Gaia and Skye's Mediocre Adventure

“The Scourge of Gnarled Forest.” Skye read out from the
wanted poster, pronouncing “scourge” as “score-j” and making a fool of herself
to anyone paying attention. Frowning (not because of the mispronunciation), she
turned to survey the jungle ahead of them. “You know, you’d really think they’d
come up with a more interesting name.”

“I think it’s plenty interesting.” Gaia, Skye’s sort-of
co-worker and self-proclaimed best friend, stood at her side. To prove her
point, she said the word “scourge” with the correct pronunciation. “Sc-urge.
Scuuuuurge. The Scoooouuuurge of Gnaaaaarrrled Forest,” she said, trying to
look Skye in the eyes as she did so.

Skye rolled her own eyes so far back into her own head that
they almost became stuck.

Giving up on looking Skye in the eyes, Gaia placed her
mighty hands on her mighty hips and mightily surveyed what they could see of
the horizon. It was not a literal horizon because of the large numbers of trees
in their way; it was more of a metaphorical horizon. The end to their journey.

“It makes sense though.” She continued as if she hadn’t just
suffered a crushing social rejection. “They’re a scourge, and they’re being a
scourge *in* Gnarled Forest. Ergo, the
Scourge of Gnarled Forest.”

Still unimpressed, Skye shoved her own hands into the
pockets of her coat and continued to survey the landscape with the frown
characteristic of “straight men” type character. (In Skye’s instance, “straight
man” was not literal, because she was both a woman and incredibly gay.) The
jungle looked just as you would expect a jungle to look – green at the top and
brown at the bottom, with the only other colour being the yellow of the bananas
native to the area and conspicuously growing on the overhanging trees. Simian
cries echoed through the jungle. Skye, who was an extremely outdoors-averse
person, found this to be extremely ungroovy and felt a shudder creep up and
down her spine. She certainly wouldn’t be setting foot in there if she could
help it, that was for sure.

“Why,” said Skye, “are we here?”

“Nobody knows.” Said Gaia, in the voice of a person who was
perfectly happy not knowing. “Some people think we just formed from dust, some
people think-”

“No!” Skye said, cross that she had been misunderstood and
turning the anger outwards. “I mean, why are we *physically* here? In Gnarled Forest?” She folded her arms, trying to
look more impressive. Unfortunately, it made her look a bit like a pouting
child. This was because of how short she was. “I don’t remember signing up for
a day trip to some jungle. Do we have to hunt for this Scourge person? Where
are we supposed to start?” She continued to complain.

Gaia had stopped listening. She had picked up a discarded
banana and started to sing into it like microphone. “Sweet Caroline, bam, bam,
bam,” she sang.

Skye was fed up enough to think that Gaia was neither called
Caroline nor particularly sweet. This was irrational of her because, of course,
people don’t have to sing songs that are connected to them like that. That’s
not how it works. But she was too fed up to care. The bugs around her (which
appeared to have materialised in the moments in which she was angry at Gaia for
singing Sweet Caroline) flew around her head. She was forced wave them away in
a very unsexy manner.

“We should go inside.” She said eventually, forgetting to be
angry because she was too busy waving at the bugs.

In front of them may have been a jungle, but behind them was
a large lodge full of other detectives and hunters and spies and people whose
job it was to catch other people. They had all been summoned there to catch the
apparently nefarious Scourge of Gnarled Forest. Gaia didn’t want to go inside,
because there wouldn’t be any bananas to use as pretend microphones inside.
Skye didn’t care. They went inside.

“Hey, Skye?” Gaia asked.

“No, Gaia.” Skye said. This was a contrast to the normal way
to respond to such a question (with a “yes” instead of a “no”) but a key
faculty of Skye’s character was her irritability, and how it made her behave in
an antisocial manner. So, in this instance, instead of “yes, Gaia”, she said
“no, Gaia”.

“How do musicians eat?” Gaia, fully aware of Skye’s
character, continued to talk anyway. “Because they’re musicians. How do they
eat?”

“No, Gaia.” Skye repeated.

As they went inside, they passed by a car park full of a
large number of vehicles – most of them cars, and most of *them* heavily armoured enough to drive through buildings, which
would surely come in handy later. (Note how the narrative draws the reader’s
attention to the cars. This technique is known as “foreshadowing”, and is
commonly used by fiction writers to establish things earlier on that are used
later. This means that the story remains more consistent, and a reader does not
find themselves asking questions such as “where did that car come from” when
they should be focusing on an action-packed story.)

“Good morning, evening, and afternoon.” Said a man standing
on a stage. This man was the man who was in charge of Gnarled Forest, and who
had called all of the people-catchers there. He thought himself clever, which
is why he was saying “Good morning, evening, and afternoon” even though it was
only morning.

“Friends, enemies, and enemies who pretend to be friends.”
He said, which was a bit more clever but didn’t really fit with the context.
“Thank you all for coming.” He continued, finally saying something appropriate.
Skye made sure to listen to him as he talked. Gaia tried to listen but kept
thinking about the bananas.

“I’ve called you here today because of the man known as the
Scourge of Gnarled Forest.” The man in charge said. “He’s been bringing down
all of the flights over the jungle, and all of our supplies are being cut off.”
He phrased it in a way that implied he didn’t want the people living in Gnarled
Forest to suffer and starve without supplies. He was actually upset because he
had ordered a jacuzzi and it had never arrived.

