Lucille Sonic D'ark Raven Rainbow D'eep Vixen The Half-Hedgehog Half-Fox Half-Unicorn was a perfect woman. She had shimmering long spiked rainbow pink hair with stars in it, wore a knee-length skirt, had very large breasts, had one blue eye and one green eye, had very large breasts, was a genius, and had very large breasts. As she herself often said to herself, she was kind, witty, popular, and had the power of many powerful things. She had no weaknesses. She could fly thanks to having three tails, and everyone loved her because she was kind, witty, and popular.
This is not a story about her. This is the story about the van that has just appeared out of nowhere and ran her over, disproving all that rubbish about no weaknesses. And one robot's strange desire to obtain a similar van...
Deep within the... I guess the depths of Neo-Robia (Does it have depths?), the Lord of Neo-Robia, Conqueror of Something-or-Other, and Seeker of Some Extra Titles So This Bit Looks More Impressive Next Time, Chaos Croc watched the feeds from a security camera alongside his Second in Command.
"Look at this. The delivery van arrives through a transdimensional portal, of the Blitovichnik-Teknababbleum Type, runs her over, and just keeps on going before realising it has the wrong address and vanishing down the street. Isn't it wonderful?!"
"Yes, I suppose, you did want rid of her for a while..." Miasma sighed.
"I'm still surprised that simply ignoring her made her go away. I mean, she did keep claiming she'd defeat me. And then she got hit by a truck."
"Van."
"Whatever. Anyway, I've determined that the van is from a company based in a parallel dimension called Dimensions Express, and they specialise in delivery across Dimensions."
"...That makes no sense at all."
"It makes perfect sense. And that's why I want that van." Croc proclaimed.
Silence.
"That means you get me one of those vans."
"Me?! Why me?! And why do you even want the van?"
"Everyone else is busy."
Miasma checked the other screens. A drunken skunk was currently lying upside down, Amelia was making a group of hapless rebels perform Punch and Judy with Chainsaws, and Robob and Josie appeared to be playing pin the tail on the donkey with a nailgun and a very alarmed looking male Donkey dressed in a latex maid outfit that was tied to the wall.
"They don't look busy to me."
"Okay, let me put it another way, everyone else will steal the van and crash it, and blow it to bits."
Miasma pondered this, and found that did seem to make sense.
"Okay, and why do you want it again? You have about seventeen different things that take you to other dimensions."
"Actually, three of them only take you to this dimension but upside down. Anyway, they're all one-person-size pod things, this is a van that travels across dimensions! I could go somewhere else and take people with me if I wanted to!"
"That's the problem, you never want to, you're convinced they'll set fire to the dimension and ruin a place you can raid for new slaves, yet within five minutes in every one you've got the local population attacking you."
"Hey, that last one, I lasted seven minutes!"
"Besides, they probably take ages to reverse engineer and work. It's technology from another dimension. You could probably build one yourself in less time than it takes for me to track one of the vans down."
"Don't care. I want one.."
Miasma gave a sigh of surrender.
"Fine. I'll try get one."
"Good. Now, away with you!"
Miasma had already left. Croc rewound the footage again.
"Heh, van out of nowhere. It never gets old."
Miasma had reviewed the footage herself, and noticed a phone number as well as instructions on how to contact the company across dimensions conveniently on the back of the van, with the also conveniently high-definition security cameras able to get a great shot of the number and instructions. It turned out to be a very simple way to make a phone call other dimensions using only some tape, paper clips, cardboard, and a 2800 Megawatt Nuclear Reactor feeding energy into a Dark Matter Gateway. Fortunately, most of these things were lying around, though she had to go and buy new paperclips, as someone had used the entire supply of them to make skeletons for Plasticine models.
She did not, however, find a way that a Transdimensional Delivery Company made any sense. How would someone even have need for such a service, let alone know it existed?
"Ugh, that's not important right now. I just get a delivery, get the van, and then Croc shuts up."
She blinked.
"Great, now I'm talking to myself.
I thought you were talking to me?
Rubbing her forehead, Miasma began to... Oh, I guess she wasn't talking to me.
"Hello, is that Dimensions Express?" She said into the transdimensional phone.
I'm not lonely, it's just no one ever talks to the narrator.
"...Then who am I speaking to?"
I know most of you don't know I'm here. But just once, it'd be nice.
"That's a sort of pizza you deliver? Do you deliver across dimensions?"
Just one 'hey, great job Narrator, you really narrated the action in my scene great!'
"I see. Do you know what number to dial for a company that does?"
'Hey, Narrator, you really helped make the story come alive with your clarification of who was talking!'
"...Sorry, I mean general parcel deliveries, not Interdimensional Indian Takeaway."
'Hey, good job on telling us the other side of the phone conversation, Narrat...Oh dear'
"Ah. I see what I did wrong now. Thank you. Goodbye."
Miasma hung up, in no way impeded by a slight narrative breakdown! No siree, not impeded one bit! Or aware of it...
The correct number was dialled.
"Hello, Dimensions Express? I'd like to place a delivery order..."
Paisley the Badger was employee of the month at Dimensions Express. This was not through skill, but through mathematics, IE that the company had a high staff turnover, as it also had a very silly method of advertising that would actually cause Miasma to become enraged at how much less sense it makes, but we'll get to that later.
She was a fairly average female badger, and wore the company uniform. A grey cap with the company logo, a red T-Shirt, and whatever else they wore because frankly, if Squirrels can run around in just a vest in other dimensions "I'm never wearing trousers again!" said the human owner of Dimensions Express.
