"Just a Bad Day All Around"

A FemForce FanFic by Eric Johnson

Somewhere, deep in a fetid swamp...

Nightveil clutched at the snake encircling her chest, pulling at it with all her remaining strength. Even as she relieved some of the pressure holding back her attempts to breathe, she felt her throat tighten as another serpentine form crossed her neck. Another serpent curled itself about her stomach, seeking purchase to constrict. Despite the circumstances, the sorceress called upon her years of mystic training to remain calm. Her eyes darted quickly about, seeking some option to escape her predicament.

From behind, a satisfied chuckle signaled the approach of another.

"Ha-ha. The mighty Nightveil, in my clutches at last... Your mystical might has proved no match for the cunning of Umbra!"

The vodoun priestess sauntered up to the snake pit where the heroic sorceress stood knee deep in a mix of constricting and venomous snakes. The ebony-skinned villainess leaned down, hands on knees, and brought herself close to her captive to continue her gloating.

"Umbra sees, Nightveil, that your mystic senses remain as sharp as ever. As you have no doubt ascertained, if you unleash any magical energies against these enchanted pets of mine, you will complete a magical circuit, and your massive power will be "grounded out" into the swamp. Just like a lightning bolt being channeled into the earth by a lightning rod. It took months of dark rituals to deplete the natural magical energy of the living swamp below, just to make this trap for you."

As Umbra spoke, the snakes continued to writhe around and over Nightveil. From time to time, a cobra or other venomous snake would strike out at the captured sorceress. Nightveil's defensive aura flared in response to each attack, but glowed weaker each time.

"Whether you succumb to poison or strangulation, in the end you will fall. Then, Umbra will perform the greatest blood sacrifice of all! A witch of your power upon the altar will provide mystical power beyond the darkest imaginings.... Ah, I sense that you are pulling your energies back to a defensive position. That will only buy you time. Perhaps you hope for rescue? You should dash those hopes. Umbra has placed wards which will keep away any help, especially your fellow members of FemForce."

Abruptly, a bubbly new voice interjected itself, "Oh, gee! I'm sorry. I didn't realize it would be impossible for me to come here, otherwise I wouldn't have done it..."

Umbra spun about to confront the intruder. "Synn!" she exclaimed as she identified the figure hovering above the scene.

"Well, like, obviously," said the platinum haired FemForcer. "Now, you're gonna stop all your, you know, yuckiness and...and stuff." Synn glanced about the swampy locale. "Ewww. Umbra, your Evil is, like, especially icky, even for Evil."

Synn looked over Nightveil's plight. "Snakes. What gets rid of snakes? I can't even remember what other animals eat snakes. Wait! I've got it! If you want to drive away snakes...St. Paddy drove away snakes!" The psychedelic super-heroine waved her hands about and generated a multi-colored glow.

With several audible "Pop!" noises, a small horde of cartoonish leprechauns came into existence. They bore a strong resemblance to a certain cereal mascot drawn manga style. The green-clothed sprites swarmed over the snakes, pummeling them with dozens of tiny shillelaghs.

Synn giggled, "Glad I had those hallucinations left over from last St. Patrick's Day."

As the cartoonish "little green men" stormed the snake pit, the serpents were quickly driven away, flowing away in a writhing carpet of reptilian forms. Released from her captors, Nightveil collapsed to her knees and elbows, choking and gasping for air. Throughout, Synn clapped to encourage her psychedelic creation, occasionally swinging some pom-poms that appeared and disappeared as she needed them.

The surreal rescue scene was interrupted by Umbra's harsh voice, "You foolish scatterbrain! You may have freed your teammate, but you have given Umbra time to reach other resources!." The voodoo villianess proudly held aloft a small doll with platinum hair and a skimpy red dress. With an overarm flourish, Umbra brought a needle down onto the doll and then viciously twisted.

