21st night: What the fuck was that last title???

21st Night: Beyond Battledome

We open on the ship. Ena and dirk are trying to remove the ball of weird code paper they lodged in the 5-dimensional ping pong table, and end up using one of Ikan's pool cleaners to pry it out. Unfortunately, the pool cleaner becomes fused with multiple alternate versions of itself, rendering it useless. Avril and Mint d0 BUSINESS with the floating, cackling Baron Harkonnen expy Volup O'Poole for like 3 hours, and Ikan totally ditches those losers in a bid to get away from the weird old guys all around the table. She heads back to the ship to find Ena and dirk trying furiously to hide the broken pool skimmer, but eventually Dirk forgets he's supposed to be hiding it, and she finds out. The shark lady goes to her room in a huff.

Dirk and Ena feel hella bad for touching Ikan's stuff so they take the tube to Sweat n' Bet- which is under refurbishment due to Ena's escapade with the roulette table- and resolve to steal a pool skimmer from there. The infiltration goes remarkably well, seeing as the work crews are off duty, and Dirk has Cool X-ray Eyes. Sadly, the pool seems to have been emptied.

The two of them head back, but they seem to be being tailed. They lose their tails by walking through a tram and leaving out the other side. When they get back to the ship, Dirk presents Ikan with the pool scrubber, and she reveals that the only reason she was mad was that she doesn't like people touching her stuff. She tosses the pool skimmer on a pile of gifts she doesn't want.
Just then, Ena gets a call. The hesitant voice says to meet in an abandoned docking bay below.

Everyone proceeds down to find Vindictus Macallen down below the catwalk on the spooky dock. He tries to reason with the bunch, saying that it is in everyone's best interests to do what he says, and that Ena/Mercury-17 belongs to him.
Dirk gives a convincing, if bogus, account of how they met M-17, but Macallen doesn't seem to care. He seems pretty legit nervous. When Ena tries to shake some sense into him, he pulls out a sheet of paper similar to the one they'd found in Elvin's safe earlier, and a sheet with squares cut out of it. As he starts to read, the cyborg locks up, a vacant look on her face.
"60774 438-"
The series of numbers is cut off when Dirk shoots him, giving him enough time to grab the guy close. Unfortunately, he also knocks his hand off of the dead man's trigger in his pocket.
There is an explosion from the catwalk Julie Oulie bursts through a door with an explosion of glitter and beads. The head of security puts up an intimidatingly jarring facade between manic and crazy.
Dirk holds Macallen in front of him, telling Julie that no one needs to get hurt, to his protestations.
"She's going to open fire!", he says.
"You're bluffing." Ena replies, then turns to Julie. "You're not going to open fire, are you?"
"~~~**Of course not!**~~~", she says, while turning Macallen into swiss cheese, along with one of dirk's legs before he can jump behind some crates.

The Head of Security just stays up on the catwalk spraying bullets down on everyone until Ikan manages to take out her targeting computer with a well-placed EM rifle shot, forcing her to come closer. Ena also shoots off her corset.
There's a tussle on the ground, but Ikan makes the best of it, wrestling the Bag of Holding connected to Julie's back out, shutting off her supply of weapons, but not before getting blasted by the jet engines. She's okay, though.
Julie shoots Ena with her wavegun and narrowly misses, taking an ear and doing some injury in the process. Meanwhile, Ikan converts Ena's Bag of Holding into a Singularity Grenade, and Dirk gathers up the contents of Vindictus' pockets, including a whole load of those cut-out papers and a few credit chips.

Around Vindictus' corpse, something horrible begins to manifest. The same thing that has been making every room he's in feel much bigger, that has made everyone near him feel like they're being watched. It looks like Macallen's employers have been using some pretty extreme methods for making sure he stays out of trouble.

Julie catches one look at it and starts to freak. It's just the chance Ena needs to pin her. The two of them start groundfighting for a while until Julie manages to blast her off with the kickback of her wavegun.
Ikan finally finishes her bomb, and gets Ena out of the way.
It was just supposed to throw her somewhere she couldn't get out of, but instead it regurgitates the whole network of scaffolds Julie was using to store all of her weapons. They clip into the floor.
Then comes the singularity. At least it sucks up the horrible monster that was following Macallen.
Julie attempts to jet away from it, but her programming is apparently too simple to adjust for this situation, or maybe she's just panicking. She starts singing weird dial-up music.
Ena grabs ahold. Ikan turns on her magboots, and Dirk limps towards a shipping container, clutching on for dear life.
Ena helps Julie up, and the crew just sort of marvel at the black hole for a while.
"I didn't think that would actually... You know... Work.", says Ikan.
The thing starts going from black to red to pink, and it becomes pretty obvious it's going to explode. The bunch pluck the emergency plating off of the floor, revealing handholds, and monkey-bar their way to victory. Julie just jets off somewhere.
Dirk is a little too slow due to his injuries, and just as he reaches the door, the singularity detonates, blasting him forward and ruining his legs.
Ikan manages to disarm Julie- who is still spaced out- by removing the power source from her wavegun; a rare Ball of Knives. They head back to the ship.

Part 2 coming soon.