The crowd of people-catchers started to mutter. Skye was
about to ask intelligent Private Investigator questions – “*when did the Scourge start to bring down flights*”, “*did anyone know how he did it*”, “*was there any bug spray she could borrow*”
– when a man in a suit walked up to her.

“Hello, my darling.” He said. He had shaggy black hair and a
five o’clock shadow and was a very handsome man. Skye hated him instantly.

“Hello.” She said, making sure to sound like she didn’t want
to bash him on the head with a stick when she actually did. “Why are you
talking to me?”

“I was wondering what you thought about the Scourge.” The
man said, cool as a pair of sunglasses surrounded by regular glasses.

Skye was about to tell him that she hadn’t had any thoughts
yet, because she had been distracted by him talking to her, but was distracted
again by the man in charge, who suddenly yelled and clutched his chest, like he
was John Hurt in Alien (or Spaceballs). He then proceeded to ceremoniously keel
over and die.

Everyone was shook, to say the least, by this development,
but Skye was unperturbed. Such was the way of the
private investigator.

“Okay, first of
all, big mood.” She said as she walked up to the dead man’s body. “Second of
all, what could have killed him?”

“Yeah.” Said Gaia,
not really listening. She was still looking for bananas that could double as
microphones.

“Shut up.” Said
Skye, only listening slightly harder than Gaia.

“Hello, hello.” Said neither Gaia nor Skye. It took a moment
for both them and everyone else in the room to realise that there was actually
an unfamiliar voice speaking. An unfamiliar voice continued: “That was a
warning.”

“You mean like a warning shot?” Skye asked, thinking out
loud once again. An unfamiliar voice was probably actually the Scourge, who
would have, of course, been unhappy with being made to stop shooting down
supply ships. The fact that this Scourge was able to kill a man seemingly
without appearing, however, was a good thing to keep in mind.

“There wasn’t a gunshot, though.” Said the suited man, who
didn’t understand metaphors.

“Let me do my work in peace,” said An unfamiliar voice, “or
I’ll kill all of you as well.”

A brief and to-the-point message was something Skye could
appreciate, but she still had to catch the Scourge, so she began to scan the
room. The Scourge’s voice sounded amplified, yes, but it was probably best to
check that they weren’t hiding in plain sight. She took in everything quickly:
the suited man was still obnoxious, the other invited guests were talking
amongst themselves about how this could possibly have happened, and Gaia had
found an oven mitt and was trying to balance it on her head. (Most people would
have thought straight away to stick their head *in* the mitt instead of balancing it, but Gaia had the ability to be
remarkably unintelligent.)

Suddenly, Skye caught sight of a suspicious-looking curtain
at the back of the room, with a suspiciously-shaped lump behind it.

“Bingo.” She said to herself, beginning to stealthily walk
towards the curtain.

“Scrabble.” Said Gaia, who just wanted to contribute.

Skye peeled back the curtain – only to get punched in the
face. She fell to the floor with a wallop. At almost the same time, an
explosion went off, and when Skye opened her eyes, she saw a decently-sized
explosion (4/10, because she’d definitely seen bigger) disappearing into the
breeze. All of the person-catcher types were strewn throughout the room. Or
outside the room. With the bugs and the bananas. Suddenly, Skye found that she
didn’t mind getting punched in the face as much.

“You found me.” An unfamiliar voice said as a boot planted
itself firmly on her… abdomen? Stomach? Diaphragm? It was somewhere like that.
The boot planted itself there, and Skye looked up into wild blue eyes and an
outrageous moustache. It was a terrible moustache, with mismatched bristles
drooping whiskers and bits of food in it. She had never seen anything quite so
horrible in all her life. The moustache was so horrible, it had to belong to
the Scourge. After all, as everyone knows, physical features are a perfect
reflection of one’s personality.

She almost said “you shouldn’t have been here to begin
with”, but didn’t. For a private investigator such as herself, it was bad
business practice to give advice to the person she was trying to catch. She’d
never make *that* mistake again, that
was for sure. Instead, she said:

“Yes.”

The Scourge placed his meaty hands on his meaty waist, threw
back his head, and laughed a deep, booming laugh.

“Truly, I am in the presence of a *master* detective!” He said. Skye tried to not be flattered by the
compliment, succeeding mostly because of the unflattering nature of the man
giving it. (Plus the fact that he was still standing on her, and that was
painful.) (*Plus* the fact, she
realised after a moment, that there was every chance he was being sarcastic.)

While all of that was happening, Gaia, who wasn’t completely
resistant to explosions but still better at handling them than most other
people, was trying to find a way to save her certified best friend. In an
ideal, whim-serving world, she would have been able to jump in and clobber the
man, and take direct action to save Skye. However, her superpowers that played
a *teensy* role in providing her with
her strength were based on a substance called Maelstrom, of which she had none
to hand. Hence her reluctance. That, and what if the man saw her coming, and
just trod *harder* on Skye? Or
something like that? If she was going to do something, and she was, it would
have to be something efficient but also fast. Faster than a speeding person.

Her attention drifted from banana microphones to the car
park, and all of the heavily-armoured and previously-foreshadowed cars within
it.

She grinned.

*Scrabble*.

