From Venus With Love

From Venus With Love is the twenty-first chapter in the Wombles Seven.

A letter floated in to where Steed & Cathy were. Cathy read it out loud. “To anyone who reads this letter, please be aware that I am on a mission to take over the multiverse. From Venus with love.”

Cathy was confused. “What? What’s the multiverse?”

“I have no idea.” Replied Steed. “Well, of course you don’t.” said Cathy. “Hey!” said Steed, feeling a bit offended.  Cathy ignored him.

Stephanie Kingsley was drinking tea in the opening to The Seacave. She was completely unaware that Cadmus and a creepy old man were both after her and of course, being from Soton, it didn’t occur to her why anyone would even think she was insane. If she’d known that Cadmus existed, she would’ve understood that but unfortunately, she didn’t.

In the meantime, Clary was drinking coffee in a random London café, trying to figure out what the ruby and emerald item on her was and how she was going to get back to Brooklyn.

Charlie was getting rather sick of the colour orange. She imagined everything being bright pink to entertain herself while she waited for someone to come and rescue her.

Mrs Peel was muttering to herself. This annoyed Charlie and made her personal entertainment attempts a little less effective because she found the Mr Punch voice considerably annoying, especially when she had no way of escaping from it.

“Shut up!” she said and got whacked on the head so that she fell unconscious again.

Back in Charlie’s underground house, Gambit had just woken up. “Charlie?” he called out. “Where are you? Has anything exciting been happening?”

There was no reply. “Charlie? Charlie!”

Gambit looked all around the house, only to find it totally empty.

Over in Montreal, Mal still hadn’t actually been able to find the secrets broker. She had found – and been captured by- The Superlative Seven though.

“Who do you work for?” demanded their leader. “I don’t work for anyone.” Replied Mal. “And I haven’t even done anything to stop you yet.”

“You are trespassing in our territory.” Replied the leader. ”I didn’t know it was your territory.” Retorted Mal.

“Even if that’s true, you have made the mistake of saying that you haven’t done anything to stop us *yet*. That means you’re planning to. And that means that we’re going to have to kill you.”

Meanwhile, Tara had lost track of the creepy old man and gone back to her house. She was just laying about on the sofa eating liquorice laces when the phone rang. Instead of answering it, she threw it on the floor and it broke in two. She sighed, saying, “Oh dear, no-one can ring me now. Never mind, at least I won’t get disturbed.”

She realized she had finished the liquorice so started sipping on her glass of champagne. She was interrupted again, this time by a thunderclap. All of a sudden, a dark-skinned woman appeared. “You must come with me, Tara Keel.” She said.

“What?” said Tara. “No I mustn’t!” She picked up a strawberry-iced cupcake. The dark woman was annoyed. “Yes you must! Don’t you just lay there eating cake!”

“Oh, sorry, wrong item.” Said Tara and picked up a crystal-studded pink gun. She shot the dark woman in the head and they collapsed. Tara kicked her absently in the side. “Well, I suppose I should wait until she actually dies to bury her.”

Back in the Room 101 studio, Teresa Lisbon hadn’t been chosen to go in and so was now free. She immediately ran off to continue studying the Katy footage. It got her nowhere.

Tara was no longer laying on the sofa. Instead, she was laying on her large extra soft rug, right next to the dark woman, who was on the rather solid and stone-cold floor. The gun had been laid on the woman’s chest while Tara dug into the cupcake, waiting for her to die.

Suddenly, Tara heard a phone ring. “What…?” she said. “I smashed my telephone and I don’t have a mobile. Oh…” she said, looking sideways at the dark woman. “Maybe you do.”

She fished a mobile out of the dark woman’s pocket. Well, actually, it was one of many pockets so it took a while to find the right one. She answered it and was surprised to hear what basically sounded like Mr Punch complaining to a friend that the evil plan they’d suggested wasn’t working very well. She didn’t say anything and simply ended the call while picking up a bottle of pineapple juice to drink and turning the TV on to watch an old, black and white movie.

