🚀 go-pugleaf

           CRAPSHOOT & CO. #13: WHO'S MINDING THE MINT?
                        By Robotech_Master


    Captain Grovel sat in the Captain's Chair on the bridge of
Japan's pride and joy, the Super Doubletalk Fortress One.  It was
a powerful starship, the showcase of an astounding new
undertechnology, Rotomech.  It was a comfortable chair.
    The SDF-1 was in geostationary orbit, over 20,000 miles away
from the surface of the earth.  This was primarily a shakedown
cruise, testing the repairs made after the climactic battle
between a massed armada of most of the galaxy's warships versus
Satan's Yesj.
    It was a source of no little irritation to the Captain that
the mighty SDF had been able to do very little against Satan's
warship, which had been defeated in the end by one man with the
power to create nuclear explosions by stomping his feet.  After
all, a man had to have his pride.
    Other than the repairs, the other element of the ship
undergoing testing was the cadre of Disposable Extras drafted
from Japan's standing army.  These Extras' duties were to stand
around in corridors and control rooms looking busy, then lurch in
unison with impacts to the ship and, if necessary, die in a
picturesque manner if the hull was breached.  More Extras than
usual had been lost in the Yesj battle and they'd needed
replacements.  They took time to train, but the ship did need a
crew.
    Grovel took his pipe out of his mouth and gazed out from
under the brim of his captain's hat.  "Leeza, course correction
two degrees starboard," he ordered.
    "Two degrees, aye sir."  Commander Leeza Hades manipulated
the controls at her station.
    "Very good."  Grovel relaxed in his chair, steepling his
fingers.  So far, so good.  No enemy starships, no strange alien
threats...might as well be a pleasure cruise.  He tapped a key on
one of the armrests.  "Captain Grovel to Main Engineering.
Status, mister?"
    "All McCulture readings nominal, Captain," the engineer on
watch replied.
    "Good, good.  Let's keep them that way, shall we?  Grovel
out."  He turned off the intercom, then yawned.  Command could
sometimes be like this--boring to the point of torpor.
    Grovel was on the point of sending one of the enlisted crew
to get him more coffee when an insistant beeping started
sounding.  Groval was alert instantly.  "Shammie!  Did you forget
to change the battery in the bridge smoke alarm again?"
    "No, Captain.  I'm reading a blip on the monitor!"  Shammie
punched some buttons.  "It's some sort of space vehicle!  It just
launched from northwestern North America.  Size...comparable to
us, sir!"
    "Get me a visual," Grovel barked.  They did.  "What in blue
blazes--?"
    "It's a skyscraper!" Leeza gasped.
    "ANOTHER one?"
    "Maybe we're entering an economic development zone?" Kimbo
hazarded.
    "Captain, I'm reading some kind of energy reaction all over
that ship," Leeza reported.
    "Is it a weapon system?" Grovel asked.
    "No..."  Leeza punched buttons.  "More like a transformation
circuit."
    "Launch Lieutenant Hooter's Skoal Squadron!" Grovel barked.
"Arm all weapons, and go to red alert."
    "Aye, Captain."
    "Take us in for a closer look."  Grovel rubbed his chin
thoughtfully.  "Let's see exactly what it is before we start
firing."

