Hey, readers! This story references the episode 'WordGirl Makes a Mistake.'
Foreword:
Well, this fic is… *checks Time to Go Home* three YEARS late?! 0_o
Oh gee, Gris, I am so sorry. X(
*sigh* Okay, time for the tl;dr backstory for whoever wants to know. It's not important to the fic itself, so please feel free to skip it if you don't care about the story behind the story.
So, I did a game with my readers when I published my WordGirl chapterfic Time to Go Home, and the winner, Griselda Banks, was supposed to get a oneshot of her choosing. Well, I let my time and my credibility get away from me, and I completely lost track of this story for a gratuitous amount of time. :{
BUT! While I'm not finished yet, what I have managed to get out on paper came out a lot longer than I expected, so I've decided to go ahead and let this story be a short chapterfic instead of a long oneshot. Hopefully the bonus length will compensate, at least in part, for the ridiculously long wait time. :} Also, this way I can catch up on writing the rest of the story while I gradually post chapters. (Hopefully I can keep up with myself… X[ I think I can! I think I can!)
For posterity, here is Griselda Banks' original request, in her own words:
"As you know, Captain Huggyface is my favorite character, and I love your interpretation of the more serious side of the lovably silly sort-of-talking monkey. Especially how much he gave up just to make sure Becky is safe.
So I would LOVE it if you'd write something about their initial arrival on Earth. I'll leave it up to you to decide exactly how you want to go about that and how to work it all out, but as long as it's got something to do with their journey or how they ended up with the Botsfords, I'll be happy."
Well, Gris, without further ado, here's the first part of your well-earned prize. I hope you enjoy it. :)
Contretemps [kon-truh-tahn] – an inopportune occurrence; an embarrassing mischance.
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Captain's Log, Scout Mission 72, Day 1
It was supposed to be a simple mission. The debriefing took less than two minutes, for crying out loud! Standard-procedure scouting operation. Map out an area of 0.01 parsecs for addition to the star charts of the Lexiconian Airforce. Easy and dull. My worst fear was that I'd get bored, or even worse, hungry.
I'm getting ahead of myself. If the worst should come, I need to make sure whoever finds this log has all the pertinent information to pass along to the Lexiconian Space Force in my absence. I sure hope it doesn't come to that.
Early in the mission, I came across a planet so pretty that I had to stop and admire it for a moment. That was my first mistake. I don't know its name yet, but it has green continents of various shapes scattered throughout big stretches of blue ocean.
I was just about to pass it and move on, and that was when the trouble started.
Who knows how a baby managed to stow away on my ship? She must have been asleep the whole time until right then, because I suddenly started hearing noises and when I went to investigate, I found her. She's Lexiconian, and maybe closer to a toddler than a baby. I made the mistake of picking her up, and right then the ship crashed into something—or maybe something crashed into the ship—I really don't know. What I do know is that the impact killed the engines and knocked the ship toward the nearby planet.
I probably could have salvaged the situation if it hadn't been for the baby. When the ship shook she started crying and grabbed onto me like her life depended on it. I tried to push her off, but I couldn't. She's Lexiconian, and even at her very young age she is stronger than me. By the time I managed to get us both to the controls it was too late.
The ship crashed, and I am now stranded on the green and blue planet with a child to look after.
This is officially the worst mission of my career.
In the interest of being optimistic, I should note that I managed to crash us on land rather than in the middle of one of the planet's oceans. We're in a forest, and I have no idea if we're close to any civilization. I also have no idea if that's a good thing or a bad thing. My scans of the planet showed that it was inhabited, but I don't know anything about its people. They could be cave-dwelling barbarians for all I know.
Fortunately, the Lexcionian child is fine. She's not my favorite person at the moment, but she's fine. I must remind myself how innocent and helpless she is and resist the temptation to be angry with her. It's not her fault some undetectable asteroid struck the ship and scared her half to death, and it's not like blaming her would get me anywhere. Besides, whether I like it or not, she is my responsibility now. She doesn't have anyone else.
As for the bad news, my ship is a smoking wreck. It's still mostly in one piece, but all of the critical systems are offline and the outer bulkheads are severely damaged. It needs major repairs, and since my little stowaway is unlikely to have any technical knowledge, it's all up to me.
But I can't even start thinking about that yet. I barely had any energy left after I finally managed to get the child to go to sleep, and even as I write I'm struggling to stay awake.
The repairs to the ship will just have to wait.
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Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.
— Proverbs 27:1
Author's Notes:
- Famous?— In 'WordGirl Makes A Mistake,' Becky refers to Bob as a "famous Lexicon airforce pilot." This is obviously in conflict with my interpretation that he was just a humble scout, but the idea that he was a 'famous airforce pilot' doesn't make much sense to me. Like, if he was so famous, how come no one ever came looking for him? :/ Becky also calls him "the greatest pilot in the galaxy," which seems a bit hyperbolic at the very least, especially if he crash-landed on Earth. XP So I'm going with the interpretation that she was exaggerating his status.
- Huggy's Vocabulary— If it seems like Huggy has a much bigger vocabulary in this story than he does in the canon, bear in mind that my headcanon for the WordGirl universe is that Huggy's mother tongue is not English. You can think of his log here as having been translated to English for the benefit of the reader, but at this point in time, he only speaks whatever language(s) he was raised with on Lexicon. This is also my interpretation of why Huggy always needs really simple words defined for him in the show despite clearly being educated and intelligent enough to do things like pilot a spaceship and draw up business strategies. He doesn't have the Lexiconian language-learning superpowers that Becky has, so he had to learn English painstakingly from the ground up like any normal person would.