Gaseous Girl and the Winds of Time 12: Send in the Cavalry
She's a flying brick with the power to control one of the fundamental states of matter, but no one takes her seriously. That's about to change.
Previously, Gaseous Girl and her evil self rode through the eighth circle of hell on a Zamboni driven by a goblin until they are forced to catch a ride up to Circle Seven on the back of the monster Geryon. We rejoin Madeleine and her doppelganger on the borders of the seventh circle…
"Now, this is what I expected hell to be like," Madeleine said as she stared out over miles of endless burning sand. Geryon had dropped them off at the edge of the immense desert and then soared away again into Circle Eight without so much as a by-your-leave. Geryon hadn't been much of a conversationalist, so it wasn't like Madeleine expected a farewell speech. Still, there they were, in Circle Seven, faced with crossing a massive desert. She might've hoped he could have dropped them further into it.
Evil Madeleine had finally come to, and she was not happy. "Couldn't let me find my own way out, could you? Nooooo, you just had to send the stupid monster after me. Jerk." She followed it up with a few more insults, many of them unprintable. Madeleine Prime was ashamed of herself that she knew those words, even if it was an alternate version of her.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Let's just get out of here." Madeleine Prime didn't see a track, or a signpost, so reluctantly she launched into the air and started straight across. Evil Madeleine, still swearing, followed.
They flew on and on and on. The heat rose up at them from the sands and blistered their faces. Madeleine was just starting to wonder how big this circle was when Evil Madeleine tugged at her sleeve. "Look, over there!" she said, her eyes lit up in excitement. "A waterfall!"
Madeleine had tried not to think how thirsty she was getting, and how refreshing a nice cold bit of water might be. Even the frozen lake back in Circle Nine sounded better than this. Still, though, she didn't remember waterfalls mentioned in Dante. She looked where her evil self was pointing. "I don't see it," she said.
"Seriously? It's right there!" Evil Madeleine exclaimed, gesticulating frantically. "It's like Niagara Falls over there! C'mon!" She kicked off towards it.
"You idiot, don't go chasing waterfalls now!" Madeleine Prime shouted.
"I know that song," Evil Madeleine called back. "But I don't care, it's totally real! Can't you hear it?"
Madeleine Prime sighed. "It's a mirage. You really expect there's a nice cold waterfall in hell?"
Before her counterpart could say anything, a sudden boom resounded across the desert. Both Madeleines spun towards the sound. A long dark blur ran across the edge of the horizon, and from that blur smoke was rising. "Something's going on," Madeleine Prime said. "Question is, do we check it out or stay away?"
"You go after it," Evil Madeleine said stubbornly. "I'm going after the waterfall."
"Oh, no, I am not going to hunt down an unexplained noise in hell all by myself," Madeleine Prime said. "Besides, that blur looks like the forest in the middle ring of Circle Seven, which means we're nearly out of this thing. And, I'm telling you, there's no waterfall. I wish there were, honestly, but there's not. So come on!"
Evil Madeleine glanced agonizingly towards the sand, where she was presumably seeing a waterfall. "Fine," she said. "Whatever." Slowly she followed Madeleine Prime towards the distant blur.
As they flew closer, the blur resolved into a dark tangle of crooked trees and thorny bushes, extending for miles to their left and right. In the depths of the forest, more columns of smoke rose, coiling and ominous. Madeleine Prime heard more loud booms, now punctuated a series of shouts and wails; once she thought she heard a ripping metallic clatter that sounded almost like a machine gun tearing through a clip of bullets. They landed at the edge of the forest. "What on Earth is going on?" Madeleine Prime said aloud.
"Revolution," came a slow, melancholy voice from the nearest tree.
Evil Madeleine yelped in fright and backpedaled rapidly. Madeleine Prime remembered Dante had said something about talking trees in the middle ring of Circle Seven. She was more alarmed by what it was saying. "What do you mean, revolution?"
