GustavoWombat
2024-12-16 22:22:47 UTC
Reply
PermalinkJoe base. Sgt. Slaughter stormed out of a tent, and slammed the screen
door behind him, which really did nothing to alleviate his anger, and
mostly made him feel dumb. The screen door then blew open again because
of the wind, which did nothing to make him feel better about that.
He stomped over towards a Triple T, and shouted “KUP!” When it didn’t
respond he shouted at another one, and then another one.
The Triple T next to the one he was addressing transformed, and Kup
stood tall, towering above the fairly large human.
“THERE YOU ARE,” Sgt. Slaughter bellowed, “I WAS LOOKING ALL OVER FOR
YOU!”
“I was right where you parked me,” Kup said, gesturing towards the
handicapped only sign.
“CHILLY OUT HERE, WINDY TOO,” Sgt. Slaughter yelled, as he grabbed his
hat to keep it from blowing off. “MAKES ME WISH WE HADN’T DESTROYED THE
WEATHER DOMINATOR. OR THAT I WASN’T WEARING A THIN TANK TOP.”
“You know, lad,” Kup began, “Wheeljack once tried to make a Weather
Dominator. He started by making a Weather Submitter, which was just a
wind vane and a mechanical thermometer, and then reversed the polarity,
so he could adjust the wind and temperature by just turning the wind
vane and moving the termometer up and down.”
“DID IT WORK?”
“No,” Kup said, slightly startled. “Of course it didn’t work. You can’t
just reverse the polarity of a wind vane and change the wind. Why would
you think it would work?”
“I DON’T KNOW,” Sgt. Slaughter explained. “HE’S VERY SMART, AND I’M JUST
A BIG DUMB GUY WHO GOT DROPPED ON HIS HEAD A FEW TOO MANY TIMES. I
FIGURE HE KNOWS WHAT HE IS DOING.”
“Well, that does seem reasonable,” Kup admitted. “Anyway, he just gave
himself a nasty electric shock when the wind turned, and that’s how he
got a Nobel Prize for Power Generation, creating an amazingly effective
windmill that removed the dependency on oil and destabilized the entire
post-war balance of the Middle East. I guess that was also the pre-war
balance of the Middle East. It was a Nobel for Power Generation, not
Peace.”
“SEE, HE’S SMART,” Sgt. Slaughter said, shivering slightly. The cold
wind made his nipples stick out like bing cherries in his tank top.
“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT WAR CRIMES?”
Kup went pale, and crouched slightly. The crouch was pretty easy to
explain, but no one could ever explain how a robot could go pale. They
also couldn’t explain how a metal face could move and have expressions.
It was something that everyone saw happening and never really thought
about. Those who did think about it then felt incredibly uncomfortable
every time they spoke, which was why more and more Cybertronians were
wearing face masks.
“Who said anything about war crimes?” Kup asked, looking around. Any of
the vehicles near him might be security or police in disguise.
“THE SO CALLED INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT,” Sgt Slaughter said. “I
DIDN’T EVEN THINK GI JOE FELL UNDER ITS JURISDICTION SINCE THE GOOD OL’
USA REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE IT, BUT APPARENTLY WE ARE INTERNATIONAL EVER
SINCE WE BROUGHT IN FRENCHY. WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE REAL AMERICAN HEROES,
NOT FAKE FRENCH BAGUETTE PIRATES.”
Frenchy was not, as his name might imply, a French bulldog. He was a
poodle. And a brilliant tactician and polyglot, with latent telepathic
abilities that caused everyone around him to understand whatever he was
saying as if his barks were just English, or whatever language they
natively spoke. “Arf!” he might say, and everyone would understand that
Timmy was stuck in a well dug by Cobra BATs as they were trying to tap
the power of the Earth’s core to create a cheap, clean energy source
that would eliminate the need for fossil fuels and thus destabilize the
Middle East power structure.
Over a video conference, however, all anyone heard was a barking
dog.This necessitated a “translator” next to Frenchy, to repeat
everything he said.
