There Are Times You Just Need Cash

A Tale of the Blundhaven Mall

by

Skytower T. Gnome.

With help (un-willingly perhaps but help none the less) from Vampirella.

There are times you just need cash, and you need it quick. That was why I was in the prototype UltraBabe robot suit running from the cops. UltraBabe in case you've never seen her is a large breasted superheroine who is very strong and lives in London, England. So she was the perfect choice for the first robot suit. The idea was that I would be inside the suit piloting it and that way I would be able to rob banks and such and everyone would blame the heroine.

It had gone great at first. I had walked into the bank, past the surprised tellers and started to stuff a bag full of money. When the bank manager started to object I mumbled some stuff about "JSA business", showed him a lot of cleavage and started to walk out. Here is a tip for anyone impersonating a hero, claim you are part of the JSA, they have had so many members in their long history no one can really say if you are one or not. I knew there was a good chance he'd call the cops and he did. But one of the things the suit had was a close approximation of the real UltraBabe's powers. I figured it would be a short and merry fight and I'd fly away. Trouble is the cops in Gotham are used to dealing with the super powered. Special armor penetrating bullets hit the suit in the legs and that killed the flight systems, so I had to toss cars and such out of the way.

It took a lot longer than I thought it would. Still I needed the cash. The Monopoly game was that night. So after I took out the police cars, jamming their radios so they couldn't call for help, I headed to the Blundhaven Mall. I figured that the police would be too busy to follow me, what I didn't realize was that UltraBabe is not exactly a low profile person. But I am a 12 inch tall gnome, being a 6 foot tall large breasted heroine was new to me. I'm not used to being stared at. Well one of those doing the staring had a cell phone and I heard the sirens as I got to the mall parking lot.

The chase through the mall wasn't a lot of fun, the Blundhaven Mall is a low profile supervillain type place and I was not going to do a lot of good bringing the cops there in pursuit of a rogue heroine. On the other hand, (as I pointed out to the Council representative later on) if you live in a city like Gotham you have to expect that sooner or later someone in a silly suit will cause trouble. Better to have the mall noticed for that than for someone to notice that no supervillain had ever menaced the place at all.

I ran through the mall and just before I got to the Victoria's Secret store I tossed a couple of smoke bombs into the mall proper. Then I signaled the lights in the Victoria's Secret place to go out and threw a real bomb at the wall. I weaved through the crowd in the store, ducked into the dressing room, keyed in the combination and let the floor drop out from underneath me. Once I landed on the lift platform the door above me closed and I was home free. I thought.

As the lift took me down into the first trap layer of the dungeon I counted the cash. I had 20,000.00 dollars, enough to play Monopoly with. I should explain that. You see I built and operate the dungeon complex beneath the mall, in partnership with the Council. Across the street is the Majestic Theatre and Dimensional Subway station run by HRH BlueTulip, a pixie princess. BT runs the station and maintains a stable dimensional warp field to another dimension. On the other side of that field is HRH SsinSSriggin WaerRes, a drow/pixie princess. Because the warp stretches from this dimension to that dimension it borders on a lot of other dimensions, forming a sort of long corridor with a lot of doors.

Every month HRH Tulip, HRH WaeRes and myself get together to review the operation, trade gossip and play Monopoly, but you have to have real money to play the game. I was kinda short that month.

So I was in the elevator safe and clear.

Nope.

No way.

My luck just isn't that good.

What I had failed to spot as I moved through the Victoria's Secret store was that a knockout blond was watching my every move. After the lights came back on she walked over to the dressing room, grabbed a shocking pink bra and panties set and went inside. (learned all this later from the many hidden camera's I had inside the store and the dressing room) Once there she spotted a 50 I that had dropped out of the bag and gotten stuck in the trap door. She pulled the carpet up, pried open the door and looked inside. She saw the lift coming back up and leapt onto it.

Once she did that alarms started to go off. I was near the end of the first trap layer, heard them and dived into the tube passageway to the Torment Area. From there I rushed over to the battle computer and set the security systems into operation. In the Victoria's Secret store a sign appeared over the dressing room door saying that it was out of order, auto-repair started to work on the trap door, a solid concrete slab slid into place and sealed the lift exit and finally sleeping gas filled the lift.

