A Verbal Sparring Session: Jack O'Neill Versus Marcus Enders
Major General Jack O'Neill sat in his comfortable chair down at his office in the SGC. He was leaning back and had his feet up on the desk. He glanced down at the stack of electricity bills in one hand and a felt pen in his other hand, tallying the figures, and assessing the reasonability of the ever-shifting rates. After having spent a good fifteen relaxed minutes scrutinizing the financial documents, he deposited them back into his folder labeled "home-related bills". He had always prided himself on being a cheapskate—or rather, extremely prudent spender, or highly-prudent spender, as he preferred to call it.
He wondered what the country's taxpayers would think if they saw him doing this non work-related activity at the base. They'd probably think he was slacking at his job and demand he be disciplined severely for derelicting his duty.
Jack O'Neil was one rather honest man. He felt that if he could sincerely convince himself that he wasn't misspending the taxpayer's money, he probably wasn't.
Flashing forward in the plot------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
O'Neil had purposely kept the door shut when he told Harriman to allow the Lieutanant Colonel down into the lowermost floor of the SGC. He liked the idea of keeping that prick who'd come here partly just to cause trouble for his former 'inferior officer' as Mark Enders liked to call him, waiting for just a few second longer. Jack O'Neill was not a person who liked to lower his character by taking cheap shots at his enemies when they were technically on the same side. But since "old Markie Mark" as he liked to call this adversary who he'd met at the US Air Force Academy, was firing the first shot in this particular boring battle he always tried to engage O'Neill in, O'Neill figured he'd loose his full Jack-O'-Neill-wit on the guy.
He heard someone, probably, Enders, impatiently and unhappily knocking on the door. Jack figure'd he'd wait a good few seconds before answering. Finally he yelled softly, "You may come in now."
The person whoever it was, that had just so rudely knocked on the door, opened it and strode right in. It was yours truly. The cross-minded air force colonel scowled at Jack.
Out of the despicably evil man's mouth came ,"You do know, O'Neill, that it's very rude to keep a fellow officer waiting unnecessarily. My time is very valuable."
"Well of course it'susually rude." "But I don't feel it's necessarily rude when the person I'm keeping waiting happens to be one pretentious, power-hungry, superiority-complex-projecting, have too–much-free-time-so-I spend –it-troublemaking, bureaucratic, wannabe bigshot, who came down here today "
Enders looked quite noticeably insulted.
"Welp, that was pretty mean, wasn't it?" O'Neill said. "But then again, being mean toward your fellow human beings is something that you're not exactly unfamiliar with. In fact, I'd say you're one of the experts on how to be mean, especially in a most petty and unbelievably ruthless way."
"Major O'Neill!" Enders said immediateley after O'Neill was done speaking. "A little bit of professionalism would behoove you, ya know. I believe that even an ignorant, uncouth ape like you could learn some professionalism if you put your mind to it, assuming you had one. In fact, that's an order, soldier! You will immediately retrieve your airforce protocols manual and practice it. The next time I see you, you will interact with me using the most brown-nosing dialogue possible. Do you understand?"
General O'Neill sat behind his disk, whirling his fancy general's pen with his right hand. "Are you for real? "he said to himself, amusedly.
At about the same time, a rather green Lt. Colonel Mark Enders realized he had been manifesting his wishful thinking, by referring to his longtime enemy , who now outranked him as he happened to have made the rank of a major- general, by only his last name at first, then wishfully demoting the man two ranks down.
"Ok, Enders. My turn to fire a volley again. First off, how do you know I don't just keep my door shut all the time? I could've been making a phone call to the president right before you came in. Crossing into my second point a bit, I'm a Major General and don't feel obligated to get up and immediately open the door for your highly-offensive hide, Lieutenant Colonel Enders. Speaking of professionalism, you just breached protocol by referring to me not as 'General' or 'Sir', but as 'O'Neill'. Then you unwittingly tried to degrade my current military rank by calling me 'Major O'Neill'. How do you know that I don't have surveillance cameras and audiorecorders all over my office to capture vital information so I can use it against ever-trouble-stirring government employees like you?"
Enders continued on, showing his indefatiguable arrogance. "Well, looks like you may have gotten a one-up over me, but maybe not. What if I claim to the Judge Advocate General that I was merely joking because we were such close friends from before, when I was your superior officer beginning from academy days. That type of situation's been known to happen. " He smiled smugly back at O'Neil.
