Title: Wipe Out
Fandom: G I Joe: Sigma 6
Pairing, etc: N/A; features Tunnel Rat
Prompt: 051 water
Word Count: approximately 1261
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: Inspired by G I Joe: Sigma 6 episode 4. Special thank yous to Amykay73 and Mickey (Cover Girl of Rogue Force) for assistance with grooming this particular plot bunny. Written for Fanfic 100 Live Journal Challenge.
Wipe Out:
The ROCC jumped the cliff, flying out over the Atlantic Ocean like and held for one brief moment at the top of its trajectory before gravity caught on and reasserted its control to drag it down toward the water.
The idea was that the Cobra submersible base would surface in time to give the ROCC something to land on. In theory, Hawk's kid Scott should have had enough time by now to do whatever computer mumbo-jumbo needed to force the Cobra sub to surface before Cobra could fire their Thor's Hammer and split the East Coast from the rest of the US like a splinter from a piece of wood.
In practice, the ROCC was rushing toward the water like it owed it money.
From his seat, Tunnel Rat could see the water taking up more and more of the ROCC's windscreen. Under other circumstances, it would almost have been pretty. It was a nice day after all; sun was out, blue skies, clement weather. In another season, it would have been beach weather.
For a moment, he thought he could smell sunscreen. He almost gagged.
I hate water! he thought, feeling his hands starting to sweat. Scott's sixteen years old. Kid doesn't even have a learner's permit yet. What the hell does he know about drivin' subs? Sixteen year old kids are dumbasses -- I should know!
He clenched his jaws, trying to hold back a whimper. No way was he freaking out. Not here, not now. His teammates needed him, the East Coast needed him. Heavy Duty would rag on him about this until he died if he lost it now. It was no big deal. Hi-Tech said the sub would surface in time and it would. Hi-Tech knew everything. He'd checked the kid's calculations and if Hi-Tech said it was ok, it would be ok. Right?
He also thinks that Sigma 6 is a good name for the team. An' that speaking Elvish is cool.
"Shut up," he growled at himself.
"What did you say?" Heavy Duty was looking at him now. Tunnel Rat hadn't even realized he'd spoken aloud.
"Ehh, nothing big guy," he said, with a nervous laugh. Heavy Duty raised one huge eyebrow and stared at him for a moment before shaking his head. Let the big guy think he was nuts; better than explaining and removing all doubt.
Besides, it wasn't as if he was actually afraid of water. He could take it or leave it. He just preferred to leave it very far away from him. It wasn't as if he actually had a phobia or something, not like Heavy Duty and the thing about the mice which was just stupid if you thought about it. The guy was like nine feet tall and he was scared of something that wasn't even a mouthful? Please.
Water now. Water could actually kill you so it made sense to be, y'know, respectful of it, right? And not to piss it off by doing stupid things like, oh, jumping into it in a six ton armored vehicle that could not by any reasonable expectation float.
Heavy Duty looked back at him as he whimpered. Feeling sweat beading up on his forehead, Tunnel Rat forced himself to grin back at him and laugh again. It came out as a sick-sounding giggle but at least Heavy Duty turned away again.
The water kept coming. Time almost seemed to slow down as if God or Mr. Murphy decided to extend the agony for as long as possible. As he stared down at it, the back of his head began to throb as the memory came back.
In his own personal inventory of "Top Ten Stupid Things Nicky Lee Has Done In His Life," The Surfing Incident hovered at number two or three, depending on how he ranked Why I Can't Go Back to PetSmart.
The summer after he'd turned sixteen, his father and mother had decided to take the family back to Trinidad for summer vacation. Grandma was going to be turning seventy-five and the folks thought it would be a good way to celebrate her birthday and give the kids the chance to see where the family had come from. That and, let's face it, July in the Carribean beat July in Brooklyn with a big, heavy stick.
It was easily the best vacation they'd ever been on. The island was beautiful, the weather clement and there had been dozens of sweet young things running around in teeny bikinis. Including his second cousin Trini who was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in his entire life. Nineteen years old, long black hair that fell to her waist, a smile that should have been registered as a lethal weapon and legs that went all the way up and made a fantastic ass out of themselves.
And she thought his Brooklyn accent was cute.
If there was one downside, it was that Trini liked to surf. Tunnel Rat had certainly seen surfers in his time. He'd even tried it once or twice back home. There were always a few out at Coney Island, dodging the famous Coney Island whitefish but personally he'd never seen the sense of it. If you had to balance on a piece of wood, skateboards were just as exciting and with a greatly reduced risk of being attacked by used prophylactics.
But, that afternoon at the beach when Trini asked him if he knew how to surf, he'd looked her square in the eye and heard his mouth say "Yeah, sure, all the time. Heck, we invented surfin' in Brooklyn."
She'd grinned at him in a knowing way. "Oh really?" she'd said. "Let's see. You can borrow my board." And then she'd smiled a killer smile at him and the next thing he knew he was facedown on a surfboard paddling out to meet the waves that suddenly seemed a whole lot bigger and more threatening.
Twenty feet out from shore, he made his first wobbly attempts to stand on the board. Nice and easy, just like back home. No sweat! Except that back home the waves were smaller, the water calmer and there were no sharks. The thought had chilled him; how had he forgotten about the sharks? Still, he was safe as long as he was on the board so he'd do his level best to stay on the board.
He was managing it quite well, he thought, until he was about ten feet from shore. He'd caught a quick-moving white flash out of the corner of his eye just as his board bucked under him and sent him flying into the water. His scream of "Shark!" -- which his memory brought back to him in all its high-pitched girlish glory -- had been cut short by the sudden attempt of the Carribean Sea to force its entire self down his throat. His life started to flash before his eyes only to be cut merficully short by Trini's board connecting with the back of his head.
He'd woken up on the beach just in time to see Trini hanging onto a lifeguard's arm and explaining that she was so grateful that he'd saved her little cousin and if there anything she could do to show that gratitude her phone number was...
It hadn't been easy to spend the rest of the trip avoiding the ocean and Trini, but he'd managed it.
Back in the here and now, the base still hadn't surfaced...
"I hate water!" he yelled.
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End Notes: The character of Tunnel Rat first appears as a GI Joe character in the Real American Hero line (1982-1994) back in 1987. Cartoon-wise, he was introduced in GI Joe: The Movie as one of the new Joe recruits called Rawhides. According to Tunnel Rat's original 1987 filecard, the character is named Nicky Lee and is from Brooklyn, New York and is of Chinese-Trinidadian descent with Irish, Spanish and Indian backgrounds tossed in. While for all intents and purposes, the RAH line and Sigma 6 lines are not related, I'm using the old filecard for background because a) I really like that filecard and b) Tunnel Rat's toy isn't being released until November and, if the backgrounds available online are anything to go by, probably won't have any background history for him.