Rane Rover and the Nega Space Nursery

Chapter 1
Whole Story

Chapter Description: Whole Story

Rane Rover and the Nega-Space Nursery

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, space cadets of all ages: Join me in the distant future of the year 2017 for-

RANE ROVER: ROCKET RANGER!

Now buckle yourself in for tonight’s edge-of-your-seat-adventure:

Rane Rover and The Nega-Space Nursery

   When we last left our plucky heroine, she had just escaped the miserable methane mines of Myrnock IV.  But her troubles were far from over, space cadets, as the explosion of her daring escape using the mine’s own methane reserves as a fuel for her trusty rusty rickety red rocket had blown her far off course and deep into the uncharted reaches of space known as “The Forbidden Zone”.

Now the difference between being lost and exploring, space cadets, is all a matter of gumption, can-do attitude, and whether you survive to tell people about it, so Rane Rover: Rocket Ranger knew that she wasn’t lost.  She was just exploring.  But running out of paper to make new star charts was the least of our heroine’s worries, folks.

After her mega thrusters had died down, and the joy of one amazing adventure well done, with another one surely well under way, Rane began to notice something was wrong.  “Creepin’ comets! Why is everything getting so spinny?” our heroine asked.  “It’s like I’ve had one too many, my dance card is all punched up, but it isn’t even seven yet.”

With one sultry, delicate hand, all it took was one little tap on the dashboard for Rane to figure out exactly why she was in trouble.  With the slightest TAP TAP TAP, the needle reading on her rocket’s oxygen tank plummeted like the stock market on that infamous day in 1929.  That’s right, Rangers-In-Training, the red headed Rocketeer had gone from a place with no breathable air, to no air at all.  “I knew I was forgetting something,” our heroine chided herself.  Those half-life house plants that she’d turned down way back in the Den of Delirious Delights sure seemed like something she should have taken with her.  She might be glowing a radiant shade of green, but she’d have plenty of air.

Her backup tanks were still filled with methane, the only fuel source available to her on the miserable mines.  “Maybe I shouldn’t have stocked on so much,” the scarlet-haired starlet thought as her cockpit began to spin like a merry-go-round.  “Air,” she said to herself, “I just gotta find some air.  But where?”

Almost out of oxygen, but still full with plenty of get-up-and-go, Rane set her jaw, reached to the top of her flight helmet and pulled her Navi-Goggles over her beautiful baby blues.  Using her Navi-Goggles, Rane could see a million-fold and was given the miracle of X-ray vision.  Surely, she knew that if there was any planet, Opposition space station, or even the dreaded Imperium’s patrol ships within spitting distance, she would find them.

She looked portside.  She looked to the starboard.  She looked to the fore, the aft, the dorsal, and the ventral.  There was absolutely nothing; an infinite sea of blackness for lightyears around.  Not even a single star to guide her path.   “I’ve been in black holes brighter than this” Rane panted as more and more precious air escaped her lungs.  “Maybe this place is uncharted…because there’s nothing to chart.”

Shaking and wobbling, fists clenched, Rane Rover: Rocket Ranger lost her composure for but an instant. “Well…shucks,” our heroine said.  Any other run of the mill thruster jockey would be saying a lot more than just ‘Well…shucks’.  Most other space sailors would be cursing up a sonic storm, or at the very least remarking ‘Well that’s a fine how-do-you-do,’ but not our heroine.

She was Rane Rover: Scavenger, Smuggler, and Adventurer Extraordinaire, as well as Humanity’s Last Hope against the Imperium of Evil. This fiery little dame had survived the Planet of the Plutonium Pythons, matched wits with the Martian Mind Melters, and butted heads with an entire Battalion of Bionic Brutes.  There was no way she was going to let a little thing like a complete lack of oxygen in the never ending vacuum of space punch her ticket, you can bet your bottom dollar on that.

No way was she going to buy the hydroponics garden.  The only setback was “How?”  “If there was a passing meteor,” Rane thought out loud, “I’d be able to hitch a fast ride on one using the magneto grappler.” Tragically, the Forbidden Zone was devoid of even space rocks.   “The methane left in my tanks might give my rocket a little extra ‘oomph’,” Rane calculated, “but that won’t make a lick of difference if there’s no place to ‘oomph’ to.  I’ve gone from being a fish in a barrel to a sardine in a can.”

Speaking of sardines, the walls of her own trusty rusty rickety red rocket seemed to be closing in on her.  Our heroine’s chest started to heave with each passing, and increasingly labored breath (and not in the good way if you get my drift, fellas).  “I’m not…even wearing…my corset…”

Our thrill-seeking space siren wasn’t out of options yet. “Maybe… a distress signal?” she wondered.  “More than likely, it’d be intercepted by Imperium Coneheads.”  But deep down, faithful fans, Rane knew that might be her only option.

Reaching into the patented and well-worn brown bomber jacket handed down by her father, Rane took out the last of the Sleeping Solution she’d gotten from Sylas VII.  That little inhaler had a puff so potent, it was guaranteed to knock out an electric elephant.  With a mind to match her looks, Rane knew that she’d use up less air and buy herself a little more time if her plan B had her catching some letters at the end of the alphabet.

Still, the thought of going to sleep and waking up captured by Coneheads didn’t appeal to Rane at all.  It was still preferable to losing consciousness and then waking up in that big Spaceship in the Sky (and I don’t mean orbit), but not by much.  Still, she’d already escaped Astro-Alcatraz once.  If everything went according to plan, she might even get a chance to break out of the Galactic Gulag.  Now there was an adventure waiting to happen.  It was definitely better than the twenty-first century equivalent of being buried alive.

Or the Imperium Coneheads might just snap her pretty little neck when they found her.  If they found her.

“Tight,” Rane started to gasp.  “Everything…is so… tight!”  Suddenly there were two sets of Sleeping Solution in her right hand, and two right hands on top of that. The asphyxiating astronaut was seeing double.

