SCENARIO B:

Fire. Well, you knew that already. Too bad you can't rig up a flamethrower out of sticks and leaves, you sure have enough of-

Wait. "Wait," you mutter. "Wait a goddamn minute. We don't need the damn flamethrower! We can build a goddamn fire ourselves!"

"I don't know about you, but I've never built a fire in my life, I kinda skipped the whole Girl Scouts thing," Sara admits. She pauses, then arches her eyebrows. "Don't tell me you used to be a Boy Scout, the shock might do me in."

You chuckle. "Not me, sweetheart! But I did see one of our illustrious comrades-in-arms of the 2nd Mass do it once. If those meatheads can figure it out, it can't be too hard."

You step back, rubbing your hand over the lower half of your face. Sure, you'd watched Mason do it, but it wasn't like you'd been trying to follow along. Even though Mason had suggested you should watch and learn. You weren't about to say it out loud, not even to Sara, but... for the first time, you wish you'd paid attention to Cambridge's advice.

God, think! Think hard, damn it. How did Mason do it?

Okay, one thing at a time. What had Mason done first? You, you'd mostly been thinking that of course an overgrown Boy Scout like Mason would know shit like this, but if you could just remember...

It'd had something to do with dry stuff. Was it dry leaves, or twigs? Or both? Hell, you'll try a little of each and see what does the trick. Either one will burn real nice, by your estimation. You slap your hands together and rub vigorously, then set about gathering up dry leaves and twigs.

You pile all those up in a heap next to the goo puddle. What's next? You remember Mason kneeling on the ground, rubbing one stick against another stick. He was kinda scraping the end of a thin stick long-wise against another, bigger stick.

So you go and you get a pair of sticks. You crouch down next to your leaf-and-twig pile, and you start scraping the end of the thin stick long-wise along the bigger stick, and you feel like a world-class idiot.

But you keep at it, and nothing happens. No sparks, no smoke, nothing. You grumble and scrape faster, and the thinner stick snaps in half.

You gripe, "Ah, sonuva-"

"Trouble?" Sara asks dryly.

"Nah. You'll know when there's trouble," you retort. You go and get more sticks and you start again.

"So who was it?"

"Who was what?"

"The one that made the campfire. The campfire you're trying very hard to remember right now?" She dips her chin, smirking knowingly.

"Uh..." You're not avoiding the question, but you are focusing on those sticks awfully hard. The truth grinds your gears, even to admit it to Sara. Still, it's Sara. And if sacrificing your pride will keep her mind off of her predicament... "...Mason."

"Mason?" she echoes. She looks around, like the good professor or one of his princely progeny might show up. "Which Mason? There's a whole dynasty of those, you're gonna have to be more specific."

"Our glorious leader. He and I got stranded up in the mountains above Charleston this one time. Gave me shit for not knowing how to build a fire, that pain in the ass."

"Okay, I know there's got to be a story behind this," she says. "Come on, dish it!"

You look up from your sticks and grin at her. "You want a story, huh? Well, you know how it is with the Nutty Professor and his band of merry meatheads: you find out the President of what used to be the USA is still alive, so the President of the New USA commandeers your airplane-"

"You had an airplane?" She sounds skeptical!

"I sure did, kinda like how you had a farmhouse. Finders keepers?" you say with a grin. She nods with a little shrug. Fair's fair.

Then her brows furrow and her nose crinkles (very cute) as your words sink in. "The President? President Hathaway? He's still alive?"

"Was. One story at a time, sweetheart." You go back to your stick-scraping and you continue. "Anyways, our very own President comes to see me and tells me he needs my plane. So I tag along to protect my property, see? Top-secret flight plan, as our fish-headed friends had a mole in our midst. Only she finds out, our sneaky little scamp, and she sends along some party crashers. Plane goes down, and it's just me and Mason and the great outdoors."

Sara laughs, rolling her eyes skyward. "God, sounds like one hell of a party."

"Oh, you bet it was! We ate fire-roasted frogs, swapped manly campfire stories, had a fistfight that damn near turned into a knife fight, pulled a 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' to escape a Skitter patrol... all the fixings of a classic Mason adventure." You snort, shaking your head. "I swear, the Masons have got a downright unnatural talent for attracting trouble."

