Disclaimer: Gabrielle and Ares don’t belong to me… unfortunately, the activists do. Gabrielle and Ares belong to those special people at Renaissance or something like that... But its just a short story that makes no sense at all, so they shouldn’t mind.

Warning: Reading this material may be hazardous to your health! It was written at 4:30 in the morning, so do not expect any sanity whatsoever!

Gabrielle stormed over to the tree and reached a hand out to retrieve her sais. Ares, who had been watching, gently grabbed her wrist. He was about to say something when two people, a man and a woman, ran up. "We’d like to talk to you," the woman said, pointing at Gabrielle. She and Ares exchanged glances. "About what? And who are you?" Ares demanded.

"We are environmental activists. And you…" she gave Ares a long look. "…are dismissed." The man finished.

"In case you didn’t notice, we’re kinda busy here. I’m trying to seduce Gabrielle over to my side!" Ares protested indignantly.

"And doing a very good job," Gabrielle added.

"Really? Cool!" Ares said.

Gabrielle smiled charmingly. "Any time."

ActivistChick cleared her throat, quite loudly.

"Ignore him," ActivistDude said, pointing at Ares. The God of War rolled his eyes.

"You do that a lot," Gabrielle commented.

"Do I?" Ares looked thoughtful.

"Yup. You did it earlier, the first time you showed up to threaten Eli. But I still haven’t figured out what the point of it was that time."

ActivistDude interrupted. "Gabrielle, we’re here to talk to you about your blatant disrespect for trees," he said.

"My WHAT?" Gabrielle was confused.

"Well, it’s obvious that you have no respect for them," ActivistChick said.

"How so?" Ares asked curiously.

"Look at her record! Every time someone she cares about is killed, she takes it out on a tree!" ActivistDude said.

"Do continue." Ares seemed amused.

"Oh, come on! Xena dies, she goes out and beats some poor innocent with her staff! Too bad you didn’t get splinters," ActivistChick added under her breath (which, it’s been said, could stand a few tic tacs) before looking to her partner.

"Perdicas gets killed by PsychoBarbie. How does Gabrielle react? She takes a sword to a defenseless tree!" ActivistDude stated. "And now, Eli is murdered and she performs a brutal assault with her sais! We demand that you stop damaging the environment- immediately!" With that, both activists ran off.

"That was interesting. Wonder where they’re going?" Ares commented.

Gabrielle shrugged. "So, where were we?"

The End