Things were not looking good for our high stakes star siren.  If she even hoped to survive she’d have to take a puff from the inhaler, breathe deep (but not too deep), and activate the distress beacon before she passed out, and that was the easy part.  Now that her vision had decided to pull a fast one on her there were now two inhalers, two distress signal buttons, and two sets of hands to do it all.

Pretending the inhaler was a Lucky Strike cigarette (Lucky Strike: Tastes good like a cigarette should) she took a puff from the little tube with the sleeping solution. As she puffed out the little green cloud of space opium, Rane payed to whatever Christian God was out there in the vastness of space that she wouldn’t see St. Peter when her lids next flittered open.

“Maybe I can learn to play the space harp,” she joked at her own impending doom.  Eyes already half-closed, our heroine prepared for what might be the long sleep as she pressed a button that sent out an S.O.S.- ‘Save Our Spaceship.’

Instead of a space harp, our heroine’s eyes shot open to the sound of alarms blaring as her spaceship’s computer blared out.

“DANGER! DANGER!  GRAVITY SNARE! COLLISION COURSE IMMINENT!”

How long had she been out?  Had the asteroid opium in the sleeping solution scattered her senses for minutes or just a few precious seconds?  It wasn’t any easier to breathe, Rane could say that much; or at least she could if she had the air.

BUT WAIT!

A collision course meant that there was something out here in the forbidden zone.  A spaceship or a planet, or even an asteroid.  Any of them might have pockets of precious, precious air.   Determined to live, Rane Rover squinted her eyes past the blurred mirage of her senses and saw an impossible shining light.

A star?  No, space-cadets, for up close stars are as bright as the sun; brighter even! Instead, shining gently into the endless night was a single gigantic alabaster dot in the middle of an ocean of ebony. This was no star! This was no star! It was impossible, Rane knew, but with nothing but her senses to trust, she could only guess that it was one thing:  A White Hole, and it was pulling her in!

Fists white knuckled and eyes squeezed shut, the rambunctious rocket ranger pulled back on the throttle.   She was going to crash and be battered into so much space debris.  Suffocating was one thing, but no space sailor worth their salt would be caught dead in a crash.

“Can’t. Slow. Down.” Rane mouthed the words rather than speak them as she yanked back the controls.  DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, she went, the gravity of the White Hole drawing her in to her sudden and inevitable destruction.  Nothing she could do, it seemed, would slow her descent into oblivion!

But as every rip-roarin’-rocket-ranger knows, when the chips are down is when you really shine your brightest.  Brighter than a white hole, even; brighter than the sun.  Rane looked back at the tanks, and sure as Shirley Temple’s tremendous tapdancing, she got an idea.  With the push of a single shiny blue button-the right one she hoped- Rane funneled the remaining methane into her retro thrusters.

Violently, the ship shook like one of those new-fangled washing machines with a screw loose as the retro-thrusters fought valiantly against the gravitational pull of the giant White Hole in the middle of space.  And valiant they were, all you rough-ridin’ rocketeers, but even the Little Engine that Could couldn’t get all the way to the top of Mt. Everest.

With her last bit of breath, our brave and buxom beauty cried out “CREEPIN’ COMETS!” as she plummeted headlong into the White Hole in her trusty rusty rickety red rocket.

So it is with a heavy heart, dear space-cadets, that I must inform you that Rane Rover: Rocket Ranger, crashed.

BUT she survived!

The shattered remains of her ship scattered around her, our heroine’s eyes opened briefly as she breathed in buckets of sweet, sweet, oddly lavender scented air.  Was this Heaven, she wondered?  Was this what they meant when they talked about the light at the end of the tunnel?

An interminable amount of time passed, as she lay there, panting as more and more air rushed in to fill her lungs.  Suddenly, much to her surprise, a funny little robot, all torso and arms and no head hovered over her.

“Huuuuuman?” it asked in a high pitched buzzy little voice.

Exhausted beyond the limits of even her physical endurance and the Sleeping Solution still polluting her mind, Rane managed to meekly nod and say “Yes….Human” before losing consciousness completely as the floating little can with arms and headlights beeped and booped in approval.

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We will now pause for station identification and a word from this week’s sponsors.

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We now return to the adventures of RANE ROVER: ROCKET RANGER! 

When we last left our not-so-lucky lady, she’d crashed landed inside the mysterious White Hole, staring up at a strange alien robot before losing consciousness.

As our plucky pilot came to, the first thing she heard was the strange tinkling tones of a softly soothing, almost hypnotic lullaby.  “Queerest little lullaby I’ve ever heard,” she remarked as her vision unblurred itself.  “Something like a cross between a nursery rhyme and those little jigs the Mind Melters used to control the Martian Spiders,” she remarked as she stretched, reminiscing about past adventures.

The bed she was in was gigantic and luxurious.  Even before her knocked-around noggin started making sense of her surroundings, the Rocket Ranger was keenly aware of just how soft and comfortable her bed was, with her being able to stretch out her entire body from feet to fingertips without touching another.  It was a darn sight better than a prison cell in the Astro-Alcatraz, that’s for sure.

Rane sat up and took in her not-so-scary surroundings.  She was in a bed all right, and a big one, but it was a bed with bars nonetheless.  On all sides of her, preposterously huge planks of woods shot up past her head.  She was having a truck load of trouble standing up- the softness of the surface caused her legs to go all wobbly- so Rane Rover grabbed onto the bars of her new cell and pulled herself up.

Ever gritty and determined, Rane discovered that if she held onto the top of her comfortable cage, she could just barely peek out over the railing.  “But where is that strange little ditty coming from?” she wondered.

Ears pricked and ever alert for an incoming attack (the music could very well be mesmerizing her, turning into an Imperium Conehead, don’t you know?) the red-headed rocket ranger only had to crane her neck upwards and see an exact replica of Earth’s Solar System dangling just above her head, the strangely sad yet jaunty jig tinkling on and on.  “Now what do you suppose that’s for?” the Opposition’s Best Gal said.  “Some kind of invasion map?”

Finished taking stock of her immediate surroundings, the speedy space siren examined herself.  “What kind of getup is this?” she asked.  Gone were her Navi-Goggles and flight helmet.  Her hair, normally wrapped up neatly in a bun beneath her helmet was now combed out into two pigtails on the sides of her head.

