Valentin's Day Fic Exchange Event ended and here are the results of this lovely idea - five delicious Valentine's Day-themed stories written by different fic-writers!
This one is by Worstcase and it is dedicated to Dark-Lady-Devinity.
Prompt: heart-shaped cards
Judging by the faint light of the sun barely shining through the thick grey clouds, it was a few hours past noon when Mr. Snippy, Engie and Pilot marched back to their headquarters.
Early in the morning -for whatever reason- Captain had declared a 'community-service-day' for the squad. Cleaning up the old station building was not exactly the worst job Snippy had ever had to do for his crazy commander so far. But spending six hours of scrubbing graffiti off of dirty concrete walls, all the time knowing that in less than a week they would be completely smeared with 'art' again was not exactly improving his morale. Engie had tried to protest that it was completely useless to repair the station speakers but to no avail. Captain had made him do it nevertheless and then used the system to sing 'Que Sera' at full volume until the minions' ears were bleeding. Pilot of course had done happily what Captain had demanded and shoveled tons of snow off the platforms to make them safer for the travelers. Since the only commuters using the station nowadays were a few skeletons with briefcases occupying the benches 24/7, Mr. Snippy doubted the pilot's efforts would matter much. But the green goggled minion didn't seem to mind at all. Currently he was running around with spread out arms as always, and happily humming a melody of some old children's song. Probably he was already plotting to draw a 'thousand deaths to Snippy' mural over the part of the walls the sniper had been cleaning.
But then again Captain had sent his minions back to the base and stayed behind to inspect their work. So Pilot might not even find a free spot for a doodle of his own, since their commander was probably already running through the station right now, a can of spray paint in each hand, to embellish the place with portraits of himself.
Nevertheless as long as Captain was distracted there was a small chance Snippy could get some rest at the base.
Returning to the base early and in one piece was always a good thing. While their bases often weren't exactly the most stable buildings in the ruined city, nor had intact windows, walls or complete roofs most of the time, they were nevertheless the closest thing the four of them had to call a home - until Captain decided it was time to move on again. A base was a place for resting, for eating, for catching a breath in between insane missions and most importantly for locking the dangers of the wasteland out for a few precious hours. So it was all kinds of disturbing to unlock the door and spot something that had definitely not been there when they had left earlier.
Engie didn't watch out and ran into the sniper, who had all of a sudden stopped in the middle of the doorway.
"What the hell, Charles… wait… what?" by now Gromov had spied the same thing Snippy had discovered. Pilot getting curious looked over their shoulders:
"Why are there so many heart shaped cards lying on the floor?" he finally asked and summed up the thoughts of Snippy and Engie in one simple sentence.
"Could Captain have done this?" Engie inquired nervously lowering his voice to a whisper.
Snippy shook his head: "Don't think he would have had the time. He was with us the whole day and I was the one who locked the door when we left this morning," he whispered back. "We might have an intruder and maybe he or they are still here. Or maybe they put up traps for us inside."
Pilot who had looked rather bored by their exchange first had tensed up on the mentioning of 'intruders'. And no matter how much he disliked Mr. Snippy, when the sneaky sneaker had readied his rifle and went inside to make sure the base was safe, Pilot had drawn his katana and followed him, checking carefully for any wires or hidden enemies like only a ninja could. A wellness sandal like Engie of course was completely useless during a crisis like that. He even failed at not getting in the way.
-How was Pilot supposed to know, that that thing on Engie's workbench wasn't a nefarious time-bomb but a totally harmless alarm clock the shoe had successfully repaired last evening? There was really no reason to shout at Pilot just for chopping a possible threat apart.
They didn't find any intruders nor any traps. It didn't look like anybody had entered their rooms, nobody had touched the stored food, the water or the other supplies. The windows were still boarded up from inside, there were no loose floorboards and the snow and ashes piling up on the plastic blankets covering the holes in the roof looked undisturbed. Aside from a few cracks in the walls, too small to even shove the cards through, the base had been a sealed room.
Somewhat calmed down that there was no immediate danger the three minions had finally time to inspect the cards a bit closer. Overall there had been about thirty of them, all somewhat heart shaped even though their design was differing somewhat. Inside somebody had scribbled various sappy lines like 'Ours is eternal love!' or 'Be mine forever!'. The handwriting looked vaguely familiar.
"Did Captain write those?" Snippy wondered.
"This is not Captain's handwriting, you shoe! I bet it was the stalker!" Pilot protested at once.
"There was no trace of the stalker breaking in here, no matter how skilled he is at sneaking through our security measures, he couldn't have possibly left the base and sealed it up again like we found it. I think we can rule him out alright. Besides I see Captain's handwriting quite often. I'm almost sure he wrote this… just that the spelling is so much better than usual." Snippy countered.
"Stop insulting Captain! Captain's spelling is perfect! And what would you know about his handwriting anyway… unless… unless you were trying to forge it you double tongued sneaker!" and with that Pilot reached for his katana again.
"Bwah?" Snippy barely managed to dodge a slash from the sword and hurried to bring a chair between himself and the enraged Captain-worshipper. "Are you completely out of your mind now? I definitely didn't forge any handwritings! Why would I even do that?"
"Oh, no! You are the one who has to answer my questions you shoe! Confess your heresy!" Pilot snarled back swinging the blade again.