Synn clutched both hands to the small of her back and arched her back in pain. Frozen in place, she gasped, "Ack! Talk...about...a bad trip. Usually, if I...pose like this...it's...to show off. Serious...bummer...really...bad trip."

Umbra held the needle gleefully, rotating it in a circular motion. "Ah, it is a good day indeed. Today, Umbra defeats not one, but two of the Femforce!"

While Umbra focused on her torture of Synn, an opera-gloved forearm braced itself against the edge of the snake pit. Nightveil pulled herself up, bracing her torso against the rim. Weakly, she raised her other arm. With a voice shaken by trauma, but with the inner steel of determination, Nightveil answered Umbra's proclamation of victory, "No...not while I yet live...and while I wield the power of the Cloak of Darkness!"

A bolt of sorcerous power shot forth from Nightveil's raised hand, striking Umbra and the doll. Umbra flew back and the voodoo totem arced into the air, separating from the needle. An arc of energy flowed from Nightveil to the remaining snakes and then to the ground below. Drained, the heroic witch fell back into the pit.

Crawling about, Umbra scrambled to reach for her voodoo dolls. Tossing aside dolls for other members of Femforce, she managed to get a Synn-doll in one hand and a Nightveil-doll in the other. On hands and knees, the villianess moved frantically towards a needle. She pulled up a foot short as her path was blocked by a pair of red boots supported in midair by a psychedelic aura. Umbra slowly raised her eyes to look up at a very peeved Synn.

Synn glared down at the woman who had just inflicted such pain on her. "You like to play with dolls? Wait, let me do this right... Synn sees that Umbra likes to play with dolls." With a wave of Synn's hands, all of Umbra's dolls turned into custom FemForce action figures, quite non-magical and useless for voodoo. The figures did prove to be quite animated, however, as the toys moved their posable arms and pecked and poked at Umbra, as if they were indignant at being manhandled.

Umbra dropped the figures quickly and backed away from the advancing Synn. Platinum tresses flared outward in a non-existent wind, expressing Synn's rage. "Synn wonders why Umbra is speaking in third person all the time? Synn thinks maybe Umbra had to go to villain school to learn that. Maybe the same place Umbra learned to be a total... ohh...

....rhymes-with-word-that-begins-with-W-that-describes-Nightveil?"

Scrambling backwards, Umbra regained her feet. "You may have defeated Umbra, but I can still curse you for what you have done!" With that, she flung a packet of blood-red powder at Synn.

"I don't think so!" Synn retorted. With another discharge of psychedelic energy, the cursing powder stopped in mid-air. The cloud of powder twisted and deformed. "Bad luck, huh?" Synn commented, "I can disperse that psychedelically without too much trouble." The cloud shimmered and transformed into a multicolored roulette wheel. The wheel spun faster and faster and spun itself out of existence, leaving trails of multicolored smoke spinning off in all directions.

Synn turned back to the direction of her opponent. "Hey, where'd she go?" Synn exclaimed, "Bummer. She went somewhere while I was distracted." Synn glanced about carefully. "She must've used some magic or slipped into the spirit realms or something. I can't sense her psychic trail. Wish I was super-intelligent today, I could figure this out..."

A flash of light took Synn's attention away from her puzzle. She looked towards it in time to see a re-empowered Nightveil float out of the pit. Synn squealed with delight, "Nightveil! You're ok! I thought you'd be down for the count."

The sorceress' grim visage assessed the situation. "I simply connected Umbra's mystic "empty battery" to the limitless energies of my Cloak. The capacity of this drained land was quickly filled."

Synn started. "You filled up the mystic capacity of all these hundreds of acres of swamp in under a minute? Wow! Cool beans..."

Nightveil turned an emotionless face towards Synn. "The swamp should feel quite...invigorated... for a while. But that does not matter for the moment. What does matter is what you have just done."

Synn beamed, "Yeah! I just beat Umbra! And after she had caught you, too. How'd she get you in that icky trap anyway?"