Gone was her well-worn brown bomber jacket handed down by her father and her matching accelerator slamming boots.  No scrap of her uniform remained.

She wasn’t naked though.  A pastel pink number covered her slender shoulders, buxom breasts, and tiny tummy while the front end connected with the back end thanks to a couple of buttons that met in the middle of her down below.  Her silky-smooth legs were bare, but otherwise her maiden modesty remained intact.

Stranger still, she appeared to be wearing layers, at least as far as her hips were concerned.  Concealed by the singlet was something that caused her thighs to become strangers to each to each other and caused her backside to bulge like an overripe hothouse tomato at the county fair.  And whatever she was wearing weighed a whole heckuva lot, with her underthings bulging and sagging, threatening to burst out the bottom flap of her new outfit like bombs out of a B-52.

Normally, any lady worth waiting for will always use the powder room to freshen up, but lacking a proper place and having no eyes upon her, Rane Rover decided to improvise and poked the puffy padding protruding from her petit posterior.

Her finger was met with the pushback of wet padding and the crinkle of soft plastic.  “Creepin’ comets,” our heroine said, giving it another push.   “What gives?” Rane asked.  Something didn’t add up.  Plastic backing was supposed to keep wetness out like a shower cap, wasn’t it?     “It seems like I’m in some kind of bathing suit, except only my backside is wet.” Rane remarked.  “Now if only I could find a beach.”

Sniffing as she struggled to stay standing, the Opposition’s Best Gal caught of a whiff of something both alien and strangely familiar to her; something fragranced mixed with something foul smelling; something aromatic and something ammonia-scented.  “It’s like a powder room next to an outhouse,” the Rocket Ranger said, pinching her nose. “Or maybe it’s the reverse.”

Standing on her tip toes, our heroine gazed out past the wooden bars of her pleasant prison to get a better lay of the land.   Beyond the caged contraption she was cooped up in was a sight to behold indeed: The walls were yellow, with paintings of little sheep following around a blue-skinned Bo Peep, and a pink shelled Humpty Dumpty plummeting off a whopping wall.   Plush white carpet covered the ground ten feet below was littered with landmines of kewpie dolls, rattles, building blocks, and tinker toys. A tremendous rocking chair that no doubt dwarfed her sat in a nearby corner, with a humongous high chair in close proximity.

“A nursery,” Rane realized, “and a big one, to boot.  That means I’m caught up in a crib. But where’s the ba-?” our normally stoic starlet stopped in her tracks.  Ever pragmatic, our heroine wasn’t one to hear hoofbeats in central park and start scanning for zebras.  “That means I’m the baby.”  Our exciting explorer of space had flown right out of the final frontier and into the pages of an alien story book; Jack (or in this case Jill) and the Beanstalk.

Rane had faced down the Hungry Hordes of Hazmo the Hazardous without flinching, scavenged spare  parts from a stranded space station seconds away from a supernova’s searing explosion with no sweat, and smuggled food and medicine past Imperium Patrols to the refugees, widows, and war orphans of Weyout I almost every Tuesday,  but the shock at her present situation was so great that she lost her grip on the railings and plopped back down onto her padded posterior.  “Creepin’ comets!”

Through the wooden bars of her booming baby bed lay a substantially sized operating table with shelves of folded white rectangles immediately beneath it.  “That’s a table,” Rane recognized, “but not a surgical one.  I’m not a mother yet but even I recognize a changing table when I see one.  Which means those are diapers stacked underneath.”  Ever observant, our heroine took a second gander at her getup.  “Which means I’m in some oversized Dr. Dentons.   And these plastic panties are…” she paused, “..well THAT’s a fine how-do-you-do.”

Rane Rover: Rocket Ranger had somehow ended up playing baby in the galaxy’s most humongous game of house.  But where there was giant furniture, there was bound to be…

“Giants,” Rane gasped as thundering footsteps signaled her captor’s ominous arrival.

Like the shadow on the dark side of the moon, this new arrival was monstrously massive, filling the cavernous passage into the giant nursery as easily as normal folk fill their own doorways. In the space of a few seconds, his large lumbering footsteps crossed the palatial sized place and he loomed over our diapered damsel.

“Creepin’ comets!”

Rane Rover’s newest fantastical foe towered over the railing of the crib.  The Sleeping Solution surely still doing wacky things to the rip-riding rocketeer’s body, Rane felt her already damp diaper get a little less dapper at the sight of him.

Her captor had skin as blue as the waters of Lake Michigan and eyes as purple as Pike’s Peak, but the rest of him…was actually quite pleasant, truth be told.  With dark, clean-cut hair, well-worn laugh lines around bespectacled eyes, dressed smartly in a sweater vest and slacks, and cleanshaven with just a hint of stubble, he looked like any respectable fella in the neighborhood of Anytown USA.

Above his right shoulder hovered the little tin-can robot that Rane had seen just before passing out.

“Well hello little, human,” He said in a voice as gentle as can be.  “Was your nap restful?”

“Y-y-yes it was,” Rane answered. “Thank you.  But would you mind telling me where I am and who you are, Mister?”

The mountain sized man smiled warmly back and told her.  “Why I’m the Caretaker, little miss.  This is my home.”  He gestured to the hovering hunk of metal over his shoulder.

The thing beeped and booped and then said, “Huuuuuuman.”

The mammoth-man looked to the little floating can and told it, “I know, robot.  I know.”  Then he turned back to the Lilliputian-like lady and continued conversing.  “My robot found you after you had a nasty fall.  So, I brought you in and took care of you. Now who might you be?”

Standing a little taller despite her infantile attire, Rane responded, “Why I’m Rane Rover: Rocket Ranger.”

“Very nice to meet you, Rane.”  The Caretaker said, extending two fingers and reaching out to the childishly dressed do-gooder.  Never one to dismiss diplomacy, Rane grabbed the giant’s freakishly big forefingers shook his hand.

