Squibby, we are Not in Kansas Anymore!
Disclaimer: The TFIW characters belong to Nelvana or anyone else but me.
Chapter 4: Getting Back Up
For several moments, Ethan and C.G. just stared numbly at Emily, until it became obvious that she was not bulging from that spot without her new animal companion.
"Emily, come on," Ethan tried to talk to the little red head. "Scaly obviously had weathered at least one sand storm – we've flushed him out of that dune, didn't we?"
"So what?" Emily shook her head. "The little guy was still scared, and besides, now he got us to help."
"So what?" C.G. would not back down either. "Emily, we are not animal rescue operation. He is probably adapted much better than we to survive in the upcoming sandstorm are. We must leave or we will perish for sure!"
Emily wavered. She looked down at the smallish animal... who was trying to hug Ethan's legs, looking somewhere between dejected and pathetic. Ethan and C.G. followed Emily's gaze, and the fight just left C.G. "Okay," she sighed, "new plan. Ethan, take Emily and the animals back to the flier."
Ethan frowned, obviously not liking C.G.'s plan very much. "I don't know, Ceeg," he muttered. "The storm is coming on real fast. I may not be able to come back for you."
"I know," C.G. muttered, "but the skimmer won't be able to bring all of us back even without the rattleback, and I got a force field to protect me from the debris."
"So does the rest of us!" Emily protected, clearly torn between the rattleback, C.G. Ethan and the dune skimmer.
"Yeah, but I am the only one who knows how to work it in practice!"
"But-"
"No buts, Emily. Besides, I am heavier than you; the skimmer probably won't fly in any other combination."
"Oh, C.G., I am sorry," Emily visibly drooped, as she joined Ethan and the rattleback on the skimmer. Squibby was already hanging on her back with all of his tentacles, long and short and both pincer-like arms.
"Yes, I know you are," C.G. said wryly, despite their circumstances. "Now go. The storm may not last long and we will all have a long laugh about today, ha-ha."
"Ha-ha," Ethan echoed back, as he revived up the skimmer's engine, noticing with concern that didn't sound like it usually did: a.k.a it may have began running out of energy or fuel or whatever it ran on – even they may not make it to the flier, and the wind no longer really permitted much movement on foot. If the skimmer's engine died before they got back to the flier even at such a short distance, then they all were in big trouble.
With a last, very sympathetic look at C.G., Ethan took the dune skimmer off.
"Where have you guys been?" Luis exclaimed in lieu of a greeting as he stared at the returning teens. "And speaking of where, this better be C.G. in the chameleographic helmet or something!"
"Sorry, Luis," Ethan muttered, still pale – slightly half way in the return journey the skimmer began to make some very strange sounds, similar to a car motor that was about to stall, and the bigger boy was still unsure just how they made back to the flier. "But C.G... she stayed behind, behind a force field – she intends to outlast the storm like the rattleback or something."
Luis blinked. "You don't kid, do you?" he spoke in a deceptively calm tone of voice. "You really left her behind, did you?"
"Luis... the skimmer is apparently dead – unless you know how to re-activate it, there's nothing that we can do!"
Seemingly unperturbed, Luis gave Emily a long look instead.
"Oh dear, you're not thinking what I think you're thinking?" Emily muttered, as she abruptly sat down in one of the chairs in the cockpit, and indicated to Ethan to do that as well.
The bigger teen sat with a frown. "Emily?" he asked. "What's about to happen?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Luis answered instead. "I'm going to fly this sucker!"
There was a pause, as Ethan digested this piece of news. He opened his mouth to tell Luis that this was much more like a suicidal mission even to his daredevil tastes – and shut up instead. Luis' normally wimpy face now bore a look resembling too close Emily's look, when she was taking a stand regarding some animal or other. In those circumstances, arguing with the small red head never amounted to anything good, and Ethan suspected that arguing with Luis in this situation would not be anything good either.
Instead, Ethan gazed at the smallish rattleback that still huddled at Emily's feet, looking about as poorly as Ethan felt.
"I knew that today was not going to be all right, I just knew it!" the sportive teen sighed. "Nothing has worked out as it supposed to, nothing!"
He said it loudly enough to be overheard Emily, but before she could ask Ethan just what he was talking about, the time flyer shuddered as it took off the ground – and shifted around.
"If this doesn't work, feel free to kick me around, guys!" Luis shouted over his shoulder to the rest of the crew – and then the time flyer flew.
Despite her earlier words and conversations with Emily and Ethan, C.G. was completely unsure of what she was doing out here, or if she was going to make through the sandstorm. By now, the wall of swirling grey sand had obliterated in a very literal way each distinction between the land, the sky and the horizon – and was pummelling C.G.'s force field with strength of four or maybe six megasquids. Normally, that would not be much of a problem, but with the time flier's main system frame still out, this meant that the power of the force field was draining fast, and once it was out, then C.G. would become defenceless or without any fall-back plans.
Just what was I thinking? C.G. mused, but her heart wasn't really in it, as she actually felt pretty sure that she had ended in this junction because the events of the day seemed to have conspired to ensure that nothing went right, starting with that snow stalker that snuck into the flier when everyone else wasn't looking, and ending with that rattleback which apparently lived on the wrong American continent and could serve as a living testament to C.G.'s greatest mistake up-to-date: getting the continents wrongs.
