Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Paper Girls, Issue #14! In the previous installment, Erin, Tiff, and Wari discover one of those violet portal foldings in the forest. Erin has an inkling about where it leads, which will turn out to be correct, so she writes the “DON’T TRUST OTHER ERIN!!! message on it, and we’ll probably see her stick that shit through the gloryhole.

Dr. Qanta “Don’tcha Wanta Fanta” Braunstein is in bad shape, hanging upside-down from a tree as a captive. One of the three cavemen picks up a translator and asks where is son is.

Mac and KJ find a strange floating alien pyramid. KJ touches it and sees a few images of the future (which will make sense as we go, I imagine). She also sees herself and Mac smoochin’, which is pretty adorable and I wish them the best.

Let’s keep going! This series is hella fun.

Paper Girls, Issue #14 [May, 2017]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan

Three saber-toothed tigers are fighting a giant armadillo-type creature! Excitement! Action! Wari shoots an arrow right into one’s neck and Erin congratulates her jubilantly on a nice shot! Wari looks annoyed.

“Huh, never seen a breathing boulder this far north,” Wari says, referring to the giant armadillo-type creature. “The dream women must have called the beast here at the same time they summoned my boy and me.”

Erin calls it a giant armadillo, which makes me feel better about my decision to describe it. Wari asks Tiff to help her gut the dead saber-toothed tiger for a delicious meal. Tiff looks like she’s gonna puke. Erin is also hesitant to indulge in a bite of raw, extinct mammal. “Starve if you want,” Wari says as she slices through the animal with her arrow.

When the girls start hearing footsteps, Wari panics and tells the girls to run away with Jahpo (that’s the baby, by the way). They don’t want to leave Wari, so she accepts this right away and tells them to prepare for a possible death, then.

The footsteps come closer. Closer. Closer. Wari readies her arrow.

It’s scarier than anyone could ever imagine!

Don’t worry, it’s just us paper girls bringin’ the good news!

Everyone is reunited yet again. Mac keeps her relief inside, it seems. KJ looks numb. After they’re asked if they’re all right, Mac tells them that “KJ just got bad-touched by some kind of floating pyramid.”

“I don’t know what it was, but it sucked,” KJ confirms glumly. Wari calls it the untranslatable. Not that it’s call that, mind you, but what she’s calling it IS untranslatable! Look, just read my rundown of the previous issue again. I know you’ve already read it seven times and told all your friends, but trust me on that one.

KJ is reminded of the Editrix that caused Tiff to relive her Arkanoid-playing days, but obviously THAT floating orb caused Tiff to see the past. The floating pyramid caused KJ to see the future. Keep this one in mind, I’m sure it’ll be very important! VERY important! VERY IMPORTANT!

“But… it was all wrong,” KJ says dully, referring to the inevitable future. “It showed me crap that I couldn’t possibly–”

HOLD THAT THOUGHT, SON. Mac tells the group that she and KJ found another time machine dealie! So let’s go kill Hitler! Or go back to 1988, whichever sounds easier.

They hear the distant screams of a female voice. Mac is immediately optimistic that this screaming woman will help them get home; she obviously came from the time machine, right?

I don’t think they even had tradition back then.

Wari is convinced that the screaming woman was found by the three unwise men and they are now doing rapes at her as they speak. Just like Wari, and now each claims ownership of Jahpo the Baby. Awkward situation! “In my guild, tradition says that a mother must give up her child to whichever father is deemed the strongest.”

And just look to the picture to see how she feels about that.

Anyway, the scream happens again. That awful, womanly scream! “I’m sorry my son and I must go,” Wari says as she walks away not very sorry looking at all, “but if the three men are ‘enjoying’ themselves, they may have left their stolen treasure unattended elsewhere. Goodbye, interesting women. I’m glad you found your friends alive.”

Word of advice: Don’t worry about those screams. Go off and survive more, that would be a much better use of your time!

The scream is indeed coming from Dr. Qanta, who is still tied up and upside down. Two of the cavemen are holding her inches from a folding. “Reveal… where child is… or your head… goes in hole.”

Qanta takes this moment to pray to some gods even though she doesn’t really believe in them all that much, but this is what happens when you’re terrified and about to die. You’re like “oh shit, I hope God doesn’t hate me for these last few seconds!” But the joke is always on you. God always, ALWAYS, hates you. It’s a good lesson to learn!

So what’s next? Head doesn’t go in hole, that’s what. “HEAD GOES IN HOLE!” Caveman #3 shouts with bold letters, but head doesn’t go in hole. I know it won’t. The four paper girls are observing nearby in the bushes.

Oh no, looks like the Sad Face Gang has some regerts!

“If we don’t do something, they’re going to murder that lady,” Tiff whispers, flailing for someone else to think of something. Mac points out, logically, that they’re all 12 years old and they don’t have any weapons. And the only girl with a weapon walked the fuck away with her baby. “How are we supposed to take on a whole gang of rapey cavemen?”