After that, it was a moment’s hesitation on deciding which
car to use before eventually deciding on the nearest one. Because it was the
nearest. Following that rather sexy line of reasoning, she scrambled over to
the car like a dog on ice to an owner standing on the edge of the frozen lake
and holding a treat; before being hit with a realisation

“*You can’t drive, you*
walnut*.” Her dastardly inner monologue told her. To combat the dastardly*
inner monologue, Gaia pretended her intrusive thoughts were an obnoxious person
she knew so that she could easily ignore them, which was a common
intrusive-thoughts-sufferer trick. Telling Raleigh-with-an-R to get stuffed,
she jumped into the driver’s seat of the car, tried to remember how she had
seen her friends drive, and stamped her foot onto two pedals at once.

Meanwhile, with Skye, her abdomen was still being stamped
on, and the Scourge was still laughing at her, which had quickly become a
mostly redundant exercise, due to the fact that Skye had come to understand very
well the fact that he was taking pleasure out of the situation that the two
found themselves in. There really wasn’t any point to continuing to laugh, and
yet the Scourge did it anyway. In all honesty, it was mostly just impolite.

“*Okay,*” she thought
to herself, “*there’s almost definitely a*
way out of this. I just need to stay calm and think rationally.*”*

“*OWWW.*” her interior
monologue screamed at her, effectively drowning out her coherent thoughts.
Which was a shame – she really liked her thoughts to be coherent.

“You will die,” said the Scourge, remaining an uninteresting
and redundant toilet plunger of a human being, “and you will die slowly.”

“You know,” Skye coughed, forgetting her rule at what was
really the crucial moment, “me dying slowly means that there’s more time for an
outrageous rescue.”

The Scourge scowled. He began to rummage around in his
pockets – presumably for a way to kill Skye quicker. Skye sighed to herself.
She’d done it again.

Back in the car, Gaia was trying every trick in the book to
actually drive the car properly.

“You really butter my crackers.” She said – subscribing to
the idea that if you talk nicely (or sexily) to a vehicle, it will be more
responsive to your commands. Unrelated to her flirtation (and more to do with
the fact that at that moment, she finally put her hands and feet all in the
right place), the car started forward properly, quickly picking up speed and
crashing through the wall like the kool-aid man. Oh yeah.

Skye and the Scourge both looked up at the heavily armoured,
probably several-ton vehicle – but while Skye was spared by the fact she was
short and also lying down, the Scourge was hit head-on with the heavily
armoured car’s equally heavily-armoured bumper, and was shot across the room
into the *opposing* wall.

“Crikey oh-riley.” Said Skye, groovily. Except that’s not
what she said, she actually said something much more profane, but basic human
decency prevents her expletives from being recorded in their entirety. Still,
she was alive, and she jumped up to stare at Gaia in a rare moment of genuine
surprise. “You can drive!”

“I can drive!” Repeated Gaia, in equal surprise.

“She can drive!” Affirmed the Scourge, who was probably
nursing numerous debilitating injuries from getting hit by the car, but still
managed to climb to his feet and hobble out of the door with no-one stopping
him. Skye made to run after him, but her legs were short and her stomach (she’d
decided that that was where the Scourge had been standing) was still in pain,
and she managed about three steps before sinking to the ground rather
over-dramatically.

“Oof.”

Thus was the Scourge’s escape ensured.

Skye, after a moment, found herself being pulled to her feet
– but not by Gaia. By the suited man, who had made a miraculous reappearance.

“Come with me, darling.” Said the suited man in an extremely
unsexy way. It was unsexy in the way that a person trying to be sexy would
ultimately be unsexy. “I’ll keep you safe.”

“*And there go the last*
lingering threads of my heterosexuality*.” Skye thought to herself.*

“Thank you very much, but I am inclined to decline your generous
offer.” Said Skye; phrasing it very politely, instead of saying “I would rather
be serenaded by a chicken drumstick”, which was rather closer to what she
actually felt.

The car door fell open like a door that had been violently
kicked from the inside, and out jumped Gaia. For reasons unknown, the oven mitt
was still on her head. For reasons further unknown, she felt quite important
with it there.

“You alright there?” She asked. “Also, can you believe how
musicians eat?”

“My answers are “no” and “what are you talking about?”.”
Skye responded succinctly. The suited man folded his arms and smirked, and Skye
didn’t know what she was smirking at. She decided to kick him in the ankles
anyway.

“Can you believe,” said Gaia, “that musicians eat by
stuffing bananas into trumpets and then honking them into each other’s mouths?”
This was entirely untrue.

Skye, for a moment, was stunned into a silence, owing to the
fact that she had never heard of such a method of eating before. It was
probably nonsense, but she would have to do research.

“No.” She eventually told Gaia. “I can’t believe.”

How could Skye not believe? Gaia hadn’t felt so disappointed
since finding out that she had lost no weight after sticking to her diet for
five whole hours. But Skye didn’t know this, and if she had known it, she would
have been pleased more than anything else.

After finishing hopping around and cursing (owing to being
kicked in the ankles by Skye some moments earlier), the suited man made the
unwise decision to re-enter the conversation. It was unwise because he was
unwanted and unappreciated, and it is a common fact of life that you should not
join conversations where you are unwanted and unappreciated. Either everyone
else having the conversation is very rude, or you are in some way insufferable,
or both. In this instance, it would have been both, but that would have been
technically incorrect, seeing as Gaia could not be considered “very rude” in
this or any instance.

