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The butler is dead in the pantry and the maid can't find her
panties! Time for another Mr. X light finger steal. It's like
walking about the grounds of a Spanish nunnery in your
birthday suit sucking on a morphine lollipop.
Rook.
AZURE ANGEL IN MORALE'S MIDNIGHT PUPPET SHOW
Yumi Wang, all 5'2", 108 pounds, 35G-22-36, 18 years (as of
last Tuesday), of her strolled down the Delta City Amusement
Park Pier. The pier, actually four nearly half mile long
newly refurbished wooden piers side by side that ran out of
the edge of downtown Delta City and into Delta City Bay, were
the latest billion dollar attempt of cleaning up the downtown
area and the cities image overall.
The four long wide fingers of wood had been converted from
derelict fishing docks and like the long abandoned warehouses
and canneries had been converted with a great deal of money
and hard labor into a lush green park and a modern amusement
park in an attempt to bring more family friendly business
into the downtown area.
The fishing docks and warehouses and canneries along with
their smells had been shunted down the coastline a goodly
distance; out of sight, out of mind, out of nostril range of
the greater downtown area.
The four piers were thus rooted to a new park designed to
breathe a little green into the gray granite and cold steel
and walls of blind glass of the downtown area. The piers
themselves had also been connected with various side bridges
to make traverse from any of the four piers much easier. You
didn't have to go all the way back to the shoreline park in
order to get to another pier.
Upon the piers had been placed various carnival rides and
attractions including a very large roller-coaster that just
managed to span all four piers. Manny temporary exhibits and
season theme distractions were yearly devised and planed. And
thus several large buildings to house these exhibits were
often shunted between acts as it were.
The idea to bring more family friendly attractions to the
downtown area was indeed a good one.
However, since the downtown area had not been a family
friendly place for decades it was also not a very practical
one and since the area was mostly populated with young single
people living in the cheap apartments and business men and
women working in the high-rise office buildings and since the
pier project had cost these tax payers millions to build and
more millions to come to operate; it was deemed that some
last minute reality would need to be injected into the pipe
dream in order to get the venture out of the red and into the
black, at least on the front page newspaper, if not in
reality, as soon as possible.
As such after ten p.m. the park would shut most of its family
friendly shops and attractions and rides and a more, well,
adult, make that single adult, sort of business would pop
open their wooden shutters and click on their lights and this
would run well into the wee-hours of the morning. In fact,
some of the bars never closed. They served shattered fathers
and mothers morning noon and night.
Despite all their best intentions it was this 'singles' bar
mentality of amusement-circus entertainment that brought in
the money and of course often the troubles adults can cause
who simply can't tell the difference between having a good
time and misbehaving themselves. As such a small police
station was slipped into the shoreline park half disguised
with 'an information center' attached to its front and a
coast guard outpost was put at the end of the central pier
again half disguised by placing benches and pay-to-view
telescopes and tables and chairs and brass railings and a
miniature light house which you could enter and climb up its
four flights of circular stairs for a spectacular view
(perfect for selfies), above it.
During the daylight hours the park and piers were full of
tourists dragging their wailing brats along and over paying
for everything and desperately trying to have fun. At night
it was the locals wanting to pay for nothing and making fun
of everything.
For a few hours after sun set and before the ten p.m.
shuttering of most of the children attractions the two
different worlds would briefly mingle and meet and it was
then the cops and coast guard were the most busy.
It was now nearing mid-night and so the four piers were in
full local rowdy possession as Yumi slipped away from the
crowds around those attractions still open and made for the
shadows of one of the many now shuttered wooden structures.
The structures upon the piers were of all sorts of shapes and
sizes; from tiny little wooden one person toll booth
structures to large long buildings that housed bumper cars or
bowling alleys.
And while some buildings butted up against one another or
even shared entrances and exits, others had narrow or wide
alleyways designed for cross traffic, allowing visitors to
traverse from one side of a pier to the other without having
to enter a building and tunnel through to the other side.
In said alleyways large trash bins were discreetly placed.
