Showgirl

<snip>"A stripper?! You have to be fucking shitting me!"</snip>

"It's just a burlesque review" Walter, the stage manager, wheedled "You don't have to take all your clothes off"

Angrily folding her arms in a flourish of silk dressing gown, Cass glared at him as he nervously fiddled with his clipboard. He was a thin, wiry man with the sort of toothbrush moustache, not yet popularised by the likes of Chaplin and Hitler.

"I'm not doing it" she said, flatly.

"What!?" Walter was aghast "This is no time for stage fright. You're a professional for heavens stake!"

"Who said anything about fucking stage fright?"

"Now, come on - There's no shame in being a little nervous." Walter soothed "Everyone is - It's not every day that royalty is in the audience"

"What!?"

"Prince Albert? - Second son of King George? Don't tell me you've forgotten!?"

"I... No" surprised, Cass back-pedalled "This is the Titanic?"

"Good God woman" Walter rolled his eyes "Have you been on those damned opiates again?"

"No, of course not!"

"In which case: Yes this is HMS Titanic and yes, you need to be on stage, in front of the Prince and his entourage, in ten bloody minutes"
HMS? Cassandra's mind raced. The Titanic from her timeline had been an RMS - a Royal Mail Ship; and furthermore: the prince, as far as she knew, hadn't been on the passenger manifest.

History had changed.

This was an opportunity.

Walter regarded her with pursed lips as he tucked his clipboard under one arm.

"Come on" he said, briskly clapping his hands "Chop chop. We need you dressed and ready to go in five minutes"

"In... what?" Cass cast her eyes around the dressing room, looking for something suitable for a Royal appearance but finding nothing.

"Fishnets and nipple tassels - The first act is the fan dance, remember?"

"Fuck right off"

"That mouth of yours is going to get you into trouble one day" Walter said, archly, as he turned to leave "Five minutes Miss Jones. Five minutes"

Watching the door bang closed behind him, Cass slowly shook her head "Fuck"



Outside in the main dressing room, Jade nudged another one of the girls and nodded towards the man with a clipboard that strode out Cassandra's dressing room. "Who's that?" she asked.

"That's Walt, the stage manager?" the buxom redhead looked at her as though she had taken leave of her senses for not knowing this "He'll have been pouring oil on troubled waters - By the sounds of it, her royal highness is throwing another one of her little showbiz tantrums"

"Well, you know Cass" Jade smiled.

"The stupid, skinny little bitch acts like she owns the place" the woman's lip curled in distaste.

"I'm going to go and see her"

"What? Wait!"

Paying little heed to the dire warnings called after her about losing her job or worse, Jade hurried across towards Cassandra's dressing room.

"Hey, Cass" she popped her head around the door "Whoa! - You're... Wow!"

Cass was stood with her back to her, in heels and what appeared to be slightly less than her underwear, leaving Jade gawping at the long, smooth curves of her naked back. She glanced back over her shoulder "Hiya"

"You're not really doing this, are you?" Jade asked as she slipped, scandalised, into the room.

"Damn right" Cass moved across the room to retrieve a couple of black, ostrich feather fans, which she unfurled with a practised flick of her wrists and silkily twisted and moved them over her barely concealed body "What do you think?"

Jade's eyes widened in surprise "I... I can't believe you're actually going ahead with this!"

Shrugging, Cass let the fans fall "Prince Albert is in the audience" she paused, expectantly, for Jade's reaction, but her friend seemed oddly distant "He's a direct descendant of Brittany" she continued "The original? I'm going to kill him during the performance. The scale of the Grandfather paradox will trigger a timequake that'll shunt us somewhen else"

Shaking herself from her somewhat distracted reverie, Jade frowned "That outfit doesn't really lend itself to concealing weapons"

"I've a backup piece. The fans will be sufficient" Cass twisted and extended an arm to reveal a circular device of uncertain function, contained within her palm.

"What about saving the ship?"

"What about it?"

"Cass!" Jade was appalled "We have a genuine opportunity to do some good here - We can't just abandon all these people to their deaths. What was it? Fifteen-hundred that died? - We can stop that!"

