Wendy's Wild Ride

   Wendy Marco held up two pieces of fabric, one a yellow color, the other pink. She was trying to figure which best complimented her face. Steve was about to do another photoshoot, and he always worked in color. Wendy had to be sure which color would suit her best, but the decision was coming more difficultly than it needed to. Wendy turned and smiled as she saw Trixie step into the room and make for a changing booth. It looked like Trixie was going to be wearing blue today. Trixie returned Wendy's greeting and noticed what she was doing. Trixie paused and looked at Wendy's reflection.

   "Pink is your color, Wendy. Of course, pink is the color most us around here wear best. Better go with the yellow. Trudy is wearing pink, and Dixie is in red."

   "Thanks, Trix!" Trixie nodded with a smile as she turned back to the changing booth. Wendy held up the yellow top and nodded with approval. This would work just fine, although if anyone wore yellow well it was Trixie. She looked good in any color, really.

   Trixie Hope was a very pretty girl, though she would have blended into the background at most movie studios. She worked with annies frequently, however, which often made her stand out in whatever crowd she found herself in. Although she was an actress of considerable star-power on her own, it was the teaming of Trixie Hope with annie Dixie North for a string of two-reelers which gave Trix her most visibility with the public these days. Though she was never described as such, many in the public saw her as the studio's token 'regular' girl in C.B.I.P.'s stable of "femanimal" starlets. (Before really getting to know the annie girls, the Boss had already coined the label "femanimal" to describe them for publicity purposes.  In the years since, the "femanimal" term had stuck, despite the Boss coming to wish he'd never invented the descriptive for the wrong impression it presents.) Trixie had sort of been accepted into the fold for her constant presence, the unofficial annie starlet.

   Trixie parted the curtain and stepped in front of the mirror to check herself. She certainly wore a Creek Bend bikini well, and blue was very complimentary to her form. In a moment, Wendy stepped into view in her yellow bikini. Trixie shot up an "okay" sign and Wendy smiled as she took a look into the changing room mirror. Wendy had to stop and consider Trixie's partner Dixie. There was a girl with cat features, red hair which included a huge tail, and yellow skin which rather closely matched the tiny patches of fabric which were now encasing Wendy's body. Wendy shook her head.

   "I don't know how Dixie does it."

   "Does what?"

   "Coordinates her wardrobe colors. Must add a challenge to it when you have skin the color of a school bus." Every now and then an annie would be born with a pretty wild coloring. Most were regular flesh tones, a great many of them were paper white, and you had a few shades in between. Every now and then, though, you'd run across a girl with skin that was pink or yellow or even sort of orange in color. Some men with bird features could even be green or blue on occasion! For an annie, this could make color coordination a factor to consider even in finding a spouse (or such was the case according to a popular joke that had been going around for years now). At the least, this sort of shading could make it interesting for a girl to dress herself in the right way. Imagine the typical cares a girl has about lighting conditions, then add the skin of a cartoon character to the mix...

   "She wears a lot of whites and blacks," Trixie noted, "I guess those are the safest choices in her case." Trixie hadn't really thought about it before, but Wendy raised a point regarding Dixie's challenge when it came to wearing colored fabrics. It was a challenge Trixie had been spared by not being an annie. Of course, Wendy didn't have that problem either. Only a few annies really did. Must they feel they got the short end of the stick, so to speak, or do they just feel more unique and thus more valued?

   In Steve's studio, Dixie checked her lipstick as Trudy looked over some notes Steve had written up for today's shoot. As Wendy and Trixie stepped into the room, Steve readied his camera. He planned to snap off a few candids before the girls got down to business. Candid shots offered a freshness which was more difficult to achieve when his models were posed. He got a good shot of Trixie and Dixie discussing hairstyles. Dixie's hair had to accommodate not only the shape of her head, but also her cat-like ears. Trixie almost always wore pigtails to offer a more cutsie, child-like appearance. She'd been wearing her hair like that since childhood, in fact, but still had the youthful features to pull it off.

   Wendy wore her hair pretty loose, aside from the styled curls of her bangs (though she often wore her hair pulled back into a ponytail if she were at all active). Trudy kept her hair cut short due to her own cat ears, but her overall look was balanced by her long feline tail. Each girl had their own distinct appearance, making this grouping an interesting selection for a group photoshoot. The purpose of this shoot was as much to promote the studio's newest expensive prop, said item being a futuristic car with a bubble dome canopy, built for a science fiction picture. The girls were herded outside to the parking lot where the car was waiting. There, Steve got off a few more candid shots as the girls inspected the car they were going to be huddled around for the next hour or so.

   Within a few minutes, Steve could have called the job completed, as he'd already gotten plenty of material before even getting to the posed pictures he'd planned out. By now, Wendy was sitting in the driver's seat. The car had been built over the chassis of an old roadster, but there was little evidence of this origin as the prop had been built so complete as to allow the movie camera to get in close. It was a beautiful design, with lines akin to a Corvette. It looked like a combination of a space ship and a miniature submarine. Wendy scanned the dashboard's numerous dials and switches, wondering which were functional and which were only window dressing. The builder of the car was supposed to be on scene for the shoot, but he'd been delayed -by car trouble of all things.

   "This thing is beautiful," Trudy patted the hood, "do you think cars will ever really look like this?"

