Princess Bride

"It's a Princess Mission!" exclaimed Dead Bride. She read out the mission objectives, called out for the bags, and acknowledged the three bright-eyed maggots joining the ranks on this warm autumn Saturnight. Everyone was decked out in sashes, tiaras, and other sparkly finery, but all were outshone by the exquisite radiance of Princess Bane Thunderella.

Leotard was most enthused. "Does it have any mission objectives in it?"

Dead Bride had gone over those already, but she patiently repeated them, for all pilots were Princesses tonight - even the slow ones.

"Choppers. HARVs. Danger. Revenge. Black holes. Space weevil. Chases. Escapes. The threat of being sucked out an airlock!" said Dead Bride.

"Sounds okay" said everyone else.

The fleet had received a cryptic message of distress from a Princess trapped in a solitary fortress, unable to leave due to a compromised port side ambulatory unit. Navigator Lordmcfuzz steered us to the rendezvous point and the mysterious royal was revealed to be none other than our own NOVA. She graciously hosted us for shore leave and bedecked us with sparkly nail polish, until it was time to leave for another rescue. "Goodbye SCUL!" she called after us. "Have fun storming the castle!"

Lordmcfuzz swooped us through Haptonic twists and turns into the depths of the Belmont system, hitting nearly every red light along the way by sheer happenstance (which fatigued Wombat, at the helm of the mighty Cloudbuster). After struggling up one massive negi g-well, we arrived at the scene of our second rescue, in the shadow of a great stone castle. As the clock struck midnight, a great shriek pierced the air! From a distance, we could see Princess MsMoon running towards us, waving her arms. Gasping for breath, she clambered onto the back of Strangelove and regaled us with the tale of how she escaped through an air duct, leaving a trail of bludgeoned princess-nappers in her wake....


Previously: in the Poison Palace...Alone and nearly in despair, princess msmoon paced her grubby sell, scheming away. She was angry, confused, more than a little hungry and… close to being bored. (no books). She could not see any way out (no light), she could not remember how she had got here (large bump on head), She had no shoes or actual weapons (not even the several ones she usually hid in her hair and in various secret pockets in her boots. And she had a sense that she was coming perilously close to being late for a princess party (princess msmooooon likes to be on time).
Muzzily, she recalls singing loudly in a room full of spinning dancers, with the sinister sounds of accordion and a bagpipe wailing determinedly, also some stomps and cries of ‘hopa’. She remembers going for a drink of water in a suspiciously empty kitchen, seeing a pair of feet sticking out from under a table and then a bang and nothing (no stars).

She knows someone has been trying to capture her for some days. Two badly dressed ninjas fell out of a tree when she, glancing upward at a soft sound casually tossed a perfume-grenade over her shoulder. A large man in a too tight business suit had menaced her on a bus…(she spotted the poison ring on his finger and crushed its evil needle with a well-loaded shopping bag), and there had been that contingent of faux-folk dancers whose plaids just were not correct at the Scottish dance society bash… she’d lured them into the bathroom with a promise of single malt and bolted them in.

But who could have banged her on the head? That just never happened any more. Last time that happened she was on a dangerous shadow-ops mission with Shadowfly…

No. Still pacing Princess Msmooooon came to a sudden stop… the punch! It must have been a drug in that innocent looking folkdance punch… the dancing had been way too sloppy and kind of woozy… everyone in the hall must have been falling into a drugged blur… they were even applauding the accordion solo… (this never happens).
But wait, a sound… guards… this might be her only chance. “Ehem… gurd-guys, you missed a bunch of stuff I’ve still got here… want some candy?” (guards never seem to get any candy). Three guards almost knock each other out getting in… in seconds princess msmoon has them on the floor sobbing… one is unconscious, the other two she ties up in cast-off petticoats. Almost midnight… the rescue princesses will be here any second! Princess LordMcFuzz is NEVER late.

Pausing only to knock out and petticoatwrap another 2 guards and graciously leaving a chocolate truffle by each, princess msmoon dashes out the massive door, locates her shiny princess boots in the guardroom and retrieves her weapons, crawls through a convenient airduct (when will they learn)… and fluffs her hair to perfection, checking her hair ornaments look good… and flies out of the stone fortress of Poison Palace to intercept the rescue princesses! At PRECISELY midnight...

The rescue princess fleet come shooting along their secret root with almost no loud noise and not a lot of yelling... stealth all the way ... sort of... Princess LordMcFuzz has done it... and princess threespeed... looking dashing dashes up with princess Strangelove for the rescue.

Princess Deadbride (wearing a dazzling blue princess dress) immediately offers a replacement tiara because… well you can’t expect a rescue princess mission to be less than perfect can you? No you cannot. So all was well… accept for a nagging suspicion… what could Shadowfly be up to?...