The question was enough to darken Nightveil face further, an impressive feat. "A simple voodoo curse clouding my perceptions, causing me to teleport to the wrong swamp when attempting to return to my mystic mansion. I never would have fallen for such a trick had I not tired myself with earlier activities. But as I said, all that matters not. When I spoke of "what you had just done" I was not speaking of your temporary driving away Umbra, but rather how you dealt with her bad luck curse."

"Yeah, that was pretty cool, wasn't it?"

"It most certainly was not!" Nightveil snapped, "The way you dispersed that curse, the bad luck could befall others. People you know. People you have empathic connections with. The psychically sensitive."

"Oh, not so cool..."

"Indeed." Nightveil agreed. "Oddly, I cannot sense Umbra mystically, either. I must perform a more exhaustive search. That means I will depend on you to investigate if this bad luck curse will effect our teammates. Begin back at FemForce headquarters, where you can check on as many at one time as possible. Be sure to check She-Cat, you were once psychically bonded to her to anchor her against Sekhmet's influence. Then work your way outward from HQ."

"Gotcha. Will do." Synn affirmed, "You can count on me."

"I hope I can." Nightveil took on the look of big sister wanting to trust a sibling so she can stand on her own, but worried about the consequences. She sighed, "Well, let us be off to our tasks. I will meet back up with you when I have completed my search for the one responsible for all this."

The two FemForcers left. This left the swamp empty. Empty that is, except for a coffin submerged beneath the swamp waters. Inside, the motionless form of Umbra rested. The zombie drugs she had taken had nearly stopped all brainwave and metabolic activity, leaving her psychically and mystically no more detectable than a corpse. The only sign of life was a smile that played across her lips from her last thought before the drugs took effect; the thought that she had gotten the better of the Femforce.

Meanwhile, miles away on Jungle Island...

Tara, Femforce's resident jungle girl, sat cross-legged on a cliff-view boulder. She breathed carefully and regularly. All the while, she maintained eye contact with a tiger a dozen yards away from her.

"That's it." Tara thought to herself, "You can tap these animal empathy powers of yours. They're infrequent, but they're there. If you learned to use the unreliable abilities you got from the Garganta formula, should be even easier to perfect these empathic abilities. Just open yourself up psychically and make a connection with the tiger."

As Tara sat there, in a semi-meditative state, a cloud moved overhead. A literal black cloud moved in, independent of any other weather pattern. The dark cloud positioned itself directly above her. Oblivious, Tara did not notice the shadow that had fallen over her. She did, however, misinterpret the cool feeling.

"I think it's working." she thought, "I feel different. Ok, try to open myself up more."

Tara felt a slight tingle, which was quickly replaced by a sharp feeling, like a huge needle stabbed into the small of her back. The jungle girl started, but her survival instincts, to her credit, kept her reaction under control.

"What the heck was that?" Tara asked aloud. She wasn't given long to speculate, however. Seconds later, a thunderclap issued out of the lone dark cloud in the sky. The echoing thunder startled the tiger. The spooked big cat leaped in Tara's direction. Landing near Tara, he growled at her sudden proximity.

Tara's eyes widened at the sudden turn of events. "Whoa, girl, you are suddenly way too much in this boy's personal space." she thought, "Don't need animal empathy to tell me that. Better back off a bit." Tara swung her legs gracefully out from under herself and gymnastically dismounted from the boulder. She put the boulder between her and the big predator, landing in a perfect spot. Perfect, that is, until a second later, the ground beneath her slipped away in a sudden landslide. The grace of her previous motions were totally contrasted with the tangle of arms and legs that tumbled uncontrollably downward, rolling towards the cliff edge.

Only inches from the cliff, in a remarkable feat of reflexes, Tara righted herself and braced her extended foot against a rock, stopping any further descent. Catching her breath, Tara exalted for a moment, "Ha! Just goes to show that agility and survival training can win out against a few bad breaks."

As if in response, the earth began to shake. Tara looked around disbelievingly, "An earth tremor? What're the odds?"