“Shall we retire?” He asked? “Now that the scourge has
escaped, I doubt we’ll find him today. I would like to get to know you better,
any rate.” This last phrase was directed towards Skye, and it was said in the
tone of voice that would have someone with a less stern temperament than her
pressing a panic button. As it was, Skye flexed her fingers and glared at him.
This was something she had done back when she had had electrokinesis (because
she had once had electrokinesis). It was a power move sort of thing.

“Retiring is for senior citizens.” She said. “We have work to
do, and if you get in my way I won’t hesitate.” She almost added another word
onto the end, but she had been challenging herself to cut back on the curse
words as of late (her previous bout of swearing was, of course, drawn from a
high-intensity situation, and would not be counted).

Suitably chastised, the suited man raised his hands and
stepped backwards, before turning on his heel and beginning to mingle with the
rest of the guests. Well, the surviving ones. 4/10 wasn’t an enormous size for
an explosion, but it was bad enough to cause fatalities. Skye was left with
Gaia, who basically immediately wandered off and began to look through the
debris.

The adrenaline wore off, and Skye suddenly realised all that
had happened. Namely, she had almost perished (which had happened before, but
was still about as far removed from “groovy” or the like as you could expect),
and the Scourge – their target! – had escaped. This was disappointing. Skye
didn’t feel merely a little bit of disappointment, or a fair amount of disappointment,
no; in that moment, she was hit with an overwhelming surplus of disappointment.

Her phone rang.

Checking the caller ID, as sensible people did (as opposed
to stupid people, who answered without looking and ended up getting wrapped up
in redundant twenty-minute conversations revolving around them trying to
politely insist that they didn’t want to buy anything), Skye realised that she
was being called by Hera – her girlfriend. In truth, she had been wondering
about proposing recently. This was mostly because she did genuinely love Hera
(or, at least, appreciated her beyond toleration), but if asked, she would have
to admit that she also highly enjoyed the prospect of being able to refer to
someone as her “wife”. The word “wife”, as everyone knows, holds a lot of
power. It’s very dramatic and serious. “That’s my wife!” “Leave my wife alone!”
“I wasn’t the one who murdered my wife!”
These phrases have weight to them. So it would have been fun, Skye
reckoned, to be able to say them and be accurate while doing so.

She answered the phone.

“Hello.” She said.

“*Hey babe!*” Hera
responded. “*How’s your investigation*
going, are you guys okay?*”*

“We’re fine.” Skye said, though things were decidedly not
fine. She looked over to Gaia, who was busy folding over a pamphlet that had
the words “twin peaks” on it so that the words merged together to create the
word “twinks”.

Skye was aware that this word meant something else entirely.

“*Great!*” Hera
said. “*I just wanted to check up on you.*
I know you get very focused on these cases, so I figured…*” She trailed off,*
but Skye understood.

“Thanks.” She said, touched. Not literally.

“*Great!*” Hera said
again, sounding exactly like how she had the first time. It was a talent of
hers. “*I’ll see you later! Love you!*”

“Love you too.” Skye affirmed, before hanging up and
focusing back on her case of trying to catch a man who shot down airships and
stole jacuzzi-building supplies, with a cretin for a sidekick.

Utterly serious business.

“Snack?” Gaia asked, waving what looked like a pretzel in
front of her. Under normal circumstances, she would have declined the offer and
also asked where Gaia had gotten the snack from (kleptomania, it seemed, was
one of her less-prominent-but-still-totally-relevant traits), but these were
un-normal circumstances. She had just almost died. It was time to treat
herself.

“Fine.” She said. “I’ll just have one bite.” She was, in
fact, about to have more than one bite. She was about to eat the entire thing.

What followed was one of those periods of time that felt
extremely long without actually being that long. Sometimes time seems to move
quickly, and sometimes it seems to move slowly. It actually always moves at one
single speed, because that is actually how time works. This is something that
everyone knows unless they forget. Skye had forgotten, and she was wondering
why it was taking so long to eat a single pretzel.

When she finished, Gaia ambled back over to her.

“Hello!” She said redundantly. Then: “I have a plan…”

**TO BE CONTINUED**

**…**

**AND HERE’S THE CONTINUATION**

For any human being who was at all familiar with a modicum of Gaia and her personality, the phrase “I have a plan” leaving her mouth would have been as surprising as a tree suddenly sprouting wings, flying into the air, and beginning to magically grant wishes. For a human as cynical as Skye, the tree sprouting wings, flying into the air, and beginning to magically grant wishes seemed like a *much* more sensible option.

“You?” Skye blurted, feeling very confused, which wasn’t something she was used to. “You have a plan?”

“Yes.” Said Gaia, looking around the room for something else – what, Skye wasn’t sure. Likely more banana microphones.

What is important to note is that Gaia said “Yes” and *only* “Yes”, failing to elaborate. This meant that Skye stayed confused.

“Well, thank you for that.” Skye said, after a long time. Very sarcastically.

“You’re welcome!” Said Gaia, ever-earnest in a display of genuinely stunning lack of perception. She was impressive like that.

“Well.” Said Skye, blinking hard. In frustration. That was a thing people did. “I do want to know what the Scourge was doing here. *And* how he killed that man with such convenient timing.”

“Mayhaps he’s writing the script.” Gaia suggested. Skye ignored her; she could understand what Gaia was implying well enough, and had long come to the conclusion that there was nothing practical about existential crises. So she ignored such a blatantly fourth-wall breaking comment in favour of surveying the room.