“Likewise, I’m sure,” she said. “But you haven’t answered my second question.  Also, what’s with the Dr. Denton’s and the diapers?”

Unfazed by Rane’s brave boldness despite her relatively small stature, the big blue behemoth kept smiling and said. “All will be answered in time, but first let’s see about getting you some breakfast.”

Not one to be told what to do, our heroine pointed one finger at her host and prepared to give him a peace of her mind.  “Now listen here Cee-Tee, I’m grateful for the rescue, don’t think I’m not, but I don’t take kindly to-“

The courageous cosmo cruiser was cut off as two huge hands grabbed her underneath her armpits and lifted her skyward.  “We’ve got to keep you to a schedule,” her colossal captor said. “Breakfast first. Then I’ll explain where you are.  Then we’ll see about your clothes. ”

Our heroine was used to strapping into her cockpit and blasting off through space, but there was something particularly peculiar about being whipped around just above the waist and then strapped into a waiting high chair.  Her diaper, sodden and sagging, squelched as she was strapped into the comically big kiddie seat, a tray pinning her arms to her side before she knew what to do with them.   “Creepin’ comets,” Rane commented “My seat is soggier than the swamps of Saturn in Summer.”

Unconcerned, the Caretaker unscrewed a lid on a glass jar big enough to hold a whole honey glazed ham.  “Don’t worry,” he said, daintily dipping a rubber tipped spoon into some rainbow-colored mush, “you’re a long ways from leaking.”

“That’s not why I’m-“ Rane responded before the spoonful of gelatinous goop the zoomed past her lips and into her waiting mouth.  The red-haired rocket ranger stopped, swallowed…and then smiled.  In all of her hurry she hadn’t been hungry for anything more than freedom, but this stuff was better than Jell-O (and there’s always room for Jell-O, folks).

Our normally loquacious lass opened her mouth only so that another scrumptious spoonful of the curious cuisine could be shoveled onto her tongue.  Before long she was bouncing up and down with each spoonful of the technicolor treat, her pigtails pogoing up and down while beneath her, her soaked seat squished and squelched in equal measure.  The squishing and squelching of her plastic-backed panties were matched only by the clinking and clacking of the spoon stirring and scraping in the glass jar.

In no time flat, the jar was empty and the resilient young woman was beginning to feel full.  “Doesn’t it feel nice to let someone else do the work?” the king-sized Caretaker asked.  With a queen-sized sigh to match her meal, Rane nodded in agreement; her pigtails bobbing up and down.  This was the closest she’d had to a vacation in ages.

Quickly, with celeritous speed, Rane was removed from the highchair and found herself carried over to the rocking chair she’d successfully spied previously.  Beeping and booping, the azure-colored Atlas’s flying robot hovered nearby.  The ding of a microwave oven chimed and a compartment inside the robot opened up depositing the biggest baby bottle our heroine had ever seen into the helping hands of the Caretaker.   “Something to wash it down with,” he said, sitting down in the rocking chair and placing her on his lap.

“I know I should put up more of a struggle,” our normally determined diva thought, “but this is just too relaxing to pass up.”  She began to suckle on the behemoth bottle the second it was offered, and was rewarded as a warm, creamy, sweet and delicious liquid lapped onto her tongue.  It was so delicious that it was almost as good as the all-natural, soothing flavor of Ovaltine.  (Have you tried Ovaltine lately?)

As she suckled on the sweet stuff, the stressed-out spacer felt her muscles and mind relax a little bit more with each pull on the rubber nipple.  “Better?” her generous giant friend asked while she greedily gulped down the bottle.  Her content eyes seemed to be all the reply he required.

As the last drop of liquid love dribbled down her throat, Rane released her grip on the bottle and allowed herself to be draped over the fantastic father figure’s shoulder.  Soon, she was treated to gentle pats and rubbing on her back as he started to pace around the nursery.  “Now to answer your little questions,” he said.

“Where…” our heroine, paused as a little burp flew from her throat, “…excuse me…am I?”

“We’re in Nega-Space,” the Caretaker told her.  “It exists where nothing else does.”

“But there’s nothing out here,” the crusader of the cosmos said, before burping again and saying “I beg your pardon.”

“Exactly,” the back-patting Brobdingnagian replied.  “There’s nothing out here, so here we are. In Nega-Space.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Mister.”

With a condescending chuckle, the Caretaker said. “I’m sure it doesn’t.”  Our heroine’s attitude started to sour. Being burped or not, she didn’t take kindly to being talked down to.  But before she could say as much she found herself staring out the Nega-Space Nursery’s window.

“Creepin’ comets!”  Just outside the window was the vast glory of space in all of its wonder and splendor, but with the colors reversed.  An endless of ocean of alabaster was in front of her, speckled with sparkling spots of black.  “Whoooooah!” she cooed in absolute awe.  No where in the known universe was this possible.  The red-headed rebellion smuggler knew three or four Sylocke scientists who would have given their left antennae for such a stunning sight.

“From time to time,” the Caretaker explained, “a human gets lost from their playing and winds up here.  And I can’t let you little tykes wander around lost.  So, I take care of you until your Mommies or Daddies come and pick you up.”

“Little tykes”, the siren of the stars scoffed before burping again.  This time she didn’t excuse herself. “Mommies or Daddies?”  She pulled back and looked her warden in the eye.  “You make it sound like I’m some kind of baby.”

“Baby?” said the Caretaker, confused.  “What kind of gibberish human-talk is that?  The grown-up word for what you are is ‘human’.”

“Now you listen here, Buster,”  Rane said feeling that old familiar fire rise up in her, crossing her arms over her chest.  “I’m a fully grown and independent woman and don’t you forget it.  I’m almost twenty-three.”  (In actuality, ladies, gentlemen, and space-cadets, Rane Rover was actually twenty-six, but it’s a woman’s prerogative to lie about her age, so we’ll allow our normally honest and trustworthy adventurer this one little fib).

