Pizazzle Dazzle 'Em

Alex was being a goit.
“Gimme the goddamn bottle, Bedge.” He grasped at the sim.
“I hav' told yoo, dere are no more. You dropped dem.”
“You're lying.”
Bedge sighed and delicately (for a large simulant) pushed a groping Solvay mitt aside. “I am not lyin'. Anyway it is a good fing, becos you should not have those pills.”
“What you on about? I felt much better on them. Now I feel like crap.”
Bedge scanned the shivering man, his hair was lank with sweat and even his lips were pale. “Yes. You do look like crap.”
Alex frowned at the accidental insult. “C'mon, man, I hurt.” He gestured to his abdomen.
“Dey were not painkillers, Marster Solvay.”
“Huh?”
“Dey were Pizazz.”
“Pi-? Oh, Zazz. Oh... crap.”

Pizazz, or “Zazz” as they were known on the black market, were a range of Personality Enhancers. They were designed to help the cripplingly shy, the overly negative, and the painfully boring to loosen up and socialise, tapping into a person's latent charisma and blocking their inhibitive pathways. Shyness, negativity and a tendency towards boring stories can be, but are not normally, linked, however the drugs worked on all of these separate conditions. They worked, yes, but they'd never really worked very well. They did assist with shyness but not in a particularly constructive way, people just felt buzzy and drunk on them, sometimes they'd trip out. They also caused negative people to gain a little sparkle and boring people to become funny. Sadly not only were people's inhibitions lost, but they tended to wave good bye to common sense as well, meaning that quite a few socially anxious, mopey, and formerly dull people ended up doing stupid things, losing their jobs and relationships. This caused them to be less sociable and more blue than they'd been to begin with. When users came down, they felt miserable, headachey, sick and grumpy.
Zazz was also horribly, horribly addictive and repeated use caused your liver to explode. They said you only needed two to become addicted. Alex had taken three or four, at once, but he had a strong constitution, if he resisted any more he'd be all right. Lucky escape, though.

“Why the hell were they in the cabinet?”
Bedge shrugged slowly, reminding Alex of mountains shifting, and rumbled “Why did you not reed de bottle?”
“I did, a bit- I- didn't have the time. There was a-” He floundered. “Shut the hell up” he finished, still sore over the recent revelation about his reading and writing struggles.
He noticed a hurt expression on Bedge's face in his peripheral vision. Was he being a jerk? He couldn't always tell. He guessed perhaps Bedge hadn't even clocked his problem and had asked the question in innocence. Yes, he was being a jerk.
“Sorry, Bedge.” He gave him a friendly elbow nudge. “Didn't mean to be a prick.”

Bedge brightened and a burst of mischief twisted his mouth into a smile.
“Dat is okay... … Al.”
His humour chip kicked in as 'Al''s face slid into a somewhat shocked expression.

Alex cleared his throat. “Yes, well. Let's move, shall we?”
–
Later

As they sat, restrained, in the almost darkness, Alex tugged ineffectually at his bonds and thought of his bunk. His lovely, lovely, non evil, humble-but-warm bunk. He wished he were in it. Instead he was in this dingy room where the GELFs had bunged them before sodding off.

“Why did we think coming here was a good idea?” He hissed at Garr.
“At least we have found some ov de ovvers.”

Alex peered around the room, it was adorned with the bodies of his crew mates, all fastened to the walls and floors by weird gloopy bioadhesive arm and leg cuffs.

A naked Phil was plastered to the wall, upside down and groaning. Jacky was next to him, right way up, goggles dangling from his foot and looking like he was about to cry, poor kid. Seymour was sprawled over the floor, where he was pinned by a rope-like strand of the slime across his middle, he looked like he'd been used as a duster, and for all Alex knew, perhaps he had.
A drop of the weird super strong bio-gunge glooped to the floor. Alex looked up to determine its source and quirked an enquiring eyebrow.
“Yeah... Don't ask.” Jay called from the ceiling.
Justin was encased in what appeared to be a cocoon of some sort, which could apparently hold holograms.
Plisken was stuck face down to the deck grumbling something about having aged 5 years while the rest of them had hardly aged a day.

Alex turned back to Bedge, too tired to express any kind of shock. “Yeup.”
–
Hangar D

Cass approached the internal hangar bay doors, a dark smirk playing over her lips. She was looking forward to this.
“Okay, unseal the doors Holly.”
“The doors are not sealed Cassandra.”
“What!? Are they still in there?”
“Who?”
A little snarl rolled through Cass's peeved inhale.
“The woman in the dress, and White Wolf!”
“No.”
“Smeg!” Cass slapped the wall in outrage. “Why not?”
“White Wolf wanted to show her around, din't 'e?”
“You just let them out?”
“Yeah.”
Cass sighed. She was going to have to poke around inside Holly again.
“Well where the smeg are they?”
“C-Deck.”
“Right. Good. Thanks.”
“If you're wondering where the others are, they're on C-Deck too, in storage bay 998b.”
“All of them?”
“Most of them...”

--

He noticed the ruffle headed Seymour twitch a little.
“Hey Seymour... You do realise you guys got it wrong about Bedge? He didn't hurt me, he helped me.”
He didn't respond.
“Seymour!”
“I... I'm a little tired” came the strained reply.
“Seymour what happened? Where are the girls?”
“Isn't this great?” Grinned Efof, who was stuck to a shelving unit.

Before anybody could groan a response, the door opened, flooding the floor with light and framing the elaborate ball gown bedecked figure of ...
“... Candice?” Croaked Jacky.
The beautiful woman stood poised and elegant, as if serenely calculating the less than pretty scene before her.
Alex was taking in the dazzling vision when Cass swung around the door and loomed behind her. She had something in her hands and was flanked by Units One and Two, two of her darkly beautiful but lethal spider-like robots.
To confuse matters still further, behind Cass, White Wolf slowly wandered into view, a thoroughly befuddled expression creasing his furry face.

A very tired, achey and grumpy Alex had three main thoughts at this juncture.
1. Who the hell is that?
2. She's hot.
3. Shit is about to kick off.

<Re. WW tag. Sorry White Wolf dude, I think Candice left :/.>
<Tag everyone, anyone, all!>
Is White Wolf going to put his plan into effect, giving us all... 'lightsabres'?

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