The Eco-Terrorist (Also, the Babysitter)

Behind the Scenes

Mattie is doing what she does best: skulking through a place she shouldn’t be. In this case, she is at an American military prison facility for holding domestic terrorists awaiting execution. She’s humming the James Bond theme in her head as she slinks through the hallway. Several lifetimes ago, back when she was a human army officer, she put people away in facilities like this one. The astral elf has a decent sense of the layout. Just have to find the anti-magic field generator.

The field stops big spells being cast (and pings the locations of little spells being cast), but does not cancel magic spells already in effect, so her invisibility holds. Mattie needs to get that field down so that Teeth can bust out their target.

Slipping around the guard patrols, poking her way into doors and spying on whatever is inside, Mattie thinks about how much she misses field work. There is something thrilling about sneaking around; and, with her crazy powers, it gets even more fun if she gets caught.

Her baby (fashioned after an old six shooter revolver, souped up with so many magical extras) drawn, Mattie has finally found the field generator. One knock to the noggin, and both the tech worker and the invisibility drops. The astral elf posts up by the door, watching the halls from inside. She now just needs to hole up and wait for the signal to drop the field. Easy.

Belinda “Gaia” Jorgensen

Belinda is staring at the letter from her bunk, placed, spread opened on the little table bolted to the floor, still in a state of shock. Her final appeal has been rejected. The panel of judges did not even call her in to testify about the injustice of her pending **** sentence. The lawyer for her side barely tried, but what does one expect from a public defender? They get judged not by how many they get off, but by how many convicts are satisfied by their final sentence once they have served their time.

And Gaia? Gaia is deeply, seethingly dissatisfied with hers. Zero out of five stars. Would not recommend.

She thinks back to what got her here in the first place. She got the materials. She assembled the bombs. She planted them at that damn Hoover Dam, which has caused so much environmental damage to the desert. But her “friend,” the guy she was sleeping with, ratted her out to the feds. They found her doing a final check on the detonator, having defused the bombs before they confronted her. And, after not hearing the explosions when she pressed the detonator button, they beat the crap out of her before dragging her bloody half-dead corpse to jail.

Surely, the brutality of her arrest should have been enough to throw out her conviction? It’s not like she actually committed the mass cleansing she sought to do. They did stop her.

So, she stares at the ceiling from her bunk, awaiting her execution, scheduled for this time next month. Her last days on mother Gaia, trapped in a foul concrete construction. Stuck in this terrible orange jumpsuit made from evil polyester plastics. Served the carcasses of innocent animals and other poisons they call food on more plastic. She will never see the sun again, never be warmed by its rays. Never feel the wind blowing across her skin, through her hair. Just **** to wait for what they call justice. It sickens her.

Speaking of poison, a pair of guards enter her cell, one with a tray of “food”, the other with gun drawn. “Dinner time, Jorgensen. Your fav. Meatloaf. Eat. Don’t make us **** it down your throat again.”

The guard with the tray places it down as Gaia turns around. They have taken to binding her hands after one too many intentionally induced vomitings. She hears the snip of the zip tie and the cocking of the gun. They won’t even dignify the condemned woman going out on her own terms. “Justice” demands that she dies at their timetable and their way. She sits and forces the poison inside her. When she finishes, the prisoner considers attacking the guards, but knows that they will just shoot her in the leg and then strap her to a gurney in the prison infirmary; the prison doctor will complain about wasting resources on her the whole time she’d get patched up. Gaia turns around and lets them bind her arms again.

Then they drag her to her cell’s sink. They forcibly brush her teeth. She has time to stare at the mirror. Her haircut was shaven on one side and otherwise styled in a pixie cut, her hair dyed a forest green, but her time in jail has resulted in a buzz-cut and the dye fading to her natural dirty blonde color. Her piercings have also been removed, and several of the holes sealed up. She hates the resigned look in her eyes.

That indignity done, Gaia is tossed onto her bunk and the guards leave. She refuses to give the bastards the pleasure of seeing her cry. She closes her eyes, a curse upon the plague that is man upon her lips. The rage burns in her heart until she finally falls asleep.

The Broadcast (Gaia’s Prison Cell)

Sirens blare and lights flash an angry red. Most occupants of the prison building don’t know exactly what the klaxons and strobes convey, but the sensations are all-consuming.

Daphne, wearing an unzipped black leather jacket and a pair of cheap 80’s action hero sunglasses (and nothing else), teleports into the cell. She has a scroll in her webbed hand and a shark-toothed grin a mile wide on her face. She holds a hand out to Gaia and, with a terrible attempt at an Austrian accent through her natural Greek one, declares, “Come with me if you want to live!”

Gaia, understandably freaking out, stammers, “Who are you? WHAT are you?”

Daphne, almost as excited about self-promotion as Tina, gives her spiel, “Daphne, your friendly neighborhood dungeon mermaid, at your service.” The mermaid pauses long enough to check her non-existent watch, then continues, “We have approximately 3.7 minutes before the Reapers are on site, which makes this interdimensional **** a lot more difficult. So, you got, eh, 2 minutes to decide whether you want to come with me and live or stay here to be executed. Let me know!”