The jolly giant who held her in his arms laughed as if she had said something perfectly precocious.  “Full-grown?! Woman?! And twenty-three no less?”  The room rattled with the great goon’s guffawing.  “Those things don’t go together.  You can’t be a human woman and be fully grown and independent.” He chuckled again and added, “Twenty-three is an adult now. Oh humans. What will they say next?”

The Caretaker’s robot helper buzzed with its own form of electronic laughter.  “Huuuuuman!”

“I was once twenty-three,” the violet eyed villain lectured, “but then I grew up.  And one day you will, too.  Until then, you’re a human.”

Egad, faithful fans!  Through some queer quirk of comical cosmic miscommunication, Rane Rover: Rocket Ranger had made first contact with a long lived extra-large extraterrestrial to whom the word “human” meant “baby”.  And here she found herself, having been spoon fed, nursed and burped while wearing a wet diaper.  Whatever could she do to prove him wrong?

“Now you’ve got it all wrong Cee-Tee,” Rane tried to correct the paternal titan.  “I’m not out there playing games.  I’m fighting a war!  And I normally don’t indulge in mashed up mush and bottles and burping,” she said.  “And I definitely don’t wear di-“ her rational words were cut off as the rubber nipple of a particularly ponderous pacifier was placed in her mouth by the Caretaker’s scrap heap of a helper.

“Huuuuman” it buzzed.

“No need to be so cranky,” the Caretaker said.  Meanwhile, our heroine tried to tell him the truth, but some kind of sweet sticky sap coated the delinquent dummy lodged in between her incisors, stopping her from spitting it out. Our wonder of a woman winced as the caretaker playfully patted her plastic backed panties.  “Well here’s the problem,” he said. “Let’s do something about the wet diaper.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, we now advise those of you with weak constitutions to walk away from this unfolding scene and to return in a few minutes once the worst of it has passed.

Her muffled moaning mewling out from behind the mouthguard of the pacifier, Rane cried out as she was placed on the cushioned plastic mat of the Nega-Space Nursery’s towering changing table, a strap pulled taught over her stomach and arms.

Quickly, the buttons holding together her onesie were undone, exposing her now very mentionable unmentionables.  More yellow than white in the middle, the all-but dripping diaper sagged outward, as if trying to run away in fear of the woman who had wet it. Rane caught a glimpse of cartoon rocket ships along the landing zone, a mocking reminder of what the Caretaker intended to strip from her in more ways than one.

A full body blush enveloped our heroine, turning her as pink as the baby clothes on her back, as two meaty hands reached for the tapes along her waistline.  She hadn’t planned to be in this particular position (sans-diaper of course) until her wedding night.

The space sailor didn’t have time to process the intimate invasion as the Caretaker gripped her ankles together with one hand and lifted her legs to the air.  Left with no other options, Rane could only lick and suck at the sugar cane coating of the pacifier in an attempt to dilute it enough to free her mouth from its grip.

Her pace hastened and slowed with the Caretaker’s cold wet cleansing, as wipe after wipe was dragged across her delicate areas, disturbing her concentration.  “Mustn’t miss a spot,” the Caretaker clucked. “I don’t want my little human to get a rash.”

Her quivering hindquarters felt the briefest bit of respite as the urine soaked underthing was slipped out from beneath her, only to have a fresh dry replacement slid back before a breath had passed.   She shivered as fragrant white flakes of baby powder were sprinkled onto her bare backside.  Her legs were lowered down and spread, and before she could blink, the clean diaper was pulled up between them and taped up.

“All better,” Rane’s cyan colored captor declared, buttoning her garish garment back up.  The scourge of the Imperium most certainly disagreed, and would have said as much if she had been able to, just then.  But our buxom beauty was unable to get a word in edgewise, with the pacifier penetrating past her puckered puss.  “Now how about a little bit of playtime?”

“Mmmmphin mmmmphets!” our heroin mumbled from behind her pacifier gag as she shook her head violently, her pigtails brushing against her cheeks.  This was no time to play, she had a galaxy to go out and save.

“Well, I can’t have you take another nap,” the titan tutted, before plopping her padded posterior in front of a table small enough for.  “You’ll be way up past your bedtime if you go back to sleep.”  Rane’s normally pristine pallor went from an embarrassed pink to the red of righteous fury.  Rocket Rangers did NOT have bedtimes!  Oblivious to his captive’s resounding resentment, the Caretaker slid a poster sized piece of blank paper and a box of colossal sized crayons in front of the onesie wearing woman.  “How about some drawing?”

“MMMeye mmmmmn’t mmmmannna mmmaw,” our diapered damsel protested from behind the bulbous binky.  “”Mmmey mmmmeed mmmoo mmmet mmmmome.”  Either the Caretaker didn’t understand, or just didn’t care, instead tapping the table where the infantile art supplies lay. But hey, at least it wasn’t finger painting.

With no way to force her way to freedom, and an inability to speak sensibly, Rane Rover felt like she was absolutely out of options.  If she couldn’t find a way to clear up this confusion, she’d be trapped in this Nega-Space Nursery until the cosmo-cows came home.  That’s when inspiration hit her!  Grabbing a club sized crayon out of the box in front of her, began writing.

It read in big block letters: I AM AN ADULT.  THE GALAXY NEEDS ME.  LET ME OUT!

It was no Gettysburg Address, but it would do the trick, sure enough.  Feeling proud of herself, Rane grabbed the sandwich board sized slice of paper and held it up to her new gargantuan guardian.  There was just one thing Rane hadn’t counted on. “That’s some very nice scribbles,” the Caretaker said, smiling with almost grandfatherly affection.  “Now how about a picture that I can put up on the refrigerator?”  Well that was a fine how-do-you-do!  Like most civilized folk, the Caretaker spoke English (with the exception of the mix-up between the words ‘human’ and ‘baby’), but to him Rane’s writing looked like scribbles.  Looking around the nursery, Rane realized that there wasn’t any alphabet to speak of, or anything academic for that matter.  There were pictures of rainbows and butterflies, but no where on the walls of this toddlerized torture chamber was there anything resembling the three R’s.

