The Masked Marauder of Castle Doom
By Cheezey
“I don’t know about this,” Cossack the Terrible said to his companion, looking uncertainly at the bundle in her hands.
The girl, an attractive Doomite in her mid-twenties, batted her eyelashes back at him from where she stood, her lithe body pressed suggestively against his. “Please?” she purred seductively, “It’d really turn me on.”
The commander let out a semi-distressed grunt. It was not the worst thing he had ever done in the name of cheap sex, but it was among the most embarrassing. Cossack was not a particularly picky man when it came to what he would or would not do in the sack, especially when the one asking had a pair of bodacious ta-tas like that chick, but there were still a few things that gave him pause.
“Well, it’s kind of embarrassing…” he said, looking back and forth uncertainly between the box she held in her hand and the hooters holding up her too-tight top.
She slid her hand along the outer edge of his thigh and whispered in his ear. “If you do it for me, I’ll do anything you ask.” She squeezed his buns. “Anything at all.”
After a few more seconds of deliberation, he made his decision. He would do it, but he would hold her to her word in every perverted sense of it. He snatched the box from her fingers. “Deal.”
Giggling, she pulled back and grinned at him. She then flopped back onto his bed, unmade as it typically was while he leered back at her. Gods, she sure did bounce nice, he thought crudely, and that was the reason he was going to do it. Not out of sensitivity to his lovely companion, but because she was so good in the sack. So far he’d had pretty good luck with her. He had met her at a bar he frequented with his drinking buddies a couple of weeks ago and they had hit it off, well enough that he’d been able to convince her to come home with him the same night. As it turned out she was as easy as she was pretty, and as a bonus she laughed at all his jokes. He had gotten her number and when he called a couple days afterward, she’d not only picked up and talked to him, but made it clear she’d like to see him again. Score! They had hooked up a few times since, and each time he had gotten some without any clingy relationship drama or boring marriage talk to go with it. Sure, she wasn’t the brightest gal he’d hit the sheets with, but hey, no one was perfect.
And as he watched her slip her shirt over her shoulders, toss it onto the floor, and then wriggle out of her slinky skirt to expose a racy thong, he had the piggish thought that her body was damn close.
Oh yeah. He was the man.
That was why he was going to do it.
He was going to dress up as Zippo the Marauder.
Zippo, for those who were not in the know, was the quintessential sex icon of the most popular romance novel series on planet Doom. A mysterious Gloomite native, Zippo was a dashing and handsome masked vigilante in a flamboyant costume that had a habit of skewering losers and monsters on a long, almost-overcompensating length light lance with style and expertise that would make the most sophisticated man feel gauche and the most seasoned warrior inadequate. When he was not slashing and sashaying his way through the undesirables of the galaxy, Zippo was laying hot women in bustiers right and left, tearing bodices apart as if they were made of tissue paper while he spouted lines that men like Cossack thought were used only by men trying to pick up other men.
For some reason though, women ate that stuff up, just like they did Zippo’s sexually ambiguous costume and horridly clichéd Gloomite accent, which to someone from Galaxy Alliance territory would sound eerily similar to the stereotypical French accent from the planet Earth used by the world’s fictional character Pepe Le Pew.
Resigned to his task, Cossack made his way over to the walk-in closet to put on the Zippo costume in private. His dignity was already severely compromised by agreeing to wear the flashy get-up, but he refused to make it worse by allowing her to watch him strip himself of his raw masculinity while he slipped into the lace-up red boots. They were supposed to be “crimson, as the color of the heathens’ blood spilt by his deadly blade,” but the porn-store costume’s quality gave them more the look of fire engine red go-go boots.
The boots might not have been so bad if the rest of the outfit was not of equal caliber. The supple black leather pants adorned with “embroidered gold flames as vibrant as the aura of Hell itself” in costume seemed more vinyl than leather and screamed “flaming” in a way that he did not think was very flattering to the average straight man. Zippo also had a small and tight ass if the way his pants were cut was any indication, and not only did the vinyl grab and catch in ways that could be mighty uncomfortable if the pants were to be worn for more than a short while, but it also made Cossack squeak when he walked. The matching shirt that went with the pants was no better. It bared his chest, which was muscular enough to pull off the look, but the design was decidedly fruity, with gold flames climbing up each side of his torso.