“You have to have,” Skye waved her hand in an indiscernibly discerning sort of way, “connections to do something like that.” In this instance, it was important to note that she referred not to literal connections (as in, connections with other human people), so much as she referred to the metaphorical strings that one would have to pull in order to do such a thing, and the ways they would have had to be manipulating the situation. It was, she would later be prepared to admit, a sub-par way of surmising the situation, and it was really little wonder that Gaia would misinterpret her words and do something idiotic.

“So, you think he had someone on the inside?” Gaia asked, misinterpreting her words and preparing to do something idiotic.

“Not necessarily.” Skye said in an undeserved show of non-berating-ness.

“Well,” returned Gaia without really paying any attention to Skye – so lost was she in her own moderately-sized world – “that’s alright. My plan should still work.”

“Ah, yes.” Skye muttered, without giving much thought to anything other than the matter of the Scourge, “your plan.”

Gaia hummed in a satisfactory manner. Like when you just finished that final piece of chicken from the bucket.

It was at this point that Skye, still trying to think, realised a key aspect of Gaia’s characterisation had slipped her mind. Though the thought of anything slipping her mind was enough to induce an urge to ritually take her own life, Skye resisted the urge to perform hara-kiri on herself. The truth was, that though it was still *unusual* for Gaia to have a plan, she had had plans before. Such as the cologne incident. Or the happening involving a strangely-shaped pencil sharpener. Heck, she was sure that their local police station, back in Nimbus Station, still told stories of the shark and the disappearing library from time.

No, remembered Skye, what was crucial about Gaia was not that she never had any plans, but rather that she never had any *good* plans. Any nice, genuinely functional, sensible plans; plans that didn’t involve something going horribly, embarrassingly, hilariously wrong.

“What *is* your plan?” She asked, in a fit of perhaps suicidal curiosity.

Gaia beamed like a sunny sunbeam. “I thought you’d never ask!” She exclaimed.

That made two of them.

“Well,” said Gaia, “my train of thought was that the Scourge is shooting down airships, right?”

“Right.” Skye nodded. That was what she remembered. She was surprised that her and Gaia’s memories were actually aligning. (Was Gaia just being sane, or had Skye finally gone off the deep end? At this point in time, she couldn’t say.)

“So.” Gaia continued with all the enthusiasm of a two-year-old who’d never managed to properly hurt themselves before. “We take an airship, fly it out to the zone where they always get shot down, and then *we* get shot down, and we once we land, we can get out and apprehend the Scourge!” She made one of her hands into a fist and slammed it into the palm of her other hand as she finished. This was indicative of the possibility that she didn’t quite understand what “apprehend” meant. Specifically, that it wasn’t \*necessarily\* a violent action.

If her partner-in-solving-crimes-and-also-potentially-in-just-flat-out-crime misunderstanding the meaning of the word “apprehend” was her biggest problem, that would have been one thing. However, Skye, in all her genius, had already spotted another problem with the plan, and it was big. It was so big, in fact, that seemed to take on a life of its own, swelling and rising until it dwarfed Skye and the room and even Gaia (who was a tall woman).

“I’m big.” The big problem seemed to say. “I’m very big.”

Skye decided that the best thing to do would be to address this big problem. (And make no mistake, it was big. If you were a dramatic person, you could probably call it the biggest problem that ever bigged, but Skye wasn’t, so she didn’t.)

“Getting shot down could kill us.” She said, not mincing her words. She didn’t like it when food was minced, it always messed the taste up. It was the same with words. “If we are on the airship when it is shot down, we will fall with it. We will probably hit the ground hard. And I dare say that could kill us.” She paused, for a moment, considering. “Well, it’d kill *me*, at least. Your head may be thick enough to survive.”

“Thank you!” Said Gaia, not understanding the concept of a backhanded compliment.

“No, you don’t understand.” Skye tried to explain. “I like being alive, sometimes.”

Gaia gasped. “So, do I! We have so much in common!”

“That’s not my point.” Skye pinched the bridge of her nose almost hard enough to crack the bone. Not quite hard enough, though. Her fingers were very dainty. “It’s just, I don’t want to potentially get killed while trying to carry out this idea of yours. There has to be another way to get to the Scourge and capture him.”

“Well, I couldn’t think of any.” Said Gaia. “And I tried really hard.”

Skye was very tempted to say another disparaging thing about Gaia, but the truth was, off the top of her head, she couldn’t think of one either. The Scourge’s only consistency was that he shot down airships that flew over Gnarled Forest. It was also the only really solid piece of information they had to go off of. Skye, still traumatised by the moustache, also now knew what the man looked like, but that would barely do them any good in the jungle – an environment almost as closely packed as an underground train carriage during rush hour.

If they actually carried out Gaia’s plan, it would be like a trap. Or, well, perhaps not *like* – it could be an actual trap. Be there when he shot down the airship, then pounce on him when he went in to steal the supplies. It could work, but…

“It still seems unnecessarily dangerous to get shot down, though.” Skye pointed out. “It’d be more prudent to, for instance, follow the airship on foot and get to the crash site before the Scourge.”

“‘Unnecessarily Dangerous’ is my middle name.” Gaia declared. This was news to Skye [hint, hint, sarcastic tone of voice]. “Plus, you hate walking! And physical exertion.”

This was true. Skye did hate both of those things.