Flipping the paper over, Rane resorted to retreating from writing and communicating in an even more universal language: Pictures.  Ham-fisted and hurried, she sketched out a drawing of her trusty rusty rickety red rocket; the same turbo charged conveyance that had taken her on so many of her misadventures (including this one).  “Very good!” the fatherly figure clapped his hands and encouraged her cleverness.  “That looks like that little toy that you rode in here on.”

Finally! Our heroine grinned behind her soother and bounced and bobbed in bountiful bliss.  Now she was getting somewhere.  “Can you draw more?“  Happily, she obliged, drawing in a doodle of herself in the cockpit, the stars whizzing by, and of course, good old Earth in the background. Maybe if she could get across that everyone one Earth was as “little” as she was, he’d release her.  (Either that, or she’d convince the Caretaker that there was an entire planet of babies that needed to be pampered; and then she’d have two invasions to deal with.)

As time went on, her breathing slowed; the normally fraught freedom fighter found herself relaxing with each stroke and scribble.  It wasn’t thrilling, but therapeutic.  Not the rush she was used to, but relaxing in its own right.  Oddly enough, Rane Rover: Rocket Ranger was feeling something she hadn’t felt in a long time: fun.

“Well done!” her purple eyed parental figure praised when she’d finished.  “This is something very special, I can tell,” he said.  “Look at that silly blue marble in the background.  I’m going to put this right on the wall where I can look at it whenever I want” he said, taking the drawing over to her crib.  Without thinking, our feisty freedom fighter smiled saccharinely, proud of her accomplishment.

As the Caretaker pinned the poster to the wall, Rane realized that she’d failed at what she’d set out to do.  Her attempt at translation had transformed itself into an art project.  She’d have to find other ways to explain the reality of the situation to the Nega-space nanny.  “Now what shall we do next, little human?”  If anything she had more firmly cemented her status in his enormous eyes as nothing more than a waif needing nourishment.

And so it continued throughout the day.  Unable to speak, the amazing astronaut told her story as best as she could; using the tools available to her.  She recreated the Astro-Alacatraz using blocks with strange alien writing on them.  She re-enacted her liberation of the mole men of Morlock X using dollies, and used puppet theatre to explain her daring escape from the methane mines.

Stranger still, Rane felt relief with each successive attempt. Each juvenile jaunt into pastimes she’d long ago outgrown brought with them feelings of nostalgia and comfort.  She’d never admit it, of course, but her reserves were being refilled with each kiddie corner retelling.  Sadly, space cadets, joy was the only thing she was getting from these efforts at diapered diplomacy.  Unwilling to listen, the big blue brute, well meaning though he may have been, simply looked to the surface and saw nothing but a tot with her new toys.

Frustrated, our padded protagonist stomped her feet in a frenzy, puppets still on her hands. “Oh, I think I know what’s wrong,” the Caretaker concluded, inserting two of his enormous digits into her diaper.  “Wet.” It was true.

Somewhere in between her miming the massacre against the Martian Mind Melters and the tea party where she had tried to demonstrate the etiquette that had negotiated the freedom of the floating ferrous folk, Rane Rover had felt nature’s call, and answered it without hesitation.  Surely, time was of the essence, and so our heroine had temporarily cast aside her pride and potty training in the hopes that she’d steer this freaky first contact towards freedom.  Her diaper had been squelching and squishing with every step since.

Unfortunately, folks, people everywhere tend to believe what they see and not what you tell them; and the Caregiver now saw a little girl in need of yet another diaper change.  “”Mmmmmphin’ mmmmmets.” Rane said as she was laid back down on the changing table, two enormous hands reaching for the snaps between her legs.

“Don’t worry,” the Caretaker cooed. “It’s my job to take care of little humans like you and keep you dry and happy.  I’ve more than enough diapers for you.”

“Huuuuman,” the Caretakers hovering henchbot beeped and booped.

Will Rane be able to escape this infantilizing internment? Will she be able to battle across the Milky Way or will she be reduced to bottles bubbling with milk? Has she permanently traded in her red rocket for a rocking horse?  Will she ever holler and hoot through hyperspace or must she now be content to quietly coo from her crib?  Will she defy the odds or is she doomed to a destiny of downloading detritus into diaper after diaper till the end of her days?

Find out after this pause for station identification and a word from our sponsors!

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You are tuning into WTCP where the ink is wet and the padding is dry. (Or is that the other way around?)

Littles,

Are you tired of having your playtime interrupted by constant trips to the potty?  Are you annoyed or confused at all the complicated and messy steps of toileting?  Does the sound of flushing water fill your heart with dread?  Do you yearn for a simpler time when you had more fun and less problems?

Return to those halcyon days of yore with diapers.  With diapers, what goes on in your pants is no longer your concern or your problem.  Play the hours away! Finish that seven-season binge marathon!  Never have to excuse yourself from the dinner table again!  Relax in the safety and comfort in knowing that your special clothing is there for you when you need it.

Toilets are exclusive and require special positioning and locations to use.  With diapers, it can be anywhere at anytime- sitting, standing, laying down-whatever works for you! They travel and bend and move WITH you. And as a bonus, any horizontal surface can be made into an impromptu changing station.

Also, diapers are the only underwear that can double as outerwear!  Less layers just means less work, and isn’t that what happiness is really all about?

So, go ask your Big to ditch those flimsy useless things hugging your hips and go for the good stuff.

DIAPERS: It’s never too late to go back.

****************************************************************************

We now return to the adventures of RANE ROVER: ROCKET RANGER! 

When we last left our heroine, she’d gone from a rip roarin’ rocket ranger to a diapered damsel in distress.  We find her now, sulking in a playpen, left alone with her thoughts and a robot monitor, her pursed lips plugged with a pacifier, the bulbous binkie remaining firmly lodged in her mouth…until now.

“Creepin’ comets,” she said as she finally managed to pull out the pacifier, the sweet solution keeping it in her mouth finally gone thanks to the solvent of her saliva.  “That Caretaker character is a real basket case.  He thinks I’m some kind of baby.”  She looked down at her pink onesie, the bulging diaper just underneath.  “Not that I can blame him.

