Disclaimer: My diagnosis is that I don't own Tin Man, it be a terrible disease for which there is no cure.
Author's Note: So this was written is small chunks over the space of a week, but Quality Control assures me that the quality has not suffered as a result. Then again, I am apparently such an amazing writer that my dad, who has never read my 'strange little stories', has decided I am perfectly qualified to write the script for the next Bourne Identity movie. You know, 'cause I know how to do that. Dad, he gets these ideas, hope nobody minds if Bourne turns into a total klutz. *Snort* This chapter, by the way, is one of those ones that I start writing, and then runs off in an entirely different direction than I had in mind. Got another character trying to bring himself to life, good thing he's stranded in the Otherside where he is relatively harmless. Oh, and I made up a word, well actually Ahamo made up a word and Hank used it, and thus I am absolved of blame in the careless treatment of the English language should anyone catch me at it.
...
Hank navigated through the cluster of deciduous plant life with the low decibel stealth feasible only to carefully engineered cyborgs...
"Hey there Hank," a voice commented from a location of superior elevation, "nice night for a walk."
"Reckon so," a second voice opined, "though I'd've taken the deer trail 'bout five yards to the west of ya, make the going a bit easier."
...or to certain humans familiar with the topography.
"You know," Officer Gulch drawled as the nurture unit triangulated their position, "this is taking the whole overprotective parent thing just a touch far. It's just a thought and all, but DG's a big girl now, she should be able to take care of herself."
"Which is why you're sitting up here in my hunting stand watching 'em like a hawk," Farmer Spencer commented dryly just as Hank detected the two human males perched several feet above the cyborg on a suspended platform partially concealed by tree branches. Had the father unit been cognisant of the fact that DG's guard would be out in the woods tonight he wouldn't have let Emily program him into coming.
"It happens to be my job," the cop fired back, "I'm sort of paid to do things like chase down speeders, break up bar fights, monitor for under-aged drinking..."
"And you're doing a fine job of it, sitting all the way up here," the old farmer pointed out.
"It's their grad party," the policeman defended himself, "I'm not that much of a bastard, besides I have no proof that they're drinking alcohol. Those could be soda cans for all I know."
"Sure, if you keep your binoculars outta focus I suppose they can be mistaken for soda cans," Spencer grunted in amusement, "but if that's the case, why don't you move your patrol elsewhere?"
"Because there've been bear sightings in these parts and someone should keep an eye out."
"Exactly," the farmer agreed airily, "which is why I'm here, gotta watch out for that bear. It has nothing to do with the fact that my eighteen year old daughter is drinking down by the river with a bunch of eighteen year old boys. Nothing at all. Wanna join us Hank?"
As the nurture unit located the ladder and began his ascent, a thought percolated through his central processor. "Shouldn't someone warn the children?" Hank wondered as he pulled himself onto the platform.
"Now that you mention it," Spencer exclaimed with a smug expression the cyborg had learned to associate with one's opinion being seconded, "maybe someone should warn the children."
"And I suppose that someone should be me," the policeman replied astringently.
"Well Hank and I can't go, we're their fathers and I've been led to believe that it would be terribly 'uncool' for us to put in an appearance," the old farmer reasoned, holding his hands in the air to bob the second and third digit of either hand at the cop in an awkward manner that suggested behavioural mimicry.
"Whereas it's my job to be the party-pooper," Officer Gulch finished dryly.
"As you said your own self not that long ago," Spencer asserted cheerfully as the nurture unit tried to wrap his electrical synapses around the notion that excreting at parties should be in the cop's employment description. Fortunately, his experience database flagged the remark as one of those strange comments Otherside humans liked to make that indicated something other than what they described and inhibited comment, thus saving the cyborg from incredulous response.
"Here Hank," Officer Gulch huffed as the father unit recovered from his abstraction, "you can use my binoculars. Be back in a few."
The nurture unit studied the Otherside device as the policeman slid down the ladder and slipped quietly through the trees towards the deer trail Spencer had mentioned. He didn't actually need the night vision enhanced bifocal visual device; his ocular units were more than adequate for the task at grasping device.