O'Neil quickly countered. "Riiiiiiighttttt…ah haaaah-- now with our extremely negative history of interacting, which you provoked continuously by the way, who's gonna be gullible enough to believe you claiming to be just kidding around with an 'old buddy'? By the way, that's the most repelling idea I've ever heard—who'd, and why the hell in the universe would I wanna be your friend you little weasel?"
Enders glared indignantly at his former classmate and target of his weekly bullying, as he realized O'Neill always got the upper hand and target of weekly bullying, or perhaps attempts at weekly bullying, once more got the upper hand on him.
Enders decided not to quit while he was a little less behind. "Well, we had a tiny change in the status quo, I guess, O'Neill" he said. But don't let that make you overconfident. I will ensure, through my daily hard effort, that I will soon again be your superior officer AND direct supervisor. Either I will have you
O'Neill just had to shoot back, even though he was tired of this whole pointless argument Enders was trying to make. "Really?" he said. "Well, technically me moving up three whole ranks, when I was one rank behind you, technically is considered a big change in the status quo. But I see you never had any regard for the plain truth, always wanting to view the world through your own warped perceptions. Now, I admit I haven't been given as many ranks as my great ability allows me, or I will simply rise two whole ranks above you. You don't percieve the military and other situations like the average officer does. But at least I'm not always proven to be so wishfully thinking like you are. Nor am I perceiving situations in an unusual way just to suit my own selfish greedy, nature."
General Jack continued to verbally assualt Lieutenant. Marucus. "Oh, and by the way, Enders, even when you outranked me by, what, ah-- one-half to one rank, you weren't really my superior officer in any meaningful sense of the word 'superior'. You were just a higher-ranking officer. Let's acknowledge that subtlety. You weren't more capable or more responsible, except if we count being responsible for your own self-gain. You really are wasting your time here, trying to improve your low self-esteem, which you being too stupid to make Full-Bird Colonel didn't help at all."
Enders glared at Jack in a way which revealed he looked angry enough to blow not just thick grey smoke through his ears, but actually intense red fire. Trying to restrain himself to the maximum level possible, he said "Well, I'd like to get to my whole point for being here, without you rudely interrupting me at every turn of our conversations. And don't forget, I'm spending a lot of taxpayer money in my ride down here to talk with the likes of you."
The general rolled his eyes, and thought "Oh for the love of peace and tranquility, stop this nonsense! You keep walking into my figurative fist and yet you keep on trying to beat me in this unjust duel." "Alright, you're jut forcing me to interrupt, even though you so mistakenly claim that I seem to enjoy arbitrarily interrupting. I'd just like to say for clarity's sake that you are the one who, along with your superiors who you play lapdog to, decided that you would come down here to lecture me about nonsensical ideas. Now, if you really object so much charging the taxpayers o that you can ride a big honkin' limousine, you could've walked. If I was your superior, knowing how much you wasted taxpayers' money each day with your power-gaining schemes which contradict the vast majority of our citizens' interests,I'd make you walk the whole damn way from wherever you're taking up space at. In fact, I'd tell you not to even dare come down to the SGC, where government employees who actually want to help better their county's conditions work."
If you say so, Major General Jack O'Neil", the lt. colonel retorted. "I'm just here to tell you that you'd better stop being a softy when dealing with the likes of people such as the Furball race" My superiors and I don't like the way you're running the SGC. That'll be all today, officer."
General O'Neill looked at Colonel Enders, tapped his watch display with his pen, and said, "Well, looks like our fun-session is over right now. It's the Furlings by the way, not the furballs—they're not even furry for crying out loud, man! Even a supposedly absent-minded guy like me can get their name right. Why can't you? Well, don't asnwer that if you don't wann embarass yourself."
Just then, a burly-looking sergeant and some airmen came by to see if Enders was threatening O'Neil in any way. He just thanked them kindly but waved them off with a reassuring smile. Enders guessed they had been watching a videorecording of the whole nasty conversation. It looked like he'd fouled up bigtime trying to give O'Neill as much lip as he had just done. The foolish power-monger quickly saluted O'Neill in an obviously half-hearted way, then walked out briskly to the nearest elevator, almost knocking down a whole line of technicians going to speak with General O'Neill about some matter.
The general, extremely glad to see the conniving-douchebag-excuse-for-an-airforce-colonel gone and, took out a small notebook from his pocket. On the cover, he'd titled it O'Neill vs Enders: a History of Verbal Meleeing Since Our U.S. Air Force Academy Cadet Days. He opened it and jotted a 'win' under O'Neill on the page that said battle-round 44.