It didn't do a lot of good because she was already a few feet into the Blue Trap Layer. I was annoyed but had no choice but to fill the Blue Trap Layer with knockout gas. I hated doing it, knockout gas is expensive, but I wanted whomever it was out. She swooned and fell to the floor. I let her lay there for a few minutes while I climbed out of the UltraBabe suit and got dressed. When I check the scanner it showed that she wasn't breathing. I knew that the gas wasn't that strong, but just whom was I dealing with here?

I sent the UltraBabe robot into the level using the remote control.

"Hello?" it asked. "Are you alright?"

She didn't answer so I had the robot bend down to turn her over. The blond grabbed the UltraBabeBot's arm and threw it against the wall. A few more circuits cracked and burnt out, but there was enough left working for me to switch the UltraBabeBot into combat mode.

The blond stood up, shimmered and changed in (what I have to admit) was a really cool color sequence. Her hair got longer and turned midnight black, her eyes turned emerald green, her breast got about a half a cup size bigger even as her clothes got skimpier. She was now wearing sheer red stalkings, a tiny (and I mean tiny) thong bikini bottom, a thin red top and a pair of boots with 5 inch stiletto heals. A floor length blood-red velvet-silk lined cloak that would have flowed majestically if there had been a breeze backed all of this.


Her name was Vampirella, a vampire. Great. I had a Monopoly game to get to in a few hours, I didn't need superheroine problems right now. I set the battle computer to "occult intruder" mode and did a quick stock of her weaponry. Black sword, (probably mystical), daggers, gun.

I moved the UltraBabeBot into the middle of the room.

"I know you can hear me Sky. I should've known it was you in the UB suit. You've sported it so many times at the bar." she said looking around as well as at the UltraBabeBot.

"Well at least you didn't know it was a suit at first." I said. I had been trying out the robot suit in the Heroines in Distress bar, seeing if it could fool people.

Vampirella drew her sword and sent it streaming toward the UltraBabeBot. I turned on the gravity trap just in time and it clanged to the floor.

"I'd let you go, but you know about this place, so I'll have to take care of you." I said.

She looked at the sword and watched as the UltraBabeBot picked it up.

"Tell it to me face to face you little troublemaker."

Anyone taking that advice would have deserved what they got.

"Me? Nope." I had the UltraBabeBot start toward her with the sword. "Not when my bot can handle you."

She smiled and the bot was suddenly caught with 20kilivolts of power. It did a nice dance in the seconds before the systems shut down.

"Nice toy, don't you think? the blade amplifies the absorbed power and is discharged into who...or whatever is holding it. And since your bot was grounded, she acts as a ground."

The voltage had damaged the gravity trap as well. Auto-repair would handle it, but it would take a few hours. Still I knew she'd want her sword back and set up the auto-destruct on the UltraBabeBot. Some really cool bat-like wings grew from her back and she lifted into the air and flew toward it. I have to admit I really liked her expression when the robot blew up.

It was really funny when the UltraBabeBot's leg hit her in the stomach. All sort of metal parts tore at her body and the force of the explosion itself plastered her against the wall. She lay there for a second, then got to her feet. There was a host of scratches on her body and her top had almost been torn away. Man, she was perky. Not light either, heavy and perky.

"To me my sword." Vampirella said in a really weird voice. The sword flew up and into her hand.

"Great, a mystical sword."

She stood there for a moment, nearly topless, the sword in one hand and gathering her strength as the wounds closed. It was a great pose and it gave me time to set the sonic trap to undead mode. In normal mode the sonic trap just tries to knock someone out or shatter their armor, in undead mode the sonic waves are designed to disrupt the flow of blood (or whatever) in the persons brain.

Vampirella flapped her wings and took off. I gotta tell you, when someone with breasts like hers has wings... well it's just something to see. The wings flapping made her breast move in ways vaudeville strippers used to work at, if she had put on a pair of tassels I might have given up then and there and died happy. But she didn't and I didn't. She flew over the sonic trap. I let her get a head into it and triggered it.