“Huuuuuman,” the floating trashcan that had discovered her droned far above her head.  Good thing too, or else it was likely to get a walloping whack from our pampered paragon.

“Yeah, yeah,” Rane sulked at the simpleton of a machine.  “You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to.”  Though even that was an analogy that didn’t work in her favor.  No matter how you pronounced it, a tuber was still a spud.

Lost in thought, she began walking around her infantile enclosure, a crinkle calling out with each padded pace as she waddled from wall to wall.  “The thing of it is,” she admitted, “is that up until the ‘wait here’ part I was kind of liking the whole baby bit.”

“Huuuuman.”

Irritated and annoyed, Rane ignored the fancy bottle warmer. “The crib was comfortable. The food and drink were good, and it was nice to be waited on for a change.”  A shudder shimmied up her spine as she accidentally uttered ‘change’.  “Okay,” she admitted to herself.  “even the clothes are nice.  It’s like lying around in my nightgown all day, without even having to take a powder.”  The she-warrior shook her head as she realized she made yet another unfortunate choice of words. She had more powder on her posterior than her pretty puss; not exactly ladylike.

“Fine!” she shouted at a stuffed sheep in the corner of the playpen.  “Even the diapers aren’t such a fine how-do-you-do!”  Then she added, “As long as nobody else in the entire universe knows about ‘em!”

“Huuuuuman,”

“But my folks aren’t coming to save me,” our waddling wunderkind whined, “and that daffy dope would dress them in diapers too even if they did. All because we’re-”

“Huuuuuman,”

Then a surge of insight and inspiration ingrained itself into her imagination...“That’s it!” our heroine raised a pointed finger skyward.  “As far as the Caretaker is concerned, I’m a lost little baby that came here on some kind of trikey.  Sooooooo….” Rane inhaled and held her breath for a hot minute.

“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” She let lose a long and loud wail worthy of a bragging banshee.  Thundering footsteps preceding him, the Caretaker ran into the nursery, staring down.

“I step out for five minutes to cook dinner, and this is what happens!” He exclaimed.  “What’s wrong little human?” he asked, reaching down to give Rane’s bum a parental pat, checking to see if it needed changing yet.

Our heroine wasn’t rattled in the least, and instead kept in character.  “I WANT MY MOMMY!” she cried, willing rivers of tears to flow down her not-so-chubby cheeks.  “I WANT MY MOMMY!”  She did her best not to thrash as she found herself cradled in the Caretaker’s cavernous caress.

“I know, I know you miss her,” he shushed her, rocking her back and forth and bouncing her lightly.  “But we’ll stay right here until she comes to pick you up.  That way you’ll be safe.”

“I WANT HER NOW!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, her throat rattling with each rumbling roar.  “I hope this works,” she thought to herself.  “Otherwise I’m likely to get a wallop of a spanking.”  Even through the prodigious pillow wrapped around her waist, she didn’t want to end up over the Caretaker’s knee.

“But you’re lost, little hu-“

“I’M!” she interrupted with a sob. “NOT! LOOOOOOOOST!”  The nursery flew by in a quick blur as the weird warden held her out and looked at her, leaving her dangling by her under arms.

“What do you mean, ‘not lost?’” the Caretaker asked, an eyebrow arched in question.

Now was her chance.  All she had to do is put her plight in language that even the Caretaker could comprehend.  “My Mommy is back on Earth!” she cried.

“Earth?”

“It’s just in the universe!” she sobbed.  Pointing out of the nursery towards the negative sky.  “Over there?”

“Really?” the Caretaker asked, tilting is head to the side.  “Is that all?”

“Uh-huh,” our heroine played her pathetic part, making sure to add a tiny sniffle and suck on her thumb.

Our plucky heroine found herself sitting back on a giant knee as he took a seat on the rocking chair, finally listening.  Her plastic backed panties were thankfully dry as a desert this time around. “And how did you end up here then?”

Rane thought for a moment to translate her preposterous predicament in terms he’d believe.  “I was playin’ a game, Mister, with my friends, and I went out of bounds.”  Considering she’d flown into a pocket universe inside a white-hole, ‘out of bounds’ was the understatement of the millennium, ladies and gentlemen, but the Caretaker seemed to consider it.  “It was an accident”, she added.

“Out of bounds?” he repeated as he ruffled Rane’s red hair.  “What game were you little tykes playing? Tag? Hide and seek?”

With steely resolve, Rane looked up into the giant’s violet peepers and with grave seriousness, told him.  “War.”

The mountain of a man sat up a little straighter in the rocking chair.  “War isn’t a girl’s game,” he scoffed.  “You should be having tea parties and playing with dollies like you’ve been doing.  Though I suppose that explains those play clothes, and that toy ship.”

Quick as a jack rabbit in July, Rane concocted another explanation to fit the paradigm she’d found herself imprisoned in.  “It’s a powderpuff game,” she said. “Girls are the soldiers and boys are the riveters.”  If her freedom hadn’t been on the line, the thought of a bunch of Imperium Coneheads all dolled up and working on an assembly line would have made her bust a gut.  Then another thought came to the forefront of her brilliant brain.  “Play clothes?” Rane realized that she hadn’t seen her brown bomber jacket or her heroic headgear since she’d woken up in this dreadful daycare.

“Where did you get those things anyways?” her captor asked, leaning in closer, causing our heroine to break into a sweat under the scrutiny.

“Uhh….they were my Daddy’s,” Rane said.  That much was true enough.  “When he was a….uh…human.”

“That explains why it was in such shoddy condition,” the Caretaker said.  A lesser (and smaller) man would have been knocked flat- nobody insulted her trusty rusty rickety red rocket in shambles it may now be- but Rane held her tongue and her fists for the time being.

Precariously positioned, Rane stowed her pride and looked up at the Caretaker with big puppy dog eyes.  “Please Mister!  The game is gonna be over soon.  And my Mommy is gonna be awful sore at me if I don’t get back home soon.”

Now rocking back and forth, in the chair, the Caretaker stroked his chin with his free hand. “Well…if your parents are just in the universe outside….”