Like most employees, she wore something. In her case, a pair of cycle shorts with a white line on the sides, below a grey skirt. She also opted to have her delivery datapad worn on a leg-strap rather than carried loose everywhere, as the things had a distressing tendency to be hijacked by nanobots and try to kill the user otherwise for some reason.
She parked her van back at the HQ of the company, based in the parallel dimension that was commonly identified as LZ-Banana-02-XCI on various alternative dimension scanning devices. Though not on Apple devices as the dimension map app there merely showed the whole dimension to be covered in cloud as well as being seventeen trillion light years out of place in the layout of the parallel dimensions tree.
She noted that the newspaper lying on the front desk had the first and easiest way to be sure she was back in the right dimension: The headline was about the boss being arrested on indecency charges again.
"Swordfish." She said to the receptionist, a pass-phrase that was to be answered with confirmation she was in the right dimension.
"Swordfish is a stupid password. Welcome back, Paisley." The Receptionist said.
"Delivered the items successfully. No problems to report."
"Are you sure about that, Paisley? Crystal said she'd had no problems but wouldn't you know it, she'd been possessed by the devil again and ate three of the minion clones in parcel processing before the Exorcists arrived."
"No. They did have a dog, though. But it was small."
"Okay. But we will dock your pay if you turn out to be a Chrysalid again. Now, we've got another delivery, and we think Buddie accidentally hit an asteroid instead of delivering his cargo of nitroglycerine to GG-Pineapple-11-MCVIII, and of course he's already in trouble for that fiasco last month, so you'll need to go back and deliver this shipment to NR-Kumquat-33-LX in his place."
"Okay. What about the others?" Paisley asked.
"All busy."
Paisley looked into the staff lounge. Her fellow drivers were all sitting with brain slugs.
"...I see. When are the brain slug removal team getting here?"
"Before you're back, hopefully. Of course, they'll be useless for anything but parcel delivery, data entry, or traffic wardens after the slugs are removed. It's a wonder this place makes a profit at times."
Paisley then left, to find her van loaded and her Dim-Nav system with the destination loaded into it already.
"Okay... Obvious Ambush Park, NR-Kumquat-33-LX. Doesn't sound too tricky..."
Miasma observed the van materialise, and watched the badger driver get out.
"Hello? I've got a delivery for a Mister... Chaos Croc Is A Stupid Bucket Of Bolts Who Should Get His Own Stupid Vans That Make No Sense? Am I pronouncing that right?"
Miasma approached.
"Hello. I'm a representative of the person you mentioned, I'll sign for his delivery. But can I see it first? I have a few questions for you, before I take the delivery to my employer..."
"Oh, sure, here..."
The Badger obliged, opening the back doors. Misama picked up one of the small metal discs, and then grinned. Disc in one hand, she placed a finger onto Paisley's tail. In an instant, her body below the waist transformed into metal.
"Eek! I should warn you that killing company staff will result in a sixty percent extra fee being charged to your account!"
"Okay, first question. Why is there a transdimensional delivery service? What possible sense does that make?"
"Uh, I never really asked. I've worked there for six years and we're pretty busy, I guess..."
"Okay. So no answers. Why is there apparently no problem in me killing you?!"
"Well, we all have our memories stored at the HQ and our DNA stored to make clones of ourselves if anything happens, but getting cloned comes half our of our pay unless the client killed us. Transdimensional travel can be dangerous. You could accidentally arrive in a dimension where everything is single-celled and be broken into a million different single-celled versions of yourself, you could arrive in a zombie apocalypse, or you could annoy the locals on an advertising run..."
"What's an advertising run?"
"Oh, that's where the van randomly goes to another dimension, lands on someone, makes sure someone saw the information on the back of the van, and hopefully uses our service."
Miasma stared at the badger.
"Let me get this straight. You have no idea what your company is for, you apparently get cloned if you die..."
"Seventeen times so far! I was employee of the month last month because I only died once!"
"...And you drum up business by running people over."
"Sometimes we just crash into cars but yes."
Miasma blinked.
"You know NOTHING about that makes any sense whatsoever?!"
"Sorry, but it's just my job. Um, now, can you sign, please?"
"...I'm turning you into a metal statue and you just want me to sign?!"
"Well, yes. Oh! Actually, madam, if you'll let me go to the front of my van you can fill in form A5FR to argue you merely petrified me rather than killing me, so you only get charged an extra delivery fee for the statue of me unless you plan to steal the van."
"I do."
"Ah, then that form is kind of useless, the extra fee from before assumes you steal the van..."
Miasma groaned, and had the petrification sweep up the badger's body.
"Thank you for using Dimensions Express! Please consider us aga-"
As she turned entirely to metal, the delivery driver was silence.
Miasma was not.
"Utterly insane... I'll remove these clothes later, the stupidity of all that's given me a headache from hell..." She muttered, picking up the newly-made statue.
She threw the now-metal badger into the back of the van, and drove it back home...
"Croc, I've got your van!" Miasma declared.
"Oh? Oh, yeah. I decided to build my own. Look, it's got wings!"
The milk snake groaned.
"I knew this would happen. I knew it. I'd go to all the effort, earn a headache from how dumb that company is, have to pay an extra fee for stealing their van, and you'd already have the exact same thing built! And that's why I ordered this!"
Miasma yanked the statue of Paisley into the room.
"...A metallic badger statue?"
"A Neodymium badger statue!"
"Oh. Wait, isn't that..."
"Yes, Croc. It's a magnet! NOW COME HERE!"
And so it was that until that body became a permanent statue, Paisley the Badger would be used to make the Lord of Neo-Robia sing silly songs. Her clone continued her work four hours later, bemoaning the possible loss of Employee of the Month and the risk there was another statue version of herself out there, possibly going to be revived and halving her pay...