Living with G. I. Joe
*Disclaimer: I do not own a laptop. Sadly.
Two words are running through my head.
NOT AGAIN!
Why is it that every time I get a great idea for a story, I get writer's block half way through?
I've taken a break from my book and am working on writing a piece of G. I. Joe fan fiction.
What a great idea, huh?
Yeah, I thought so, too!
Except I'm braindead.
"Hey, whatcha got der, huh?"
One name: Tunnel Rat.
One phrase: Oh joy.
"Hey, Rat Boy. What do you want?"
"I wanna get out of the predi-pre-predicammiment you've got me in, dat's what I want!"
I turn around and look at the teen skater boy behind me, his spiky red hair fringing out around the bottom of his ski cap.
He's not the sharpest tool in the box, but he can get in and out of anywhere.
Seriously. I could tell him to go through the air vent and he'd do it.
"So whatcha gonna do about it, huh? Authoress?"
"Don't you use that tone with me!" I say severely, glaring at him.
"Okay, fine, writer lady. Just hurry up! It's not fun hangin' by my feet, okay?"
"I know. That's why I put you there. And I've got more than half a mind to LEAVE you there!"
I open my email account, and decide to try and forget Tunnel Rat.
That's hard to do when he's breathing down my neck.
"Hey, hey! Dat's Snake Eyes! What's he doin' in der?"
I groan.
"Hannah sent me a bunch of pictures of him because he's my favorite character, okay?"
"Ooooooh!"
"What?"
"Nu'in'."
"Yeah, right."
"What?" Tunnel Rat's voice sounds horrified. "You've got a pictah of Stormshadow in der!?"
"Yes! Yes yes yes, okay? He's cool, too, you know."
"I am flattered."
I turn around and scream.
The white-clad ninja is standing in my living room!
"AAAAAHHHH!" I scream.
Tunnel Rat clamps his hands over his ears.
"Ai yi yi! Give it a rest, will ya?" he asks, frowning.
Once I get over my initial shock, I sit staring at crosses the room in one stride and peers at my emails.
"Who's Hannah-Ranger Tucker?" he asks, squinting at my contact list.
I can see his eyes where his mask divides, but that's it.
"She's my friend! She's actually writing a story about you guys. A book, a few hundred pages long. So go bug her!"
"Real nice friend you are, sendin' us to her cuz we're pesterin' ya!" Tunnel Rat looks accusatorily at me.
"Well sor-ry!" I say, not sounding sorry at all.
"Hey, good picture of me," says Stormshadow.
"Yeh," sneers Tunnel Rat. "Good pictah of me, he says. Why she had one of ya, I dunno."
"It was sent to me! I keep telling you," I growl at him.
"Anyways, Snake Eyes is my favorite character."
Tunnel Rat groans. "Not you, too! Good grief, why am I nevah the favorite character, huh?"
"Because you're annoying?" suggests a new voice.
I turn and see Kamakura, a ninja apprentice to Snake Eyes, standing behind the couch.
"Am not!" argues Tunnel Rat.
"Are too."
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
"Am -"
"Are too!" Me, Stormshadow, and Kamakura interrupt in stereo.
"Hey, evvybody's gangin' up on me!" he whines.
He opens a can of soda and flops down on the couch.
"Hey, where'd you get the soda?" I cry, looking at the can.
We don't even drink soda!
"Aah, found it in the refrigerator."
"Our refrigerator?"
"Nah, you ain't got nothing' but junk food."
"Uh, that's called 'healthy' food, not junk food. You should know, junk food is your specialty," says a female voice.
I turn to the left and see Jinx, Snake Eye's other apprentice, standing there, looking at Tunnel Rat with a disgusted expression.
"Yeah! Your teeth will probably have fallen out by the time you're thirty," grins Kamakura.
"Yeh, yeh, laugh at the Rat," says Tunnel Rat. "Sheesh, I thinks I'll's go some other place!'
He gets up and walks down the hall, out of my sight.
A few moments of me staring down the SigmaSix and Cobra agents, I hear "Hey! 'Ey, hey hey! Put me down, lemme go! I didn't do nuthin'!"
And a second later, in walks Snake Eyes.
He deposits Tunnel Rat in the middle of the floor and holds up something Tunnel Rat was holding.
What? Where did he get that?
I'd really like to know, I would. So I ask him.
"Tunnel Rat! Where'd you get that!?"
"What? Your laptop? Somethin' wrong with it? I can help ya!" and before I can stop him, he yells the dreaded name. "Hi-tech!"
And suddenly Hi-tech appears.
"Yeah?"
Oh, boy.
"She's havin' trouble with this laptop!"
"I am not! HE just jumped to conclusions!"
