Gaseous Girl and the Winds of Time 17: Second-to-the-Last Battle
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 counterpart had finally made it through the First Circle of Hell and had reached the river Acheron, the border of the Infernal Regions, only to be met by an army of all the collective foul beasts and other evil denizens of Hell….
Madeleine almost liked her chances. After all, she’d been through worse. When one knew the plural of apocalypse and had occasion to use it, one tended to accept these things. She'd lived through the Crisis of '09 with the bad-tempered kaiju and the acid tsunamis, hadn’t she? This was a walk in the park compared to that.
She fired up her flame powers and was about to launch herself across the river when she noticed that Evil Madeleine was hanging back. “Hey,” she said, “You gonna help, or what?"
"No, duh," the other Madeleine said. "Why would I help you? I'm, y'know, evil. When I said this was going to be fun, what I meant was watching you and those guys go at each other. You think I’m taking on those people? Please.”
"That tracks," Madeleine said in resignation. "Fine, whatever, I'll fight the armies of hell all by myself."
Evil Madeleine produced a kazoo from her own utility belt. (Why she had a kazoo was a question to which Madeleine Prime would never know the answer). She then burst into off-key song, "All byyyy myyyself.... don't wanna be all byyy myself, anymooore..."
"Shut up, will you? I'm trying to-" Then Gaseous Girl had an idea. She turned and yelled back to the assembled demons, monsters, goblins, and the like, "Any of you know where your boss is? I mean the big one!"
There was a long pause. Evidently they had expected her to commence fighting, not ask a question. Then, with unsettling slowness, a tentacled slimy Thing emerged from the crowd. "If you mean Our Father Below..."
"Yeah, yeah, I've read Screwtape along with Dante, I know. I want to talk to that guy."
The Thing walked, or stumbled, back to its confederates, where it held a brief conference. Then it came back. "He will be summoned."
"Peachy," Madeleine said.
The army settled in to wait. Madeleine wished she had a snack. In her current never-been-born state, she technically didn't need to eat, but still, it could have occupied the time. She rummaged in her own utility belt. Madeleine's search turned up a fork, a spoon, and a moldy biscuit, but that was hardly satisfactory. She sighed. She'd had the worst luck lately.
Then Evil Madeleine spoke. "I am here."
"Well, yeah, I know you're there, why-" Then Madeleine noticed that her evil twin's eyes were glowing red. "Ah. Lovely. You got yourself possessed."
"Indeed," Eviler Madeleine said. The voice sounded exactly like Madeleine's own, except with an undercurrent of sinister creeping evil that sent shivers up Madeleine's spine. "You wanted to talk to me?"
"Yeah," Madeleine Prime said, gathering herself together. "Okay, here's the deal. I know a few country songs, okay? You challenged some guy to a fiddle contest, he won, he got a golden fiddle, yadda yadda yadda, the point is, you’re up for challenges. I've got one. If I win, you let her go and let us both out of here, with zero negative consequences. If you win...well, the usual."
"I get your soul," Eviler Madeleine said.
Madeleine Prime had a feeling that Father Milo in St. Expeditus, the church she infrequently attended, would be somewhat alarmed at what she was doing. Assuming she survived, she'd have to do some serious penance. "Yeah. Sure. Incidentally, can I get Ben out too? He’s my ex, it’s complicated. Circle Two."
"But he is already dead."
"So?"
"Very well. Ben will be restored."
"Great. So let's do this. I can't actually play the fiddle, so that’s out, but maybe chess? Cards? Yahtzee? Rock-paper-scissors? Wordle maybe?”
"Actually," said Eviler Madeleine, "I propose a test of strength."
"Meaning..."
"We fight. The winner is whoever’s standing at the end."
Gaseous Girl had a feeling that it would've come to this. "Fine. Let’s go."
The two Gaseous Girls hurled themselves at each other in a storm of flame and fury. Fire blossomed around them as they collided, fell back, and then charged at each other again. Madeleine Prime pummeled her evil possessed self with all her might and main, but since Eviler Madeleine had exactly the same flying-brick flame powers as her, Eviler Madeleine had a good deal of might and main in her own right. Thus the two Madeleines with their respective mights and mains blasted away at each other, neither giving ground, neither letting up.
After a while, a little voice in the back of Madeleine Prime's mind began to wonder how this would end. She couldn’t keep fighting forever. But she also couldn’t kill her evil self since the point of the whole adventure in the first place had been to rescue her, so how could-
Suddenly she had an idea. She ducked and aimed a snap-kick combined with a burst of burped flame at Eviler Madeleine's boots. Eviler Madeleine was momentarily caught off guard. She stumbled and fell, hitting the ground with a loud smack. Eviler Madeleine howled in rage and moved to bound up again.
"Wait, hold up," Madeleine said. "You're not standing. I win."
"What?" said Eviler Madeleine. "You haven't won. I’ve barely started-”
"Yeah, yeah, sure you have, John Paul Jones, sure you have. Except that the exact terms of the deal was 'whoever's left standing'. You're not standing anymore. So, I win. Now, dispossess my evil twin and we'll be going. It was fun."
Eviler Madeleine smiled. "Well played. Except for one thing."
"What?"
"I was never going to abide by the deal anyway."
She whistled, long and ear-piercingly loud. The armies of hell surged forward and across the river Acheron, straight towards Madeleine Prime.
“Well,” Madeleine said, “Should’ve expected that, I guess.” She flamed up for what she assumed would be the last time and hurled herself into the oncoming horde. If she had to go, and it had to be in the Infernal Regions, she might as well go out fighting.