"Don't worry Hank," Spencer assured him, mistaking the cyborg's concern, "it's not peeping, just being a good invisible chaperone letting the kids have their fun. Now if anything does happen that turns this into a peep show, well that's why I brought this."
Hank glanced at the shotgun in puzzlement, "I thought that was for the bear."
"The bear? Naw, don't gotta license for bear, this is for any boys who might be thinking of gettin' frisky with my Missy. Wanna borrow it if you need?" the old farmer offered neighbourly.
The cyborg frowned and crosschecked his Otherside dictionary with the Consort's parent guide. Frisky, his CPU informed him, as it pertained to teenage boys, involved attempts at physical contact with an end goal of copulatory interfacing. The father unit's eyebrows narrowed as he considered the Anti-Frisk device and found a glitch. "Isn't that illegal?" he inquired of the farmer.
"Only if the arresting officer and judge aren't fathers themselves," he replied cheerfully.
Hank did not see how the existence of offspring should change the officials' duties, but he applied his logic processor to the problem once more. "Officer Gulch isn't a father," he pointed out, having run the probabilities regarding likely scenario counterparts.
"Not to worry in your case then," Spencer mused, "seeing as from what I hear tell young Elmer's become only too happy to chase the boys away from DG."
This was true; Emily had nearly overloaded her emotional circuits with joy at this convenient development. Hank could crush a human's spine with his bare hands if he needed to, but for some reason the mother unit didn't perceive him as capable of circumventing the approach of partially developed human males.
"Made my Missy mad as fire," the farmer continued, "the way he ran off my nephew, wouldn't talk to DG for weeks. Silly of her, really, there ain't no competing in that arena, I just didn't have the heart to tell her as much. 'Cepting that Roxanne disaster he ain't ever had eyes for anyone else."
Little warning alerts started forming in the cyborg's processor but before he could analyse what it was about the conversation that was disrupting his tranquil data stream, an interruption occurred in the form of loud cacophony of yelling in the distance.
"Heh," Spencer snorted in amusement, "sounds like Elmer's crashed the party."
Indeed, it would seem that Officer Gulch was doing his 'pooping'. There many cries and howls of repudiation, Hank's auditory processor filtered out more than one whine of 'Officer Fuuuuuuudd', and numerous other variations on the theme of objecting to the policeman's being there, all summed up by the voice identified as Bobby Gibbons moaning, "DG, do something about him."
The nurture unit and farmer unit turned towards the commotion, using – or pretending to use – the night vision binoculars to hone in on the source of disturbance. Hank had just ascertained the position of the cop when the princess came storming out trees to confront her guard.
"Oh no you don't," she hissed at a pitch even Hank's enhanced auditory capabilities had difficulty picking up at this distance, "Don't you dare! You are such a bastard, if you so much as think of going all Honest Cop on us now, of all times, I'm gonna superglue a pink flamingo to your cruiser's hood, I'm gonna hound Roxie every damn day for the rest of her life and leave her little notes saying Officer Gulch made me do it, I'm gonna...I'm gonna...I'm gonna tell Popsicle that you need help working on your truck and you were just too shy to ask him!" she howled menacingly.
Hank tweaked his sound amplifiers with interest; he wondered if that was true, he'd always wanted a closer look at the policeman's truck...
"She's been good for him," Farmer Spencer commented suddenly, disrupting the cyborg's thought sequence, causing him to look away from where DG was still venting her teenage fury at the blandly smiling cop. "Sure she hospitalizes him every second year or so and keeps him a regular customer at the ER in between," the man added with wry amusement, "but she's done him a world of good."
The nurture unit stripped several gears in his cognitive machinery trying to follow the human train of logic: the old farmer was, with near certainty, speaking of the policeman and the princess, but how constant structural damage could be considered a good thing...
Off in the background of the cyborg's auditory awareness, Officer Gulch interrupted DG's tirade with a mild, "Are you done yet? I'm not here to spoil the party; I just wanted to warn you that there was a bear in the area. And watch your language young lady."
