Gaseous Girl and the Winds of Time 10: I Wanna Drive the Zamboni
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 died in the explosion of her starship and made it to the gates of Heaven, only to find out that in order to save reality, she must rescue her evil doppelganger from the depths of the Other Place. Will she succeed? To find out, read on!
Splat went Madeleine on the ice. She said a few choice words, words that wouldn't have been appropriate had she still been at the gates of heaven. She wasn't there anymore, unfortunately. Gaseous Girl had arrived in hell.
She had hoped to arrive in more dramatic fashion, kicking open a giant iron door, maybe blasting her way through a line of demons, that sort of thing. Instead, however, St. Nicholas had unceremoniously shoved her through a hole in a cloud near the Pearly Gates, and the next thing she knew she had landed smack on her face in a vast icy plain. As she rose to her feet, shivering a little in the cold, Madeleine looked around and try to work out where she was.
Ordinarily one wouldn’t expect a vast expanse of solid ice in hell, but fortunately Madeleine had read her Dante. After a moment’s reflection, she realized where she must be: the last of the Nine Circles of the Infernal Regions, a frozen lake in which traitors were sealed for all eternity. The question was, why would Evil Madeleine be down there? Supervillains were usually known for grand larceny, theft, or murder, not necessarily treachery.
Then she heard a hollow voice call her name. "Madeleine..." the voice gasped. "Help..." She turned. There was her evil self, locked fast in the ice, her head just barely sticking up like the world’s creepiest potted plant.
"Ah," Madeleine Prime said. "Well then. Who'd you sell out?" She looked round, trying to estimate where in the lake they were. As she remembered, the level at which one was submerged was based on whom they had betrayed. "Your head's out, so you're not a traitor to a benefactor, or a guest...so either you betrayed family, or your country. Bet it's America, isn't it? I stopped a terrorist group just last year. Got a medal for it. You probably helped them. You would. "
"No..." Evil Madeleine whispered. "It’s not that. It’s gotta be Evan. That’s what the snake at the front said, anyway.”
The good Madeleine was confused. She hadn't had a relationship with anyone named Evan. She hadn't had a relationship with anyone, really. The closest she'd gotten had been her high school boyfriend Ben Wizowsky, and he had cheated on her with Lizzie Dern-
Suddenly she knew. Ben had been one of those not uncommon people who went by their middle name. His full name? Evan Benjamin Wizowsky.
"Oh my God," she said, ignoring the irony of using that exclamation in hell. "In your world you cheated on him. Not the other way 'round."
"Yep," Evil Madeleine said, giggling faintly. "With Lizzie's boyfriend. Kyle. Oh, Lizzie was so mad. Like, raging mad. Then I broke a Botticelli painting over her head. That was fun. Little pieces flying, fragmenting everywhere....the painting, not her head. Though her head wasn't in too great a shape either."
"So that's it," Madeleine Prime said. "You betrayed your boyfriend, which is more or less like betraying family, boom, frozen lake."
"Yep." Evil Madeleine giggled again. "And then I cheated on Kyle with Will, and then on Will with Jordan, and then-"
The good Madeleine was half appalled, half envious. Evil Madeleine had a way more eventful love life than she did. On the other hand, who was trapped in a frozen lake and who wasn't? "Yeah, okay," she finally cut in, "Let's skip the recap and go to the finish. Thing is, I'm here to get you out."
"You're what?"
Madeleine Prime sighed. She hated the explaining part. "Apparently you broke reality, made all the alternate versions of us come together, and now the universe is going to collapse. I've got to fix it, only I can't do that if you're stuck down here." She wondered if she could just burn her evil self out of the ice. Then she glimpsed movement across the lake. All of a sudden Madeleine reflected that the current management of the place might not want to let Evil Madeleine go. ""Oh, joy," she sighed. "You know, I bet other superheroes haven’t had to rescue their evil doppelgangers from hell. The Wombat probably doesn’t."
Evil Madeleine giggled. "I torched a wombat once. When I burned down Australia."
"You burned down a whole continent?"
"I was bored."
Madeleine Prime, not for the last time, wished she could just leave her evil self in hell. Unfortunately, she knew reality was at stake, and that meant she had to blow-torch Evil Madeleine out of the ice, a tricky job at best. There was only one thing to do. Quickly she bent down and began breathing hard on the ice. Slowly, painfully slowly, it began to melt.
"Didn't know you could breath fire," Evil Madeleine said.
Madeleine Prime winced. She'd just taught herself a new trick. "It's not fire," she said. "It's technically superheated gas. We're Gaseous Girl, you know, we can do that."
"Sweetness! Ooh, I gotta try that sometime."
"I don’t even want to know." She went back to breathing, trying to do it more rapidly. She could hear something whirring towards them. It was getting closer.
The ice was turning to slush now. Madeleine Prime seized her counterpart's arm and pulled. Evil Madeleine moved a few inches, then stuck fast. Before Madeleine Prime could try to melt more ice, the whirring something spun up behind them. Madeleine Prime turned to face it, ready for a fight. Then she paused.
A small goblin-like creature sat glaring at them, high atop what looked suspiciously like a Zamboni ice resurfacer. "Hey, what's all this?"
"Ah..."
"Blimey. I work all day, workin’ me tail off if I had one, keepin' the lake all shiny-like, and you two idjits have to go and melt it!"
"I apologize," Madeleine Prime said. "And who are you then?"
"Screwbolt," he said. "Cocytus Maintenance. I'm an honest goblin, I work hard for my livin’, I try to keep the ice clean, but how am I supposed to do that with people constantly trampin' through? I ask you."
"Really?" Madeleine said. "You get paid for this?"
Screwbolt sniffed. "Course I don't get paid. I'm in hell, missie. We ain't exactly got labor laws down here. Nah, I do it for the joy."
Much as Madeleine Prime was curious about the employment practices of the infernal regions, she noticed other shadows in the distance, and decided not all of them would be as relatively harmless as Screwbolt. "Well, I apologize again for melting the ice. I tell you what: let me just pull my friend out of here, and then if you could give us a ride back to Circle Eight, we'll go away and never come back again. Deal?"
"Deal. Lemme help." Screwbolt hopped down, and grabbed Evil Madeleine's other arm. With a heave, the two of them pulled her free at last. They all scrambled aboard the Zamboni and tore off down the frozen lake, Screwbolt as eager to get the interlopers out of his domain as the two Madeleines were to go. Madeleine Prime didn't dare look back to see what might be chasing them. She just wanted to get out of hell and away. Unfortunately, even though it looked like they'd get out of Circle Nine unscathed, they still had a long way to go.