Reverse Psychology

The girls had exclaimed with anguish that the costume was a size too small for Jade, commenting mercilessly on the areas of her body that were softer and plumper than they could be. Jade had struggled as they stripped her and applied superslick 9000 all over. Suitably oiled up they pressed, pulled and squeezed her into the spaghetti corset and short, shorts that really didn’t leave anything to the imagination. The girls nodded with approval as they placed a bullwhip in her hand and a wide brimmed, high crowned, sable fedora on her head. They emerged into the wings of the stage to the confusion just beginning. Jade looked on with dumb shock as Plisken mounted the stage had a brief conversation with Cass and fled back into the melee. The girls with Jade screamed and ran, not wanting to get hurt. All of them tripped on the stairs and at least one broke an ankle, the others had sprains at the minimum. Jade took a step forward to go and help Cass fight off the attackers, the stage creaked ominously below her and she paused. The floorboard cracked beneath her and she briefly avoided falling into the chasm beneath the floor. She took the hint and stood there, doing nothing.

She watched as Cass was attacked, hurt and desperate.

The key to Talon’s restraints skittered to her feet. She kicked it into the chasm.

She watched as Plisken took a particularly nasty punch to his already wounded face.

She did nothing to help them. Nothing to stop it.

A man in flamboyant wear ran past her screaming. Jade stuck out a leg and the pimp, (for as that was how he was dressed, she assumed he did) fell down the stairs, the long coat that he had slung over one arm left behind as the man ran out of the back door. Jade smirked and picked up the coat, putting it on over the oil was an unpleasant experience, but it left her less exposed.

Then she watched as Cass and Plisken kissed. For a long time. The action seemed to die down as a result, but Jade couldn’t help feeling slightly hurt at what she was seeing. It was stupid. Cass had no idea how she felt, she had never wanted to ruin that friendship they shared but inadvertently, kissing her earlier she had broken something inside herself. She knew deep down that Cass was only doing it as a distraction, and that she loved Jay, but, it still hurt seeing her kiss someone else now. It hurt, a physical pain in her chest, and she was sure that it wasn’t just the too tight corset. A realisation that Cass was never going to like her the way she saw Cass. She watched as the distraction on stage cleared up the fighting, calmed everything down. She watched as the beautiful, emotionally vulnerable, leather clad, sexy, ass kicking woman became further, obviously, inexorably, out of her reach. And Cass didn’t have any idea what she had just done. Karma was always watching though.

*

A lull developed after that, almost as if anyone was to afraid to speak or act. Pulling herself together, Jade approached Cass, Plisken and Talon and nodded her head to the exit.

“Hey… That coat…” The naked Talon asked, hoping that he’d get something to cover his dignity.

“It’s mine. Get your own.” Jade snarled, the hurt she felt filtering out and making it sound harsher than she would normally have intoned.

“You ok?” Cass asked, noting the anger.

“Abso-fucking-lutely marvellous” Jade said, adjusting the coat around her some more. Cass eyed up the outfit Jade had on beneath the coat and sensibly didn’t press further.

They made it outside into the flickering firelight, smoke and horror of the promenade, and headed for the garden centre. As they did Captain Ashley’s voice boomed over the ship wide tannoy:

“Absolutely, under strictest orders, is no one to go to co-ordinates 65 mark 34 mark zz alpha phi gamma. There is a strict no fly policy in effect, and no shuttle is to leave this ship. No-body is to go there. No one is to check out the strange energy signal that could be the karma field generator that is there…. That is all. Captain out.”

There was a moment where they all looked at each other and tried to work out if they had all understood exactly what the message implied.