These large bins once a day were wheeled to set points on the
piers where lifts were set in the railings. Here they were
lowered down and emptied on garbage barges. Once a week the
re-cycling bins were lowered down to re-cycling barges. Not
the most cost effective way of doing things but a little less
annoying for the customers than driving half a dozen garbage
trucks down the 'no vehicles allowed' piers every day honking
at everyone to get out of their way.
It was down one of these alleyways that Yumi ventured. She
selected a narrow one with no nearby open business and no
nearby roaming venders hawking wares and no one currently
staggering drunkenly down it and which had two large
dumpsters set near each other. The alleyway was well lit but
Yumi pointed her wrist watch at each exterior light and
turning the outer dial and pressing the crystal each light
winked out in turn.
The lights would come back on in less than five minutes but
it sure beat burning her finger tips on hot bug covered bulbs
or spending several minutes trying to unscrew light covers
while dangling upside down by her knees.
Yumi gave another sharp look about her and set to work. The
electricity suppressor field would only work for five minutes
and that was not as much time as it sounded. She slipped
between the two garbage bins and in less than thirty seconds
had stripped herself completely naked. She stuffed her
clothes into her purse after extracting her costume. It then
took her almost three minutes to put her costume on.
Funny how girls can always get undressed in under a minute no
matter what they are wearing but it takes them forever to put
anything on? Seriously Yumi was out of her street clothes in
under a minute but it took her three minutes to basically put
on a one piece swim suit. Don't believe me? Go shopping with
your girlfriend/mistress/wife/daughter. She walks into the
changing room and it takes her seconds to shed all her
garments. But it takes her minutes to put on the one piece
swimsuit. Go and get her another bikini; it takes her seconds
to shed that first swimsuit but minutes to put on the next
bikini. Repeat as often as you like. It defies Einstein's
theory of relativity. And god help you if there is a mirror
present. Add a mirror and it suddenly takes them hours to
dress?!
Women and mirrors are the quantum mechanical reality of black
holes. Set any woman near a mirror and watch time and space
bend and be devoured!
So it was that Yumi had just affixed her mask and completed
her transformation into Azure Angel when the lights slowly
bleed back on. With a worried yelp the teen super heroine
leapt upon one of the closed tops of the garbage bin and with
an agile flip was holding the rain gutter edge and flipping
herself up on to the rooftop of one of the closed buildings.
Here she crouched and tip toed along finding a vent pipe and
using it as an anchor to lash her purse containing her street
clothes to she paused to glance about her.
All around her people swarmed in large groups breaking off
constantly into small clusters and milling about under the
competing loud speaker music and garish flashing lights. They
filed by on both sides of the building though there were
fewer open shops on west side of the pier and thus fewer
people gathered along that side but it was just as well lit
and she had to remain crouched as she moved along the roof
top in order to keep out of sight.
The night sky was overcast and a damp fog was encircling the
piers. But her costume was designed to 'attract' attention,
what with her buttocks being mostly exposed and the large cut
out at her breasts and thus distract would be combatants in a
fight; rather than make her blend in to the shadows. So there
was a real threat of her being seen out of someone's
pariphial vision. Especially with all the beer being poured
down people's throats and the heads tipping back skyward to
accomplish this.
Luckily Azure Angel only had a short ways to go. In fact, no
further than to the end of the roof top she was on. But she
had been right that she would have been easily seen changing
her costume upon the roof. For it was a simple steeple style
and not one of the flat roofs with raised edgings and air
conditioning units to hide behind. There were plenty of those
on the pier but the jumps between buildings were beyond even
her incredible athletic abilities.
She reached the end of the roof top and looked down. There a
crowd was packed in shoulder to shoulder loudly braying and
drunkenly shouting. Mostly college kids from the look of it.
Fortunately, there were many cos-play girls amongst the crowd
and she knew she could risk the drop down and a quick shove
into the building she sought.
When Yumi had arrived at the amusement park piers she had
been wearing a tight blouse with no bra open to her navel and
a short pleated skirt with a hem that fell to her upper
thighs. No panties.
People seemed to really like this 'naughty Japanese school
girl look' a lot and she wore it at night and it did well for
her. But tonight she was working so she left the requisite
kanta at home.