Between the weight of the landslide and the seismic activity, the small outcropping gave way. The ground beneath Tara folded away like a badly built sandcastle with it's supports removed. Tara frantically scrambled for purchase, but everything she grabbed at just collapsed away before her.

Knowing it was time to find another option, Tara scanned beneath her and spotted a deep running root exposed on the cliff side. Diving to the side in her last moment of semi-solid footing, she propelled herself towards this desperate handhold.

As the cliff edge collapsed around her, she reached out desperately. Her right hand caught the root for just a second, but it was long enough to redirect her momentum, allowing her to get a firm grip with her left.

Tara dangled as the dust settled below her. "I do not believe my luck all of a sudden," she said, "the way this is going, I wouldn't be surprised if this root started to..." She stopped mid-sentence, thought better of what she was about to say, and glanced anxiously at the supporting vegetation she was depending on.

Once she had reassured herself that she wasn't about to fall victim to any cinematic root loosening, Tara assessed the situation below her. Several hundred feet up, there was nothing but jagged rocks and the rubble of the former cliff edge below her. However, a bit further off from the cliff was an expansive lake.

"Too far off to jump to, even from this height." Tara thought, "If only...Wait a minute, maybe I need this root to loosen up after all."

Bracing herself against the cliff face, Tara drew forth her trusty survival knife. After a minute or two sawing away, she cut loose the bottom of the long root. Feet against the cliff, she tugged the root free to get as much slack as possible, while keeping the topmost point attached. With several minutes' hard and precarious work, she had a serviceable swing line.

"Now, the fun part." she thought "Sorta like cliff-diving, only with a bit extra at the beginning." Sheathing her knife and holding on tight to the root, she kicked herself away from the cliff face. As her makeshift rappel line brought her back Tara quickly ran along the cliff side, building up speed. The first time she swung off the cliff, she let the root pull her back in a pendulum-like motion. As she returned to the cliff she ran along the cliff again, adding more momentum. With each pass, like a child on swing getting pushed higher and higher, she built up the necessary velocity. Each time took her a little higher at the apex of the swing.

Finally, when Tara had herself swinging up to nearly even with the anchor point of the root, Tara released her grip and let inertia carry her on her path. Propelled ballistically upwards, Tara soared a remarkable distance before gravity's inevitable grip started her downwards. She arced towards the targeted lake. In midair, Tara twisted her body relative to the lake below. "From this height and direction," she thought, "I better get the angle just right..."

Seconds later, beneath the waters a surprisingly clean impact created a cloud of bubbles. Tara sank deep beneath the surface on the momentum of her fall. Reflexively, she began swimming towards the surface for an important breath of air.

Gasping after breaking the surface, Tara paused and assessed. "I made it." she thought, "Well, the worst of the day has got to be behind me now." Tara began to move towards shore.

She hadn't gotten three stokes done when a clammy grip wrapped itself about her ankle. Abruptly, her head was pulled beneath the waters by an amazingly strong force. Caught between breaths, Tara found herself open-mouthed with surprise with water rushing into her lungs. Tara again unsheathed her knife. Even as she did, a second gripping form wrapped completely around her lower leg.

Tara looked down and in the clear waters, she could make out two huge suction-cup filled tentacles attacking her. "Some kind of octopus," she realized, "mutated into an aggressive form by one of the strange phenomena that have bedeviled Jungle Island. I don't have much air here, have to deal with it fast."

Curling herself up, Tara allowed herself to be pulled down more quickly towards the main body of the beast. As she was pulled towards the underbelly of the beast, she saw the size of it. The mouth she was being pulled towards was at least the size of her head. Despite her predicament, Tara couldn't help but think "What a remarkable specimen. Have to get some scientists to study it some other time."

