Pennybags Gets Mad Now

At Mama Brain's Arcade, there had been a dark haired biker looking dude with his back turned playing a game of Galaga II through the entire conversation.  As the number by The Organization drew to an end, he stopped playing, and turned and looked what must have been almost seventy five yards, at Lemmy, who gazed at him from the audience at the front of the stage.  Lemmy walked towards the arcade, weaving in a trance, meandering between drunken and stoned concert goers, ("Hey, buddy, you wanna hit?" a long haired kid shoves a joint in his face), "Nah!!" Lemmy pushes it away, instead feeling in his back left pocket, and pulling out his half pint bottle of Jack.  He keeps walking towards them but he never gets any closer.  He is lost in a crowd of ecstatic revelers who'd just had their minds blown.
The arcade seems to stretch away further than before from the stage, like the door in a hallway in that one horror movie, when the poor protagonist can never get to the end of the hall to safety and get away from what was coming behind--

Something ripped in space time and the dark haired biker turned toward Mama Brain and Lemtata.

It was Glenn Danzig.   He looked truly frightened.

"He's coming." He said, looking further away from the stage and behind the ladies.
"I think he's mad now."

Then they heard the laughing.

Milk Rock

“The will to do it a twist!” cried the Lonely God.

“Uh… what?” exclaimed everyone else in the room. Which was kind of somehow a store and kind of somehow a bar, because it was funky that way.

“You have committed all the sins!”

“That was surprisingly comprehensible,” mumbled Lemtata.

“Any you do not have to have an Candice! No, I will send of you all to another place and time! To Toronto in 2013! And—”


Mama Brain interrupted. “Yeah, babe. *Which* 2013?”

“Uh… what?” exclaimed everyone else in the room, except the Lonely God.

His response was “Funky woman really talk!”.

“What is he talking about, hon?” Lemtata asked Mama.

“Oh, everybody died.”

“What?”

“Just like that. Suddenly, everyone died. Just us humans, not anything else. It was about, I don’t know, 2016 or so? I wasn’t following that closely. Then human history started over again from the monkies and, well, a few billion years later, here we are, honey.” Mama Brain was now on UFO stage of Time Pilot, but did not seem to be giving it any attention while sailing unscathed through the hails of on-screen bullets.

“Yeah... right. Some kind of weird poison or something?”

“Oh no, the authors were just bored I think.”

“The AUTHORS?”

“Oh, they’re all right. Hey look, we’re there!”

To Lemtata’s amazement, they really were there. Mama Brain’s arcade corner, where Lemtata was standing to chat, was still an arcade corner, but it was further away from everyone else in the concert hall. They were in a concert hall. Some band was giving a concert.

“This piece is by The Organization,” announced the band leader. “It doesn't have lyrics, so we gave it some, because it's no fun just being a cover band all the time. Can we hear it for creativity?”

The crowd roared.

“All right. Bear with us, this song doesn't have much room for lyrics, so it might sound pretty strange. But it sounds pretty strange anyway. All you big fans, you know what we're talking about! Get ready for Milk Rock!”

Into various points in the melodious cacophony that ensued they moaned and shouted:

Fantastisch,
Elektrische,
Melancholisch,
Irrsinnig,
Romantisch,
Statistische,
Poetisch,
weiß, schmelzende Musik...

Lemmy stood at the front of the audience throughout the whole song, his jaw hanging low.

Lonely God

As the battle commenced, Joe happened to be eating a bag of asian potato twists.  He watched from a bar stool, semi-interested, and nudged Lemtata.  A fight for the soul of Candace began, Mama Brain against the two Pennys, and one Penny against the other.  There was lightning and electricity and strange ooze and screaming.  Most of the bars patrons split when it started, except for Joe, Lem, Lemmy, and Nik Turner, who was too busy rolling a joint on the bar to notice the commotion.

"She's mine!!!" screamed Pennybags, his monocle steamed up with perspired moisture.

"You can't just make up the rules!! She still has a choice in this!" replied Pennywise, his long green teeth oozing and dripping, his eyes like a sickened reptile.  

Pennybags shot a laser out of both his eyes, chuckling and grimacing.

"It's too late.  You know it.  I know it." 

Mama Brain was not having it.  She had not come for anything less than Candace and the end of both of these monsters.

Joe stood up and briskly walked into the fray in-between the three of them.

"Stop," he said.  "This matter is outside the authority of all of you. The Lonely God will decide. Let him come forth."

Joe threw down his bag of twists and motioned to the others to look.

After a minute of suspicious glaring, they all gazed down to look at what he had discarded.

Then a miracle occurred.

Micro Mini Cool

Penny and Penny each strode to the Soups and Pasta aisle, each full of the urge for confrontation, and stared down it at each other as Mama seemingly wove incomprehensible plans of her own on that Time Pilot cabinet.

Pennywise broke the silence first.

"I think it's time to put a new record on the turntable, Bags.