Azure Angel dropped down nimbly into a brief open space
between three young men.
"Whoa!" One man recoiled back spilling some of his beer.
"WOW! Great Physc-Loke costume!" His buddy yelled.
Azure Angel gritted her teeth and pushed through the crowd
toward the dark wooden door that no one seemed interested in
and reached it and opened it and shut it behind her. She had
received several thumbs up for her 'Physc-Loke' costume and
smiles and waves and a couple of camera phone snap shots and
only got her ass groped four times and her breasts mauled
twice in her six stride walk. The crowd was unusually well
behaved tonight, but then they weren't that drunk yet.
Leaving might be a bit tougher? But she pushed such rowdy
future prospects out of her mind and peered into the dark
gloom around her.
She was rather surprised no one had followed her in; not one
drunk pervert or gushing cos-play creeper. She would have
liked to think it was her perpetually sour angry demeanor but
sighed and acknowledged it was probably the 15.00$ Cover
charge declared in the banner over the door.
The same cloth banner that hung over the door hung now
immediately before her; "MORALE'S MIDNIGHT PUPPET SHOW" with
15$ added on either side of the words. Below this banner sat
an old woman on a chair knitting. An over turned top hat sat
next to her and a metallic money box sat under her old wooden
chair.
Azure removed the prearranged twenty dollar bill from her
cleavage (not exactly the safest place to carry it) and
offered it to the woman. The woman ignored her for a few
seconds and then nodded briskly at the hat. Hesitantly Azure
dropped the folded up twenty into the hat where she saw
several other bills lay and then after an awkward silence
where she waited for her change which the old woman made no
move to give her she sighed and left the tinny poorly lit
room via the red velvet curtain that hung immediately behind
the knitting woman.
Raising up the curtain and passing under it Azure realized
that it was not a tiny room where the shawl wearing old woman
sat; rather the single rectangular room had been divided by
the red velvet curtain into a small antechamber entrance.
Beyond the red curtain was the rest of the room. Not an
overly large room. It could have been a room in a nicer
suburban house or a room in one of those very small single
room churches or schools one saw old grainy sepia washed
photos of on the internet.
The lone room was windowless and dark. The little aclove
where the old woman sat in her layered dress knitting away
had been lit by a single oil lamp casting a greasy yellow
light. But the room proper was lit by several open flame
torches hung in brackets on the narrow walls. The ceiling was
not high and the wooden walls dark and plain. She could have
walked in ten large strides from the curtain to the back
wall. The floor had seven metal folding chairs where people
sat enthralled by the spectacle.
More metal chairs lay folded up and leaning against the wall.
But Azure selected to stand with arms folded under her huge
firm breast and take in some of the show.
At the end of the rectangular room sat a puppet stand. It was
quiet large, filling almost all of width of the room and
almost touching the ceiling. It was well lit by hundreds of
candles that blazed away. It was an outdoor puppet show
stand. The kind one would see in a park on a Sunday afternoon
with a carousel in the background and kids watching a Punch
and Judy show.
This one was sequestered away inside a windowless room
because of the subject matter it portrayed.
It was the kind of stand men crouched behind unseen and held
up hand puppets or rod puppets in the central opening. This
stand was large enough that a man could stand unseen on a
platform up above and work marionettes as well.
Right now all three were being used; hand puppets and rod
puppets and marionettes. All with the puppeteers acting out
the voices as well as the puppets movements.
Azure Angel knew something of the show. She had stumbled
across it on the internet obviously someone had used their
cell pone to video tape a few minutes of the show. The show
consisted of adult humour. Very blue humour. A mix of sex
jokes and snarky one liners and put downs and zingers about
local politicians and celebrities. At the moment two of the
puppets were naked. They were sexually correct, or as
genitalia correct as wood and glue and paint and cloth could
make. One of the naked puppets was a woman who was being
'fucked' by a dog. The other naked puppet was apparently both
the dog owner and the boyfriend of the girl and was very
upset to have found his dog humping his girlfriend. Both the
girlfriend and dog were trying to explain the situation to
the distraught boyfriend.