On the positive side, the outfit did have a decent leather belt with a scabbard for a light lance that might have looked good had it not been part of that costume. Unfortunately any cool points the belt earned were eradicated by the fact that the weapon itself was obviously fake, complete with a low budget chemical glow stick illuminating the exaggerated length of the false blade and a vibrate feature on it to make it double as a different kind of toy altogether. Adding to the indignity were the ensemble’s gloves, in that same unfortunate scarlet hue as the boots, except that they were tipped with glittering gold flames to match the embroidery in the pants—“fingers like quicksilver, which moved as if they were on fire,” as it was supposed to be. Cossack, however, felt the gloves gave a very different effect, and demonstrated it by waving in a ridiculous manner to the mirror when he put them on.
The worst was yet to come, however. Zippo did not stop at a bad accent and porno store quality tight pants. He also wore a cape. Not that there was anything wrong with a cape—Cossack had a nice tasteful mustard one himself—but he drew the line at parading around in public in one like Zippo’s. It had black velour on the outside, “dark and mysterious, like the man who wore it,” and red and gold flames on the inside, “the fires of love that burned hot inside him and the heart of every woman he touched.” He felt something burning as he fastened that around his shoulders all right, but it wasn’t his heart; it was his cheeks. Gods, the things he did in the name of getting laid!
But sadly, there was still more. Two more pieces remained in the box. One was the mask. Because the enigmatic Zippo had to hide his secret identity—most likely from the fathers, brothers, and husbands of the chicks he boinked on the sly in the middle of the night, Cossack thought with a snort—he wore a mask. It was a simple black band of velvet that went around the eyes, which at least when Cossack looked at it in the mirror, seemed to him did not hide much. He supposed no one in the Zippo books ever bothered to check the nose, lips, or hair of the guys they were fighting or fucking. But he supposed if it got Zippo laid, the guy had to be doing something right, Cossack thought with a shrug as he went to put on the piece de resistance of the outfit—the hat.
The hat was by far the most hideous thing he had ever seen. Made of the same plushy black velour as the cape and mask, it was wide-brimmed enough to double as a beach umbrella, and it had the fringe to match. Red and gold ornamental fabric hung off the end of the brim to presumably give Zippo an added touch of sophistication. “Sophisticated” was not a word Cossack would have used for it, but he did not have to describe or even like the monstrosity, only wear it. Preferably for only a couple of minutes before his ravaging of the woman who forced him to wear it would knock it off and hopefully destroy it for all eternity.
Once dressed Cossack picked up the plastic light lance and switched it on, wincing at the painful cheapness of the prop sex toy. Man, couldn’t Zippo at least use an electrolash or a blaster? With a real weapon, maybe the Zippo costume might not be so bad. He looked at his reflection. Then again, maybe not. Zippo was pretty over the top either way. After a quick glance at the box for reference he shrugged. Weird as it was to dress up like him, he was confident that he at least made a respectably decent Zippo. In fact, he pulled the look off pretty well except for one thing.
Zippo, at least the way he was drawn, appeared to have a sock stuffed into his pants. The same way women typically sneered and jeered at the ladies in pornographic media for having fake breasts; Cossack rolled his eyes at the impossibly proportioned drawing of Zippo. “Well, I can top ol’ Zippy there,” he chortled childishly, and fished a balled-up pair of socks out of his sock drawer. “These pants kinda chafe anyway.” He then pulled apart the socks and stuffed them into his crotch around his goods, not only cushioning his personal electrolash against the cheap vinyl, but also giving him triple the proportions of the fictional man he wore the costume of.
His costume complete, Cossack struck a dramatic pose and swished his cape over his shoulder. “All right, my leetle love muffin!” he shouted out in a campy and exaggerated version of Zippo’s Gloomite accent. “Zippo ze Terrible ees coming out of ze closet for you!” With that he burst out of his impromptu dressing room in a melodramatic fashion brandishing his fake light-lance as though there was a giant robeast in the room holding his girlfriend in its clutches.
Excited by the appearance of her hero in tight flame pants, Cossack’s girlfriend squealed playfully, “Oh Zippo, I’m so glad you’re here!” and eyed him up like a tasty piece of meat from where she lay naked and spread-eagled on his bed.
As soon as he got an eyeful of that, Cossack decided that parading around in the dumb outfit was definitely worth it. Yup, once Zippo the Terrible got a piece of that action, all would be good. Playing up the part, he slashed his crappy plastic light lance through the air a few times not unlike the way Voltron diced up robeasts, and then strode over to his girlfriend with a smug leer on his face. “Zippo has saved you from ze deadly robeast, uglier zan ze weetch Haggar and more fierce zan ze breath of her steenky cat after a tuna buffet,” he crooned, leaning over her breasts, which heaved pleasantly with each excited breath.
