Paper Girls, Issue #18

* Part 3 of 5 of the Paper Girls Volume 4 storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Paper Girls, Issue #18! In the previous installment, Tiff escapes the car relatively unscathed and discovers a creepy goth woman (or man) in her home. When asked if she (or he) knows Tiffany Quilkin, the woman (or man) responds in the affirmative. “She’s my wife.”

The other three are hanging out in Charlotte Spachefski’s basement where they surf the net on a kickass tangerine iMac G3. They learn a little bit more about the Foldings, as well as a young man named Jude who was good friends with Teenage Mutant Heck and Naldo. Once Charlotte learns that Tiff is a mile or two away among the Transformers battle, she sees the three girls as a threat all of a sudden and aims a gun at their faces.

Exciting things are afoot! Everyone’s a lesbian (or not)! Including me! Let’s keep going.

Paper Girls, Issue #18 [December, 2017]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan

“REMEMBER: Turn your computer off before midnight on 12/31/99

-Warning Sticker from Best Buy circa 1999”

I forgot to do this and my computer exploded cum all over my face. It was worth it.

“I don’t want to kill you. But if I have to, I sure as heck will.”

Ugh, been there done that. Erin already got shot with a gun. She doesn’t want it to happen again, please.

“I can’t worry about your past when our future is in such terrible, terrible danger,” this old bat yells desperately. She has heard all the horror stories from the Future Kids. “Stories of anthrax in mailboxes, of airplanes flying into skyscrapers, of… of people being addicted to their telephones!”

Suuuuure, crazy lady. Airplanes flying into skyscrapers! I’ve never heard of anything so absurd! And if it happened, I sure did forget about it!

The Old-Timers, see, want to preserve timelines. For them, it all already happened and it should happen. The New-Timers, A PHRASE WHICH I AM COINING NOW, want every generation to have the best possible present “even if history has to be… futzed with to get there.”

KJ creeps forward. Spachefski warns her to get back. KJ tells her she doesn’t have the GUTS to pull that trigger.

Erin tells Mac to get ready. Mac asks what the hell she is going to do.

Paper girls at your service!

Erin’s got good aim! The flung newspaper hits the generator’s off switch, powering down the computer and cutting the basement lights.

“What in the world–”

“RUN!”

“Ow!”

“Get upstairs!”

“I’m trying, but I can’t–”

BLAM

“JESUS H. CHRIST!”

Everyone’s ok, no one got shot in the gut this time. Mac and Erin push the credenza in front of the door, blocking Spachefski in. Then they high tail it on out of there tout suite.

“You’re making a terrible mistake, girls!” Spachefski shouts. “The war is over if you get yourselves captured!”

Who cares, they’re gone. Fuck it. If this war is between loser nerds smacking each other from within Transformer robots, then let it happen. It’s entertainment for the rest of us!

This is all happening, by the way, right outside Tiff’s house. It appears that this woman that I thought was a woman is actually a man who looks like a woman. My apologies. “I don’t get it,” Tiff says, arms crossed and not getting it. “You’re my… You’re Tiffany’s husband?”

You look like you immediately looted Hot Topic once the lights went out.

Yes! Pay attention! It happened three weeks ago. Tiff calls the guy a time traveler, which he must get a lot based on his punky, hopeless anime fan attire. Tiff just boggles, horrified that this is her future.

“How did you say you knew my wife?”

“Tiffany is… my big sister.”

…

“I mean, she was. In the Big Sisters of America. Or, I was, and she used to be my–”

This guy cuts her off, likely to save them both from the misery. Old Tiff went on a beer run after their party petered out and everyone took what was left with them. “And you let her leave?!” Tiff asks incredulously. So incredulous, this one! Looking out for her future self, that’s awfully kind of her. “It’s Y2K, not Armageddon,” this guy says simply.

Do I know the name of this guy yet? Should I call him something until I know? How about Danzig. He says that Old Tiff’s parents are in Europe, so they’re, uh, “house sitting”. As it were.

Danzig is interrupted by a very loud and red-block-text KRAKKADOOM, which is a fantastic PC game. “Those were not M-80s,” he says, exiting the house to get a look. Tiff yells at him to get back inside, and then we find out his name is Chris. That’s incredibly disappointing! I only got to call him “Danzig” twice! Such is life…

“I’m Tiffany, all right! I don’t know how and I don’t know why, but I’m here! I came here through time! I’m the girl you’re going to marry, just from, like, twelve years ago!”