"It seems," said the tree mournfully, "that someone broke someone else out of the frozen lake in the lowest part of hell. Word spread. People further up decided they wanted to break out."
Madeleine's stomach knotted. She had only meant to rescue her evil self and undo the damage she had caused. She hadn't meant to spark a revolt in hell. Before she could ask anything else, however, something rushed over her head with a freight-train roar. A second later there was a loud whump nearby and a shock wave that slammed her and her other self right up against the trees. Branches scraped her face, and she had a nasty cut on one knee.
“Ow! What the hell?” Evil Madeleine exclaimed.
“Exactly,” Madeleine Prime said. “I think that came from further up. Maybe Phlegethon.”
“Phle-what?”
“Phlegethon. It’s a boiling river of blood with people violent against other people or property stuck in it. I’m guessing they’re behind the revolution.”
Suddenly she heard distant shouts in what sounded ominously like German, and more rapid weapons fire. This time it sounded more coordinated, more synchronized. It also sounded closer. Her stomach clenched again. "Oh lovely," she said. "Violent against people, modern weapons, military experience, and speaking German. That means Nazis. I just hate Nazis."
Then she saw the excited look on her evil counterpart's face. "You are not going to join them."
"Why not?" Evil Madeleine whined.
Madeleine Prime face-palmed. "Because they're freakin' Nazis. And they're leading a revolt in hell. You really want to join a Nazi hell rebellion? Does anything about those words suggest that maybe that's not a good thing to do?"
"I killed off the entire population of my planet," the other Madeleine observed coolly. "I'm evil, remember? So, naturally-"
"No,” Madeleine Prime said. “Look, we're getting out of hell right now. We, and by we I mean you, are not stopping to join a Nazi hell rebellion. Got that?"
"Make me," Evil Madeleine challenged.
Before Madeleine Prime could take her up on it, another shell roared in. This one was a lot closer. Madeleine Prime saw it just in time, and dived for cover. Her evil self started to react. “Hey, where-”
The explosion knocked Evil Madeleine flat unconscious. Madeleine Prime climbed to her feet. "Okay then. That settles that. We're getting out. I just need to figure how to get past those guys."
All at once she heard a rumble of hooves. To her great surprise, a full squadron of twenty centaurs charged up around her, centaurs in neat khaki uniform tunics and neater pencil mustaches. "Right, love, we'll take over now," said one of them, waving a saber gallantly towards the gunfire in the distance.
"Okay, who are you?" Madeleine asked, wishing that this particular circle wasn’t quite so crowded.
"Captain Arthur Jenkins-Dunchurch, miss," said a second, more serious centaur. "My lieutenant, Jinx MacPhee. Seventh Circle Defense Corps, Squad B, at your service. "
"Ah," said Madeleine. She remembered centaurs from Dante, but they hadn’t been quite so formal. "Shouldn't you have bows and arrows?"
"We’ve upgraded them, y’see,” Lieutenant MacPhee explained. "They've got Earth-side weaponry datin' from twentieth century, so we had to adapt."
"So...what do you have then?"
MacPhee smiled. "Somethin' that'll fall on the enemy like a bloomin' piano."
The captain, all business, bawled out orders in a stentorian voice. The squad fell out, deploying in a neat line. Other centaurs, moving up behind them, handed out an assortment of long green metal tubes. "Bazookas?" Madeleine Prime asked.
"Almost," said MacPhee, still smiling.
"Squad, aim!" Captain Jenkins-Dunchurch roared. Twenty almost-bazookas pointed at the horizon. A pregnant pause ensued, and even the distant Nazis seemed to sense that something was amiss. Then the pause gave birth. "Squad, fire!"
The weapons didn't go bang. They went wirp. Twenty balls of crackling light arced through the air and were gone. Then, after another pause, the sky in the direction of the river lit up. The ground bucked beneath Madeleine's feet. "What the-"
"Proton torpedo-bazookas, miss, to be exact," MacPhee said.
"Blimey," said Madeleine Prime.