“What does the ICC want?” Kup asked, nervously. He could feel the metal
of his face changing as he spoke, but he interpreted that as simple
anxiety.
“THEY WANT ME TO WRITE A 500 WORD ESSAY ABOUT HOW WAR CRIMES ARE BAD AND
THAT I AM SORRY THAT I COMMITTED THEM. AND GENERAL HAWK SAID THAT HE IS
VERY DISAPPOINTED IN ME. I DON’T KNOW WHAT HE EXPECTED WHEN HE RECRUITED
ME, MY NAME IS LITERALLY SGT. SLAUGHTER. BUT I GUESS THAT HE ISN’T
ACTUALLY A HAWK.”
Kup bit his lower lip, an act that Perceptor would have described as
impossible. Although Kup loved to tell stories, he was sworn to secrecy
on this one. Unbeknownst to Sgt. Slaughter, General Clayton M. Abernathy
aka Hawk, was born Tobias Fangor, and changed his name after the
Animorphs war. Also, he was still a teenaged boy, trapped in the body of
a red-tailed hawk, who had learned how to morph into a human form, which
was now somehow a middle-aged man, and which he could only hold for a
limited time. This led to Hawk holding short meetings.
None of that would require any secrecy, but Hawk was also infiltrating
Cobra as Raptor’s sidekick, and that information channel could not be
risked. Too many lives depended on it. Also, it was how they learned
that the Cobra Cafeteria had Taco Tuesdays, which explained why there
were never any Cobra attacks on Tuesday.
Hawk was also in a very happy relationship with Spirit’s bald eagle
Freedom, but this started during the Clinton Era “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
policy, and they decided to keep it quiet even after the policy changed,
to protect Hawk’s cover in Cobra.
“Are you sure they want you to write an essay, and this isn’t a trick to
get you to write a confession?” Kup asked.
“PRETTY SURE,” Sgt. Slaughter said. “I ASKED IF IT WAS A TRICK, AND THEY
SAID NO.”
“Well, that seems reasonable, I suppose,” Kup said. Human law
enforcement was something of a mystery to Kup.
“DID THEY HAVE WAR CRIMES ON CYBERTRON?”
“No, lad, in order to have war crimes you need to have non-combatants.
And on Cybertron, there weren’t any of those. It was like Ironhide
always said ‘If you aren’t with us, you’re against us.’ Smart guy, that
Ironhide.
“Well, I guess Ratchet did have medical transport markings, even though
he was also a warrior. I think that might be a war crime. When he came
here and disguised himself as an ambulance, everyone kept saying it was
technically a war crime, but it was a war misdemeanor at worst. No, not
even a misdemeanor. Whatever the war crime equivalent to a parking
ticket is.
“You know, Law and Order came by, and they wanted to give me a parking
ticket for being in the handicapped space, but when I transformed and
explained that if someone came by who needed the space I would be happy
to grudgingly move, they let me off with a warning. Well, Law did,
anyway. The things that Order barked were not suitable for polite
company.”
“SO, YOU NEVER DID ANY WAR CRIMES?”
“Is this a trick, are you wearing a wire?” Kup asked, looking the
Sargent up and down. He certainly didn’t have any recording device under
his too-tight tank top, but who knows what might be hidden under that
hat, or in that mustache.
“NO TRICK.”
“Well, then, no war crimes on Cybertron at least. Did you know that you
aren’t allowed to abuse enemy prisoners, but there’s no rule about how
you treat friendly prisoners?
“In my defense, I didn’t even know he was a friendly prisoner, I thought
I was getting information to save the missing Autobot Punch. He
vanished, and I caught the Decepticon Counterpunch lurking nearby. Punch
was in imminent danger! The longer we waited the less chance there was
that we would ever see him again.”
“DID YOU CHECK THE LATRINE?”
“We don’t need to use latrines like humans do, but I sent someone to
check anyway just in case he was hiding in there to watch humans. Hey, I
don’t judge. Latrinotron is happy, and he’s not hurting anyone.
“Anyway, Counterpunch was saying that he had no idea where his Autobot
counterpart Punch was, but he was nearby… real nearby. He said it like
it meant something, like something terrible was going to happen to him.