He was pleased to see that the costume and act had the full desired effect on her, because she was all over him like a ten-tentacled robeast on a chow bin as soon as he approached. Circling her soft hands around his neck, she pulled him onto the bed with her and rubbed against him in ways that made the tight Zippo pants a lot tighter. “Mmm, you’re my hero, Zippo… let me make it up to you,” she panted between seductive kisses.
“Ze hot love of a beautiful woman like you ees all ze reward Zippo needs,” he responded as he straddled her on all fours. Not that he was complaining, but did chicks really go for lines like that, or was that just a strange rumor perpetrated by the authors of the Zippo type stories?
Apparently not, for as soon as he said the bad line in the even worse accent, she wrapped her legs around his waist, ground against him, and kissed him with previously unmatched fervor. “Take me, you masked stud!” She grabbed his hat and tossed it across the room to get it out of the way so she could smooch him some more. Naturally, “Zippo” made no protest. He also did not protest when her other hand slid beneath his shirt and cape and massaged his back, or the way her leg rubbed teasingly against the giant Zippo bulge in his pants.
“As you weesh, my dear!” Cossack answered in the Zippo accent with renewed zeal. “I will make love to you all night so hot zat eet steams up ze mirrors een ze bathroom, my busty beauty!” He had to try very hard not to laugh as he spewed the corny lines, but as long as they worked in working her up, he could zip out the drippy Zippo dialogue all night long. It had served him well thus far, and when he got a handful of the soft blue melons on her chest, she cooed with audible excitement.
She had just torn off his cape and reached down to stroke little Zippo when Cossack heard her giggle yet again. “Um, Zippo… I think you’re losing your socks.”
He lifted his eyes from the nice view of her breasts to meet her gaze. “Socks?” he inquired in the bad Zippo accent. “Zippo wears no socks where you fondle.”
“I mean this,” she snickered, and grabbed his pants at the low side of his calf, just below his knee, where one of the socks he had stuffed down his pants earlier had worked its way down in the midst of romping around on the bed.
Oh man. Now there went some cool points for sure.
Nevertheless, Cossack refused to let a little setback like that spoil his—or Zippo’s—good time. Instead he grinned and waggled his eyebrows through the mask. “Oh no my dear. Zippo ees all real and all man.” He thrust his hips forward in an exaggerated manner and kissed her neck hungrily in what could have passed as a bad imitation of a vampire. She giggled at his creative, if not over the top response, and wriggled into a position where she could reach up his pant leg and pull the sock out.
“Then what’s this?” she tittered.
Upon seeing the sock, “Zippo” smiled sheepishly. “Er, eet means eet’s time for Zippo to have a word with ze laundry man, light lance to face.” Before she could say anything else, he rolled over on top of her. “But no more talkeeng! Now is ze time for loooove,” he added quickly in the exaggerated Zippo accent, figuring that’s what the masked hero would do in such a situation anyway.
As it turned out, he was right. Instead of continuing to tease him, she eagerly accepted the advance, panting heavily and murmuring about how hot he was. Whether the complement was meant for him as Cossack or Zippo he did not particularly care, since either way it was still him getting laid. Before long the mighty Zippo was divested of everything but his mask, which he stared through at the ceiling in half-lidded pleasure as his cute conquest stroked his meat-lance with her lips and tongue.
Oh yeah, Cossack thought with shortened breath and a quickened pulse. It was good to be Zippo. He’d be her masked costume boy anytime she asked! Oh, baby, yes he would!
The insistent beep of a communicator sounded in the background.
He ignored it, and clutched at a silky lock of her green hair instead, groaning in indescribable pleasure as her mouth did incredibly naughty things to him.
It sounded again.
Fuck it. They could call back. He had better things to do—like her.
Beeeeeep!
Damn it, couldn’t Mom just leave a message?
Beep! Beep!
Voice mail was a wonderful thing. Almost as wonderful a thing as Zippo’s pretty little love toy, rewarding her masked hero for his service.
Beep, beep, beep!
He groaned, half in frustration from the annoying beep and half because his partner was very good at what she was doing. Just a few more minutes, was that too much to ask?
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
Cossack did his damnedest to ignore the unwelcome interruption. It was hard.
Beep!
So hard!
Beep! Beep!
He threw his head back on the pillow, ready to succumb to the pleasure afforded by her ministrations. At least Zippo was getting his reward…
Beep!
