Chapter 11
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
MYLO
I hop down and wave at a PA—a young, scrawny guy about Haley’s age—who stands nearby with a couple bottles of water.
“Thanks, you’re a mind-reader,” I say, taking on and pouring part of it out on my face. Fuck, that feels good. I’m more overheated than I realized.
“No worries,” he replies with a light Kiwi accent.
I take a careful sip, looking out over the ocean to try to get my inner ear to settle. The sea breeze cools the water on my face.
Christine leans out of the doorway. “What, bored? I thought you were having fun showing off.” Her casual tone is almost convincing.
“Not everything’s about you,” I say lightly, pouring more water down my shirt.
Andy steps over. “Doing okay?”
“Just got some motion sickness with the rig moving. I’ll take a Dramamine tomorrow; that works well for me. For now, I just need to cool off.”
Andy nods, then tips his chin toward the waves. “Ocean’s pretty cold right now.”
“Yeah, good idea.” Implied in his suggestion is the quiet reminder that we don’t have time for me to take a half hour walking off motion sickness.
I strip my shirt off, releasing a puff of citrus.
It helps clear my head, so I pretend to be drying off my face as I inhale my own scent, clearing my nose.
I set my shirt on a nearby pop-up table, pile the vape on top, and then jog out into the ocean.
The water is frigid, and sinking into it is sweet relief. I take a few deep breaths, submerged to the neck. The heat doesn’t usually get to me this badly unless it’s a good forty degrees hotter, but it may well be inside that fuselage.
I duck my head underwater, scrubbing the sweat off my scalp and ignoring the resemblance to my weird dream.
It’s only a couple minutes before my muscles tense with the cold. I wade back to shore, pausing in ankle-deep water to squeeze as much as I can out of my basketball shorts. The damp quick-dry fabric should help keep me cool for a little while longer.
Alright. Feeling better. At least until I reach Andy and Christine. The wind shifts, hitting me with another wave of that sweet coconut scent. My mouth waters unpleasantly, and that overheated feeling rises again.
I tousle my damp hair, and the breeze picks up, changing direction to cool me off and bring me blessed fresh air. I take a hit from my vape and hope for the best.
“Ready to start working with the cameras?” Andy asks. Gears turn behind his eyes—trying to gauge how much more I have left in me. He’s finding a balance between diving deep on each step and getting through it all in one day.
“Yeah, the sooner we get to doing what we’ll do tomorrow, the better.”
“Agreed,” Christine says. “I’m not quite sure this is going to be what Lana’s looking for. Don’t you think Electra would be a little more proactive?”
“Does she have time to be?” I ask. “It’s her low point in the script. She needs to be on the back foot.”
Christine frowns. “That’s not how I was reading it…”
“Electra still wins,” I remind her. “You get to push me out of a plane at the end. Doesn’t get more triumphant than that. We’ll make sure you look like a hero.”
Christine’s jaw twitches.
I swear I meant to be encouraging, but I guess that’s the best way to get under her skin at this point.
I run a hand through my damp hair. Maybe being nauseous and tired leaves me without enough energy to hate Christine, because I really do want this fight to be the best that it can be.
You can do it, Mylo. Don’t be an asshole.
I dig deep.
“Okay, so… Electra. What’s her ideal outcome here? It’s not just knocking Melinoe out of the plane, right?” I already know the answer, but it’s important to give Christine the chance to feel like she came up with it.
Christine eyes me warily, then nods. “Yeah, she has her hero code. It’s very much arrest the villain, bring them in for questioning.
Electra knows that Melinoe might have intel on Thanoseid that’ll help defeat him.
Electra’s a bit overly optimistic too; she kinda thinks she can still talk some sense into Melinoe. ”
“Maybe we ad-lib some dialogue to that effect; that’s a nice touch. What do you think, Andy? Can we work with that in post, even with the oner?”
Andy rubs his chin again. “We’re already doing some voice-over with Haley for getting the right grunts in. Face-replacing and voice-over at the same time, though…”
“Maybe Melinoe’s just laughing, refusing to engage.”
“That’d certainly get under Electra’s skin,” Christine says, and she seems to actually be talking about the character.
“That’s good. So, how is Electra reacting?”
“She’s getting angry,” Christine says. “Trying to pin Melinoe.”
Andy nods. “Let’s take a run like that.”
I’m sure this has all already occurred to Andy; he’s an incredible storyteller.
But I think that’s exactly why he’s drip-feeding us this information.
He wants us both to feel ownership here, to not only take direction but to really live in the role.
It’s the only way to make this all work in the limited time we have.
Christine and I take our marks in the fuselage.
For the first time, I feel like I’m standing across from an actual person. We have a job to do together, and we’re both committed to doing it.
This time, when I take my first pass at Christine, she predicts my landing, leading a swipe to grapple me. I duck and roll, then line up for another attempt—but she’s already moving toward me, on the offensive.
Now there’s no time to think, there’s only the flow of movement, only instinct and muscle memory.
There are a few stutters as we adjust to the tilting of the fuselage—Christine stumbling and leaving an opening, me jumping up to the ceiling just as the angle of the plane twists awkwardly—but Andy doesn’t tell us to stop, so we keep going.
And then it all clicks. I’m not really trying to get the ribbon; she’s not really trying to pin me—or, well, we are, but the tension of those two goals in equal balance creates something more than the sum of its parts.