   "Some already do," Trixie offered, "at least those dream cars they build for auto shows. A pity those never seem to make it into production."

   "Yeah..." Wendy sighed, "there was this powder blue number from Pontiac I think, had a fin out the back and twin windshields that looked like they came from fighter jet cockpits. I wanted that car."

   "I guess their time hasn't come yet," Dixie ran her hand along one of the curves of the chrome trim, "I wonder if any of us will be around when it does. Annies don't age, but they don't live forever."

   "They live a good while," Wendy palmed the steering wheel, "you might make it, Dix. These things may come to us sooner than we think, too."

   Wendy began to climb out of the car to let the next girl try the driver's seat, but in doing so her foot clipped the dash and activated the control for the giant clear bubble dome. Wendy yelped as she pulled her hands back into the vehicle to avoid the dome as it snapped down over the cockpit. She blushed as the other girls giggled. The mood was light until Wendy reached for the same control to raise the dome back into it's open position. Wendy accidentally flipped the wrong switch, causing the car to roar to life. Her eyes popped wide at this mistake and she reached to shut the car back down. What she didn't realize was that her foot was over the gas pedal, and that her weight was placed on her foot as she shifted her body.

   Providently, none of the other girls were standing in front of the car as it took off like a sling shot. Wendy was so surprised that all she could think to do was grab the steering wheel and do what she could to prevent hitting anything. The other girls were left in a cloud of smoke as the car shot away. Steve ran to telephone the gate. Wendy was headed in that direction. Along the way, Wendy had to hold the car steady as it roared between stages and through lots. An elephant brought in to make a jungle picture was so startled by the vehicle that it reared and made ready to charge. It's handlers managed to get the beast under control, but in the time it took to do so Wendy had already sped through several more outdoor sets. She zipped through a Western town where the combatants of a gun battle came to stunned silence when the bubble car blazed by. On another outdoor set, a string of harem girls parted like the Red Sea. 

   It was all happening so fast that Wendy could only concentrate on not hitting anybody. Whenever she tried to slow the car, it became harder to control and threatened to plow into the side of a building. Wendy gulped as she realized that she had to keep the car at top speed until she was in an area open enough to allow for her to come to a stop without running into anyone. The main gate was opened just in time for Wendy to go roaring through and onto the main street of the suburb area directly outside the gates. Wendy tried to slow down again, now that she was on a wider street, but even this area was too crowded for her to risk doing any damage. She'd have to race through town to the more open areas beyond.

   The town square was taken aback as the futuristic vehicle made the scene, looking like the vanguard of a Martian invasion. The car roared along main street toward the town's outskirts. Although Creek Bend was a small town by any measure, it suddenly seemed like the population of Creek Bend was at least triple what the welcome sign indicated. Wendy wondered if she'd run out of gas before the car got to an area where it was safe enough to slow down. Fortunately, the car could turn on a dime, and Wendy was able to avoid plowing into the fence running along Blake road. Wendy was looking for a pasture where there would be plenty of room. 

   Far behind her was a growing number of cars racing after her. Trixie and the other girls were in the lead car, with Steve directly behind in his own car. A few more cars from the studio followed, joined by the Sheriff, the fire chief, the newspaper editor, and a growing number of curious farmers, store owners, and townsfolk.

   Wendy finally came to the opening to Haskell's cow pasture. The car was turned and sped along one of the few flat stretches of land to be found in the area. Finally, Wendy could power down and let the car drift back and forth as it finally wobbled to a stop. Wendy still didn't know which switch shut off the engine, however. Cautiously, she reached over and touched the switch she was fairly certain was the canopy control. Wendy sighed as the dome raised and pulled back. She jumped out of the car and staggered a bit as she made sure the car was absolutely still. She dared not put on the emergency brake, for fear of not knowing which device WAS the emergency brake. The car was just going to have to sit here until someone who knew how could come and drive it back to the studio at normal speed. Or tow it back, as the car was finally beginning to sputter from limited fuel reserves. 

   When the car finally pooped out, Wendy turned to see the others approaching. Trixie pulled to a stop and the girls pilled out of her car to surround Wendy. Wendy was alright, but she had been so tense during the episode that she nearly collapsed when Dixie and Trudy put their hands on her back to support her. Steve was on scene a second later. He hadn't even had time to think about his camera, which he'd tossed into the seat next to him. He knew his business, though, and immediately grabbed the device to snap off a few more candids as Wendy regained her composure. This rural background offered some much more interesting visuals than the bare lot back at the studio did. They'd have to finish the shoot out here anyway, with the car having run dry.

   Soon enough, what seemed to be the rest of the town had arrived on scene. Steve had to convince the Sheriff that what had just happened wasn't a publicity stunt. Once the matter had been settled and the assembly calmed down, there was a great deal of interest in the futuristic car which had caused the whole thing. The starlets, even in their Creek Bend bikinis, were almost completely un-noticed.

   "Are you sure you're okay, Wendy?" Trixie asked.

   "I'm fine now. I'll tell you this, though, I'm not as upset over not having that dream car anymore."

   "What now?" Trudy asked of her peers.

   "The car will probably star in it's own picture after this." Dixie crossed her arms as she looked on at the crowd of farmers and townsfolk huddled about the car, she and her friends completely ignored.