Mannequins from Mars - 8

by Paul Jutras

        "Help me take charge of the situation, Sylvia." Samantha said, knowing her team members needed to be trusted. As they took out their blasters, they blew apart the mannequin zombie farmers.

     "We're the federal help you requested." Kim said to the girls at the school dance, who took off their hose.  Team mannequin followed the same plan until almost everyone was restored and the nylon aliens got more than runs to finish them off.

       "All right!" The girls cheered. "We did it!"

       Soon all the girls returned home on Christmas Eve for a toast of Egg Nog with family and friends. Inside the girls' heads they heard Dan, now a mannequin, gave a special thanks to the girls in his mannequin voice. "Maybe next time I'll join you in the field."

 

     Early Christmas day, Samantha Pizza and her friends Tina, Christine and Kim got up to find nothing at all underneath the tree. "This isn't right." Sam said as she looked toward her friends.

    "You can say that again." Dan's voice came into their heads. A voice that didn't sound like Dan at all. "The problem isn't just my voice."

     "How so?" Samantha sighed as the girls in semi-transparent nightgowns stood before the presentless tree. "Our parents have mistaken Christmas for Easter and hid our gifts?"

    "Not that our plastic bodies feel the cold or need many clothes." Kim said with a sexy smile as Dan interrupted them by saying: "Girls, please! Yours isn't the only house to be hit. A Christmas gift bandit has stolen every present on Earth!"

     "You're kiddin," Tina said, in no mood for a joke. "By the way, what's wrong with your voice?"  

     "I should have had you change me back like the farmers." Dan said as he drummed his plastic fingers on his desk. "Changing into a plastic, sexless male mannequin at first was one thing. The process didn't end there."

    "You mean..."  Kim cringed at what Dan was talking about. She tried to come up with images of what Dan looked like now that the mannequin transformation had completed its process.

     "I'll be able to join you in the locker rooms as well as on your mission." Dan replied. "I need you to come into headquarters so we can be prepared and I can introduce you to my replacement."

     "I don't understand." Sam said as the girls started slipping out of their bed clothes and slipped their fused toes into pairs of heels and their bodies into some bare-midriff stretch tops and tight Capri pants.  "We'll be right down."

     "Since I'll be joining Team Mannequin, ma'am president has appointed a woman, Sharon Ember, to take my place at the field desk." Dan said as the girls transported before their former commander and now team mate.

     "It isn't possible." Kim said as she laughed at how poorly Dan; now Donna, had put on his make up. Not a very convincing job for a newly female mannequin. "You'd better let us help with your face before your replacement does get here."

      "Whatever the problem behind the theft,  we can handle it." Samantha said as a metal door panel slid into the wall and Sharon walked in dressed like someone was filming a second Men In Black movie.  Right down to the wraparound sunglasses she wore.

     "You'll find your mission wardrobe in the boxes being brought in now." Sharon said as a series of M.I.B-dressed men set down boxes in front of them. When Samantha opened the box, she pulled out a white leotard and tights, pink tutu, and toe shoes.

     "What kind of mission outfit is this?" Tina said as she pulled out a blond Shirley Temple wig and pink party dress with white polka dots, cut in a retro 50's style. There were also white socks and saddle shoes in there. "I wouldn't be caught dead in this thing."

      "The crook is stealing toys." Sharon said as she took a seat behind her new desk, crossed her black-sheathed legs, and glared at them from behind her sunglasses. "Once you're in the outfits, Dr. Al will shrink you to toy size. Your plastic bodies will make you perfect for this undercover assignment."

     "Now why did I ever want to get back on the field?" Dan said as he slipped on a rag doll outfit and Samantha had to redo his makeup to match. "At least I don't have the problems real women would have."   The rest of the team got dressed quickly.

     After the girls were shrunk to doll size in the agency lab, they were packaged into display boxes, wrapped, and put under a decoy Christmas tree. "We don't know how the thief works, but we hope he or she will think you were missed last night." Sharon's voice said in the teams' heads.  "All you have to do now is stay still and wait."

     "The gifts are under the tree." Al said, hiding in the for-sale house they had rented for the 'sting' assignment.  "How are we going to lure the thief out?"

      "Leave that to me." Sharon said as what looked like six year old girl in a long dress and heels walked into the room as if ready to go to Church. The 'child' spoke with their bosses' voice. "I used the shrink ray to reduce myself to child size; this outfit hides my more developed body."

    "Oh look!" Sharon shouted in a joyful little girl's voice. "Santa didn't forget me this year. He must of hidden my presents and now just taken them out." 

    "I can't believe this." Sylvia thought to herself as she struck a pose in the snow globe that she was assigned to just before the wrapping was torn off. She had to remain still to keep up the illusion of being a plastic figure inside the globe while the swirling 'snow' tickled her tiny nose. Sharon set the globe quickly aside and opened the box that doll Tina was in and then Dan's box.

      "Oh daddy," Sharon continued her little girl act to Al as she opened Christine's box and found her dressed as a cheerleader. "These are just what I wanted."

     "What now?" Christine thought as she remained stiff and allowed Sharon to adjust her pose, then held it just as a real doll would.   No different than being set up as a life-sized mannequin, but just as boring.  She just hoped the crook would show up soon so she could return to normal size.

    Little Sharon unwrapped Samantha's box next and wound up the music box the ballerina doll was perched on.  With a tune from the Sugar Plum Fairy, the miniaturized operative twirled around and around in a perfect pirouette.

    Al and Sharon then pretended to head off to Church; which included driving around the block.  As they left, the girls were left beside and inside a doll house. The sound of footsteps was heard approaching.

    "This is it, Donna." Samantha whispered to Dan. "Ready for your first  team battle?"

     "We can't fight yet." Dan whispered back. "We need to find out where the toys were being taken. That's why my anklet included a homing device. "Sharon will be guided right to us and thus to the loot."

     "I don't believe it." Sylvia thought as she stared through her glass prison at  a glowing energy field. A normal-looking young girl dressed in a pink play dress stepped through; scooped up the toys, and put them into a picnic basket. "The crook is from another dimension."

     "This wasn't counted on." Dan said as he saw the girl move into the nimbus of the energy transport, then enter the shadowy living room of a house that was a double for the one they had just been in. Except this one had a lived-in look to it.

     "What now?" Christine asked.

    "Search me." Samantha said hoping that this case would be easy. She never expected that they'd be taken to another dimension. She couldn't see how Sharon could follow them and rescue them with the other toys.

      "Who's there?" The girl asked, hearing the shrunken agent's voice.

   "Hold it!" Christine voice said as she opened the lid of the picnic basket and aimed her tiny blaster at the thief. "In the name of planet Earth, I demand that the toys you have taken get returned to their rightful owners."

    "Hello, my name is Rita." The girl introduced herself, not surprised at seeing a talking toy doll. "Those things that I take from your world are the only toys that exist in my world. I saw through papa's dimensional scanner how happy your kids with toys are. I want my friends and me to be that happy too."

      "Doesn't seem like we have a real crook here." Dan said as Rita set the girls down in the middle of a model city that expanded the length of this family's old dining room table. Sylvia was glad to get out of the snow globe and was glad not to have to find someone who appeared to be a giant in their current state. "Just a mixed up child."

     Getting things straightened out with Rita's parents, Dan showed her dad how to make toys for all the kids he wanted to. They then returned to their own world and to the correct size. 

 

The End


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