It's strange that it's all gone so wrong... these guys freaking on the floor before us... these spiderwebs of horror... Don't you agree?"

"It's always the small things, young man."

"...Sigh. You were always so crude, and you haven't changed."

"And so refined about it, Wiseguy!"

"And so refined. Yes, she was small. But she's no thing."

"She's a thing for us. A prize. I'm just honest about it."

"...It didn't have to be."

"But it is."

"But it is, but... she was such a treasure. I mean, a good person. Great to be around. Cool!"

"I am not interested in 'cool,' young man."

Pennywise ignored him. "Why did we go to the store late last night looking for this fight?"

(Jose checked his watch. It really was a new morning... where had the time gone?)

"I no longer care about the girl. But I won't forget your slights."

"You don't care? Then burn this." Pennywise threw a heavy framed photo at Pennybags. The glass in front shattered as it landed. "You don't care, right?"

The photo of Candace was shoulders-up, so here she stood as tall as anyone. Her smile in it could radiate happiness into the hardest of hearts. Pennybags lost his composure after just a glance, then regained it. "It doesn't matter. She's gone," he sniffed.

"You mean she's gone to where we wouldn't follow."

"I'll only follow without you. That's why you're going to die, Wiseguy."

"I know you'd only follow without me. And for years, I would have only followed without you. But now, you're going to follow me."

The scenery began to change. The characters did not. "I'm sorry," muttered Pennywise.

Penny for Candy

As it turns out, Pennybags and Pennywise both adored Candy.  And they both went to extremes to taste a little.
 Like infiltrating the store and rewiring the security system.  Like conning Joe and his crew, as well as the British Hawklord rockers into acting as a distraction.
Like creating an entire virtual computer landscape to house the secret.

You see, Candy was no ordinary virtual concubine.  She had once been a real girl.  Like an inverse female digital Pinocchio, she had become their private puppet.  And she just happened to be Lemtata's long lost sister Candace.

Now, Lem! Go the Synthesizer Way!

"...Mark," Lemtata sighed a few minutes later, now back down in her seat in the booth, her eyes still painfully watering from the local atmosphere. "I mean it's a niggl - ummm, ermmm, umm. It's a minor point, I mean we all agree that, uh guy? with that gun was a jerk and that I acted in self-defense. Why do you care if I used my fist or my floss?" Mama Brain nodded agreement.

"Because you're making shit up, that's why." Mark said slowly, while subconciously pulling on his green workman's suspenders. "Yer makin' shit up!" Fast this time. "Those are MY pants. You know that. I know that," he added, sniffling a little snot onto his sleeve. "I loaned them to you. You know. I know. AND I DIDN'T HAVE FLOSS IN MY POCKET. I don't. Ever. 'Cuz that would be weird. C'mon, you hit him. Weren't nobody out there with you to see if you did or not. But all you had were yer fists. Y'hit him."

Mark was the kind of leftover childhood friend that you'd like to get rid of, but you'd kind of feel guilty. And hey, at least they'll loan you a pair of pants when you haven't managed to do the laundry in a week.

"Well... maybe just once you did have floss in your pocket? Just a weird coincidence?"

"Righhht, Lem. Or maybe you slipped a box of floss in the pocket where you were changin' into them in the bathroom here. Magic floss. No-bulge magic floss."

"Uhhh... you were staring at my leg, Mark?" Mark blushed.

"Hey boys," said Mama out of her undying love for confusing Mark. "Girl talk time. And Lem here needs some fresh air." Mama and Lem stepped outside, gasping in relief the moment they did.

After regaining her breath, Lemtata asked, "What is it, Mom? If it's about introducing you to my boyfriend, the answer is still no. He's kind of weird. Anyway, what is it?"

"Lem, I never knew you were one of us. But you are."

"What are you talking about?!"

"You can synthesize."

"Synthesize?"

"Make shit up. But for real. From... atoms, I guess."

"You mean like that floss? Fuck you, I know you like shitting people but this is kind of sick."

"Reach into your pocket, Lem."

Lemtata pulled out a bouquet of dandelions.

"I never knew you cared!"

"Fuck you. Hey... looks like I can't control this? Pick what I get and when and why? Like, can you?"

"...Kind of? Not much? I guess... not? So? Anyway. Will you use it for good?"

"Like a cop?"

"Sure, uh, OK, like a cop." Mama Brain reached into her purse with her eyes closed and handed a confetti-gilded statuette of Ganesh to Lemtata. "This is your badge. I say so. What is it?"

"Some... elephant thing? Looks like a stoner art project."

"Well, that's your badge. Wear it with pride."

"Won't."

"...Bear it with pride?"

"I guess."

"Oh, I should also tell you about Geo--"

...but just then, Mama Brain was hauled off with no justification by a Police car, with Andy Summers at the wheel.

The Red Alder tree releases its deadly pollen while Robert gasps for breath.