Gaia looks stunned, “A mermaid, like Ariel?”

“NOT LIKE ARIEL! But yes, a mermaid.”

Gaia has such the cutest squee. How she follows it up is less cute, “Okay. So mermaids are apparently real and want to rescue me. Maybe they want me to join forces with them to purge mother Gaia of the scourge of man. Alright, Daphne, take me to your leader!”

Daphne, for her part, shrugs and pops the Planeshift spell scroll, using a tuning fork to select the appropriate dimension. The mermaid makes a shimmering portal to the entrance of the set’s throne room and beckons the criminal in.

The stomping of what sounds like an entire platoon of troops rushing down the hall is heard above the blaring sirens.

“Okay, Gaia, got to go.” Daphne exclaims. She summons a walkie-talkie and squawks out, “Mattie, we are out very soon. Time to scoot!”

The walkie-talkie squawks back, “I am out. Field going back online soon. Go, go, go!”

Gaia and Daphne jump through the portal just in time. They hit the carpet as bullet flying through the closing hole in reality. Even those don’t fly for very long, as the portal has completely closed after a few seconds.

“Is it safe?” the former prisoner asks.

“Safe enough. Go on and say hello to the others. I’ll see you later!”

Gaia

Gaia watches the mermaid walk away, still feeling a little confused. Her surroundings do not look like the domain of mermaids, ready to slay the blight that is humanity; instead, it seems like a somewhat generic castle.

Gaia stands and walks to the throne room. The sight is odd. A moderately obese young woman of East Asian descent sits on a throne. Two humans, one a rail thin female with brown hair nearly as short as Gaia’s, the other a lanky blonde male, stand to one side. The women on the other side are stranger. One is dressed as a bunny with a poor sense of modesty and the other is blue. At least the blue one looks properly regal.

Gaia kneels before the blue woman, “Dear lady, thank you for sending your mermaid emissary to rescue me. I wish to offer whatever aid is necessary for the cleansing of the surface world of the plague called humanity. How may I help with the healing of mother Gaia this day?”

The melodious tone of the blue woman is quite appealing. Her words, on the other hand, are not. “Belinda, you are here to help save your world, not destroy its people. And, anyways, you should be bowing to your Mistress, not me. Surely you remember Mona over there?”

The overweight girl on the throne stammers out, “B? What happened to you?”

Before Gaia could answer, the blue woman speaks, “The Cult of Malar happened. Belinda here decided that human civilization needs to be destroyed to save the planet. Sure, there are things that humans should do differently, but Belinda took her beliefs too far. Would have killed a lot of people if she got her way.”

The thin female human, seeming in a foul mood, grumbles, “Great, a Gygaxian freak.”

The lanky human male questions, “Isn’t Malar on the banned list of Gygaxian deities?”

Gaia ignores the humans, focusing on the blue woman. “The Beastlord will bless mother Gaia once we have purged the evils of humanity. Surely, as a non-human, you can see that?”

The blue woman responds with blasphemy, “Maybe you should embrace a different nature deity, Belinda. Eilistraee perhaps? Regardless, we have to move on. It’s been a while since you have seen Mona here. Do you remember her? Why don’t you reintroduce yourself?”

Gaia glares at the blue blasphemer. She feels an urge to answer a number of unspoken questions and spits them out, “My name is Gaia. My parents **** the name Belinda on me, but I reject it. I am a political prisoner. I am a masculine preferring bisexual. The last time I had sex was with my now ex- boyfriend right before he betrayed me to the state. 26 years old. 34A-25-34. Satisfied?”

“And what about me? Don’t you remember me?” the obese woman asks.

“Honestly, no. Should I?”

“You babysitted me for years.”

Gaia strains her memory. She babysitted a lot of brats as a teenager. “That was years ago. You remember everyone in your sixth grade class? That’s what you’re asking me to do, Mona was it?”

“That’s right. Mona Cummings.”

That actually triggers memories of laughing at the unfortunately named kid when she was walking back home from a first new client gig. Gaia goes to stand by the other humans, still chuckling, “Moaning while Cummings.”

The male human balls a fist and grits his teeth, but Gaia does not particularly care. While she doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, she’s free from the humans’ clutches. She’ll figure out what to do to strike against them again in time.

The blue blasphemer sighs, then talks towards the doorway, “Our third contestant, folks. Continuing on, the chronology for our fourth contestant’s admission to this little show is a little strange. While Mona met (and hated) her before she really became part of her romantic life, she did have a big impact. When Mona turned 18, she spent all of her birthday money on premium Insta-Thot subscriptions. And we have the very first model Mona subscribed to. So, fourth up, the e-thot, Tessa O’Connor-Peters.”

Gaia has no recollection of this person, but she finds Mona’s reaction a little amusing. Her so-called Mistress is confused.