Even Azure Angel who thought laughing was a sign of weakness
and lack of commitment to being a super heroine found herself
giggling along with the small audience to the absurd humor of
the puppet exchanges. It was sort of like if you took Monty
Python and made it x-rated. It was a sort of pornographic
vaudeville and yet it maintained a lot of snappy innocent
humor thrown in at fast pace. To put it bluntly it was
skillfully well down.
Azure Angel certainly did not come to the puppet show because
she intended to shut it down. She wasn't THAT much of a
prude. And besides it was indeed quiet funny. No, she had
come here because this was the last place one of her
informants, Todd 'the Toad' Rackman had been seen and hadn't
been seen since. Informants came and went. Super heroines
were notoriously cheap when it came to paying their
informants. In fact many like Azure Angel had no money to pay
them at all. Nor could they offer protection or deals like
the police could.
The Toad had gone missing two weeks ago and Azure Angel would
have let it pass with a shrug as she had so many others
except Toad went missing while gathering some important
information for her and she had partially pre-paid the creep
with one hell of a messy blow job so she would be damned if
she was going to let that bugger slip away. More over she was
now certain that the Toad had not amscraed from town. He had
been following his leads when he vanished and he had vanished
after entering this room during one of the shows two weeks
ago.
The Toad seemed the only one on the street who could get her
this particular information for he had been dating one of the
fallen daughters of a local rich businessman who had many
questionable dealings but many strong connections. The toad
had entered this establishment without is girlfriend two
weeks ago and had ceased to exists.
What Azure Angel wanted here was to see if she could pick up
any lose ends or a hint of a cold trail. She had wasted the
past two weeks certain that the Toad had gone into hiding or
was laying low or had left the city. She had proven this was
not the case. He was not shirking his part of the deal with
her and had indeed been working studiously to sniff out the
information she needed. No doubt the second part of the
payoff for him upon finding the information had put a spur in
his stride. That payment of course being a one off anal sex
with Amazing Babe. Azure Angel had not the slightest idea how
she was going to get Amazing Babe willing to let the Toad
blow his load in her ass but Amazing Babe had been 'trading'
photos and videos of Azure Angel getting mutiod raped in the
sewers for informant information all summer and Azure Angel
owed the bitch! Besides there were always her chloroform
darts and her blowgun.
Normally Azure Angel would have just waited for the
performers to close-up shop and leave at mornings first light
but she had seen something in that internet video of the
puppet show that had spurred her curiosity but the video had
been to short and cut off too soon, She needed to see it
herself. And there it was!
The format of the overall puppet show was sort of a take on
the Satrycon or of Ulyses. The naked puppet who was the dog
owner basically had episodic adventures involving a menagerie
of people and animals accompanied by his dog essentially
because he is depressed that he can't sexually satisfy his
girlfriend whom he is deeply in love with and wants to marry
but knows she will never be faithful to him as long as he can
not sexually satisfy her.
And here was the part that Azure Angel had seen partially in
the on line video clip. It was a bit with the 'wind in the
willows' cast. The dog owner wanders into the book as it were
and finds himself surrounded by the beloved children's books
fornicating cast. And of course one of the principle
characters of the book is 'Toad'.
And there he was, Toad, prancing about the puppet stage
platform sometimes a hand puppet sometimes a rod puppet some
times a large marionette puppet. But always, and this was the
important bit, he spoke in Todd 'the Toad' Rackman's voice
and avuncular. Azure Angel's keen senses could tell it was
not in fact her 'Toad' doing the voices and working the
puppets but there was no doubt that the puppeteers were aping
the man utterly. They even had his walk down and his
mannerisms!
Azure Angel found it odd that a group of puppeteers would be
stealing the identity of a missing two-bit thug whose main
occupation was washing the cars for one of the local
gangsters and shunting cases of empty bottles around at one
of his front bars.
From the video she had not been sure as it had been so short
but seeing it live before her now she had no doubts. This was
indeed a mocking copy of Todd 'the Toad' Rackman right down
to his weird white and red stripped bell bottoms that he
garishly favored in wearing.
She had no idea what to have expected in coming to the puppet
show so she had come as the business end of her persona Azure
Angel. But now as she stood there pondering the strange
situation in front of her no longer laughing with the eager
small crowd she realized coming to the show as Yumi Wang
would have been a much better choice as it would have given
her a few more options.
