Tasha screeched in horror, "My purse is inside the ship…with my credit card!!"
"You mean, you left home without it?" Mollie inquired seriously.
"Look, like totally catch a grip, okay? Iggie says he can unlock the ship, no problemo. He wants us to like meet his mega mondo cool-dude leader…"
"No way! I am not following that overgrown newt anywhere." Snerdly exploded. (Not really, but, well, it was a nice thought.)
"He totally didn’t ask you," Sparki replied.
"But…" Snerdly began.
"My purse is inside…" Tasha stomped her feet in the yellow cheese planetary surface, cringing as she remembered the condition of her brand new boots. But, what the hell? This moon had to have a least one decent mall. Every moon had a shopping mall – it was the first thing that the contractors built – followed closely by a McDonald’s and several law offices. Tasha realized that while she was fussing, Iggie (who was handling is new nickname with gracious aplomb), Mollie and Sparki had left the area and were making a left turn just after passing a large celery stalk. Leaving Snerdly behind (he was leaning against the ship’s bulkhead, fuming silently), Tasha began to run after them, but they were gone. She stormed back to Snerdly. "Now look at what you made me do!" She hit him.
"What I made you do? My dear, the chance of Mollie and Sparki coming back here alive are 92,997,562 to 7. Lizards that size invariably eat people. It’s a rule." Snerdly pushed his glasses back on his nose.
"Is it NOT a rule! You’re a jerk," Tasha hit him once more, then left to follow her sister and her new friend. Snerdly followed Tasha. She was much more attractive when she was pissed off.
"Where do you think you’re going?" Tasha demanded.
Snerdly postured himself, sucking in his stomach and trying to make his chest seem muscular. Tasha was grateful for the gesture. She needed a good laugh. Snerdly pumped himself up and stated, purposefully: "I must protect you. I cannot allow a woman of such great beauty to travel unprotected through the wilds of a hologram…uh, holographic moon with uncensored certainty of probable death via alien serpents who are large enough to consume humans with single gulp. No, I must protect you. Yea, it is…my duty."
"Oh, puh-lease." Tasha sniffed, realized with a sudden shock that fuschia nail polish did NOT match the orange surface of the moon. She continued walking, aware of the fact that Snerdly was indeed following her like a sick puppy dog. She groaned, which excited him, and continued her trek.
To their discredit, Mollie and Sparki never realized that Tasha had been missing, so when she caught up with them and gave them enormous hugs, they were confused. Tasha was deeply hurt by their callous behavior. "What do you mean you never knew I was gone? You left me alone with Snerdly and you didn’t even notice?!?!"
"Sorry," Mollie mumbled weakly as they continued their journey to Iggie’s home village. Snerdly brought up the rear admirably, wielding an overgrown pretzel as a weapon, should renegade lizards attack them from behind. They walked for what seemed like several hours but were in reality, several minutes.
"Like, halt!" Sparki said sharply, suddenly slipping on the slimy surface. "We’re most definitely here."
"Wherever here is," reflected Mollie.
"According to my calculations, here is not there, nor is there anywhere else that here might be, for if here were there, then there could not be here and that is neither here nor there." Snerdly snapped.
All three women looked at him, but did not say a word.
The village, which was populated by reptilian creatures resembling Iggie (yet no two alike), was actually a geographic (or appetizeric) masterpiece. The houses were built out of what appeared to be large scoops of ice cream in more flavors than Baskin Robbins ever dreamed of. The insides were carved out to leave room for sleeping and the roofs were protected by hot fudge and whipped cream that looked like snow. Paths were made of maraschino cherries and nuts. It was a pleasant village (or would have been if Snerdly had stayed back at the ship) and the intrepid heroes were pleased by it.
Iggie left them alone for a few minutes while he fetched his leader. Snerdly promptly started yelling. "It is most probable that we will be consumed and digested by malicious carnivorous creatures and you women are too stupid to do anything about it!"
"Was that, like, as heinous implication that women are somehow bogusly intellectually inferior?" Sparki put her face up to Snerdly’s, a cruel glint and hint of madness apparent in her eyes.
"No…." Snerdly sputtered, breathing a deep sigh at the proximity of Sparki’s breasts.
Sparki backed off, gasping and crying out. She reached into her purple backpack and removed a box of Tic Tacs. She pitched one of the in Snerdly’s general direction as she continued to cough. "Do us, like, all a mondo favor and buy some Listerine, dude!"
"What I was trying to say is," Snerdly examined the breath mint with some caution as he continued to speak, "that we must make our escape while they aren’t looking. I can definitely get the ship open and working again, and we can be on our way. So let’s go!"
"Goodbye, Snerdly," Mollie waved him off.
Tasha stopped wiping her boots clean with parsley and glanced up. "Oh. Is Snerdly leaving?" she asked hopefully. "Ta-ta…"
"I cannot depart without you. It would go against my personal beliefs to leave helpless women stranded on a…" Snerdly broke off as Mollie elbowed him in the gut and threw him to the ground, face first in the hard cheese.
"What do you mean HELPLESS?!" she demanded.
Snerdly mumbled something. He lifted his head and spit cheese out of his mouth. "Now see here…."
Sparki stepped on the back of his head. "How many mondo cool minutes do you think it will take him to like totally smother?"
Snerdly squirmed in earnest, shrieking and flailing his arms about.
"But if he smothers, who will fly the ship?" Mollie inquired.
Tasha shrugged and fluffed her hair, "I will…"
Both Sparki and Mollie helped Snerdly to his feet.
Snerdly was spared further humiliation, and the girls were spared listening to him moan, when Iggie reappeared with a larger, magenta colored lizard.
"This is the mondo cool leader-dude, Reginald. He’s like, in charge here." Sparki told them after listening to the lizard speak for a minute. "He totally needs our most excellent help."
"At your service," Snerdly bowed, figuring that in this group, his help was the only thing anywhere near excellent.
"What should we do," asked Mollie, not really caring what the problem was, but eager for a little excitement.
"He needs us to zappo this planet – blow it to mega pieces – and transport the liz-dudes to safety."
"But how can we do that? Why should we do that? When…" Tasha exclaimed in a high pitched wail.
"Just keep screeching," Snerdly suggested, actually managing the subtle art of sarcasm, "and it may spontaneously combust…." Tasha glared at him, picturing how he would look buried up to his scrawny neck in cheese.
"Screeching?" Tasha screeched.
"Like, that’s totally IT! Screeching. We’ll like start a totally excellent rock band. Iggie can play the bass and if the rhythms are correct – and my rhythms are excellent – we can zappo this mondo hunk of rock. Wowee!" Sparki exclaimed.
"I can play the drums!" Mollie jumped up, eager to get in on this plan. A band was exactly what they needed.
Snerdly began to calculate tours and merchandising and how much of a cut he could legally (or illegally) take as their manager if they sold several million CDs. They needs a name, and a promotions manager, and a business manager, and someone to tell them all what to do while skimming a lot of the top.
Meanwhile, Tasha was not paying attention. Now that her boots were clean, she could afford the time to look around at the Village of the Lizards. She counted seven scoops of chocolate chip ice cream houses, thirteen vanillas; two mint chocolate chip, eight peppermint and nine cookies and cream. She was beginning to add the tootie-fruties when she notices something in the distance: several ice cream flavors connected by marshmallow fudge. Outside of the sticky mess were hundreds of lizards walking around carrying shopping bags. Tasha was almost, but not quite, rendered speechless.
"Oh look – a MALL!!!!!" she cried out, breaking into a sprint.
"No, Tasha, don’t!!" Mollie screamed.
There was an explosion.