Chris Danzig looks at her with polite melancholy. Her voice gets small as she hangs her head. “How do you not even recognize me?”

The Transformers keep fighting. Suddenly, one of those orbs with the swirling red, green, and blue tendrils shows up – the one that whisked the girls away to the year 2000.

Like salmon!
Check out other images on this page and other pages for top-quality captions like this one!

I don’t know what these people are talking about, the Prioress wants to nuke these fuckers if they reappear again, but the Grand Father advises against it. “I don’t think we’re quite at the point of using tactical nukes.”

“Says the man who declared this chickenshit invasion an act of war?” the Prioress retorts. Grand Father can’t argue with that one! He gets rather sheepish. “Yes, but unlike our young opponents, we’ve actually learned a thing or two about this century. Our wars have rules.”

Nah, fuck that. Playing by the rules gets you killed and nuked! In that order! Grand Father doesn’t have a response to this other than “call me by my real name”. I don’t know what that is yet, so I’m sticking with Danzig!

Prioress says “NO!”, possibly because the position is more important than the person. Grand Father swore an oath to “preserve humanity’s first draft” at any cost. Grand Father doesn’t want humanity killed with nuclear weapons! We’re at an impasse here, aren’t we? I think these two want to bone.

“Whatever collateral damage we’re forced to inflict on this one neighborhood will barely make a dent in the long-term continuity of Earth’s timeline,” she says. That means stopping these mutant teenagers ASAP, PDQ, and right fucking now. Or else bad things will happen, like raining frogs and rivers of blood! Killing the first born! Eating the poop!

Mac, Erin, and KJ have made it to the woods and are heading toward Tiff’s old house, where they assume (correctly) that she may have wandered to (if she’s here in this timeline) to see how her folks are doin’ (they’re in Europe).

The look on Erin’s face lately suggests she’s tired of being the voice of reason all the time. That’s called “character analysis”. I’m very good at it.

“Hey Erin,” Mac whispers. “Fall back a second.”

Erin falls back a second.

“Have you noticed anything… weird about KJ?”

Erin thinks that is not important.

“I’m serious. I think our Kaje might have been replaced by an imposter.”

Erin thinks that is ridiculous.

“Back in that woman’s house, KJ told me she was, like, a lesbian.”

Erin thinks that is none of her business. Erin also doesn’t mind either way.

Mac is very concerned. She thinks she might be just like that one Not-Erin from a couple of storylines back. And now I’m starting to think that maybe she’s onto something, perhaps something to do with that floating pyramid she touched. The lesbian thing, though, Mac is still very confused about her own feelings. This is called “character analysis” and I’m very good at it!

They don’t have time to discuss this further. As they exit the woods a cop car, blaring its sirens and lights, speeds down the road and stops right next to the three of them.

It’s the cop who, uh, got “killed” by a drone. He has this hazy look to him. “Please do not worry. All shall be done and forgotten,” he says, much to the bewilderment of the girls.

He starts driving away. “Please do not worry. All shall be done and forgotten.”

…

“Well, that was disturbing,” KJ says, eyes like dinner plates. Mac is angrily shocked. Erin frowns.

Back at the Tiff House, Chris is not entirely convinced even after seeing an photo of Tiff in her 1988 yearbook lookin’ all identical. “This is some genuine 12 Monkeys shit.”

Tiff, of course, doesn’t get the 1995 reference, and Chris has no other choice but to believe her. After she learns that she dropped out of the School of Business at NYU (“Business? Gross.”), the other three girls knock on the door and say hi.

Leave your crosses and garlic at the door.

The basement is where it’s safe, even though the basement they were just in an hour ago wasn’t safe. The other three have no idea that giant Transformers are out there battling for the fate of the world and the fabric of time and the desolation of space and the hunger in my stomach.

The Transformer full of mutant kids punches the Transformer full of Prioress and Grand Father. The controls get jammed and the Transformer is out of control! It tips over, landing on and crushing about three houses. Grand Father is bleeding but able to stand up. The Prioress has been impaled through the abdomen by shrapnel.

As she dies, she calls Grand Father “Jahpo”.

(!)

Some asshole speaking the shitty Irvine Welsh future language radios into the command console. “Come in, Grand Father! Number Four ‘ere, taking a ritescruddy beating. Permasking to engage in lethal, ayeup?”

Jahpo is now sick of it all. Rules of Engagement have been revised. Time to fuck with history and kill everyone! “You are now authorized to perform Last Rites. On all of them. Immediately. Do you understand?”