Refocusing on the situation at hand, Tara deterred the remaining tentacles from grabbing her with a few strategic stabs of her knife. Tara knew that the creature would never grip something it felt to be piercing and sharp. Still, the two tentacles that already had her pulled rapidly towards the hungry maw. With calm assessment, Tara thought, "It's too big. By the time I kill it with my knife, I'll be eaten. Besides, there may be a better way." Now close to the main body, Tara scanned quickly for her goal. A moment later, she made one precise stroke with the knife.

Instantly, the water turned dark from the fluid released from the ruptured ink-sack. Instinctively, the creature released Tara and jetted away to safety beneath the cover of sudden aquatic darkness. Tara rocketed to the surface again. "Poor thing," Tara sympathized. "it probably doesn't know if it got inked by a rival or if that was it's own reflexes in response to a predator. Still, glad I didn't have to kill it. Octopi are the only animals besides primates, dolphins, and whales that have shown both number recognition and complex puzzle solving abilities. One that big, and mutated besides, might be able to be communicated with someday."

Claiming precious air for the second time, Tara tried to move towards shore again. However, the fight with the octopus had pulled her towards a strong current leading out of the lake and into a river. Fuming in disbelief and frustration, Tara tried to angle herself towards a riverbank. As she moved herself towards her goal, she began to hear a roaring sound downstream, growing louder.

"Oh, I do not believe this!" Tara let out in exasperation. She struggled to find a safe spot along the riverbank with greater urgency. Pushing herself up to the edge, she found only sheer rock, with no purchase. She clung to the slime-slick surface as long as she could, but the strong current overwhelmed her weary arms.

Seconds later, the unfortunate jungle girl was propelled over a waterfall, the source of the noise she had recognized earlier. As her bikini-clad form catapulted over the cascading water, further frustration echoed from her across the Jungle Island valley; "Oohhh, Ssshhhhooooooot....."

Minutes later a waterlogged, battered, and bruised Tara pulled herself up onto the safety of a downstream riverbank at last. She flopped herself down on her belly and took some revitalizing breaths. After a few moments, she looked distrustingly at the water and began to move. Commando crawling on her elbows out of sheer weariness, she got herself some distance, both physically and mentally, from the dangers she had passed through.

Finally reaching a safe distance and some cover, Tara let herself collapse again. Lying there, she thought aloud, "Ok, all this is too much to be coincidence. What could it be? Alazarin Crimson playing with us mere mortals to lure Nightveil out? Some mad scientist testing some kind of probability-altering machine? Maybe it's all some test or game being staged by the Shimmerer or some other alien intelligence? Well, whatever it is, when I find who's responsible, I'll make them wish they'd never crossed T.C. Freemont's little girl Tara..."

Tara let herself close her eyes for just a moment...

What seemed like seconds later, Tara awoke with a start, "Ugh, what's this pressure on my body?". Snapping her eyes open, she was horrified to see yards and yards of muscular scaled form wrapped about her. Her mind raced: "An anaconda! Constrictor snakes never attack adult humans unless they drop on them when they are asleep. Of course, I checked the area around me for tree branches that would make for good snake drops before I rested here. Darn it, it must've just been on the move and came across me helpless by chance. More bad luck!"

The huge snake had already circled her stomach twice and had another coil tightening about her neck. Tara pushed her hand against the snake's neck, extended her arm and locked her elbow, trying to keep the snake from completing another loop around her skull. Meanwhile, she pulled up her relatively free legs and got to her knees, straining from moving the weight of the snake along with her.

"Ok, Tara, you can get out of this. Just get...your knife again." She glanced down. Her sheath along her thigh was empty. From the position of the serpent's body, it looked like it had just happened to knock the knife out as it had encircled her. Tara tried to calm her panicking heart, "Ok, so it should be just here." She searched the ground about her as the snake hissed menacingly, annoyed that it's meal was making things difficult.

Tara zoomed in on where her leg had been laying, expecting to see it right there. To her dismay, there was a small incline, which had caused the knife to slide away from her position. Tara reached out with her spare hand but her fingertips were still a few inches short of the hilt of the knife. Tara thought with gallows humor, "If we can change the saying to 'Unlucky on Jungle Island, lucky at cards', then I'll break the bank at the next environmental charity casino night."

