Gaseous Girl and the Winds of Time 7: Doppelgangfight, Part Two

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, our heroine had just defeated Behemoth Bob with the help of three doppelgangers of herself. Where did they come from? Where will they go? Will they break into a remix of Cotton-Eye Joe? (No.)

Several summers ago one of Gaseous Girl's friends had undertaken a journey across the United States in a Winnebago in order to "find herself." Madeleine had never understood that. Now, she had found herself in a painfully literal sense; she'd found multiple herselves, in fact. Three versions of herself had just materialized outside the Edison City Public Library. On the bright side, there hadn't been multiple versions of Behemoth Bob. Gaseous Girl didn't know if she could cope with that happening.

Meanwhile, she now faced an awkward moment. What did one say to knockoffs of one's self? Madeleine wasn't great with small talk; usually she just mumbled something about the weather or the crime rate before making an excuse and running for it. "So..." she said to the other Madeleines as they assembled post-battle on the library steps. "Bit chilly, isn't it?"

"It is a standard temperature for this time of year," Lady Madeleine Smith-Harrington observed after checking the heads-up display on her violet mecha-suit.

"Kinda sucks, though," Mad Maddie said, bouncing up and down in her boots. She seemed full of energy. "I like summer weather, m'self. Fireworks and all that."

"Indeed?" Lady Smith-Harrington said.

"Yep!"

An awkward silence ensued. The fourth Gaseous Girl said something in her Latin-like language that might have been about the weather, and might not have.

"What's her deal?" Mad Maddie said.

Madeleine shrugged. "Maybe she's from a universe where humanity never got to the industrial age. She's the medieval version of me."

"Like Gargoyles? Sweetness." Mad Maddie hummed a few bars from the cartoon show theme. The medieval Gaseous Girl didn't appear to get the reference.

Madeleine finally decided that she hated small talk, and that it was time to get serious. "Look, I don't know why you all are here, but-"

The medieval Madeleine cut in then, apparently having also grown weary of small talk. She spoke very fast, gesturing wildly with her hands, and at several points appeared on the verge of tears. She wound up with a desperate exhortation, which no one there understood.

A second awkward silence ensued. Fortunately, this one only lasted a few seconds. “Oh, wonderful,” Lady Smith-Harrington said. "My armor’s translation matrix has finally activated.” She read the words spidering across her faceplate's internal screens. "She calls herself Princess Madeleine of the Grey Castle. She says that... she was fighting a heroic battle against a swarm of terrible dragons when she was suddenly brought here. She wants to know what strange sorcery has done this. She also wants to go back, very much. Apparently..."

Here Lady Smith-Harrington's electronically filtered voice wavered, just a bit, "She was not alone. She was with her betrothed, a certain Prince Patrick. Patrick has a sword, but no magical abilities. She is rather deeply concerned for his safety."

Mad Maddie sniffed. "That's rough, girl."

"I don't exist," Madeleine said. "That's rough."

"Course you exist. You're here now, ain'tcha?"

"Oh, never mind," the original Gaseous Girl said. "Okay, so we've got to get the princess back. How?"

"Perhaps we could construct an Einstein-Selvik bridge?" Lady Smith-Harrington asked.

"A wha' now?" Mad Maddie said.

"It's a remarkably simple concept." Whereupon Lady Smith-Harrington launched into several minutes of technical discussion that went way over Mad Maddie's head and of course was completely incomprehensible to the princess. Madeleine, on her part, vaguely understood that there was some sort of Outer Space Thing that, if they all flew out to it, would get everyone back to their own universes. She disliked outer space things almost as much as time things. Outer space things usually involved nasty aliens who wanted to eat your head, or else sprawling galactic empires who wanted to strip-mine your planet or build a hyperspace bypass over it. Madeleine much preferred dealing with ordinary human bad guys on Earth.

"So..." she asked, when it looked like Lady Smith-Harrington was winding up. "How do we get to, ah, whatever it is?"

"Whatever transported me here, also brought something else," Lady Smith-Harrington said smugly. "I have a Superhero Corps Century Comet starfighter in orbit." She produced a small device from a pocket in her mecha-suit and pressed a button. "I have engaged the teleporter."

"Wait, you did what?" Madeleine had no time to object. In a flash, all four Gaseous Girls had disappeared.

Silence reigned near the library. Then a ghostly figure appeared above the library's steps. Its translucent face curved into a sneer. "Excellent," it said, in a high, cold voice. "Ooh, I love it when a plan comes together."

It had taken a lot to get this far. First it had been just her and her cold, dead, planet. She had been bored. Incredibly, wildly, out-of-her-mind bored. And she just hated being bored. She had remembered something a scientist had said about other worlds. He’d also said that she should be careful with her powers or she could light the planet on fire. Well, hadn’t he been silly. Then again she had fried the planet, so maybe not. Oh well.

She had managed to save the portal thingy the scientist guy had been working on. After a while, she’d figured out how it worked. If it went right, she would find herself in another Earth, one she hadn't wiped out. There might even be an alternate version of herself, one who saved people instead of flaming them. That didn't seem fun. Maybe she'd have to flame the alternate. And then replace her! And the innocent civilians wouldn't know the difference!

It had worked, of course, but she’d wound up as a ghost on the alternate Earth. No fun. But then she’d found her other self, and her other self had a cousin called Gregory with magical abilities. Rather than just getting Gregory to restore her, she thought it’d be more fun to possess him and start using him to mess her other self’s life up a bit. What’s the harm, yeah? Even if there was, what did she care? She was evil!

Now all her other selves, because that was happening now apparently, were all up in a starship somewhere. She needed to get at them. She’d been bored before. Evil Madeleine didn’t like being bored.

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