She raises her eyebrows. "Frankly I'm just impressed you two made it back to civilization without murdering each other."

You scoff. "Don't think I wasn't tempted!" The stick snaps again. "SON of a-"

You stomp away to get more sticks.

As you begin again, Sara pipes up, her tone teasing. "So how was it you survived to show up at my farmhouse, and you and Tom aren't decomposing in the mountains somewhere?"

"Well, the good professor went and screwed up his ankle, couldn't walk for shit, so guess who played the dashing hero and saved the day?" You glance up, grinning. Sara chuckles and does that fond eyeroll. You go back to work, and you continue. "Now, Mason, he told me I didn't have the balls to go on ahead, walk outta those mountains without him."

"And you, being a good and honorable soldier of the 2nd Massachusetts, never even considered it," she quips.

"Oh, you know me, duty and honor and God and country," you shoot back. "But, uh, nah. I did walk away, as a matter of fact. Now, I didn't say a word when I left, I figured I'd let him stew a while."

"You never actually planned on leaving him there, did you?" There's that knowing tone in her voice.

"'Course not! The fish-heads wanted him dead that bad, shit, I'd have dragged the bastard outta Hell itself just to flip 'em the finger."

"So that's what it was, huh?" She doesn't sound convinced.

"That, and I wasn't in the mood for a court martial. Mason and me, we didn't exactly start out on the right foot and everybody knows we don't see eye to eye. Wouldn't have been a very good look, me moseying on in alone, our dear President conspicuously absent."

"So how did you get back?"

"Well, what Mason didn't know was, when I left him to simmer, I was off scavenging us a pickup truck from some old ranger station. Came back, rescued Mr. Damsel In Distress from some Skitters, drove till we ran outta gas, then I lugged his sorry ass the rest of the way with three good ankles between us."

"All that just to stick it to the fish-heads and save your own ass," she remarks, and if voices could smirk... you glance up at her and, yep, she's doing the smirk, the one where she thinks she's got you all figured out. Problem is, she usually does.

"Well all right, Miss Smarty-Pants, so what's your theory? Why'd I go to so much trouble to rescue the Nutty Professor from a cold and lonely death in the wilderness?" you challenge, and for anyone else but her there'd be venom in it.

"Same reason you've stuck with him this whole time. If you actually hated the guy, I think you'd've been long gone," she muses. She waves a finger at you and says smugly, "You trust him."

You snort. "'Trust' is an awfully strong word," you mutter at your sticks.

"Is it? Because I have a hard time believing you'd still be with the 2nd Mass if you didn't," she points out. "Do you remember what you told me before my first firefight? Because I do. You said, if I wanted to survive, I should stick with the Masons. You either meant it or you didn't."

Well, shit, she's got you there. You stare down at your sticks, the scrape of wood on wood filling the silence as you mull over what to say.

With your eyes still on your work, you tell her, "Look, Tom Mason may not be the kinda guy I'd sit down and crack open a beer with, but I'd rather be with him than against him, let's say that. He's handy to have on your side. Somehow, all his harebrained schemes always end up pulling through. He's gotten us this far, anyway. And, hell, he pisses off those fish-heads even more than he pisses off me, and that's not nothin'!"

"So... you trust him. That's trust, John," she says, and she sounds almost a little concerned.

You mutter and keep scraping. "I did, anyway." The words are out before you've realized you were even thinking them.

The stick snaps. You swear and stomp off to get another (good thing they literally grow on trees, huh?).

"Did?" Sara echoes.

"He's been different ever since he got back from his daddy-daughter road trip," you say sourly. "Everybody knows it. Anne and Weaver, they know it, they just won't do a damn thing about it."

"You're worried about him." There's no teasing in her voice this time. She hasn't known Mason for very long, and she can still tell you're right.