She had no doubt that the puppeteers could secretly watch the
audience as they performed and thus they were fully aware of
a super heroines presence in the room. Whether they took her
for Azure Angel or Physc-Loke whom of course she bore no
resemblance to what so ever or a cos-play slut it did not
matter. She would have to go forward as Azure Angel and Azure
Angel wanted to talk with those puppeteers as soon as
possible.
The wait, it turned out, was not long. The show ended with
the wind in the willows bit. Apparently the puppeteers did
four one hour long shows a night with a thirty minute break
between shows. And each show continued the adventure. That
meant to see the entire story arc you would have to shell out
15.00$ Four times and stay up all night?! Well that was one
way to make a buck.
Azure Angel did not wait for the cheering clapping small
audience to clear out but headed straight up to the stage
flat puppet stand. It only took her a few moments to find the
small cat-flap door and quickly squeeze through it.
Upon the other side of the spring hinge door she found
herself in a poorly lit maze of raw wooden beams and rows and
rows of puppets on rolling racks of hooks and long loops of
ropes. Ropes always made Azure Angel nervous. You get
captured enough times and you would know why yourself.
Amazing Babe had once confided to Azure Angel that just the
slightest whiff of chloroform made her butt hole hurt!
This side of the stage flat all smelled musty and dank. On
the audience side she suddenly realized everything had
smelled of heavily buttered popcorn and yeasty bready
homemade beer?!
There was absolutely no one about. No puppeteer to be seen?
She took one more step forward and found herself falling
through a trap door. She plunged down in darkness for only a
second before landing harshly in a rusted iron cage!
Below her the surf beat against the pilings and night birds
wailed who made their nests in the support beams. Carnival
sounds and rides hooted and screamed only slightly muffled by
the thick planks above her and the considerable distance to
each side of the pier's width above her.
The trap door, the roof to her rusted orange iron barred
caged swung shut with a resounding solid defying locking
snapping 'click' sound the instant she had landed in her
cage.
The cage was a narrow cylinder about twelve feet long and
about four wide.
Had her boot heel caught in the iron cross pieces that staved
the sides she could have easily broke her neck.
Azure Angel got up on her feet brushing the rust on her palms
off and then putting her tits back away inside her top. Any
sudden or hard blow always made her full energetic breasts to
pop out of her top. It worked wonders on men in battle. But
was a pain in the ass when you needed to walk up or down a
staircase into a room of reporters.
The lithe super teen heroine shimmied up her cage and started
banging on the trap door to her prison. To no avail. The wood
must have been four feet thick of kiln dried and tarred
hardwood. It was like trying to punch her way through two
inches of steel plating. Azure's super powers lay in her
healing factor and her extreme agility. She posses no extra
strength and relied heavily on her martial art skills and
stealth training to defeat her adversaries.
She looked down. It was easily a fall of a half a football
field to the churning waters below. Even if she could get out
of the iron cage the nearest pier cross-support was out of
reach. She would survive the fall, of that she was sure, but
it would take her some time to reach a place on the shore
where she could make her way back up drenched and soaked to
the street level and then to the park. She could swim to the
coast guard platform a pier away. They had a floating dock
and a coast guard station built underside of the main central
pier. Still she would have to get out of the elongated
cylinder cell first.
She was an expert lock pick and had a set of locks secreted
upon her suit but there was no lock to pick? She sometimes
kept a small torch in her boot but it was uncomfortable and
she had not expected to need it so it remained at home. Her
watch was in her bag with her civilian clothes on the roof of
the nearby building. It could create an electrical damping
field for a short time but it ate up its power fast doing
that. It could also act as a saw or the outer ring could be
snapped off and thrown as a deadly circular blade. But even
if she had it on her wrist now it would be worthless to her.
The batteries would most certainly be nearly drained having
used it to subdue so many lights when she needed to change
her clothes and the saw was designed for cutting ropes not
metal!
That left her only her weapons. These consisted of several
small throwing knives, some smoke pellets, a collapsible blow
gun with six drugged darts, and...