Meanwhile Engie completely ignored the argument, the wild chase and the battle that broke loose right behind him. He kept reading the Valentine's card in his shaking hand all over that read: 'A million hugs to you!' The engineer collapsed more onto a chair than sitting down. "It's her! This is Annie's work! She has found us and she's about to kill us all!"
When Captain finally returned to his base Engie was close to a hysterical breakdown, Snippy was still trying to fend off Pilot with a chair and the latter had worked himself up into a true berserker rage. The base looked like a tornado had wreaked havoc inside and the red, heart shaped cards had been scattered all over the room again.
"What's going on, meine minions?" three faces turned to him like flowers to the sun.
"Captain! This criminal shoe has tried to fake your divine handwriting!" Pilot rushed over, a firm grip on the sniper's collar pulling the other minion with him. The aviator held one of the cards up opened, so that his Captain could see the writing.
"Let go of me you moron!" Snippy tried to shake off the pilot's iron grip but to no avail. "I swear this is not my doing, Captain!" he added to his commander.
"Seven! It must have been the ANNET! One of her drones must be still in the area watching us! We need to move the base and get away or she'll come back with hundreds of them to destroy us all!"
The Captain cast a look at the card, then at his minions, who were staring at him expectantly, waiting for an answer, a command or any sort of remark.
"Do you not approve of zee lovely new recruitment notes?" he finally asked.
"Bwah? Those things are supposed to be recruitment notes?"
"Yes zee Captain has thought for a while zat zee last ones might have been a touch on zee plain side, since zey only lured Engie into zee ranks of my tasteful army so far. Hence zee brand new design."
"This is brilliant, Captain!" Pilot hurriedly agreed, finally letting go of Snippy's collar. Of course he didn't deem the sniper worthy of an excuse.
"But there's no word about joining your army in them." Mr. Snippy inquired readjusting his jacket and casting Pilot a hateful glance.
Captain nodded "I wasn't quite finished writing zem."
"And why were they lying about all over the floor?" Engie finally decided to voice a question of his own.
"Well I wonder about zat, too." Captain shrugged.
"Wait, did you put them maybe on the small table by the wall?" the engineer attempted to solve this last riddle, too."
"Maybe." Captain answered, as if this was completely unimportant.
"There is one of those cracks in the wall. Some strong draft could have blown the cards off the table," the engineer visibly relaxed now there was a rational explanation for everything.
"Well, then gather those cards for me Pilot. Zee Captain will finish zem in a beat of your liddle hearts. And zen my minions you will carry zem out like zee cute armours you are, even though I'm not sure what exactly armament has to do with zee Valentines, maybe it's considered chain-mail?"
Much later the minions were sleeping, all their energy drained by the task of delivering the delicious heart shaped recruitment cards. Captain walked through the base, making sure everything was back in its place and finally stopped right in front of the couch the sniper was resting on.
"Did you have fun today?" Captain asked, well aware that it wasn't necessary to lower his voice. When no response came he continued: "Still pretending you are sleeping? You know you might have fooled zee others but eet ees impossible to fool zee Captain."
Now there was a barely visible movement and Captain nodded contentedly to himself: "Zee Captain ees a great detective just like zee Mr. Parrot, who has a stylish moustache too and solves crimes for a cracker. Anyway zee case of zee red cards still needs zee solving. When confronted with zee puzzling mystery zee Captain thought to himself: Where would you find zat many pretty cards of lovely wishes? Same place where zee classy doodly pens come from. And whom did zee Captain sent a few days ago to fetch him zee most fashionable purple ballpoint pen? Mr. Snippy. Zen who was zee last minion to leave zee base zis day? Eet was Mr. Snippy again. So who would have had all zee opportunities to get and to place zee cards in zee base while nobody was looking, if not you …Cancer?"
Red threads that looked almost like they were made of wool slipped out from under the sniper's hood as the sentient red scarf began to stir, forming into something that resembled the skull of a snake. "YOu Can'T pRooVE aNYthInG, EntiTy calleD Zee CAptaIN! BESides: WHy dID YOu TeLl THE mInIons IT Was All yOur plAn, iF IT WasN'T reaLly YoUr DOiNG?"
"Yes, why indeed?" the Captain took a sip of his tea and the biomatrix instinctively tried to creep back into the semi-safety under the sniper's hood "Zee opportunity for some lovely recruiting was too good to pass on. And talking about zat, if you have time for zee pranks, you surely have zee time to fill out a few more of zee delicious recruitment notes, so zee Captain went to pick a few more for you to write," and Captain placed a staple of at least a hundred more red, heart shaped cards on the small coffee-table next to the couch.
The snake-skull stared first at the cards then back at the Captain: "YOu cANnoT PosSiblY ExpeCt oF Us to…"
"Oh, and Cancer! Nobody but zee Captain may troll zee minions!" with that Captain left the Biomatrix to its new task.
The alien kept staring at the cards, some of its inner voices were cursing the human commander, a few were saying that it really didn't have to do this job, a bunch of others suggested just killing all the humans while they were sleeping and one whispered: "It will totally be worth seeing Charles' face tomorrow, when he finds out that he has to deliver a hundred more Valentine's cards."
The biomatrix cast a glance at the still sleeping sniper and began working. That would be worth it, indeed!