KJ has the right idea: they don’t have to physically beat them. They just have to get Qanta away from them. She’s going to go back to the Big Scary Pyramid. The other three will grab her and take her there while KJ waits… she just has to… uh… see some more of that gay kissin’ that was very appealing…

“What is she doin’?” Tiff exclaims, very worried.
“Actin’ insane ‘cause it’s that time of the month!” Mac yells with frustrated indignation!

“Last chance, Dream Woman,” Caveman #3 warns through Qanta’s space helmet. Qanta insists that she has no idea where the fuck their baby is! She doesn’t know any baby! What even IS a baby?!

Caveman #3 gets on his knees and starts begging. He doesn’t want to hurt her for realsies. He just wants his babby!

“HEY!” screams a voice – a little kid voice – from down the way. “Whatever you’re doing. Don’t…” KJ starts to panic a little bit. “…don’t do that.”

Then she runs. The three cavemen are like “HRUFMN” and they start chasing her, leaving Qanta hanging upside-down inches from the folding. The other three girls approach and start hacking the ropes off.

1988! Ha! Super Mario Bros. 3 hasn’t even come out yet, you poor, poor children!

Qanta looks like she’s ready to cry because, obviously, she was not the first future human to enter this past era. Boo hoo. Go get abused by three cavemen about it, you little whiner.

As KJ is running away, mere yards ahead of three cavemen, she takes a moment to reflect upon the visions.

“I’m gonna kiss Mac?” she says to herself, eyes like dinner plates. She wonders why? Why would any girl kiss another girl? That’s crazy nuts! That’s some malarkey! The Torah forbids it! And also God and maybe even the Devil?

She approaches a large chasm, possibly about 100 feet from the river below, preventing her path forward. She looks back at the rapey, rapey cavemen and continues reflecting upon her girl-kissin’. Then she contemplates jumping.

“DON’T!” screams Helmet Caveman. The “nice” one. The one that will only rape gently. KJ takes the leap and…makes it to the other side of the chasm! Done and done. Bye bye, cavemen. See you on the flippity flop. Totally tubular.

The cavemen retreat. And that’s the last we’ll see of them forever! Guaranteed!

But, hey now, the rest of the group arrived at the Upside-Down Pyramid Scheme and KJ is nowhere to be found! “It’s from the fourth dimension,” Qanta explains while they’re all staring up at the ridiculous-looking thing with the weird tentacles and the luminous fairy dust. “Technically, it’s still there, I suppose, but it’s allowing part of itself to be observed by lowly 3D beings like us.”

Well, isn’t that nice of it? Qanta is enamored by the strange 4D object, so much so that Erin has to grab her titty and hold her back to keep from touching it and possibly seeing a future where she, I don’t know, also kisses Mac? And gets sent to jail.

OK, here’s the part where Dr. Qanta Scott Bakula Billy Pilgrim Desmond Hume Braunstein finally explains who she is and what she’s doing and, maybe, what’s going on with the hair.

Ain’t no parent in this day got no kid named at ALL Qanta Braunstein!

Never mind, I guess. That didn’t explain shit! Also, being born two weeks after Trump won the election is pretty grim. Never even knew Obama’s America! Tan suits and summer playlists and drone strikes. Those were the days.

Mac doesn’t trust this woman as far as she can throw her, and since her bones are disintegrating with the dreaded cancer as we speak and live and breathe, I can say for sure that she can’t throw her very far. Also, she’s a kid and she’s like seven feet shorter than her besides. “Cool it, Mac,” Tiff raises an eyebrow at her brash “friend”. “I’m pretty sure this woman is on our side.”

Erin pulls out her Apple iPod Shuffle thing and shows it to Qanta, who sneers and wonders how a child from 1988, one of the worst years ever, has a device such as this. First of all, it was never even available for sale. The brain invasion feature gave people nightmares, and, at best, gave people directions to abandoned malls near Cleveland. Erin promises she’ll tell Qanta everything they know… as long as she helps them get out of this prehistoric hellhole. And Qanta is like, cool beans, but it’s going to take us to 2050 or something. Way past where you want to be. Global warming has wreaked havoc on Earth, so everyone moved to southern Ontario. And that place was already crowded… oh, and I guess Cleveland is ok too.

Bidets so powerful that the water will shoot up and come right out of your mouth, it will!

A rustling in the woods causes an interruption in the time travel chat. At first it’s assumed to be KJ, but it’s Wari. And she is without child. “Wari! What happened? Where’s… where’s Jahpo?”

Jahpo is gone-o. The three cavemen got what they wanted.

Final Thoughts

Season 1 took place in 1988. Season 2 took place in 2016. Season 3 here takes place in 11,706 BCE. This is some Chrono Trigger shit.

Season 4 will likely take place in the 2050s or so. However, we have one issue left of this particular storyline! Hold on to your butts, kids. Hold on to them hard.