The continents! As if somebody could confuse them, even if they were reading the map for the first time – and C.G. was not one of them. She had read the map hundreds of times; in effect, she helped to make the map, as she and her crew had flown over the future world dozens of times – but she still messed up. And she was unable to determine that in time to prevent disaster, and got herself into a ridiculous situation where a rattleback was determined to stay on her legs, and unable to recognize the deteriorating weather patterns, and-
Suddenly from behind C.G. came a deafening, grinding sound, probably more loudly than a mega-sized colony of gannetwhales disturbed by a family of snow stalkers. Confused and not understanding just what it was, C.G. turned around and stared into a blindingly bright light, as a misshapen shape, standing out darkly even among the swirling grey sandstorm, seemed to swallow her up.
"C.G.? C.G.? Are you all right?"
"I'm... I am alive, I think..." the taller girl muttered woozily, as she opened her eyes... and realized that she was back in the time flier's sleeping quarters, with the rest of her crew huddling nervously around her. "What had happened?"
"By the time the guys came back the mainframe was mainly online, so I decided to risk it," Luis said.
"That is not possible-"
"I temporarily re-routed some of the systems to supply their share of power to the flight systems, and just went in your direction, trawling for you with the bottom ramp."
"Trawling?!" C.G. got up – and then she went down, as she hit her head on the upper sleeping bunk. "Ow. Anyways, that's not in the protocols!"
"Yeah, probably for all the grit and everything else," Luis admitted, guiltily. "We probably shall have to go back to Northern Ice for some more titanium as well."
"That bad," C.G. could not help but wince despite all of her bruises. "Ow!"
"Yeah, it doesn't look good, even if we don't have to replace it with new titanium plating or something," Ethan spoke up for the first time, as Emily, Squibby and Scaly nervously peered from behind him. "Um, Ceeg-"
"Look, I am not angry at any of you, I am angry with me," C.G. said with a sigh. "I am the leader, I should have taken the responsibility to check the weather-"
"Ceeg, I don't know how it is in your time, but in our time plane crashes aren't that rare, unfortunately," Luis said with a look of distaste on his face. "There's an entire show back then dedicated to investigating the causes of these crushes. In this case, though, the fault is mine – I must've pressed the wrong sequence of buttons-"
"Look," C.G. interrupted, "I grew up in the shadow of an ice age, for us weather-observation skills should have come naturally-"
"And they did, like when you save my and Emily's butts back in the further future during the meteorite shower," Ethan easily agreed. "The thing is, we usually have some fine flying weather – except for the occasional blizzard at the Northern Ice or at the Great Plateau further in the future, where we had no real accidents, by the way. The thing is, C.G., it is natural that you got a bit unworried about the weather, because of all the good luck. The fault here really is Murphy's."
"Whose? I thought that rattleback's name was Scaly?"
That made all other teens stare at their captain. "You don't know Murphy's Law?" Ethan replied incredulously. "Come on, it's the law that stays that if anything can go wrong, it will!"
"My father probably would not agree with you," C.G. said thoughtfully.
"Yeah, but we think he doesn't really agree with us being on this mission, period," Ethan shrugged, then sobered up. "Uh, you don't have a problem with that, do you? Considering that we got you into stuck in the sandstorm outside and what the scaly rattleback being on our ship-"
"What?! He's still on the flier?" C.G. exclaimed louder than how she would have liked.
"Yeah, after Luis had scooped you up with the ramp and we dragged you here, we all kind of zonked out as well," Ethan shrugged. "I actually had to drag Luis here – he sort of fainted back in the cockpit!"
Luis turned bright pink. "Uh, Ethan," he began and then abruptly stopped. "Oh boy. I forgot to reroute the power back to the communications system. Ceeg, your father is going to kill us."
"M-maybe not," Emily spoke up for the first time, sounding quite nervous. "I think I have an idea."
C.G. exchanged brief glances with the boys and then gave Emily a small smile. "We're listening."
"Cassiopeia! What is the meaning of that prolonged silence! Why your communicator has not been responding?" the rather worried than angry face of Dr. G. appeared on the communicator screen as soon as it was re-powered once more.
C.G. exhaled. "Father, there was a small problem with the autopilot."
"The autopilot?" Dr. G. frowned in consternation. "What about it?"
"Well, while I was installing it, a storm had hit, and we were forced to stay grounded, rather than make the overseas flight."
"A storm? Interesting," Dr. G. appeared deep in thought. "We do have really little data about the weather patterns in the five million years' future. Cassiopeia, do you think that you'll be able to re-launch the weather satellite here, as opposed to further future?"
"Of course we will, father," C.G. nodded in agreement.
"Good, but there still remains the problem of our lack of communication. What else had happened?" the look on Dr. G.'s face suggested that he did not believe the teens' story as wholeheartedly as they hoped.
"Well, I decided to re-check the flier's piloting manual and realized that the systems were due for the obligationary check-up, so I launched that," C.G. said, trying her best to appear at ease. "Only apparently I made a small miscalculation and the autopilot got uninstalled, again."
"Oh, Cassiopeia," Dr. G. groaned back in the communicator screen, but again, seemed more relieved than angry. "Try to be more attentive to such details in the future."
"I will," C.G. nodded. "Sorry about this, father."
"Good to hear this and I still want more detailed reports about the babookari, over and out." And the communicator went dark.
The four teens simultaneously exhaled in relief. "That was still too close," C.G. said, "we must get to the Amazon grasslands as soon as possible."
"We will," Luis nodded in agreement, as they and their friends looked outside. Outside laid the great North American cold desert and it did not look any friendlier at night. "As soon as the light breaks tomorrow."
The End.