The sound hit her pretty good and she flew around the room like her legs were on fire. She must have crashed into the ceiling and walls a couple of times before she hit the floor. Her top was really straining at this point, how it held together was a mystery to me. She almost dropped the sword.

At this point it should have been over and I should have been able to put her into a cell and get to the game. But no, heroines are a stubborn bunch and vampire heroines the worst of that type. She braced herself and got to her feet. I could see she had a little blood coming out of her ear but she managed to lift her sword anyway.

"Must...concen...trate! MUST!"

The 3 gems on the hilt of her sword started to glow and the air started to whirl around her.

I HATE magic swords. I realized what she was doing and sealed of the chamber, then started to pump out the air.

It wasn't fast enough. She lifted off the ground about a foot and then spun around like a 45 on a turntable. She spun fast enough to become a blur of motion and when she was nothing but a red and black tornado she moved across the room. She moved so fast that I wasn't able to turn on three of the traps that might have taken her down. Worse the tornado was fighting against the vacuum I was trying to create. The air pressure was going wild.

"Cute." I said hitting controls on the board. I cut the noise and waited until she stopped spinning, then I cued in the solar trap. Super bright sun lamps came on and lit up every part of her body. At the same time I upped the heat in the chamber. This brought Vampirella down to her knees and I began to hold out hope that she was out of it.

No such luck.

She wrapped her wings around her body and curled up into a ball. Luckily the solar lamps had woken up Poison Ivy's trapper vines. They reached out from the wall to ensnare her. Would have worked but for the darn sword. She cut a few of them that were wrapping around her, but that left her open to the lights.

I had an idea and switched the lights to pulse on and off, this would drive the vines crazy. At the same time I turned on the heat a bit more and noticed that there was almost no air left in the chamber. That should have done it.

But again, that darn sword came into play. It light up like a torch and it had to have been mystical flame because there was no air in there. The vines were cooked in a few seconds and those that survived she hacked away at.

"I hate magic!"

I turned the lamps on full blast again and made sure that if Vampirella chose to go through the tube exits she'd end up in the middle of the room again. Then I dropped the temperature in the chamber to 0 degrees.

Once she was through with the vines Vampirella jumped into the middle tube. I wasn't going to let her near Mr.Fang, even as weak as she was.

"Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars." I said and teleported her back to just before the sonic trap. Then I turned up the heat again.

I was sure I had her now. She knelt down panting and almost dropped the sword again. I turned the temp down even more and ordered a pair of the Samurai sex/battle bots to go get her.

While I was doing this she was fixing her top.

"Sky, can you hear me? I know you can."

If she knew I could why was she asking? She was starting to tremble from the cold.

"You may have the upper hand now but the tables will be turned. This I swear!" She looked behind her, straight up, then back to her front again.

"Why," I wondered "do they always say stuff like that?"

Vampirella saw the sex bot coming toward her and gripped her sword.

"Goddess its cold!" she said shivering violently. I was about to promise her a warm cell to relax in when the sword began to glow with an intense turquoise sheen. It shook in her hands and then she began to fade out.

"You have won this round Sky but there will be others who will challenge and defeat you, once I reveal the location of this torture chamber."

There was a bright flash of white light and she was gone.

Have I mentioned how much I hate magic swords?


Well it could have gone worse, I guess. I mean the complex was only a few weeks old, and despite her promise I knew that Vampirella wouldn't be back with an army real soon. Heroines, vampire ones anyway, tend to be loners. At least I hoped so. Just in case I'd activate the phase shift generator and move the complex out of reality for a while, it would cost me but it'd be safe. The only thing anyone would find under the mall would be dirt.

That still left me with the problem of Vampirella though. I could go after her myself, but then that would expose me to danger and I'm a coward, or I could hire someone to go after her.

Oh well, for time being I let the system go into the auto-repair mode and then headed off to the game. Maybe Tulip or WaerRes would have an idea of who to send after Vampirella, or some suggestion of a weapon to use against her. At least I took with me the memory of her top being almost ripped off and goosebumps forming all over her body.

...NOT the end of this, to be continued.