“Getting shot down might be physically exerting, too.” She replied in the voice of someone who hated physical exertion being offered everything they could ever want. “Plus, you know, the threat to ourselves.”

“We might not even die.” Offered Gaia. From Skye’s perspective, this was probably not the comforting statement that Gaia must have hoped it would be. From Gaia’s perspective, Skye was now perfectly comforted, because how could such a reassurance *not* be comforting, unless the recipient had a death wish? Gaia knew that Skye didn’t have a death wish, because three score and nine days before that day, Skye had off-handedly mentioned not having one any more, and sometimes Gaia did remember some things.

Skye, meanwhile, crossed her arms in a slightly pathetic attempt to make herself look more imposing. Given that Gaia was exactly one foot taller than her (and yes, they had measured, and yes, Skye had found it embarrassing), there was only so much that crossing her arms could accomplish in terms of bigging herself up. But what she lacked in size, she liked to think she made up for in attitude and also attitude.

“We’re not going to do that.” She said, sternly. “There have to be ways to apprehend the Scourge that don’t involve literally killing ourselves.”

This was Skye’s final stance, and it was also the logical sort of perspective to take. But logic had never been for cool people like Gaia.

“We’re going to do that.” She said, in a voice that was not nearly as stern as Skye’s and yet, somehow, left less room for argument.

They did, of course, end up doing it. You know how it is. Your friend tries to convince you to steal an airship so you can get shot down and catch a criminal, and you do your best to resist, (‘nooo, we can’t just steal an airship and get shot down, that would kill us haha’) but they have such a silver tongue and way with words that you’re just coerced to do it anyway, and the next thing you know you’re just hurtling out of the sky to your apparent death. It was like that, except Skye had never in her life said ‘haha’, and also it hadn’t been Gaia’s silver tongue that had convinced her but instead the fact that she had simply picked Skye up like a sack of potatoes and walked towards the airships. Skye prided herself on intelligence and ingenuity, but those things became obsolete when a woman built like a brick shithouse was carrying you underarm.

“I hate this.” Said Skye, because she hated it.

“You love it!” Gaia proclaimed. She was incorrect.

And so, they were in the nearest airship, and so, Gaia was jerkily piloting it of the bay that they were kept in, and so, the actual pilots were yelling abuse and hurling cups of tea at them from outside, and so, Gaia was too busy sticking her tongue out at them to notice the end of the bay coming up, and so, Skye had to bodily throw herself onto the steering wheel in order to get Gaia’s attention and also to turn the airship in such a way that it *wouldn’t* immediately crash as soon as they’d taken off.

(Logistically speaking, that’s actually how the rest of the story could go. What is life if not a series of ‘and so’s, with the occasional ‘but’ and ‘because’ thrown in? But it’s not actually how the rest of the story *will* go, on account of the ‘and so’ formula’s somewhat repetitive nature. Some gimmicks just have a shorter metaphorical shelf life than others, and it doesn’t have to be Christmas to know when you’re sitting next to a turkey.)

It was only once they were high in the air, flyin’ high in the sky, that the issue of landing was brought up.

“I mean, we might not be shot down.” Skye reasoned. “It’s not like the scourge has destroyed *every* airship so far since he started. What if he misses us, and we… run out of fuel, or something?

She was thinking ahead. Gaia, who was thinking behind, pondered this.

“We land!” She eventually came to the conclusion. It was a hard-fought battle – she had grappled with postulates and pondered paradigms beyond imagination, but eventually, she had found an entire answer.

“Uh-huh.” Nodded Skye, unimpressed for even a moment. “Do you know how to do that? Because, I know you fly jets sometimes, but these control work *real* differently.” Her eyebrow, just the one, contorted like a contortionist’s nightmare. “It might be very different.” She did not add ‘too different’ to the end of her sentence – not because she did not dare, but simply because her point had been made, and there was nothing more appealing than wasting breath. Aside from terrible political views. And maybe foot fungus.

“Yeah, sure, I know.” Gaia stammered, who really didn’t know. She flicked her gaze up and down the controls again. She knew that the steering wheel was for steering, that was in the name. And she knew that all the other buttons were for all the other things. That much was simply obvious. But, like an engineer who had lost his charts, the specifics evaded her.

“You don’t know, do you?” Skye, who was a detective, asked. There was wrath beginning to crawl into her voice. It crawled slowly and painfully, like truth crawling out of her well to shame mankind. Only, in this case, instead of mankind, it was just Gaia. Perhaps womankind would be a better term, Gaia thought, choosing to consider anything apart from the fact that the tiny scary woman in front of her was getting to be really quite angry.

“I *definitely* know.” She lied, before asking: “But, just because I’m casually and coincidentally curious, I don’t suppose *you’d* know how to lower this thing, then?” Not wanting to make Skye even angrier, she tried to be innocent in her asking. To prove her innocence, she kept her voice light and airy and coincidental. The irony, of course, being that she was far from conventionally innocent and also far from generally innocent. She was described as “un-innocent” so frequently that if her name weren’t already “Gaia” it would, without a doubt, have been “Un-innocent”.

Skye’s face was straighter than either of their sexual orientations, even as her eyes screamed vengeance. “I can’t say that I do.” She said, also keeping her voice light and airy and coincidental.

