Many things went wrong. It started immediately after the meeting when Clancy burned the meal he had prepared for everyone's dinner, which he insisted on repeatedly swearing up and down was "definitely not human meat." I decided to go hungry.

The first jam session I participated in for the jazz combo took place shortly after dinner and seemed like it was going okay until Captain Marmalade called it off because the mojo wasn't right in the room.

The next two days I got absolutely no sleep because of the Bubba roommate situation and I failed in every attempt I made to sabotage the ship or get a message out to the agency. I thought I might have a chance when Captain Marmalade asked me to hack the Intergalactic Capital Space Station's shipping manifest so that it would list us as an authorized arrival, but Bigsby was watching me like a hawk the entire time, so I didn't dare try to sneak in a message. And while I did get us the authorization we needed, something still went haywire as I had requested V.I.P. parking for our ship, and yet when we arrived we were shunted off to lot ZZ, which was situated in an out of the way corner of the station. It was an almost three mile walk to the nearest tram stop where we could catch a ride the rest of the way into the main entrance.

I'd never been on board the Intergalactic Capital Space Station before. It consisted of a long cylindrical body with two circular ring structures on either end. From outside it resembled a giant barbell floating in space. The inside was more like a giant metropolis. Nearly one billion people were on board at any given time and there was every kind of shop, business, service and form of entertainment that you could possibly imagine, as well as quite a few you probably couldn't imagine. There were even giant biodomes inside where you could observe plant and animal life from over one hundred million different planets. It would be really easy to get lost in there, but when I got us our parking authorization I also managed to connect us to a live map of the entire station. We knew the exact conference room where President Crane would be giving his speech as well as the location of all the closest weapons caches.

The plan called for Avery to keep the Flying Fist of Righteousness parked inside the station for one hour and then quietly depart into a nearby orbit without arousing suspicion. By that time we would be in position and as soon as we gave the signal that the deed was done Belladonna would transport us out. We were each wearing a small communications device around our wrist with which we could contact each other as well as the three crew members still aboard our ship. These were innocuous enough not to raise any alarms with security, unlike weapons which we didn't bring with us as we planned to access them aboard the station.

Nonetheless we were busted almost immediately. I assume our appearance gave us away. Even a low paid security guard could tell at a glance that we were not an intergalactically famous dance troupe. Captain Marmalade hadn't given us any costume beyond the big pink tutus, which he insisted would be enough to sell our story. As such, we were each just wearing the normal outfits we had already had on. Bubba had at least finally put on a shirt, but it was a dirty wife beater tank top with several food stains on it. Captain Marmalade wore a skin-tight shirt covered in sparkly gold sequins. He had augmented his own costume with a silver tiara, which he insisted he had the right to wear as he was the lead dancer. Aside from that our group consisted of an eight foot tall gecko man, a hulking hillbilly, an angry bald hooligan with mismatched hands, a pudgy blue guy, and me. Hardly the stuff of which professional dance troupes are made.

"Hold it right there!" a guard shouted the moment we made our entrance.

"I'm sorry, are you speaking to us?" Captain Marmalade said.

"Yeah I'm talking to you. What do you weirdos think you're doing?"

"What does it look like we're doing?" Captain Marmalade asked. "We're going inside the space station."

"Why are you wearing those ridiculous things around your waists?" the guard asked.

"Surely you've heard of us. We're Rhythmic Thunder."

"Say what now?" The guard asked.

"You know. Rhythmic Thunder. The intergalactically famous dance troupe? We hail from the planet Feldstein with a message of love, peace, and toe tapping beats. We're here to perform for President Crane. Check the manifest. I'm sure that we're on there."

We definitely were on there because I had placed us on it when I obtained our authorization to board. Unfortunately the guard didn't look at the manifest because he'd already seen through our ruse.

"Now hold on one cotton-picking second here. I've been to Feldstein and I happen to know that dancing is illegal there because my buddy got arrested for bobbing his head too vigorously at a stop sign. In fact all forms of art are banned there. I don't know what's going on here, but this doesn't pass the smell test."

If anything didn't pass the smell test I thought it was probably Bubba who still gave off a stench of musty body odor.

"For reals?" Captain Marmalade said. "They don't allow art on Feldstein? That's crazy! I mean, of course, they didn't used to allow art, but that all changed when they elected the new governor. Now it's a land of music, dance, and poetry as far as the eye can see and we just want to spread love."

"I don't think so, mister," the guard said. "It was just last weekend I was there. I'm still trying to raise the bail money to get my buddy out of jail. I'll tell you what, you may be a lover but you ain't no dancer. I'm going to have to get my supervisor involved with this. In the meantime we'll need to stick you in a holding cell."

"Oy!" Bigsby spoke up. "If yer thinking yer gonna lay a bloody finger on me, why boyo, yer gots another think comin'!"

Clancy let out a low guttural growl and bared his teeth while Phelps cracked his knuckles in preparation to throw down. Bubba stood right where he was with a blank look on his face. I was trying to make covert eye contact with the security guard and give him some kind of signal that I was on his side without blowing my cover.

Before any of us could do anything the guard had pushed a red button on his desk and a door slid open in the wall revealing a battalion of heavily armed guards. They pointed guns at us and stuck us with high voltage cattle prods and before we knew what had happened they had deposited us into a detention cell and slammed the door behind us.

It became clear pretty quickly that we weren't alone in there. We found ourselves in a rectangular space roughly the size of a standard living room. It was dimly lit by a couple fixtures in the ceiling and completely unfurnished except for one narrow metal bench along the far wall. This was occupied by an enormous hairy beast that I could only describe as an ogre. Both Clancy and Bubba looked tiny next to this guy. He was missing his left eye and had a large scar that extended from his forehead down to the tip of his chin. He had frizzy green hair and splotchy emerald and brown skin. His ears were long and pointy and one of them was pierced with a rusty metal ring. Two sharp fangs emanated from his lower lip and droplets of drool dripped from the tips of them. He had a sour look plastered on his face and didn't seem amused in the slightest by our presence.

Neither did the roughly thirty other inhabitants of the cell who looked like a motley collection of thugs, murderers, rapists, and the odd embezzler. The room fell silent upon our arrival and all eyes were on us. I felt highly self-conscious of the ridiculous pink tutus we were wearing. I also found myself wondering why I had thought it was a good idea to join the anti-vigilante agency in the first place. Surely I could have been happy working in human resources or something along those lines. Even the good old file room at my Uncle Larry's discount law office wasn't sounding so bad right about now.

"Well ain't you a bunch of pretty little things," the ogre said in a deep rumbling voice.

"We ARE pretty, aren't we?" Captain Marmalade beamed. "Thank you for noticing, good sir."

"I don't like pretty things," the ogre said. "In fact, I hate pretty things. I like to squash them in between my hands."

"Squash this, ya ugly bugger!" Bigsby shouted as he flipped him an inverted bird.

"Come on now, fellows," Captain Marmalade said raising a conciliatory hand. "There's no reason to get nasty. We're all in the same boat here, are we not? Confined in cages against our will by an unfeeling bureaucracy run amok? Why should we take our anger and frustrations out on each other when the real criminals are the ones out there sitting in boardrooms and fancy offices? We're just a bunch of well-intentioned misunderstood souls trying to get by in a cold and heartless galaxy, am I right?"

"You talk a lot, little man," the ogre said. "I agree with some of what you say, but I also find you irritating. I'll give you one minute to convince me not to smash you and your pretty little friends into a paste of bloody pulp."

"Well, that's good," Captain Marmalade smiled. "Because I'm only going to need thirty seconds to bust us all out of here."