"World war one will start in two years time," Cass retorted, dryly "These primitives are going to kill more ten thousand people, each and every single day for four years"

"But, we can't just travel through time like this, killing indiscriminately" Jade protested "It's horrific"

Cass seemed to sag at this and, self-consciously, raised one of the fans to cover her all but naked chest "I agree" she said, quietly "But what choice do we have?"

"We've got to tell someone" Jade urged "Make them understand."

"Yeah, do it." Cass nodded "I can drag the performance out for a good fifteen minutes before I shoot the prince. You find the Captain or First Mate or whatever and tell them - Do some good"

A sharp rap on the door announced the return of Walter, the stage manager "Five minutes!" he called from outside.

"I reckon you've probably got about twenty five before the timequake" Cass said to Jade in a low voice "You'd better get moving"



"Positions please!" Walter called some minutes later, to the assembled dance troupe of redheads, each bearing ostrich feather fans and dressed in sequinned swimsuits.

"Cassandra" he turned and hurried over towards Cass "I need you on to the lift platform below stage, to rise up, out of Venus's oyster"

He began guiding her towards a slightly raised, circular area, from where music from the orchestra could be heard overhead.

"Are you ready?" he asked

Stepping up onto the lift platform, Cass took a deep breath. Truth be told, she was as nervous as hell, but that couldn't be helped. She nodded.

"Good" Walter fussed around her as the orchestra struck up into a boisterous waltz and the crowd above, cheered the dancers onto the stage "Now remember, this is the deck stage so you'll be dazzled by the sunlight when you emerge"

Cass frowned "Isn't it a bit cold out there to be dressed like this? - You get icebergs..."

"Icebergs?" Walter laughed as he signalled a stage hand and the lift began its ascent "You'll be lucky, sweetheart - There are no icebergs here in the Caribbean"

"Wait" Cass called back down to him as she emerged out into hot, dazzlingly bright sunlight "The Caribbean?"

Squinting and momentarily discombobulated, Cass raised one of the ostrich feather fans to shield her eyes as the strings section of the orchestra, idled away on a long lilting note.

Fuck it.

Cass began her dance, her eyes scanning the front rows of the audience for the prince as she seductively twisted and twirled the fans around her.

As soon as she spotted him, she resolved, she'd give up the pretence of this tawdry spectacle and blow a fist sized hole through his chest with the V2-21 - The little palm sized weapon was only good for a shot or two, but that would be more than sufficient for what she had in mind.

Idly wondering whether Jay was in the audience and if her were enjoying the show, as she slunk down towards the font of the stage, a young man, sat on the front row caught her eye. Covered in medals and surrounded by an impressive-looking entourage, there was no way that he could be anyone other than the prince!

Taking a deep breath to steel herself for the kill, Cass glanced up in surprise at something metallic glinting up in the sky. She frowned. This era didn't have aircraft that big, so what the hell, she wondered, was that thing?

Several other, smaller objects swam into focus as they approached, Cass realising with a start that they seemed to be airships of some sort and were closing quickly.

"Raiders!" a ship hand yelled as a klaxon suddenly blared and the air was rent by the whistle of incoming shells; the audience immediately erupting into panic as detonations shuddered through the ship from several impacts near the bow.

"Shit" Cass snarled, dropping one of her fans and raising the V2-21, but the prince was up and on his feet and mobbed on all sides by bodyguards as they swept him away to safety, leaving her without a clear shot "Fucking shit!"

Firing another volley of shells, the raiders swooped in low, their engines just audible above the screams of the panicking audience.




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Nothing says alternate time line like a dirigible, eh? - it's the sky pirates of the Caribbean!
Who are they, where are they from, and what do they want?

Time has changed, so mix things up and get creative dieselpunk style

What's your character doing while this is going on, where are they, how do they react?
do they help fend the attackers off? - how?

does anyone get kidnapped?

who and what else is aboard the ship to help or hinder us?

has anything else changed in history as a result of our actions at the Alamo?

over to you...

apologies (again) for being quiet on all fronts - this is literally the first opportunity that I've had to write recently - life has been mental of late

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