After that, nobody spoke for a moment. And then another moment. And then, several more moments. It was only when Skye turned to look past Gaia’s head and out the window behind her and caught sight of something supremely unsexy – an object that looked suspiciously like a missile – careening through the air to their left side.

“Gaia!” She said. “Look out the window!” Gaia’s method of compliance was to stare over Skye’s shoulder and out the right side of the plane’s cockpit, prompting Skye slap her own forehead in a warrantedly dramatic facepalm before exclaiming “Not *that* window, you ass!” Before Gaia could decide to read up on how many windows a plane had, Skye grabbed her head and manually turned it around in a way that implied that if Gaia’s neck had been accidentally broken, Skye wouldn’t have minded all that much. Suddenly, Gaia had a full view of what was *definitely* a missile heading straight towards them.

“Holy plums.” Gaia said.

The next moment, the pair were thrown to the ground as the missile slammed into their plane. It was like a dance party, except for the circumstances were almost completely different. Thankful that the cockpit was sealed off from the main body of the vehicle, Skye checked their readings and discovered that, in a series of events that could in no way have been described as “cash money”, one of their engines had been obliterated by the impact, and their plane was falling out of the sky that Skye may well have been named after. She was able to confirm the readings by the fact that they were plummeting downwards instead of hovering in the air.

Gaia yanked on the wheel harder than she’d seen people yank on Christmas crackers that refused to open, but the plane (like the crackers) refused to do what it was supposed to do. She said “Oh no, oh no, oh no…!” as an indication of disaster, but ended up saying this mostly to herself because Skye was too busy in the background, complaining that she (Gaia) should have never come up with this hairbrained scheme to fly a jet around Gnarled Forest and that she (Skye) didn’t ask to fall out of the sky today and she (Gaia) was a complete tool. Whilst some people would have had been at least mildly upset – perhaps even *moderately* upset – by how rude Skye was being, Gaia both knew that Skye was like this all the time and had gotten used to it, and was very much more concerned with the fact that they were minutes or moments away from being splatted into a fine paste.

“Hell yeah!” Said nobody, since this was really quite bad.

“Gaia! Do you have any proper ideas?” Said Skye, since she was as genuinely nervous as a legless cat would be in a dog pound.

“No!” Said Gaia, since she had already accepted the fact that she was moments away from dying, and had decided that if she was going to die, she would die an honest woman. This was less a matter of her having not been honest in the past and deciding to make a change in her final moments, because she’d always been fairly honest – in this instance, it was more her choosing consistency over some manner of randomness, which was honestly quite shocking in its own right. If Skye had been aware of this thought process, she might have had an entire reaction to it. But she wasn’t, so she didn’t.

Still, she was heroic, as many people wouldn’t say. So it would be best to save their lives.

“Come here.” She said, reaching her arms out towards Skye and making grabby noises. “Num num num num num num.”

Skye, who had previously been fairly opposed to death, now began to see its broad appeal.

Without wasting more than two minutes and twenty-odd seconds, Gaia grabbed Skye, ran back to the cockpit, and flung herself out of cockpit window. It wasn’t open at their time, so the pair suddenly found themselves in the company of many pieces of glass, falling with them.

“How’s your day been?” Gaia asked, out of politeness. But the pieces of glass weren’t very good conversationalists, so they said nothing back.

“Absolute shit.” Responded Skye, who didn’t get it.

They fell like a tortoise dropped by an eagle to crack its shell open, although they didn’t land as dramatically. Instead, they caught on some overgrowth, and then they fell through that, and then they caught on some undergrowth, and then they fell through that, and then they hit the floor. They didn’t fall through that last one.

“Ow.” Skye murmured, sitting up and rubbing her head. “Did we survive that?”

“I’m not sure.” Mused Gaia, also sitting up and rubbing her head. “I mean, I don’t *feel* any deader. So I guess we did.”

Smacking Gaia’s hand off of her head, Skye clambered to her feet, swayed in place like a regency-era love interest, and then pulled herself together and took stock of the situation. Gaia, meanwhile took a bit longer standing up. She frowned. She should have gotten up quicker than that. Been tougher. Was it possible that falling from the sky like that had damaged her mightiness in some way?

(Of course, one could make the argument that she was just rattled after plummeting to earth from a great height and crashing through a bunch of plantlife on the way down. Especially considering she’d essentially been hanging onto Skye like an undersized body pillow, and had taken the brunt of their impacts herself. But, by now, it must be obvious that Gaia would not reach the simplest conclusion for at least a little while longer.)

“Well,” sighed Skye, “he got us.” She sounded depressed, which was odd, considering that their whole goal was to get shot down in the first place. Then, she remember that their whole goal had indeed been to be shot down in the first place, and she brightened up immensely. “We’ll have to have a stake-out.” She proclaimed. “Wait for him to come to us.”

“What do we do while we wait?” Asked Gaia, for whom no cunning plan was complete without a way to stave off boredom. Then, without waiting for an answer, she announced: “I could come up with ‘roses are red’ rhymes!”

Skye did not deign this statement with an answer. This was partially because she was already focused on hunkering down and finding the crash site, so that she could keep a vigilant watch for the Scourge. It was also mostly because she did not care for roses are red rhymes. They had romantic connotations, and she was highly resistant to connotations of romance on principle. You might have thought that this opinion of hers would have changed following her getting a girlfriend. However, you’d be wrong. You fool. You bumbling fucking idiot.