The alarm was so insistent, so rhythmic, just like her tasty little mouth.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Oh! Oh! Oh…
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
He let out an unintelligible noise of both incredible excitement and unparalleled aggravation. The head was great, but the ruin of his post-orgasmic afterglow with that accursed electronic invasion was anything but. Meanwhile, his girlfriend released him and peered up at him. “Baby, I think you’re beeping.”
Cossack sighed. He knew that, but he asked anyway, vainly clinging to his denial in the hopes that the gods would not be cruel enough to call him in on duty when he was just getting to lay a hot piece of ass. “Yours?”
She shook her head, shattering his illusion and dashing his—and Zippo’s—dreams. “It’s yours.”
“Ze Fuck.” The irony of his sentiment, being the curse that bore the name of the action he was being denied, did not escape him in that irritating moment, especially given that he said it in the bad Zippo accent.
Beep!
Glaring poisonously in the direction of the unwelcome electronic reminder, he held out his hand. “Pass eet over to me,” he muttered, still using Zippo’s accent in protest. There was no question about it, because only one incoming frequency could supercede the comm. unit’s programmed ability to go straight to voice mail after six signals—Castle Doom’s command center. That meant it was either the king, the prince, or the witch, and he could not ignore those calls. Taking the communicator, he read a text message on the screen indicating that he was to report to Haggar’s lab immediately for a briefing with her and then attend a subsequent meeting with her, King Zarkon, and Prince Lotor before Zarkon left on some business later on that evening.
The look on his face must have been pretty telling, for his girlfriend pouted even as she continued to fondle him with naughty, teasing little fingers. “Is my Zippo leaving me?”
“A man of ze galaxy like Zippo can never stay een one spot too long,” he replied with a sigh. “You know how eet ees being a marauder—you come, and zen you go.” He shrugged disappointedly.
“But what about me?” She draped herself over him, pouting more visibly, as he sat up and reached for his pants—the non-Zippo ones.
Cossack frowned irritably as he felt those luscious breasts press against his back. “Zippo regrets zees deeply. But eef he does not perform for heez king, zen he will perform for no one but ze bones een ze Pit of Skulls. You do understand, do you not my sweet sex keeten?”
His girlfriend nodded, and rested her head on his shoulder for a moment. “Yeah.”
“Tell ya what,” he said, lapsing out of Zippo-speak for a moment as he put on his regular boots. “This shouldn’t take more than an hour or two.” He figured that Zarkon’s business later on would signal the end of what he had to be present for, and then he’d be free for the rest of the night. “You stay here, and think about what,” he smirked and resumed the bad accent, “keenky theengs you would like Zippo to do to you in ze heat of passion.” He rolled over onto the bed with her for a moment, savoring the sensation of her naked body wriggling against him. “I will return as soon as ze king finishes with me to lay you like ze expensive rug.”
She chortled. “Zippo wouldn’t be that crude, y’know.”
Cossack reached for the black shirt on the floor and pulled it over his shoulders, not realizing that it was actually the Zippo shirt and not the plain one he usually wore with his fleet uniform. “Oh yes he would. He may have ze lines, but he ees ze pervert supreme, charming ze sexy ladies like you eento hees bed like warts to ze weetch Haggar’s face.” He grabbed his yellow cape and fastened it around his shoulders before turning back to his date, leaning over her with an appreciative leer. “You keep ze bed warm for Zippo, and Zippo will come for you to make you—”
She cut Cossack off with a kiss before he could make another crass remark to further undermine “Zippo’s” charm. “See you soon,” she said in a sultry whisper as they broke apart.
Oh man, I can’t believe I have to leave a hot horny chick in my bed to go see Haggar! This sucks! Cossack thought bitterly, cursing the karmic injustice of it all as he rose to his feet and gave the girl a melodramatic Zippo-esque bow. He then picked up his metal tri-horned fleet helmet and placed it squarely on his head, flashing a grin to her as he headed through the door—completely forgetting that he was still wearing his Zippo mask.
His girlfriend, however, did notice. “Uh, Cossack?”
“Yeah?”
Something about the way he looked back at her through that mysterious velour mask while he wore the metal fleet helmet, Zippo shirt, and the rest of his fleet uniform sent shivers down her spine. Zippo the Marauder was hot, but Zippo the Fleet Commander? Oh, wow. What more could a Doom girl ask for?
“Lance ‘em once for me, baby,” she giggled, and picked up the discarded costume light lance, switching it on to a glowing, vibrating hum.
“Later, tootz,” Cossack replied in his bad Zippo accent, and left her behind to go and take care of business, oblivious to the fact that he still wore the Zippo mask and shirt.