Still reaching in vain for the knife, Tara assessed. "Ok, knife's too far away. Snake is too heavy for me to move from this kneeling position. Snake's too strong to break free. Definitely...can't concentrate enough...to use those giantess powers. If I don't think of something fast, this could be it..."

Tara stared at the snake, literally held at arm's length. Looking it straight in the eye, she thought, "I don't suppose this would be a moment where I could play Dr. Dolittle?" She stared deep into the snake's eyes, but all she received in return was an angry hiss.

Tara's eyes narrowed. "Ok, big boy. If that's the way you want it, come and get me!" She abruptly released her arm holding the snake's neck. The anaconda lurched towards Tara, and she rolled in the direction of the snake's push, bringing her several inches closer to her knife.

Flailing out with her arm, Tara's fingertips touched the pommel of the knife. Dragging it closer with only the strength of her fingers, the knife moved tortuously slow. Then, finally, the handle was within reach.

With desperate quickness, she brought the knife around to the neck of the snake and pressed firmly up against it. Staring into the snake's eyes again, she projected, "Care to reconsider based on the new situation?"

Whether it was due to anything sensed from Tara or simply the stimulus of a sharp edge guiding its head away, the snake began to uncoil. Bit by painful bit, Tara felt the pressure release from her ribs and her windpipe. Once fully uncoiled, the snake slithered away to the underbrush.

Tara staggered away from the scene, nursing bruises and hoping for no broken bones. "Gonna be some time in the FemForce HQ Infirmary when this is all done." she thought. Tara set out for one of her nearby outposts, realizing that she needed to reach a safe base camp, where she could rest and assess.

Tara found one of the few trails on Jungle Island and was back into territory she knew well. She was just beginning to let herself think that her troubles were over when the heavy rainfall began. The intensity of the rain was the type you could only get when the air got moisture directly from the ocean. Miserable, Tara thought, "It's like there's a conspiracy to keep me wet and downtrodden. Oh, yeah, and I seem to keep sliding or falling..."

No sooner did she complete that thought, then the trail beneath her gave way in a sudden mudslide. Almost resignedly, she grasped at bushes along the hillside to stop her slide. She was barely surprised when the bushes' roots pulled right out of the wet, softened ground. Her downward passage came to an abrupt halt with a splash into what looked like soft ground, but she quickly sunk into it up to her neck.

Tara looked down and sighed. "Quicksand at the bottom of a mudslide," she thought, "Ok. Just don't panic. Quicksand is thick particles suspended in water. Anyone who can tread water, can tread quicksand even easier, no matter what the movies show. The worst part is the embarrassment; I've lost my footing at least three times in a few hours. If She-Cat could see this, she'd be laughing her skinny butt off."

Tara paddled over to the side of the quicksand and tried to climb out. Every attempt simply brought more of the water-soaked earth into the pool with her. "Fine," she revised her plan, "I'll just get a branch."

Leaping upwards from the quicksand, Tara grabbed a branch and pulled herself out up to her waist. She almost smiled. Then, with a sudden hiss, a venomous cobra revealed itself on the branch above. Tara froze in a startled position. "Update to that list," she thought, "bad luck involving falling, getting wet, and there's also a definite snake theme developing. Well, a little physics took care of your big brother, let's see how it works on you."

Tara began to put more and more of her weight on the branch. The snake hissed again, but Tara moved very slowly, using her experience to judge how far she could push it without inducing it to strike. Then, once her full weight was bending the branch as far as she could make it go, she let go. The cobra whipped back towards the tree and impacted against the truck. Stunned for a moment, the cobra dropped into the quicksand.

"See how you like it." Tara commented as she swung herself confidently onto the branch. From there she leapt to firm ground.

