Shadows arched haphazardly over the walls and roof of the cavernous 
hallway.  Situated deep underground, some light still managed to creep 
through the twists and turns, somehow creating an atmosphere darker 
than that which pitch-black could bring.  It whispered of lurking evil, 
the creeping terror of that which was unseen, yet deadly, that which 
could possess the power to rend mere men in two with neither effort nor 
regret.  One glance down the serpentine corridor would speak of the 
pure evil of whoever resided to even the most casual of viewers.  
Somewhere here was one to truly be feared.

"GETITOFFGETITOFFGETIYOFF!!!" shrieked Eugene as he tumbled down the 
hallway, ramming into walls, an angry British feline still latched onto 
his face.

The SUPERYOUMAGENERAL finally stumbled over one of the charmingly 
decorative broken rock pieces that were artistically scattered over the 
floor.  Being an intelligent creature (at least more so than his former 
owner), Commander Fuzz leapt off of Eugene's head, landing daintily 
several feet away while the transformed teenager crashed to the ground.

"You'll bloody well regret the day you went against me!" the cat spat.  
"I've decided to side with the other chaps.  Though they may be a bit 
odd, they are better than a brainless git who can't comprehend what it 
means to respect those who are smarter than himself, and provide food 
for you, and not throw them out of windows.  So ha!"  The cat stalked 
off back the way they had come, head and tail raised proudly.

"Gah..." said Eugene faintly, more concerned about his nose, which was 
gushing purple youma blood from the impact with the floor, then the 
anger of a pompous cat.  He managed to shift into a sitting position, 
pulling one of those small packages of Kleenex from his pocket that he 
always kept for such occasions.  He was gingerly applying pressure to 
his nose when a skittering down the hall caught his attention.

"Hello?" he whispered, afraid that Commander Fuzz was returning.  
Suddenly, a small pink lamp with a flowered lampshade that had once sat 
on his mother's nightstand raced down the corridor towards him.

"What is it, Goku?" Eugene asked the small lamp.  Before it could 
respond, a ball of brightly colored energy flashed towards it, 
engulfing it and reducing it to nothing more than a pile of ashes.

"You dare use the name of one of the greatest warriors in the universe 
to refer to a small, pink, flowery, girly lighting accessory?" came an 
angry voice.  A small figure with a red ponytail stepped into view, 
yellow energy arching around her form, death in her eyes.

Eugene looked at Josh-chan.  Her clothing was still damp and slightly 
singed.  He looked at the smoking remains of the lamp.  He looked back 
at the girl.  "Um, no."

The energy dimmed a little.  "Oh, okay."

Eugene sighed.

"But I believe you said something about a fight, didn't you?"  The 
energy flared bright once more.  Josh-chan's hair exploded from its 
ponytail tie, flying back and fading to a golden-blond.  She gave a 
small, grim smile.

"I didn't say anything about a *fair* fight," Eugene muttered.


^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^
PROJECT CHIBIFICATION

Created by Lady Brick

This Part Unearthed and Classified by Lady Brick

Part Eleven - Hair Raising Blues
^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^


SD Kamen looked wearily at the angry lamps that surrounded him.  He had 
woken up a few moments before, in his chibi hero form due to the 
electric shock, he had found Josh or Josh-chan as he or she seemed to 
have been dubbed in his or her female form gone.  While puzzling out 
which pronouns to use, he decided that the DBZ otaku (a nice, non-
gender specific title) had left to go find Eugene and beat the crap out 
of him.  While Frank couldn't fault Josh(-chan) in that, he didn't 
understand why he/she/it only had to destroy the few lamps that had 
apparently blocked his/her/whatever's way, leaving the majority for 
him.  Probably one of those stupid unstoppable quest things.

He eyed the lamps that were closing in on him angrily, then whipped out 
with his arm, letting fly a bunch of miniature roses.  Unfortunately, 
the small missiles did little damage, tearing the shades of the smaller 
ones and bouncing off the stands of the floor lamps.  He leapt over the 
electric discharge of the lamp that had delivered them the message in 
Morse code, only to be swatted into the wall by a large, angry-looking 
table lamp.  He stood up, a bit dizzily, only to find the lamps backing 
away from him.