* * *
A few minutes later Cossack strode into Haggar’s lab. As usual, he had not bothered to knock, and he stomped on over to where she was standing impatiently. “All right, Haggar, this had better be good.”
The old witch turned around to greet him, and suddenly a smile cattier than that of her familiar crossed her features. “Oh, hello Zippo,” she cackled snidely, not bothering to stifle her snickers. “So glad you could make it here and take a break from all your marauding!”
When Haggar greeted him as “Zippo” he recoiled in horror. Why on Doom would Haggar call him that? They had not been loud enough for the entire castle to hear, had they? It was then that a horrible thought occurred to him. He knew the old witch had no life and spent way too much time in front of her scrying crystal…
“You spied on me!” he snapped in acrimonious outrage. “Do you always get your jollies that way, you wrinkly old pervert?”
Haggar had absolutely no idea what the buffoon was talking about, and she wondered what bug had crawled up his pants to make him so defensive when he was the fool parading around in a Zippo costume in public. “What are you talking about?”
Still blissfully ignorant about his attire, Cossack demanded, “Well why would you call me ‘Zippo’ unless you were spying on me?”
The old witch’s yellow eyes rolled at the accusation. She was many things, but a voyeur with a fetish for frizzy-haired dumbasses was hardly one of them. Honestly, did that fool have a small enough brain and a big enough ego to believe that he would be worth her time watching for such thrills? She supposed so, and it disgusted her. “The shirt and mask made it an easy guess, Cossack,” she enlightened him with more than a small amount of sarcasm.
The indignant Cossack opened his mouth to protest what had to be a bad cover lie on the witch’s part, but then he felt the telltale sensation of the velour mask upon the bridge of his nose. Oh no. He then gingerly put his hand on his side, as if to verify to himself that he was indeed wearing his usual black shirt and not the flaming Zippo attire. To his horror his fingertips brushed against a patch of glittery gold lamé flame climbing up his side as surely as a hot flush then climbed to his cheeks, turning them utterly purple beneath the mask that suddenly did not cover nearly enough of his face for his liking.
He let out a nervous chuckle while Haggar quirked her head and regarded him with far more amusement than he ever wanted to see the old crone direct at him. “So, Cossack, what did I supposedly spy on in my crystal?” she sneered triumphantly. “Or would you prefer I call you ‘Zippo?’”
His embarrassment increased tenfold. “Um—uh—well—ah, you see…”
The humiliated fleet commander got a brief reprieve when Prince Lotor barged into the chamber. “Haggar!” he shouted irritably, “My father is throwing a fit. Why aren’t you and Cossack up in the throne room yet? What’s keeping you two?” He cast only a brief glance Cossack’s way as he passed and mumbled only a casual, “Excuse me, Zippo,” before he realized what it was exactly that he had said. The second he did, he stopped dead in his tracks to turn stare at the masked man.
The Prince of Doom blinked, and then stared at Cossack again. Briefly he looked toward Haggar, back to Cossack, then to Haggar once more, and then to Cossack once again with a very disturbed look on his handsome features. Lotor was not sure why the highest ranking soldier in his father’s army save him was wearing part of a ridiculously fruity costume based on a romance novel character in the old witch’s chambers, but coupled with the fact that they were both late, looking increasingly awkward by the second, and that neither had gotten out much lately, Lotor could only draw one terrible conclusion. It put a mental image in his mind that burned so painfully it would take drinking a vat of wine to eradicate it, and he backed away slowly toward the door intent on doing that as soon as possible.
“I’ll, um, be back in a few minutes. You two, uh… carry on.”
When she realized what it was that Lotor had concluded, it was the old witch’s turn to panic. “Oh no, sire! It’s not what you think!”
Cossack blanched in turn as the realization sank in to him as well, a realization that involved him, Haggar, and sexual context. “Whoa, no way!” he blurted out, waving his hands wildly in protest.
“No really, it’s all right,” Lotor argued, and broke into a run toward the door. “Everyone’s got their fetishes and fantasies. Some men like older women, and I’m sure even ugly old witches find a man like Zippo attractive!”
A blast of magic from the witch’s staff caused the heavy door to slam shut before the prince could escape. “It’s not that!” Haggar insisted, trying to purge the repugnant thought having of sex with Cossack from her mind. “I have no idea why this toad pond born idiot is flouncing around like Zippo, but it has nothing to do with me! He just showed up here.”
“Yeah, I was wearing this when I got here,” he added with a vigorous nod. “I wouldn’t fuck her if she was the last sort-of woman in the Denubian Galaxy!”
