker of Alfonze, who will bring them to him before the police can do anything to stop the horrible plans he has for both of them.

~End of intermission I