    Inside that skyscraper, mechanisms unused for over fifteen
years were beginning to move.  Sections of the building shifted,
rotated, expanded, contracted, in a complicated sequence that
would have given Escher a good deal of inspiration.  The
Builtmore Tower was undergoing a remarkable transformation.
    On what passed for the bridge of that starship, a good deal
of consternation was being caused by these sweeping changes, but
the attention of all within was directed at something else
entirely.  Well, the attention of MOST within.  Jimmy Smathers
was peering curiously at a bank of controls and wondering which
button would bring up Super Mario, and Zen Navigator was looking
for a drinking fountain, but everyone else was paying attention.
    The object of all this attention was the newly-awakened Sasha
Borodurov.  "What for you to look at me, comrades?"
    "You're...you're..." Sheri stumbled.  "White," she finally
ventured.
    "It's true," Chance Vennt added.  "You've turned pale all of
a sudden.  Could this be the result of eating that thermonuclear
Tic-Tac a couple of episodes ago?"
    "To not know.  Feel...strange."  Sasha floated into a
somewhat upright position.  "To feel loss of weight, plusly."
Not only was Sasha now somewhat white, she looked somewhat green
momentarily.  "In outer space?"
    "Da--er, yeah, that's right," Sheri replied.  "This
skyscraper launched into space all of a sudden."
    "To be that normal?" Sasha wondered.
    "No, to be that not normal," Chance replied.  "Or something.
But it happened anyway."
    Sasha steadied herself.  "Feel...funny."  She took a deep
breath and closed her eyes, and a curious whitish haze coalesced
out of the air around her.
    "Hey!" Kissy McCall noticed.  "The peppermint odor's gone!"
    Chance looked on with great curiosity.  "What are you doing,
and how are you doing it?" he wondered.
    "To not know..."  Sasha lifted her hands, examined them.  She
rubbed her fingers together, examined the white substance which
now surrounded her.  "Is like being...there, but not there."
    "It must be like some kind of ectoplasm," Chance thought
aloud.
    "'Peptoplasm?'" Sheri suggested facetiously.
    "Perhaps you can manipulate it consciously."
    Sasha looked confused.  "Too big words."
    "Try to do something with it," Sheri Brown translated.
    Sasha's face brightened.  "Oh, da!"  She concentrated, and a
blast of whiteness shot out of her hand, propelling her halfway
across the room while coating a random control panel with a
white, chalky substance--which Chance was quick to identify as
peppermint candy.
    Sasha gazed at her white aura and breathed something in
Russian in an awed tone of voice.  Whatever it translated to,
Chance couldn't help but agree with the sentiment.
    "I think you've got another paranormal on your hands,"
Filmation remarked.  "One with powers of...peppermint?"
    "But isn't there a character with that schtick already?"
Claymation asked.
    "Sort of," Sheri Brown said.  "But I think that as long as
she doesn't freshen people's breath, it'll be okay."
    "Maybe she didn't freshen our breath," Kissy McCall remarked,
"but she certainly cleared out my sinuses.  Whew, what a smell
that was."
    Sasha fired another burst of mint, this one weaker, and
shoved herself down to take one of the seats at the main control
console where Sheri was.  "Where we are?"
    "In orbit somewhere."  Sheri punched a few keys.  "Try to get
some kind of status report.  I don't think the computer does
Cyrillic, though, sorry."
    "Da."  Sasha reached for the controls.  Of course, the moment
her white aura touched the keys, deposits of mint candy appeared
on them.  Hmm, thought Sasha, this could be a problem.  [She
thought it in Russian, though.]  How do I...?
    But even as she thought it, the minty aura faded away.  It
wasn't gone; it had just absorbed into her skin at her command.
She nodded, and commenced typing.
    No one had quite failed to notice all the shifting and
sliding around of the skyscraper's components, though Sasha's
transformation had been a more pressing concern at the moment.
Now that this had been dealt with, everyone was free to wonder
what was going on with the building.
    "Hey, what's going on with the building?" Claymation
wondered.
    "I'm checking that now."  Sheri Brown was keying commands
into the computer.  "As near as I can tell, it's some kind of
alternate configuration, expressly meant for space flight."
    "But what is--whoa!"  As Chance was talking, the part of the
floor on which one of his feet was resting dropped away, causing
displaced air to push him toward the ceiling.  "What's happening
NOW?"
    The control room itself was changing.  Part of the floor was
dropping away, another part was elevating, and the walls were
changing.  Fortunately, no one was injured.  Unfortunately,
neither was Jimmy Smathers.
    "To think this part of integral design scheme," Sasha
Bordurov reported.  "Bridge room to alter shape with ship
alongly."
    Everyone just sort of held on as best they could, and finally
the shifting stopped.  "Is everyone okay?" Chance asked.
    "I think so..."  Sheri looked around curiously.
"Er...doesn't this new bridge layout look familiar?"
    The control stations that she and Sasha were occupying had
been elevated on a platform above the rest of the bridge.  Toward
the front, various other control stations had dropped into lower
positions, and in addition, a large viewport had opened up to the
front.
    "Oh, NO..." Chance groaned.  "This isn't Builtmore
Towers--this is Builtmore Galactica!"


 WHAT WILL THE CREW OF THE SUPER-DOUBLETALK-FORTRESS ONE DISCOVER
                    WHEN THEY APPROACH CLOSER?

 WILL CRAPSHOOT & CO. FIGURE OUT HOW TO WORK THE CONTROLS (WHILE
     AT THE SAME TIME KEEPING JIMMY SMATHERS AWAY FROM THEM)?

     WHAT WILL BE REVEALED ABOUT SASHA BORODUROV'S POWERS OF
                           PEPPERMINT?

       WILL SHE CHOOSE A CODE NAME?  IF SO, WHAT IT TO BE?

                "Hey!  That's not funny!"  *SPLAT*


     SOME OF THIS AND SOME OTHER STUFF TOO, COMING UP ONLY ON

                           SUPERGUY!!!

(And whoever understands the reference in this episode's title is
                free to feel very, very special.)