“The feeling’s mutual, horn-head,” Haggar spat back in utter disgust.
Lotor eyed Cossack dubiously. “So you just felt like playing dress-up today?”
“No! I mean, ah, it’s a long story. I was in the middle of something when you called—”
“I’ll bet you were,” Lotor snorted derisively, before adding in his own imitation of the Gloomite accent, “Zippo!” Then both he and Haggar burst out laughing.
Cossack frowned as the purple in his cheeks grew richer. “C’mon guys, give me a break! I grabbed the wrong shirt!”
“And ze mask?” Lotor pressed, still mocking him in the bad Zippo accent.
Letting out a frustrated groan, Cossack looked up at the ceiling and wondered which god he had managed to piss off that day. “I forgot I was wearing it!”
Assuming a false and melodramatic look of sympathy, Lotor patted the fleet commander on the shoulder. “It’s all right, Cossack. There’s no shame in living out your fantasies. Some men aspire to be great kings, some to be warriors… and some to be Zippo the Marauder,” he finished with a snicker that slipped through the act. “Of course, I threw out my gladiator costume when I was twelve, but some men do grow up faster than others.”
“I don’t think I’m Zippo! I don’t want to be Zippo!” Cossack protested in a whiny tone.
“Hah, as if a crass numbskull like you could pull off Zippo if you wanted to,” Haggar interjected.
Cossack turned to glare at Haggar. “Look, my girlfriend thinks Zippo is hot, all right?”
Both Lotor and Haggar continued to snicker, and the witch shook her head condescendingly. “Oh Cossack, you don’t have to pretend.”
Lotor turned to her with an inquisitive look. “You think he’s making it up that his girlfriend asked him to wear that?”
Haggar shook her head. “I think he’s making it up that he has a girlfriend at all!” The two of them then roared with a second round of hearty laughter at Cossack’s expense.
He was not amused. A dark look crossed his features as he regarded them. “Hey, I’m not the one who spends my spare time conjuring tentacle beasts for fun!” he snapped back at Haggar. She had a lot of nerve ragging on his ability to get a date when she stood there looking like a half-decayed robeast carcass!
Undaunted by his comeback, she held up a bony finger in a tsk-tsk motion. “Now now, would Zippo say that? He’s supposed to be charming to the women, remember?”
Cossack scowled. “Fine, find me one, and I’ll charm her! Until then,” he lapsed into his Zippo accent again, “shut ze ugly mouth, foul wart covered beast!”
“Oh Cossack, you couldn’t charm your way out of a wet paper bag,” Lotor sputtered out through peals of laughter, both at Cossack’s horrible accent and the fact that he was standing there defending himself with such outraged indignation while wearing that gods-awful Zippo getup.
“Your Zippo needs serious work if you think that’s going to impress your imaginary girlfriend,” Haggar gasped through her titters. “That accent is faker than Merla’s hair!”
“That is fake, I know from experience,” Lotor quipped to the laughing witch, renewing their giggles once again.
Meanwhile, Cossack’s mood grew fouler with each guffaw. He would have loved to pummel them both, but one was his boss and the other had the magical ability to turn him into something nastier than she was—well, maybe not that nasty, but still close—so all he did was glower and sulk instead. “Aren’t we supposed to be meeting with King Zarkon anyway?”
“You’re right,” Lotor said, assuming an air of seriousness, before adding, “We’d better zip to it!”
That was all either he or Haggar needed to burst out laughing again.
Cossack let out an unintelligible growl, stomped over to the door, yanked it open, and stormed out in a huff, his yellow cape ruffling dramatically in the air behind him as he departed. How dare they make fun of him? He was Cossack the Terrible! Fleet Commander of King Zarkon, first son of a prominent noble family, former Emperor of Oron… and a damned fine Zippo if he did say so himself!
As he was leaving, Haggar almost spoke up to let Cossack know he still had his mask on. Then she thought about the rude ways he had insulted her, and she decided that if he was too dumb to realize he was still wearing his mask, that was not her problem. Nope, if “Zippo” was such a wise guy, then he was smart enough to figure out on his own that he should remove his stupid mask before he talked to the king. Instead she let Cossack leave without a word and turned to Lotor, smirking. When he turned to face her, she assumed a false girly-girl voice and said mockingly, “Who was that masked moron?”
The prince doubled over in a fresh peal of laughter, and Haggar echoed it with a hearty cackle of her own. Laughing almost the entire way, she and Lotor left the lab behind and followed that mighty masked marauder, Zippo the Terrible, all the way to the throne room.