“Huuuuuman,” the robot beeped and booped, irritatingly.  The Caretaker frowned a little bit.  She almost had him!

If Rane didn’t think quick and speak quicker, the domineering daddy would change his mind (along with her diapers) forever. “What if he came with me?” Rane asked, pointing to the floating robot that found her. “As a…chaperonie?” Rane was careful and clever enough to mispronounce the word, giving her the extra edge of an aura of innocence.  “My Mommy could send him back as soon as I get home!”

The giant grinned.  “That’s a winner of an idea if I ever heard one!” he said.  “Alright, human girl.  There’s just one thing….”

“What’s that?” Rane felt an enormous knot form in her throat.

“You’ll need your toys and your play clothes back, won’t you?”  A chipper ‘ding” came from the hovering hunk of metal, and out came Rane’s brown bomber jacket, flight cap, and Navi-goggles, all as good as new, the scrapes and scuffs from half-a-hundred battles buffed out.  Apparently, this thing was a washing machine, too.  “This thing might actually come in handy,” she thought.  The Rocket Ranger held out her arms and allowed herself to be dressed in what the oddball alien though of as her ‘play clothes’.

Her old jacket resting comfortably over her new onesie. Hair still up in pigtails, she managed to pull on her flight helmet, the pigtails sticking out two little holes in the side.  Objectively, she looked more ridiculous than Venusian clown monkey.  Still, if it would get her out of here, she’d ride out buck naked like a Galactic Godiva.  Speaking of which, Godiva had a horse and our heroine was still in need of some horsepower of her own. “What about my rock-?” Rane sputtered before stopping herself. “My Daddy’s toy?”

Setting her down on the floor, the Caretaker took her by the hand and led her out of the strange little house and into the wide open Nega-Space, a pitch white sky dotted with dark black stars.  “I fixed it.  It was too big to bring inside, but I was going to put it in my garage as soon as the paint dried.”

There standing in front of her, good as new, was her trusty rusty rickety red rocket.  Only now it wasn’t so rusty, or rickety, and it looked a lot more trusty.  Tears of joy in her eyes, Rane looked up to the Caretaker, and for once being at a lack for words, hugged his leg.  “Okay, now,” he chuckled.  “My roast is in the oven, which probably means your mother’s is too.  I don’t want you to be late for dinner.”

Not wanting to lie any more than she already had, Rane nodded her head in agreement.

“Robot, you take good care of her,” he said to the airborne automaton that was just a few feet off the ground.

“Huuuuman.” The robot agreed.

“Well off you go little lady,” the Caretaker said, giving our best gal one last diaper check and a pat on the bum to send her on her way.  Relieved to be released, Rane swallowed her pride and climbed into the cockpit and turned on the ignition.  She sat a little taller than she remembered, likely because of the extra inches underneath her, and she was painfully aware that her “chaperone” now hovered right behind her in the unused co-pilot’s seat, but everything else was as it should be.  Everything functioning at peak efficiency, and all tanks (including oxygen) were filled to the top.

Without further ado, and frankly afraid that at any moment her ruse would rupture, Rane plotted a reverse trajectory than the one she had taken to get here and initiated the countdown sequence.

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-BLASTOFF!

The rush of the rockets rocking her back into her seat, Rane rose up, up, up into the negative sky, speeding towards a tremendous tear in the fabric of reality itself: a wormhole back into her good old Earth-having Universe.

Out into the great wide galaxy they went!

Once the rocket thrusters cut and they were safely out into the other half of the once dreaded ‘Forbidden Zone’, Rane took stock of her new situation. “It’s a shame,” the space smuggler sighed to herself.  “I kind of liked being a big baby for a little bit.  Maybe I can have myself a slumber party over there with a few of my gal-pals after we win the war.”

“Huuuuuman” her new robot companion buzzed, it’s tone nagging at her.

Rane laughed, realizing that the bucket of bolts had as many screws loose as its creator.  “If I can get permission from my Mommy, that is!”  With the autopilot set on course to the nearest Opposition territory, Rane got out of her seat and walked over to her supply closet.  “Now let’s see about getting out of these ridiculous clothes and into something a little more-“  the Opposition’s Ace Operative found her words cut short as a small mountain of baby supplies, all sized perfectly for her, tumbled out onto the floor, fairly burying her.

“Creepin comets!” she yelled as stuffies, frilly dresses, baby bottles, and a not-so-small stack of not-so-small diapers tumbled out of the supply cabinet and on top of her.  The Caretaker had restocked more than just her fuel tanks, and as the shock of being buried under a pile of toys subsided, our heroine noticed a not-so-unfamiliar warmth flood into her pants, her disposable undies already starting to puff out as it absorbed her latest accident.

“Huuuuman?” the Robot chirped, digging her out of the heap.  “Bottle? Nap? Diaperrrrrr?” It inserted two little robot claws into the leggings of her diaper.  “Wet!”

“Maybe I better work on convincing this hunk of junk that I’m toilet trained, first.  Otherwise I’m going to have to learn how to save the star system from the seat of my stroller.”

This has been another exciting adventure of RANE ROVER: ROCKET RANGER! 

 Tune in next time where our hero must battle against both the forces of the Imperium of Evil and the crawling creep of diaper rash!

Author’s Note:

This was done as a request by Dirty Books as part of a request thread.  When bringing it to life, I couldn’t stop thinking about the old timey space opera serials and radio shows, and thus it evolved into the story you’ve just read.

These request threads are always a tricky thing to me, as part of the art of storytelling is engaging and surprising your audience with twists and turns while giving them something that still satisfies them and gives them what they asked for.  After all, if you already know everything that’s going to happen, why read the story, or have someone else write it for you?

This turned into a bit of an experimental piece, with the soundbites and the near constant use of alliteration and tone and it took on a kind of life of its own.  Even so, it was a blast(off) to write and I am extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity to do so.  I hope that everyone who read this (especially Dirty Books who gave me this idea with their request) had a fun little bit of faux padded nostalgia while reading this little mess from the dark corners of my mind.