Neal the Stunt Pilot approached the attack chopper, and any idiot could’ve spotted the hesitation in his step. He looked like a good kid, the kind of son who listened to his mommy, who ran home whenever she ding-a-linged the triangle at dinnertime.

But in his eyes you could see fear. He preferred the light places, the comfortable zones, out in the open with various people, laughing and frolicking and eating brunch. He avoided the long, dark alleyways, ran from danger, and hid from the chaos of battle.

So yeah, Neal the Stunt Pilot had no idea what the fuck he was doing.

“Um, sure, Mr. Lukas,” he said with his voice cracking, like a soda jerk. “All good!”

“Okay, fantastic,” George Lukas said. “So you’ll be taking off nice and easy, nothing too complicated—then maneuvering past that radio tower, then dodging four drones as scorching pyrotechnics erupt all around you, then doing a straight nosedive at the cold, hard earth until you finally pull up at the last second without a scratch on you.

“Oh, and be careful around those drones, those are ridiculously expensive. But they’re not nearly as pricey as the multimillion-dollar helicopter you’re about to fly. Got it?”

Neal the Stunt Pilot gulped. “Totally.”

George Lukas patted him on the back, then turned to his assistant as the pilot shuffled away.

“Hey,” he said, “do you think we should’ve spent some more money on that stunt pilot?”

“Nah,” the assistant said. “I found him on Craigslist. How bad could he be?”

“Shit,” George Lukas said. “People still use Craigslist?”

The assistant shrugged. “At least one, apparently.”

Neal the Stunt Pilot sat in the cockpit, about to head down that long, dark, winding alley of fear for the very first time in his life.

And I—denizen of destruction, cheater of death, master of basic helicopter safety—knew exactly what was going to happen.

Yep, just minutes after taking off, the damn thing crashed.

It was actually going pretty well at first. Then this crazed hawk came out of nowhere, forcing Neal the Stunt Pilot to swerve. The Apache collided violently with the drones, spinning out of control, plummeting out of the sky, and finally, in a giant ball of smoke and sparks and raging fire, exploding against one of those fountains with the pissing Cupids.

It was cool as fuck.

Thankfully, the crazed hawk was unharmed. Especially because it was my crazed hawk. I’d released the little bastard thirty seconds earlier from my own private aviary after telling him, “Hey, bro, let’s make shit interesting. That’s between me and you.”