"About him? Nah, his little fan-club's got that handled," you scoff. You get back to work, scraping Stick A aggressively against Stick B, and you're silent for a bit before you say, "But the way he is now... he's gonna get people killed, Sara. And I've just about had it with burying the 2nd Mass. There's not a day goes by I don't remember names, faces, voices... the people I helped bury. People I fought next to, suffered next to. And if I wind up having to bury more of our people because Mason's latest alien adventure changed him for the worse and no one would stand up to him about it, then-"

And that's when you catch the faintest whiff of smoke. You look down, and you see something beautiful: a thin wisp of smoke curling upward from your sticks. Slowly, you grin, and then you laugh, and you scrape faster. The smoke thickens, rises, and there it is- a flicker of flame!

"Ha hah! Ya see?! Flamethrowers, who needs 'em? We're gonna do this the old-timey way," you crow. You feed some dry leaves into the little flame, and it catches and grows.

Sara laughs and cheers. "Nice work, caveman!"

You feed your little fire, poking more leaves and twigs into it, building it up till it's nice and strong. The smoke will probably get you some close encounters of the Skitter kind, so now's the time to act fast. You grab a dry branch that still has some leaves on the end and you hold it above the fire till it catches.

And now that you've got yourself a tiki torch, you stand up and sweep the flames above the edge of the goo puddle. The goo hisses and sizzles away, and ain't that just the most beautiful sound you've heard all day? All that alien super-technology from all the way across the universe, taken down by a big ol' ape with some sticks.

Cackling triumphantly, you burn away the goo and clear a path to Sara. And when you reach her, you grin and tip an imaginary hat. "Afternoon, ma'am."

She laughs, relief palpable in her voice, and you were wrong: that's the most beautiful sound you've heard all day.

You carefully singe away the goo around her knees and shins, and she shifts and wiggles, testing the goo's weakening grip. You hold out your free hand and she grasps your wrist and forearm to balance as she tries to work herself loose. You're not about to take your hand away, so you lean and reach over her shoulder to get the torch behind her and get it as close as you dare to her feet.

Suddenly she gasps and laughs. "It's working, baby, I'm out!"

You toss the torch aside and pull her to her feet, but she stumbles, so you pull her into your arms to hold her upright and she holds on tightly.

"What's the matter, are you hurt somewhere?!" you shout.

She shakes her head, grimacing. "Other than my feet being asleep, I'm okay! I'll have some pretty bad pins and needles though, oof."

You heave a relieved sigh and plant a hard, quick kiss on her lips, then you press your forehead to hers. Then it occurs to you that you should probably do something about the fire, so you guide her over to the log and sit her down, and then you go and stomp out the torch and your hard-won fire.

And then you're back at Sara's side, squatting in front of her and gripping her hands, looking her in the eye.

"You feel like you need to head on back to Chinatown? Because we can do that, and if Mason says a single goddamn word-"

She shuts you up with raised eyebrows. "John," she says chidingly, "look. Not a scratch on me! I'm fine! I can handle pins and needles!" She gives you a playfully suspicious look. "Hey, you're the one that taught me how to fight. You're not gonna get all weird on me now just because we talked about kids before, are you?"

You scoff and fiddle with a strand of her hair falling alongside her face, not looking her in the eye. "Nah." So that's a 'yeah'.

"Uh huh." Her eyebrows are still sky high. "Uh, yeah, we're gonna have a talk about this later on. Let's roll, we got a mission to do! C'mon, I'm trying to make a name for myself around here! You guys have a head start on kickin' alien ass, I need to catch up."

She gives you a light push to the chest, grinning, then she stands from the log with a wince and heads off along the path you'd been following before this little excursion in alien superglue.

A regular ol' hellraiser, that one, you think admiringly as you watch her go. You stand up and jog after her.

"So, I guess we owe Mason a thank-you for that little lesson in wilderness survival skills, huh?" she remarks as you fall into step next to her.

You shrug, clear your throat. "Or, uh, we can just keep that between us. If Mason's hero complex gets any bigger, the Skitters'll see it from miles away."

She nods, all wide-eyed innocence. "Oh, sure, sure, our secret. Absolutely. Not a word."

Yep, hellraiser. And you, of course, wouldn't have it any other way.