"What are you..."  Hearing a sound overhead, he looked up, just in time 
to see a large florescent ceiling fixture crash into his face.

"That's it..." Frank muttered as he rose shakily, shaking broken glass 
from his hat.  He gave the lamps a quick once-over, then suddenly leapt 
towards the older one with the plastic-covered shade, doing a cool 
twisting flip in mid-air, the kind that only masked and caped anime 
heroes can.  Landing lightly behind the lamp, he snagged it near the 
top with his left arm, the right pulling from nowhere a small, shiny 
black cane about the size of a knitting needle and pointing it at his 
prisoner.
 
"No one move, or your leader gets his bulb smashed," SD Kamen said in a 
calm but deadly serious voice, hoping the lamps would get that he was 
serious.  They looked at each other nervously, apparently unsure of 
what action to take against the pint-size hero.  The lamp in his arms 
quavered a bit, and began blinking its bulb on and off.

"No, I won't let you go," Frank said in response to the Morse code 
message.

The lamp blinked another message.

Frank shook his head.  "No, not even if you say please really, really 
nicely."

Apparently becoming more agitated now, the lamp flashed its bulb even 
faster.

Frank blinked.  "Um, I don't think that's even anatomically possible."

"Hello?  Is someone there?" came a small voice.  Frank recognized it 
before the girl even came around the corner.

"No, Katie!" he screamed, "Get out off here, quickly!"

"Hi guys!" Katie said, apparently ignoring or not noticing the rabid 
panic in Frank's voice.  To his amazement, the lamps that were 
scattered around him hopped over eagerly to greet her, their bulbs 
glowing happily as she patted them all hello.  Then the group of lamps 
turned towards him accusingly.

Katie stared at him in shock.  "Are you HURTING them?" she demanded.

Frank gave the only logical response to such a question.  He 
sweatdropped.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

"Um, I don't think Deedee is going to be too happy about that when she 
wakes up," Cecil murmured to Anna.  She ignored him for a moment, 
finishing looping all of Deedee's hair in a messy knot with a ratty 
rubber band she had found in the corner, pinning a stringy brown wig 
over the whole mess.

Satisfied with her work, Anna turned to the chubby otaku.  "We need to 
get everything pink out of reach of Rosa, in case she wakes up."  She 
glances at the detransformed girl who lay unconscious and rather singed 
a few feet away.  "However unlikely that is."

Cecil nodded reluctantly.  "I'm just wondering why Eugene had so many 
wigs lying around."

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

Across town, a group of five lamps wearing wigs and trench coats 
entered a large shiny building.

"Oh, look at the cute children in their matching outfits!  They must be 
on a fieldtrip!" a woman said to her husband as they walked down the 
sidewalk.

"Damn longhaired, trench coat-wearing punks, probably in a cult," her 
husband muttered.  "Well, my tax money better not be going to support 
that riff raff."

As the couple headed away, one of the lamps stuck his shade back out of 
the door and made a very rude sound before being dragged back in by his 
companions.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

"Who knows?  Now, we need to get these three down to the van and get 
some more weapons."  She picked up Rosa, and Cecil likewise retrieved 
Deedee. 

"Will it be alright to leave Brett here by himself?" Cecil asked as 
they headed towards the door.

"It won't be for long.  Besides, he can take care of himself."

"Anna, he's unconscious!"

"Well, anyone who knows him in the least still won't go near him."

"Point."  The two walked in silence for a moment, and then Cecil 
coughed.  "Anna, what exactly was that that just happened with Deedee?"

Anna didn't reply for a moment.  "Deedee isn't good to be around when 
she is angry," she finally said, repeating her earlier statement.

Cecil just looked at her pointedly.

Anna sighed, throwing open the heavy front door with a strong kick.  
"She made a mistake once.  Back when she was assisting the AEIOU with 
Rosa's case.  I think Rosa had taken her insults of shoujo anime to far 
or something; at least that's my guess.  Lord knows that seemed to be 
one of her hobbies.  She was basically angry at the lack of the 
progress to revert her condition, and mostly seemed to take it out on 
Deedee.  I don't know all of the details of what happened, but Deedee 
somehow broke into the main controls of Rosa's mecha form, and 
programmed a series of self destruct commands."