When they arrived and a pair of royal robot guardsmen moved aside to allow the trio entrance, King Zarkon tapped his scepter impatiently against his knee. “Well it’s about time,” he said, peering irritably at the three of them. As they drew closer, he noticed something off about his underlings. It wasn’t his son; he looked like he usually did, with his long white hair flowing impeccably out from beneath his freshly shined ax-helmet. It wasn’t Haggar either. The old witch was the same hunched over figure in a drab brown robe followed by a blue cat like always.
But Cossack…
Zarkon squinted curiously at the figure of his fleet commander at the bottom of the stairs.
What was that fool wearing?
“Father,” Lotor greeted him ceremoniously with a bow.
“Your highness,” Haggar echoed with an equally respectful gesture.
“Sire,” Cossack added, also bowing. When he straightened, he felt the uncomfortable weight of Zarkon’s intense stare fixed intensely on him. Oh shit. He was still wearing that damn mask, wasn’t he?
“Cossack,” the king said in his deep voice, its tone somewhat ambiguous but not entirely pleased. “That’s an interesting look for you.”
A sheepish smile crossed his features. “Uh, yeah… um, I was kind of caught by surprise when you paged me…”
“The mask is quite classy, I must say, but I don’t think the flames are you,” he informed him sarcastically, and shook his head in utter bewilderment. His newest commander had never exactly been a fashion plate with that silly yellow cape and habit of wearing his helmet no matter what the occasion, but gold lamé flames were a new low.
“That’s because they’re Zippo, sire,” Haggar supplied oh-so-helpfully, causing Cossack to shoot her a death glare.
Zarkon blinked, even more puzzled. “Zippo? Who the hell is Zippo? Emperor Zeppo’s little brother?”
“No, Zippo is who Cossack aspires to be, Father.”
“I do not!” Cossack argued, his voice taking on a highly frustrated note as it rose in protest. “It’s just a costume I wore for my girlfriend!”
Haggar cackled where she stood. “You keep telling yourself that, Cossack.”
The crease on his brow deepened, and Zarkon gave his fleet commander an evaluating look, trying to determine whether Cossack was up to some sort of trouble that would embarrass him by association as his king or if he was merely losing what little of a mind he had. “That still doesn’t answer my question. Who or what is Zippo?”
Before Cossack could answer, Haggar volunteered the answer. “Zippo the Marauder is a Gloomite hero from a series of romance novels. He’s supposed to be a suave and dashing man of the night that rescues attractive women from the clutches of danger and makes them weak in the knees.”
“As you can imagine, Cossack’s version is a bit less charming and noble and more of an aspiring lothario with hideous taste in clothes, bad lines, and an even worse accent,” Lotor added.
Zarkon snorted from trying to restrain a very un-kingly burst of laughter. “I see. And this charming renegade hero of the night nonsense is the kind of image you’re trying to bring to my military, Cossack?”
“No I’m not, sire,” Cossack groaned as he wondered how he could possibly sink any lower than having to explain his Zippo costume to the high king of Doom. “I just grabbed the wrong shirt. It’s my girlfriend who’s into Zippo,” he said, enunciating the fictional name in the bad accent. “If she left it up to me, I’d be Armor Cop or something.” Armor Cop was a naughty icon more his speed, a man’s man, a rough-and-tumble cybernetically enhanced stud that used an array of kinky handcuffs and restraint devices to “book” his big-busted perpetrators. “But for the record, I do make a good Zippo!”
Zarkon winced at Cossack’s sharing of too much information, while Lotor snickered at Cossack’s silly admission and Haggar shook her head in abject disgust. “Uh, well I’m sure you do, but I don’t really think our meeting about fighting Voltron is the place to talk about it,” the king replied. “So if it’s all the same, I’d like to go over our strategy with our newest robeast and talk about Zippo later.”
“I’d rather not talk about Zippo at all,” Cossack murmured honestly as he heard the cruel snickers of Lotor and Haggar behind him again.
Lotor cast a sly look at Cossack. “Of course, Father. Our lips are zipped.”
Cossack sighed. This was going to be a long meeting.
“Let me tell you about the attributes of this new robeast,” Haggar began with a smirk that first focused right on the masked commander. “Its’ speed rivals that of the lions at their quickest—quite zippy, really.”
Oh yes. It would be a very long meeting indeed.