“And when I threatened to hurt Counterpunch, he just kept repeating that
all I would be doing was hurting Punch. We needed to get that
information out of him, and we were running out of time.
“I looked over to Prowl, and he raised an eyebrow — well, he didn’t
literally raise an eyebrow, but he tilted his head a little so one of
his decorative horns was raised — it was a code we had, which said we
should use good-cop/bad-cop, and since it was the left horn, I was bad
cop.
“SMART,” Sgt. Slaughter said, nodding approvingly.
“Prowl raised a power drill to Counterpunch’s optic, and threatened to
drive it through if he didn’t say where Punch was. Counterpunch began
babbling some nonsense, trying to claim that he was Punch.
“Prowl signaled me to intervene, and I figured that if he was playing
good-cop, I had to do worse, so I grabbed Prowl’s hand and pushed, so
the drill was buried into Counterpunch’s optic, spinning and shredding.
I didn't want to do this, but I was bad-cop, so what choice did I have?
It’s like Stalinotron Prime always said ‘You can’t fabricate an
Omelotobot without breaking a few Eggformers.’
“Counterpunch screamed and kept trying to gaslight us into believing
that he was Punch. So I kept pushing.
“I knew Punch. I’m not colorblind. Punch was orange while Counterpunch
was blue. I don’t know who he thought would believe that lie.
“Prowl kept trying to get the drill away from me, but I could see anger
in his optics. I know he was supposed to be playing good-cop, but with
that much anger, I didn’t think I could let him get that drill — he
could really hurt the prisoner. As we continued to fight for the drill,
Counterpunch kept trying to transform, but he was strapped to the table.
“Prowl yanked at my hand, pulling the drill around Counterpoint’s head,
tearing up important systems. I tried to keep it from him, but that just
tore up more systems, and eventually the light faded from his remaining
optic and Counterpunch slowly turned grey.”
“SOUNDS MORE LIKE PROWL COMMITTED WAR CRIMES.”
“Later, he claimed that I was supposed to be the good cop, and that
raising his right horn was the signal. I said that he raised the left
horn, and then we were silent for a moment. We never decided whether it
was going to be his left or mine.
“It’s kind of funny when you think about it.”
Sgt. Slaughter tried to think about it, but came up blank. Thinking just
wasn’t his strong suit.
“Ultra Magnus wanted us brought up on charges for torturing a prisoner
of war, but it turned out that Counterpunch really was Punch in
disguise, so he wasn’t technically a prisoner of war, and all the rules
about killing another Autobot were written so you had to know they were
another Autobot, to avoid prosecuting accidental friendly-fire
incidents. A bunch of lawyer bots got together to try to tighten up the
rules, but they were destroyed when Omega Supreme threw Devastator and
he crushed them.
“Anyway, what war crimes are they claiming you did?”
“THE USUAL...” Sgt. Slaughter bellowed, shaking his head.
“I know the usual…” Kup said, shaking his head. “That’s the worst. One
time, I was minding my own business, and a couple of security bots
arrested me for the usual. I don’t think I ever figured out what they
meant, and didn’t want to say anything because what if I asked about
something they didn’t even know I did?”
“MMM-HMM,” Sgt. Slaughter grunted, apparently even able to shout while
grunting. “I TOLD THEM THAT SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO DESTROY THE VILLAGE TO
SAVE IT, AND THEY SAID THAT TORONTO WAS MORE THAN JUST A VILLAGE.”
Just then, Leatherneck came up, and slapped Sgt. Slaughter on the butt.
“Oh, god, this is so funny,” Leatherneck said, barely able to contain
his laughter enough to speak. “Shipwreck’s stupid bird just fucking
waterboarded Gen. Hawk!”
—-
You see, it’s funny because a bird was waterboarding another bird.
I gave up on a title to this one. A Kup's Tale often starts with a vague
notion of an idea and then just does what it wants to do, and this one
didn't do enough of one thing to get a decent title. Also, there really
wasn't even a vague notion of an idea.