Author's Note: Due to the lack of comments, I suppose Val and I are among the very few people enjoying this. It's okay. We don't mind taking up a few kBs of the internets. Of course, if you wanted to suggest a fandom or a scenario, you're completely welcome to!

Interlude: The Requisite Insertion

"No." Elspeth spun round in the computer chair to face her younger sister. "Absolutely not. You may not just start a chapter like this and leave it hanging for me to resolve."

Val let a provocative grin take up residence on her face. "Meaning you can't? You're stumped? The keyboard's getting to you?"

"Meaning that I refuse to get us out of this situation. You started it, you finish it." Els swung back to the keyboard and started typing. She was rewarded with a string of gibberish, sending Val into yet another fit of hysterical giggling. "No. No - just don't say anything." Taking a deep breath, she turned the laptop's microphone on. "Modern technology has an answer to this, too. Hal. Dictation." Technically, she didn't need to say the computer's name, but it was definitely cooler if she did. "And be quiet!" she hissed. "It's my chapter."

Chapter Four: Game

The X-Jet lifted off smoothly, Val at the controls. Rising swiftly, the sleek machine cut through the air, accelerating as it punched toward the clouds. "Whoo!" Val yelled into her headset, which muffled the roar of the engines. "Gonna take her supersonic!"

"Or maybe you won't!"

Both girls twisted at the sardonic yell, which had originated behind them - from Cyclops, who was standing next to the Joker. A still-smoking hole in the cabin ceiling laid to rest any questions about their manner of entry.

Elspeth rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. Could you get any more cliché?" She started unclipping her seat harness.

"Yes."

"Yes what?"

Val glanced over at Els. "Yes, it can get more cliché. You're wearing black leather."

"Oh, for crying out loud!" It was true; somewhere along the way they'd had a wardrobe change. Muttering under her breath, Elspeth freed herself from the last of the straps and stood.

"What are you doing?"

"Well, somebody's got to deal with them. Fly the plane."

Oh, come on now, that's really cliché.

My chapter, hush. Erm...

There was a convenient space in the center of the cabin; Elspeth faced off with the two superhero/villains. The jet was still climbing steeply, forcing the men to look up the slanted floor at her. Eying her speculatively, the Joker began: "Want to know how I got these scars?"

Els cut him off with a laugh. "Not really. Looks like you've put on a little extra poundage since the movie - need to lose some weight?" She kicked the back of Val's seat for emphasis.

Val, taking the cue, brought the jet level, arcing the top of a sharp curve and sending them all weightless. The Joker giggled himself into a state of paralysis at the pun, leaving Elspeth free to launch herself from the seat back, flying straight at Cyclops. Catching him about the middle, her momentum drove him into the rear bulkhead - winding him, she hoped. The only problem was that his glasses slipped down onto his nose, letting loose a beam of red light that obliterated yet another portion of the fuselage.

This was bad. The X-Jet was well on its way to becoming a piece of Swiss cheese, and physics didn't like flying Swiss cheeses.

"Hey, Val?" Els yelled, grappling with Cyclops in an attempt to push his glasses back up where they belonged, "Get over here! We need to end this fast!" Normal acceleration was reclaiming them, but Val seemed somewhat reluctant to join her.

"I have to fly this plane!"

"We have a new pilot! Get out of the chair!"

"What?"

"Just do it!"

Val left her seat suspiciously, but there wasn't any need to worry. A very recognizable pilot with a somewhat eighties haircut took her place. "Ma'am, I've got this bird under control."

However, Val was still looking at him as if she were contemplating a cross between a cockroach and a plate of week-old fried squid leftovers. "Do I know you?"

"Maverick. That'd be Top Gun, ma'am." He winked at her. It didn't have much effect.

"Just fly the plane," she snapped, and headed for the Joker - which was when all hell broke loose.

Thinking about it later, Elspeth realized that -

"Hey, hey, just a minute." Val shook her head in disbelief. "Thinking about it later?"

"Sure. It's a subtle but effective method of recording a character's thoughts on a situation that they are much too busy, in the moment of the event, to actually think about."

"It also gives away the fact that they get out of it!"

"Exactly. So now we know that I survive." It was Elspeth's turn for the trump card grin. "The question is, do you? I'd suggest not interrupting for the remainder of the chapter."

"You owe me a milkshake."

"What?" This was off-topic and extremely confusing.

"You owe me a milkshake."

Elspeth closed her eyes and counted to ten. "Why do I owe you a milkshake?"

"I don't know yet. But at some point, you will end up owing me a milkshake."

"We'll see about that." Extremely weak comeback, she knew, but she had more important things to do right now.

Thinking about it later, Elspeth realized that it wasn't really hell breaking loose, but more like an amusement park ride doing a very poor imitation of hell, with the "amusement" and "park" parts taken out. It was her mistake, really. Putting Maverick at the controls of her baby (she was beginning to think of the X-Jet extremely possessively) was all the invitation he needed to begin a series of twisting, looping, stomach-churning, bruising, and often-negative-g manuvers. Combine that with the fact that the four combatants in the cabin lacked seatbelts and, indeed, seats, and there was suddenly an explanation for the bodies that began slamming into the walls.

"Maver-!" Els was cut off by a particularly hard collision with Cyclops' skull. Grey haze pounced onto the edges of her vision, hesitated for a moment, and then swarmed towards the center.

This was bad. Should have gotten an Air Force One pilot.