* * *
An hour later, Cossack emerged from the throne room on his way back to his quarters with his fists clenched in unspeakable aggravation. As he feared, the meeting proved to be just as much about mocking him and his Zippo costume as it was about business. Every other word it seemed that someone felt the need to be a real comedian and make some lame pun on the word “zip,” talk about “masking” or “marauding,” or blatantly mispronounce something in a Zippo-esque accent. He might have believed the last was an honest mistake except that every time it happened, the individual who said it was staring right at him and everyone else in the room would laugh. Yeah, it was real good to be Zippo, he thought sarcastically.
Had the individuals making fun of him not been who they were, he might have taken issue with it, but considering that King Zarkon and Prince Lotor outranked both Cossack the Terrible and Zippo the Marauder and that he had no desire to suffer through a case of magically-induced hemorrhoids like the last guy who had taken a swing at Haggar, his options were pretty limited—sit and take it or stand and take it. In the end he had gone for option B, if for no other reason than because if he remained standing he was that many seconds closer to being able to walk out the door when he was dismissed.
Cossack had about reached his limit with the Zippo mocking when he passed a pair of humming robots in the hall. That in and of itself was not unusual. Doom’s robots were pretty advanced, and they had entertainment codes programmed into them. That they had not started humming until they saw Cossack was a little odd, but it might have been coincidence. The fact that the tune they hummed when they passed him was “Zippity-Do-Dah,” however, was highly suspect, and it immediately resulted in both of them being short-circuited into oblivion by his electrolash.
That was it! No more Zippo, no more fruity costume, no more bad accent, no more fodder for unspeakable humiliation for this fleet commander! By the gods, he was Cossack the Terrible, and while he might have made the best damned Zippo the Marauder Castle Doom had ever seen, there was no way on Doom that he would ever wear so much as a scrap of that cheesy getup ever again!
No sir, once he went back to his room, he was going to tear off that Zippo costume and stomp it into the rug! He was going to blast it into bits! He was going to tear it into little pieces, shoot it with a blaster, and then incinerate it with the cheap glow chemical in the crappy light lance as lighter fluid! He was fed up, and there was no stopping him now! Zippo the Marauder was going to be deep-sixed into permanent retirement!
Still fuming, Cossack punched in the lock-code to his quarters and stomped inside. Once in, he noticed that the light was still on in his bedroom. He walked over to the door and pushed it open, ready to shed the Zippo costume and be rid of it for good.
As he stepped into the room, he saw his girlfriend still on his bed. She was buck naked, writhing in the throes of pleasure, with a Zippo novel in one hand and herself in the other. When she heard him enter, she looked over at him and smiled with a sultry come-hither look. “I’ve been waiting for you, Zippo.”
Firm and resolute in his decision, Cossack walked over to the bed. Zippo was going to retire, all right! First thing tomorrow morning.
* * *
Down in another dark chamber of Castle Doom, the witch Haggar climbed into bed after a long day of magic casting, robeast making, and buffoon mocking. Pulling on her sleeping robe, she stretched and yawned as she curled up under the covers, Coba snuggled up beside her. Reflecting upon the day’s events, she realized that it had been some time since she’d read any of her Zippo novels. Maybe she’d get one out and read a bit before she went to sleep.
Reaching over to the bookshelf on the bottom of her nightstand, she pulled out a leather-bound book with a handsomely drawn Zippo on the cover. “One Night on Demos” was the book’s title, and it was one of her favorites of the Zippo series. In that one, the masked marauder saved a sexy sorceress from a tentacle beast experiment gone awry, and she rewarded him with her undying love… and plenty of hot steamy lovin’. Corny and trite, yes, but it was a fun read and Zippo was quite the suave hunk to fantasize about!
Haggar opened the book and began to read. The opening narrative was about the
heroically anti-heroic Zippo. Flowery
prose described the god-like physique, the strong and powerful arms that
wielded the light-lance with such expertise, the handsome features and
prominent cheekbones, his velour cape that flowed softly upon the
Haggar blinked, wondering why she had read that into the text. She must have been more tired than she thought.
After a brief shake of her head, she lost herself in the story once more. She read on about the suave and charming Zippo, about his sexy Gloomite accent and his aura of mystery, the way his nimble flame-tipped fingers clutched at the light lance, and how he bravely slashed away the slimy tentacles that held the imperiled heroine in their deadly clutches. Shirt open and chest bared, Zippo vanquished the foul monster and then reached down to lift the rescued maiden to her feet and into his arms. The sorceress gasped in delight as she looked into his eyes, surrounded by the black mask he wore just above his smug, shit-eating grin and below his tri-horned metal fleet helmet.
The old witch winced and threw the book down onto the bed in disgust, her once-beloved secret fantasy forever tarnished.
She could never read Zippo again.
The End
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