Cecil glanced at the limp figure in the bad wig he was carrying, then 
back at Anna, his eyes goggling.  "But she's... she's..."

"I don't think she's quite as stupid as she like to pretend.  At least 
not all the time."  Having reached the vehicle that she had arrived in, 
she laid Rosa on the ground rather gently, opening the sliding door on 
the side.  "Do you think we should secure her?"

Cecil shrugged.  "I guess... are we going to give her over to the 
AEIOU?"

"I don't think we have much of a choice.  Even though it may go against 
her will, she has already shown she is willing to hurt others.  And 
it's not as though the regular authorities could do anything with her."

"I suppose."  After placing Deedee in the front seat, he watched Anna 
secure Rosa in the back with padded leather restraints that Brett had 
procured for them from no one wanted to know where.  "I dunno, it just 
seems like such a waste to give up a fully functioning mecha..."

Anna gave him a Look.  "We are not 'giving her up'.  We are trying to 
help her."

Cecil gave a quick nod, and the two headed back towards the castle's 
main door.  Before stepping through the door, he gave a thoughtful 
glance back at the van, then quickly followed Anna.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

He awoke to a good bit of pain.  Blinking his eyes, trying to bring 
them into focus, he wonder why he felt as if he had been caught in an 
explosion.  Then he remembered he had.

Pulling himself into a sitting position, Brett noticed that everyone 
was gone.  Frowning, he retrieved his katana that lay several feet away 
and surveyed the room.  There was a small hole in the ceiling, directly 
above where he had woken up.  He spotted something shining on the floor 
and stooped to pick it up.  It was a small enamel pin of two anime 
characters he recognized as Miaka and Tamahome from Fushigi Yuugi.  
Deedee's then.  He pocketed it to give back to her later.

Deedee.  He couldn't be sure, his memories were a little hazy, but he 
was pretty sure that she had been the cause of the explosion that had 
stopped Rosa from killing him.  He did distinctly remember her 
demanding Rosa to let him go.  How odd.  He never would have expected 
such an act from her.  She had never seemed the heroic, gung-ho 
assertive type in the least, not to mention the fact that she had 
always gone out of her way to blatantly avoid him.  Very odd indeed.

Perhaps he wasn't the only one in their little group who was hiding 
things.  It seemed like the two of them could possibly have more in 
common than he ever imagined.  But he doubted he would say anything to 
her, at least not yet.  He did have a reputation to maintain, after 
all, and it was hard enough doing so when you looked like a real life 
bishounen.  At least his reputation was well established enough that he 
wasn't getting hit on by other guys at the conventions anymore... THAT 
had given him nightmares for quite a while.

Well, standing around here wasn't going to do any good.  Hefting his 
katana, only giving a minor wince as his shoulder complained, he headed 
down the corridor, in search of the others.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

"And then Deedee said something that sounded like she was talking about 
pickles and then there was a big explosion and Rosa and Brett kinda got 
hurt and then Anna set me free so I guess that Deedee won't put that 
bad bad patch on me now.  And that is what happened."

The lamps applauded Katie's story.  SD Kamen felt as if his head was 
spinning, and shook it a bit to make it stop.  "So you said that Deedee 
claimed that the patch thing was to help restore your original 
personality?"

"Uh huh, but I don't believe her, because she did all those mean 
horrible nasty mean experiments and stuff."

Frank fought the urge to sweatdrop.  "Um, Katie, if I tell you 
something, you promise you won't get mad?"

"Sure!"

"You *promise* you won't get mad?"

"Uh huh."

"I think that maybe Deedee was telling the truth about the patch, and 
maybe we should go talk to Otaku Force and-"

"NO!!  NO I DON'T WANT TO GO BACK AND I DON'T WANT TO DO MORE 
EXPERIMENTS WITH TURNIPS AND RATS AND BEANIE BABIES though the Beanie 
Babies were cute and they said that maybe I could have a few-"

"Katie!"

"Yes, SD Kamen?"

Frank sighed and rubbed his forehead under his hat brim.  "Do you trust 
me?"

"Yup!"

"If I went with you, and we talked to Otaku Force, and I promised that 
I would make sure that they didn't do anything to you that wasn't just 
to help you AND we made sure Rosa was okay and rescue her if necessary, 
would that be okay?"