We find a rhythm, a volley, trading attacks and dodges as we move fluidly through the space.
Christine swings a punch, expecting me to dodge. I swivel a kick at her head, knowing she’ll catch it properly on her forearm without harm.
That’s what’s changed: trust.
We trust each other.
The fight progresses, spilling out onto the wing of the jet. Melinoe scurries over the top, swinging in through the opposite door—also opened by her hacking bots—and surprising Electra from behind before the two grapple again.
As we pass over the waves, that sickly sweet coconut fades, or perhaps I’m getting used to it.
Between my bare chest and damp shorts, I stay cool enough to fend off the motion sickness for the next couple hours as Andy guides us through progressively more complicated passes, adding in the camera work and blocking out some rough choreography.
The part we rehearse the most is the last few moves: the moment that Electra finally seems to get the upper hand, when Melinoe allows herself to be grappled in order to subtly grab the Thunder Stone.
As Melinoe twists out of Electra’s grasp, the plane jerks sharply, smacking into Melinoe’s back. Air knocked out of her, Melinoe tumbles out the open door.
We lift the fuselage to ten feet for this practice, which gives me enough time to get to a safe landing position before I hit the blue foam crash mat the PAs dragged in for us.
There won’t be room under Melinoe’s costume for padding, so when the plane jerks up to hit her across the back, I take the hit directly.
The metal fuselage rings convincingly with every impact.
All ten of them as we practice and reset, practice and reset.Christine hesitates.
“You sure we should keep doing this part? That looks like a hard hit.”
“Nah, I’m good. Making it look like it hurts is the point.”
“It doesn’t hurt at all?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I’m not wearing any padding, so it’s certainly not the most comfortable.”
Andy chuckles knowingly.
“So you just take hits like that all day long,” Christine says.
I shrug. “That’s the job. I actually land on my shoulders and my toes. The main thing is to protect the spine and tailbone. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
I expect a quip, but Christine just has an open, earnest expression as she asks, “Could you teach me how to fall like that?”
I look over at Andy. “I don’t see why not.”
Andy nods, eyes crinkling as he gives a warm smile. “But later. Not enough time now.”
“Back to it,” I say, taking up my mark again.
We practice until the sky turns blazing red, and dusk closes in from the forest.
Christine and I stride out onto the beach to drink some water and catch our breaths as Andy and Pauli work out the last few adjustments to the camera.
The sun settles over the ocean, turning all the water scarlet. Massive waves crest and crash, frothing into white foam on the black sand. It stretches out on either side, tracing the contours of an alien world that seems to at once warn and welcome us.
“Good work today,” I say.
“Thanks.”
“We might actually be able to pull this off. Another week or two would be great, though…”
“I know, I know,” Christine says lightly. “Amateur.”
I glance over. Since she’s still being a real person, I’ll cut her some slack. “I meant for me.”
She quirks a brow. “Really? You already look like you were born on that thing.”
I shake my head. “There’s so many things I could push further, sell harder… We could do some absolutely crazy moves in a rig like this. I have a thousand ideas.”
“You should talk to Andy about it.”
“Nah. Andy’s making the right call keeping it grounded, scrappy. That’s what we can pull off with this amount of time. It’ll look great, but… man, that thing’s fun to climb around.”
Christine glances over at me. “How’d you get into stunt work? You’ve always liked climbing on things?”
“Partly. I got into gymnastics and martial arts young. Joined the parkour club in college, and that’s where I met someone from a stunt family. They helped me train and got me my first couple gigs in LA. Rest is history.”
“You ever wanted to do anything else?”
“Yes and no. Out here on shoots? Nowhere I’d rather be. Killing time and picking up odd jobs in between, trying to make rent and wondering if I’ll ever get another gig? Not as fun.”
“What would you do if work dried up?”
I shrug. “I dunno; I’m not really good at anything else. You think about it, with dry spells, injuries…”
“Alanna seemed optimistic she was going to bounce back,” Christine offers.
“Yeah. We always seem that way.”
Christine is quiet, and the rush of the waves flows over us.
“Sometimes you bounce back,” I add. “Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you’re lucky to live. Sometimes someone isn’t so lucky. But if you work with a good team, don’t do anything stupid, that last one doesn’t happen too often.”
“You seem like you’d be hard to slow down, injury or not.”
I take another swig of water. “I hope so. But this line of work humbles you. I’ve known people who made it through a whole career with nothing but scrapes, then switched to coordinating; they’re in great shape.
Then sometimes you do something you’ve done a hundred times, pinch a nerve and…
Let me just say, nerve pain and opioids are no joke.
Sometimes the fall itself isn’t the thing people struggle to survive. ”
“But it’s worth it,” Christine says, as if to assure herself.
I offer what I hope is a comforting smile. “Ah, here I am, scaring you the day before our big stunt.”
“You’re not scaring me,” she says too quickly.
“Yeah, I am. You’re scared, and you should be. I am. It’s what keeps you sharp.”
She folds her arms across her chest. “Hm. Yeah, maybe I would like another week on the ground…”
“You’ll do fine. Andy’s not joking when he assigns you a good night’s sleep. That’s the last thing left to do: try not to worry about it, be fresh and well-rested tomorrow.”
“Yeah, no worries. What’s that other thing they say here? She’ll be right?”
I nod and finish my water. “She’ll be right.”