Azure Angel eyed the hinges on the trap door. They had been
placed on the underside no doubt to hide the door from the
topside. Deftly she reached in her hidden boot pockets and
slipped out one of her gas pellets.
The hinges were riveted in place. No screw heads to use her
throwing knife on and unscrew. But she had three acid
pellets. They were designed to eat away metal. Not very
powerful but the hinges were heavily rusted. It just might
work.
With the calm nerves of a bomb explosive expert which of
course she was, the once ninja in training, held herself at
the top of her cage with her feet braced against the bars and
used a throwing blade and her three acid pellets to slowly
eat at the hinges to the trap door.
It was not enough to do the job alone but it weakened the
hinges enough that the determined girl was able to pry one
hinge free completely with her throwing knife and most of the
second loose. She promptly inverted herself and started
kicking at the trap door. A dozen kicks latter and she was
pulling herself up through the dislodged trap door and back
into the dark frame work of the puppet flat stand.
Still there was no one to be seen in the heavily shadowed
maze of support wood braces and crates and webs of rope.
Azure Angel took another few steps in the dark and
immediately fell through another trap door.
She caught herself, her breasts helping mightily in this, and
hung there with elbows out and her face buried in her
cleavage almost suffocating on her enormous breasts. Her feet
kicked wildly below her. Though she could see nothing but her
own squashed tits she knew from having just been in the cage
that lay only a few feet away that it was the only cage under
the pier in the immediate area of the puppet building and
thus any plunge through any other trap doors would mean an
ice dip in the bay far below!
It took some rather awkward struggles and less than graceful
grunting efforts and she looked and felt like a desperately
horny man putting on a way too small condom on his penis in
order to get his once and a life time hurry up chance to fuck
the most beautiful woman in the world; but she bumped and
slapped and wiggled and slapped herself out of the trap door
looking a bit too much like a bull seal popping out of an ice
flow hole.
Once she had regained her feet and the trap door had angrily
and impatiently snapped shut between her straddled legs, the
young teen leapt up and grabbed a rope and pulled herself up
onto the hidden marionettes puppeteers platform. She angrily
removed a small pen light from her boot and began shinning it
down on the floor.
The entire back floor of the puppeteer stage flat was riddled
with dozens of trap doors?! They were even where the men must
kneel and perform at the raised opening?!
In fact it was almost impossible that anyone could move
around back stage without plunging through one of them.
Azure frowned. Where was all the puppeteers? Surely the next
show was about to begin? She moved cautiously along the
platform and sure enough there was a mirror set at an angle
to another mirror and it allowed her to see most of the
audience. About twenty five people were setting up chairs
where they will and milling about chatting. Though for some
odd reason she couldn't hear them.
All she had to do was wait and the men she wanted to talk to
would be forced to show up to do their job right below her
and right on this scaffolding and she could ask her questions
and maybe give them a few bruises for two attempts of
pitching her into the drink.
Almost as if reading her mind a man suddenly appeared below
her and over to the far side of the room. He held a dimly
light oil lamp and wore a tight tail coat and dress pants and
a top hat upon his head. Azure Angel wondered if it was the
same hat she had dropped her twenty into and whether she
could get it back?
The man was tall and thin and wore dark round granny glasses
perched on his large thin aquiline nose. He spoke in a soft
muted voice that reminded her of the scent of old lemons.
"Girl it is dangerous up there. You must come down."
"I found it a bit dangerous down there!" Azure Angel sneered
down at the man. He might have been in his late twenties or
early forties so hard to tell by lamp light.
"Sorry about that. I was told originally this was meant to be
a magic theater; bunnies in hats, saw a woman in two,
disappearing cabinets that sort of thing." He seemed very
calm and nonplused by all of this.
"So the lady in the cabinet disappears via a deathly fall
into icy bay water?"
"Not at all. They apparently dropped the magic theater idea
before the substructure was built but after the trap doors
were put in. There's several switches which are supposed to
control the trap door magnetic locks but they don't seem to
work at all. We just avoid the doors by putting down planks
when we need to move about."