Venus, who was still in her hotel room without a view, was working out her plan to take over the multiverse.

“Hmmm, now where should I start?” she murmured to herself. “It’s hard enough taking over the world, so I guess this plot could be kind of difficult. But I really can’t think of another way to fill in my spare time since I’ve been *really* bored lately and singing everything is getting to be a sort of samey way of dealing with that.”

Somebody came into the room. “Excuse me, Mrs King, we have a letter for you.”

Venus glared at them. “Well, knock first and you don’t have to speak, just leave it there!”

“Of course, Mrs King.” They said, leaving the letter next to Venus’ multiverse domination plans on the desk. Venus didn’t actually read the letter, due to the fact that she was focusing on filling in her spare time, but it was a message from Katy, asking if they could join forces, because she’d also come across the floating letter about taking over the multiverse.

Katrina was in her house, wondering what had happened. She tried to figure it out. She failed miserably. She couldn’t work it out. She didn’t actually know about TODE so unless someone explained everything to her, she was never going to work it out.

Katrina’s thinking was interrupted by a frantic knocking at the door. She answered it to see Gambit standing there. He looked worried.

“Have you seen Charlie anywhere?” he asked. “Apart from when I suddenly saw a load of unconscious people including you and her in a café, no.” replied Katrina. “But don’t worry, I expect she’s just gone shopping.”

Gambit cheered up. “Oh, OK then, can we watch some TV until she gets back?” Katrina smiled. “Of course we can!”

So they went into the living room to watch *The Avengers*.

Rather than shopping, Charlie had woken up again and was now daydreaming about everything being bright red while Mrs Peel muttered to herself about a friend of hers hanging up for no apparent reason. Charlie considered telling her to shut up again so that she didn’t have to keep staring at all this orange but decided against it since she didn’t want to wind up having an excessively sore head all day.

Tara had finished her juice and was halfway through the movie when the doorbell rang. “Go away, I’m busy!” she called out, wishing she could pause the TV broadcast. But Evie came in anyway.

“Um…hello.” Said Evie. “I was told that the occupier of this house is into fashion and most of my outfits seem to have disappeared so I was wondering if you knew anything about that?”

“SHUT UP, I AM TRYING TO WATCH THIS MOVIE, DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THAT!” yelled Tara.

“Er…” said Evie, who was rather nervous about the look of anger in Tara’s eyes. “I think I’ll…go…now.”

“YES YOU WILL!” yelled Tara, and Evie sprinted out the door, slamming it as she went.

Gambit & Katrina had just finished *Quick Quick Slow Death* and finished all the Haribo sweets they’d that they’d had to go with it. The phone rang, and Katrina answered it.

“Hello?” she said. A bizarre voice replied, “Mrs Purdey, would you please tell Queen Lady Catherine Steed the Sixth that I do have Charlie and I am most certainly NOT Mr Punch!”

“No, I’m sure you are not, but you don’t have Charlie because I can be quite sure that she’s simply gone shopping and you are a merely a prank caller. Goodbye.”

Katrina ended the call. “I hate prank callers.” Said Gambit then realized that *The Danger Makers* was about to start so turned the television’s volume back on.

Venus had finally figured out her multiverse domination plan. She expected she would need allies but she could quite easily kill them all afterwards and have it all to herself. Satisfied, she picked up Katy’s letter and read it aloud.

“To the evil genius that is Venus King, you may remember me, but please try to see me in a different light as I now wish to be your ally in multi-universe domination. I think I could be quite useful. All my love, Katy. P.S. Did you know that Dora Aniston is leading WOOF? I think she might be useful too.”

Venus smiled and wrote a reply.

*To my dear Katy*

*I am searching for allies in my plots and I would be quite happy to take you on and let bygones be bygones.*

*From Venus with love*

Venus laughed, thinking how much fun she was going to have killing Katy once they’d succeeded. She got similar letters from LSFS, Tara, Trigon, Catwoman, Dora Aniston and The Superlative Seven.. She accepted them all. She didn’t actually know that Trigon was a demon so thought he’d be as easy to kill as anyone else.