Katie pondered this for a moment, head cocked to the side cutely.  "So 
if they got out the turnips, then we could leave?"

"Of course.  I just want to make sure that you are going to be okay, 
especially in terms of the transformation effecting you mentally."

"I haven't been acting weird or anything, have I?"

Frank was glad the mask hid his small sweatdrop.  "No, not at all."

"Wai!  Thank you SD Kamen!"  Katie hopped over and gave him a kiss on 
his nose, then bounded down the hall.  One of the lamps somehow 
whistled despite having no mouth or lungs.  Frank glared at it, turning 
a bit red.

'This isn't the time for this,' he thought to himself as he and the new 
lamp allies followed Katie, who was happily bouncing off the walls.  
'We have to make sure that Rosa is all right.  And more importantly, 
get help for Katie before her mental state progresses any further 
towards permanent bishoujo chibification.'  He shuddered at the 
thought.  Sure, he liked the girl, a lot in fact, but not enough to 
tolerate *that*.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

"Gah!"  Eugene barely managed to dodge the latest blast from Josh-chan.  
Luckily, he had stored a small bottle of the Sauce on his person for 
such an emergency, but had only really served to allow him to go on the 
defensive.  Apparently, even a brilliant SUPERYOUMAGENERAL was not a 
physical match for a super monkey-whatever DBZ person.  But since he 
now had the intellect of a small planet (or so he liked to think), then 
he was sure to win, as long as he ignored the fact that the bad guys 
never won.

"I suppose that this is the point where the Dragonball Z villains 
transform into a bigger uglier and more powerful form and proceed to 
kick the crap out of the hero, right?" he yelled to glowing figure.

"Um, yeah," Josh-chan answered, a little nervous.  Though endowed with 
some pretty impressive-looking powers, including a Super Saiyen form, 
she knew she wasn't really as powerful as her beloved characters, even 
in her male form.  Pretty lights and a bit of firepower were cool, but 
wouldn't help against a real-life Cell or Frieza.  "Uh, are you 
planning on doing that?"

"Sorry to disappoint you, but I plan to go the more traditional 
villainous route and announce my evil and nefarious plan now."  Eugene 
cleared his throat and assumed an impressively dramatic pose.  "Since 
no one seemed to be impressed by my evil-doing, I have stepped up to a 
new villainous level.  I have sent my most trusted lamp minions to 
infiltrate the base of Maplecrest's cable provider and shut down all 
activities.  That's right kids, no cable, no TV shows, no Cartoon 
Network, no Toonami."  He burst into a rather dry evil laugh.

Josh-chan froze.  "But... but... I used all my DBZ tapes to change into 
this form!  I need to tape them all again!  You can't do this!  I 
thought you *liked* anime!"

Eugene crossed him arms and said the cool line he had thought of 
several weeks ago and had been waiting ever since to use.  "My dear 
otaku, I *am* anime now."

"Oh yeah?  Well... well... I'm going to kick your ass!  But not right 
now!"  Josh-chan frantically flew towards the heart of the city.

"Yeah, if you can even find me," Eugene muttered as he retreated 
towards the castle.  Then, realizing he was ruining the moment, he once 
more snapped into a dramatic pose.  "And so, it begins," he cackled 
ominously.  Then he rushed off to find a nice hiding place.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

Inside the official Otaku Force transport vehicle, Deedee slowly awoke.  
Blinking confusedly, she glanced around, trying to discern her 
surrounding.  She caught a glance of herself in the rearview mirror, 
and noticing something seemed to be wrong, took a closer look.  Her own 
pale face stared back, surrounded by a mess of brown, uneven, ratty-

"WHAT HAPPENED TO MY HAIR!?!?!?!?" she shrieked.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^
^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

Gah.  This is yet another in the series of part-written-in-three-or-
less-days.  At least this one was quickly pre-read (thanks Lurker!) and 
pretty thought out while I was on Christmas vacation.  I wanted to get 
them out of the castle, but it looks like it wasn't meant to be ^_^  At 
least I got to do some stuff with Commander Fuzz and Brett.  Anyway, 
please write some reviews for me on the new MB or something.  Coming up 
next by Lady Brick, Starburst Crystal!  Yay!

Lady Brick
Lady_Brick@yahoo.com