Hours later, a tired, wet, and now dirty Tara strode out of the jungle and onto a beach on the edge of Jungle Island. She knew she was now just a few minutes from boats and radios which could reach the mainland. She stopped and considered for a moment. She turned back to the jungle and shouted, "All right! I'm almost there. If there is anything else you'd like to throw at me before we wrap this up?" She stood, arms spread to the sky, defiantly daring any more bad luck to strike.

On cue, a lightning bolt struck some dry driftwood near the brush. A fire ignited, with all the signs of spreading fast. A moment later, one of the nearby mountains suddenly erupted into volcanic action, spewing ash and oozing lava. Finally, to top it all off, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, strayed from one of Jungle Islands dimensional portals, rose above the tree line and roared.

Tara's jaw dropped. For a moment, her eyes reflected total disbelief. Then, her eyes changed to anger. She breathed deep, rage building, "That's it! Someone is going to PAY!" Tara clenched her fists, preparing to unleash the type of fury she usually reserved as punishment for moments of exceptional cruelty to animals.

Then, from behind her, a voice. "Calm yourself, Tara. Your ordeal is at an end." Turning, Tara saw Nightveil and Synn coming through a mystical portal.

The sorceress strode forward, "I will deal with these latest manifestations of Umbra's curse." With a literal wave of her hand, Nightveil began to fix the problems in view in an amazing display bathed in eldritch light. The fire quenched. The volcano flowed in reverse. And the T-rex wandered off, it's primitive mind distracted by lights only it could see.

Synn turned to Tara, "And I'll fix your bad luck!" A rainbow glow suffused Tara, then drew off and formed another spinning roulette wheel. This one, too spun itself until dispersal.

"Synn!" Nightveil chided. Synn grimaced. "What? You did the other stuff, and I removed the curse. We're a team, right?"

Nightveil shook her head, "In your forgetfulness, you did the same thing you did before. Now we must pursue the bad luck curse to others linked to Tara. At least this time, we will be right on its' trail, and both of us can search."

"Cool beans! I'll do it right this time. I'm on the case." A "Sherlock Holmes" hat and magnifying glass appeared on Synn's person.

About the same time, in the Oceanus One lab of Dr. Carol Hiesler, aka Garganta:

Garganta looked up from the data she was studying due to a beep on her computer. She went over to take a look. As she read the screen, her eyes widened further and further in horror.

"Virus Found? Oh, no."

"Mail files infected? Oh, no, no."

"Private email address sent to newsgroups? Oh, no, no, no."

"Newsgroups included 'alt.obsessive-giantess-fanboys? Oh, God, NO!"

Garganta gingerly clicked the mouse, and the computer voice chimed "You have 1,748 new messages in the last 30 seconds, all marked urgent. Warning: Sysadmin of Oceanus One says mail server in danger of crashing."

Just as Dr. Heisler slumped into her chair, Synn appeared. "Don't worry, Garganta, we're on top of it." Another roulette wheel appeared over Dr. Heisler, but this one shrank instead of dispersing.

Synn continued, "And don't you worry about the email virus thing. I bet you Synnzilla can convince them to stop bothering you. I'll offer to dance for them if they let me erase their memories or something....I'll take care of it..." And with that she disappeared.

Befuddled, Garganta stood there, stunned. "But wouldn't it just be easier to change my email address?" she muttered.

Hours later, again, the members of FemForce gathered in their HQ.

Synn was dancing with joy. "We got them all. Nightveil corrected the computer error that put all of T.C. Freemont's money into Enron stock and Marvel junk bonds. We made sure no more Femforcers were cursed. We're all set."

Nightveil paused. "Are you sure?"

Synn said, "Yeah, we searched everywhere on Earth."

Nighveil responded, "Just on Earth?"

Synn giggled, "Yeah, just on Earth. Oh. I get it. Uh-oh."

Off in deep space patrol, Stardust fought valiantly to escape the pull of a passing miniature black hole. As she fought for her life, she couldn't help but think, "The odds against this are really quite...astronomical..."

....The end

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