"Sounds very suspicious that they would put in the trap doors
change their minds about a magic theater and just leave them
there. Suspicious and recklessly dangerous!"
"You wouldn't believe all the short cuts they took and how
botched up everything is. It was a government job after all.
Now please come down. If you walk along to the end of that
plank you can climb down the ladder. It's perfectly safe
where I am standing. No traps here."
"There's an iron cage under one of those trap doors."
"Really?!" He seemed genuinely confused by this information.
"I can't fathom its use or need... not even in a magic show.
Please come down and take a seat here."
"Hmmmm, no thanks I think I will just take in the show from
up here."
"I'm afraid that won't be possible. Our permit will not let
us perform with any member of the audience behind the stage
flats. Please come down. The show is about to start. We have
people waiting."
Azure Angel realized that she did want to talk to someone who
seemed to be part of the show and this fellow seemed to
definitely be part of the show and nothing more was to be
gained from her standing upon this crowded platform. So she
cautiously walked to the end of the scaffolding near the man
and seeing the ladder he gestured to, a normal aluminium
ladder that had been strapped to the side of the scaffolding
sides, she climbed down it and found herself standing
directly in front of the man.
He was taller than her, but most people were, but he was
easily over six three or four and that was without that
ridiculous stove pipe hat he wore. He was pale white and very
lanky and long limbed. He motioned her to several old wooden
chairs that were set alongside the wall where wooden crates
had been fashioned into makeshift tables upon which a very
old time radio sat upon a lace doily and a few candles
burned.
Funny she had not seen the candles before but then crates
seemed to be blocking the direct view to anything. She did
not take the proffered chair but stood next to it as the
lanky man sort of folded himself up into his. His knees
seemed to rise up almost to his chest in the chair. It looked
anything but comfortable.
"Who are you?" She frowned at the man. There was definitely
something very odd about him. But then she was sure she would
find anyone who had tried to toss her down some trap doors
very odd. No matter how many times it seemed to happen to her
on a daily basis.
"I am the proprietor of this humble puppet show. I am Mister
Morale." He immediately stood and made a deep bow at the
waist and then sat down again.
"Perfect! Just the man I wanted to see-" Azure Angel broke
off as Mister Morale took up a dainty tea cup and saucer and
with finger extended took a sip. She was certain she had not
seen a tea cup and saucer next to the old time radio when she
first walked over to the chairs and crates. "I have some
questions I want answers to; namely concerning one Todd 'the
Toad' Rackman who disappeared after entering your
establishment two weeks ago.
The man just kept staring at her placidly.
"Well?!"
"I am sorry. I was waiting for you to ask the questions."
"I just did! Where is Rackman?! I couldn't help but notice
your Toad puppet has been made to act and even look like him!
Where-" Azure Angel broke off again for as she was slamming
her fist into her open palm she suddenly noticed that her
tits were popped out of her top. Of course she realized her
tits had popped out when she had almost fallen through the
second trap door which means that every second she had seen
this man up to this very moment she had been talking to him
with her breasts slipped out of her top on full display.
She stifled an 'eeek' into an 'eeep' and spun on her heels
away from him and furiously began stuffing her tits back into
her top! It took a while as she had a lot of tits to stuff.
She could feel the blush upon her face and that was making
her angry. She spun around about to really let him have a
blast of her nervous sputtering anger when she was stopped
short, finger still waving in the air, mouth wide open, as
she realized the puppet show was going on. She realized it
had been going on. It had started just as soon as she had
stepped off the ladder and made her way over to the man. A
distance of a few meters at most.
Boxes stacked high of wood slats blocked her direct view of
back of the puppet stage. She was certain the wooden crates
had not been there before. They couldn't have been. She would
have walked right through them.
Slowly, as if walking in a dream, Azure Angel approached the
edge of the stack of crates so she could see the puppeteers
working their craft even as her mind puzzled over 'where'
they had been? They had not been back stage and there was no
way they could have passed her in that single room. She had
already seen the overall layout of the roof of the building
when she had been on the opposite roof before dropping down
and entering the structure. There was no small rooms off to
the side no place for hidden passage ways.
"When I fell," She mumbled to herself. "That's it when I was
trapped in the cage below the pier.