“Roses are red,” began Gaia, undeterred, “grass isn’t yellow… I’d say of the Scourge, he’s an unpleasant fellow…”

Together, the pair found the crash site and hid themselves nearby, settling down so they’d have a view of the whole thing. When the Scourge appeared to take the supplies that had been on the airship, they’d jump out and catch him. Both figuratively, in a ‘busted’ sense, and literally in a ‘physically apprehending’ sense.

Time flew, as it does (even if turkeys and ostriches and penguins don’t). Skye wondered what other people were doing with their lives. Surely it was something more worthwhile.

“Roses are red…” Gaia was saying, still playing the game. “Uuhh… alcoholics drink beer?”

Skye was about to tell her to shut up, but instead caught sight of within the overgrown undergrowth. (Which wasn’t to be confused between the undergrown overgrowth, which was growing *over* it.) “Oh my God,” she said, “the Scourge guy is here.”

Stowing away her existentialism and hatred for ‘roses are red’ rhymes, she leant forward to observe as a figure emerged from the jungle. Was it-? It was! The Scourge. He was creeping forward, as such a miscreant was wont to do. His moustache was still traumatising. Skye leant back, her suspicions confirmed, and quickly began to think of a cunning plan.

Little did she know, she didn’t need one! Gaia leapt out of the undergrowth, bravely and courageously forgoing all caution and intelligencia in favour of a direct confrontation. Her leap carried her far, all the way across the clearing; as it turned out, near-death experiences did nothing to detract from her mightiness, after all. Fantastic!

As she arced through the air, she pulled her arm back, preparing her fist for a mighty punch, and-

\\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

“Okay, stop.”

Skye held up her hands, despair etched along her face. “Please, just stop.” She repeated. Normally she prided herself on her ability to remain moderately put-together, but at this point, she couldn’t stop herself from sounding genuinely distressed. “I can’t take any more of this, it’s making my brain hurt.”

Hera, snuggled into Skye’s side on the sofa, laughed.

“No!” She said. “Keep going. I’m loving this.”

“Babe…” Skye pleaded weakly.

“Come on.” Hera patted her girlfriend’s shoulder. “This is literally the best thing I’ve heard all week!”

“I would honestly prefer a corkscrew to the temple.” Skye remarked, almost meaning it.

Gaia, who had been watching this discussion unfold, coughed loudly. They both turned to look at her, sitting almost regally (well, regally by Gaia’s standards, anyway) in the chair opposite the sofa. Her legs were crossed in a way that looked as if she were about to settle in to meditate, borderline contorted around one another. A pair of glasses were upside-down on her nose.

“Hello!” She said, somewhat loudly. “Storyteller here. Storyteller would prefer it if storytellees-”

“That’s not a real term.” Skye interjected, but Gaia continued onward, stubborn as always.

“If storytellees would, uh… would *refrain* from criticising the story while I’m trying to tell it.”

“You see?” Hera said, still giggling slightly. The curls of her hair shook like a set of tiny dark waterfalls as she laughed, Skye noticed. “You see?” She said again. “We can’t question the storyteller. Besides…” Hera lowered her voice, looked at Gaia conspiratorially, and then leant in to whisper to Skye: “As long as we both know it’s not real, why can’t we enjoy it?”

Skye grumbled to herself; a bunch of annoyed sounding words and mutterings with no clear focus. She didn’t have the energy for this.

“Though, while on the subject of taking liberties with what actually happened…” There was a glint in Hera’s eyes that hadn’t been there previously. “I *am* curious as to how close to real life that whole shpeel about you wanting me to be your wife was.”

Skye felt herself blush as she turned her head away and folded her arms. It probably didn’t make her look any awkward, but in the face of such a question, it was all she could really think to do.

“Well, first you have to consider the precedent set by the accuracy of the rest of the story.” She weakly pointed out.

“Hey!” Gaia blurted – though her interjection went ignored as Hera cackled lightly.

“You’re not denying it~.” She pointed out in a sing-song tone of voice.

Skye, blanking on any verbal way of getting Hera to drop the matter, opted to instead lean forward and kiss her solidly on the lips. After a moment, she pulled away and met Hera’s eyes, idly licking away the lip salve that her girlfriend had been wearing.

“Ask me again some other time.” She said.

Hera nodded, wordlessly, and Skye turned back to Gaia, who was staring at the pair with a gleam in her eye. Suddenly feeling self-conscious, she muttered: “Okay, so… out with it, I guess.” Inwardly, she resigned herself to hearing the rest of the nonsensical story. “How *did* we capture the Scourge after you jumped out of that bush, anyway? If I remember correctly, it took more than one ‘mighty’ punch to actually bring him in.”

This was all the prompting Gaia needed, as she practically leapt out of her chair and began to speak about the ‘punches and kicks and punches’ that she and the Scourge had exchanged during their fight, as well as the ‘epic vistas’ that their battle – which had apparently lasted for several days (it hadn’t, actually) – had taken them to. Putting an idle arm around Hera’s shoulder, Skye had to admit that her girlfriend had a point. Inaccuracy notwithstanding, Gaia was surprisingly good at telling, at the very least, an interesting story. Even if it made absolutely no sense at all. Even more credit was due, really, when considering how the source material for this tall tale was a job that had actually been pretty boring.

Kudos to Gaia for that, thought Skye. Making a good story out of what was originally quite a…

…mediocre adventure.

(Author’s note: Hah-hah.)