"He did? WHAT is THIS?"
Hi-tech walked over to my laptop.
"THAT is called a LAPTOP," I say, scowling.
"It's practically sacrilegious!"
Hi-tech holds it between two fingers, like a dirty towel in a mansion.
"Oh, come off it, Mr. High - and - Mighty! We don't happen to have the technology you do in your SigmaSix base!"
"Huh. I feel sorry for you, with this stuff," Hi-tech says, dropping my laptop none too lightly on the couch.
"Hey, watch it!" I flare, looking at him.
"That was expensive! It cost four hundred dollars!"
Hi-tech bursts out laughing.
Stormshadow grins irrepressibly, and Snake Eyes looks politely the other direction, with a hand covering his mouth under his mask.
Howling with laughter, Hi-tech manages to wheeze "Four hundred!! Our base cost four billion dollars, and you say four hundred is expensive!?" he keeps laughing.
"HA! HA! HA! HA!" I laugh dryly.
"Go ahead and laugh! Why did I ever like you guys?"
"You still like us," Kamakura points out.
"And though I can't vouch for the others, I like you. You're not brutal to us like SOME I could name. That Hannah-whatshername. You should see what she does to Snake Eyes and Scarlett!"
Scarlett walks in, nodding. "I know! It's positively horrid!"
Stormshadow chuckles a deep, throaty chuckle.
"Except for you, Thomas Arashikage," says Jinx, looking at him, "other people feel sorry for us."
"Well, you're right about that, I don't feel sorry for you, Kimiki Arashikage," retorts Stormshadow.
"Just call her Jinx. It's easier to pronounce," grins Kamakura. "Plus, the name 'Kimiki' doesn't really portray her tendency towards disaster."
Jinx glares at Kamakura.
"What's that you're wearing?" asks Thomas, peering at Kamakura.
"Oh, that? That's nothing," sais Kamakura airily, "only the legendary Tatsuashi."
He gripped the handle behind his back and made to effortlessly pull it out, but it stuck to the sheath like glue.
"I should have known." Kamakura tugged on it, using both hands.
"Every time I brag."
He continued trying.
Suddenly Snake Eyes turned around, grabbed the Tang Ninja sword and pulled it out.
It WAS impressive, I looked admiringly at it.
"Quite a sword," says a new voice.
Not ANOTHER one!
I turn and see Dusty standing there in his usual brown outfit.
It's actually white. But Dusty never washes.
I cough dramatically and wave my hand in front of my face.
"Great," I say, pretending to choke on the dust, "now all I need is for all the Cobra agents to file in here!"
"Called us, did you?" say not one, but TWO voices.
I think I'll just die.
I turn around and there stand two red-and-white clad ninjas.
The identical twins, Slash and Slice.
"Hey, you two. We were just talking about you," I say.
"We heard!" says the first. "How kind of you," says the second.
"Small wonder, seeing as how you were eavesdropping," says Jinx.
"We never eavesdrop," says the second, "except when it's necessary!" finishes the first.
Great. Now that I've got the Ridiculous Duo in here, what else could go wrong?
"Ahahahahaaaaaaa!!!" Insane maniacal laughter ensues.
Remind me never to say those five words again.
"What have we here?"
Cobra strides in, holding the Fang stick.
That's what we call it, anyway.
"Hey, didn't that break?" asks Kamakura, looking at the stick.
"Well, yes, but I enjoyed carrying so much I had doctor Mindbender fix it for me!" chortles Cobra Commander.
"Lovely."
"And now I shall give you all a taste of WORLD DOMINATION!" Cobra cackles, holding his stick out.
Nothing happens.
"What? How can this be!?" he screeches, staring down at the stick.
He tries whacking it on his hands a few times.
Still nothing.
"IT DOESN'T WORK!" he wails.
"Aw, big deal," says Kamakura, void of any sympathy whatsoever. "Who cares?"
"Yeh, who cares?" chimes in Tunnel Rat.
Ah, yes.
I can just feel the sympathy permeating the room.
"WAAAAAH!" wails Cobra. "I can't believe it!"
"Maybe it's cuz you're here, not at your Viper Pit?" suggests Scarlett, feeling SOME sympathy for the distraught Commander.
"Ah, perhaps you're right," he says, cheering up again.
"Hey!" I say suddenly, grinning.
"I've got it!"
"What?" they all say, sounding like a dozen Slash and Slices.
"I'll write all of this down! That way my Writer's Block will be gone and I'll be rid of all of you! But don't worry. I'll write you back when I'm in a better mood," I assure them.
"Okay!" says Kamakura.
"Have at it!"
And so I write the story down, and the characters vanish.
I'll save them for a rainy day.