That's when they left the backstage and well went out the
front door for a smoke or a stretch or a breath of fresh air.
And they returned when I started talking to this man."
Azure Angel took one full stride past the corner of the stack
of crates and turned to look full at the backstage area of
the puppet show. There were all the puppets putting on the
show. Dancing in the air. With no puppeteers above or below.
"Ah, so who is controlling the puppets?"
"I am," Mister Morale stated deadpan and he took another sip
of tea and set down the cup and saucer.
"And how are you doing that?"
"That would be secrets of the trade. Sorry."
"Okay. Not my department today. So, back to where we were.
Where is Todd Rackmen?"
"As you have already pointed out he is our delightful Mister
Toad. I'm afraid he's not in this act. They all show back up
in the finale. That's the last showing. Bit of time to kill
before then."
Azure Angel tore her eyes off the floating dancing dolls and
looked over her shoulder at Mister Morale. His sun glassed
eyes were fixed upon her and she shivered despite herself.
"So you are telling me you turned him into a puppet?"
"I didn't say that but the conclusion is correct."
"And why did you turn him into a puppet?"
"He was so very curious about the disappearances of several
persons over the past few months. I found that disquieting.
May I assume his blood dog curiosity was rooted in your boot
toe upon his posterior?"
"Yeah, he was working for me. May I take it you turned all
those missing persons into puppets as well?"
"You may."
"I don't know if you're just a nutter who has killed people
or locked them away somewhere and thinks he has turned them
into puppets or if you really have turned people into
puppets? I have seen too many strange things to dismiss
either idea outright. Working alongside Hexanna a couple of
times will do that to you."
Mister Morale raised his hands in a shrug and dropped them
back down to lay on his boney knees. The tea cup and saucer
were gone and now a plate of cup cakes had taken their place.
"In either case I am taking you in. This ends tonight. I am
not sure what kind of evidence I can find but as a Delta City
super heroine I got enough clout to put you under citizens
arrest and put you behind bars for up to three days."
"No evidence I am afraid. Our Mister Toad brought it all with
him, as it were, in his head. I have been exhaustively busy
since then removing it from bothering anyone else."
"No evidence then?"
"None."
"Flying puppets that's rather interesting evidence?'
"Doubt they would 'fly' in the presence of any law
enforcement and I am utterly certain they wouldn't fly in a
court room."
"Well, as I said there is always Hexanna. You would be amazed
at what that woman can do. And she never uses a court room or
police. Ever met her?"
"No. I am afraid not. Look you want evidence? How about this?
Our 'girlfriend' in the play, the one who fucks everyone and
everything, is just a carved doll. No soul. No life. Her
performance is... wooden at best. How about you take her
place? Ever wanted to be in show business? Ever been fucked
by a dog? Something tells me you're going to enjoy that;
several times a day."
Azure Angel in a furry threw a punch and it hit empty air
that felt less like air and more like water. She spun around
and again it was like she was at the bottom of the deep end
of a pool. Her moves very slow and weak and her mind
increasingly dazed.
It was several weeks latter when Hexanna caught up with
Mister Morale's puppet show outside of Paris, France. She
tossed the master puppeteer into a fourteenth century Judy
doll from the Punch and Judy puppet show museum; which she
now keeps in her shop upon the shelves of the 'not for sale
section.' She released the imprisoned 'puppets' and returned
them to their lives as best she could. This included Azure
Angel who still to this day will not pet a dog or play fetch
with one or toss a frisbee and has often been seen crossing
to the other side of the street if one approaches even on a
leash or even if it is leading a blind man.
She has also taken up a new found strong aversion against;
bulls, donkeys, goats, horses, oxen, gorillas, abnormally
large snakes, two litter soda bottles, hair brush handles,
curling irons, cucumbers, zucchinis, gourds, fire hydrants,
the large agitator that spins around in washing machines,
jack hammers, emergency brake handles and manual floor
mounted gear shift levers, banana bike seats, the pedestals
at the end of stair case rails, foot balls, ice cream scoops;
Well the list is quiet long. Apparently Mister Morale added
several acts once he hit Europe and the Big Time.
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