"His dad asked me to keep an eye on him," the old farmer remarked pensively, drawing the father unit's attention away from the eighteen year old's indignant reply, "when he found out his health was going down the tubes, old Arnold asked me to watch out for Elmer, give him help if he asked for it. Heh, help Elmer," Spencer grunted with a shake of his head, "I've known him since before he was crawling, that boy doesn't know how to ask for help, he never did. The kid would go halfway around the world and then some just to help a stranger out, but if he had to cross a street to save his life...," the man snorted, "if he had to cross the street to save himself, he wouldn't bloody well notice because he'd be too busy going halfway around the world for a blasted stranger."
Still unable to tabulate the purpose of this conversation, Hank let his gaze drift back to where the princess was trying to help propel the cop out of the camp, her hands planted in the middle of his back as she shoved him along. Officer Gulch grinned and DG squeaked as she suddenly found herself bearing most of the policeman's weight.
"Oh dear," he said in mock concern, "I seemed to have developed a sudden weakness in my legs, whatever shall I do?"
"I worried he'd fall apart when his parents died," Spencer continued after a moment's pause, once again commanding the cyborg's active attention, "I expected him to come apart at the seams, the boy's never handled grief well, he cares too deeply. He damn near tore the town apart when his great-grandfather died and he was only five at the time. I was prepared for him to go right off the deep end and not a damn thing I could do about, promise or no promise," the old friend of the late Mr. Gulch glance unseeingly at the riverside camp and sighed, "and I think we all know why he didn't."
Hank followed his gaze, just in time to see the princess, slowly being crushed under the weight of the cop, grin slyly, release her support and dance to the side. Officer Gulch yelped and stumbled back a half dozen strides trying to regain his balance.
"Hay," DG crowed, "cured you, I'm ma-miraculous!"
The nurture unit frowned – those were almost dangerous words, the princess could not be allowed to realize yet...before he could consolidate the data, the cyborg found his cognitive processes being redirected once more.
"He's a good man," Spencer remarked in that strange off-hand manner human's sometimes used when having a conversation they were simultaneously pretending they weren't having it, "honest, hardworking, cares about people," the old farmer locked ocular systems with the father unit and held his gaze, "You could entrust him with the most important person in your life and know he'll care for her, protect her, like she is the most precious thing in the world."
Hank blinked in true surprise – he knew that, that very trait was one of the reasons why the tic toks had enlisted Officer Gulch in the first place, but how did Farmer Spencer know...
The cyborg's attention was diverted again by a sudden rustle in the bushes near the princess. It was becoming impossible, between the Othersider's strange conversation and his attempts to monitor the princess, for the nurture unit to finish streaming a single chain of thought.
DG squeaked in alarm and latched onto the policeman's hand in a manner that disturbed the watching tic tok in its familiarity. "Is that a bear?" she demanded.
The cop merely grunted noncommittally and reached down to scoop up a stick that had been lying near his feet. As a weapon it was woefully insufficient in the cyborg's estimation: while nearly as long as the human's arm, the circumference was such that it was hardly thicker than DG's index finger, resulting in a strangely pitched whipping sound as the policeman waved it once or twice experimentally. Hank wondered why he didn't just use his side arm...
...right up until the moment Officer Gulch darted forward as far as the princess' hold on him would allow and brought the stick down on some unseen object with the full force of his arm and an exquisitely timed flick of the wrist. There was a loud Crack and an even louder yelp of pain, and a young male tumbled out of the brush, clutching his buttock and gasping imprecations.
"Evening JR," the cop said conversationally, "nice night to play boogeyman at your little sister's grad party."
"Bloody hell Elmer, what'd you have to do that for?"
"That'd still be Officer Gulch to you," the man began, only to be cut off as a slightly intoxicated Missy Spencer caught sight of her brother and let out a shriek of rage.
"Siblings," Farmer Spencer sighed, watching the indignant teen descend upon her older brother, "no matter how old they get, you get them together and it negates all maturity."
Down by the river, JR Spencer raised his hands in surrender, "Hey Missy, chill, you should be thanking me. I brought beer..."
"I didn't hear that," the policeman muttered, looking anywhere but where the young man had pointed.
"...and friends. Think of it Missy, college boys."
"I'm going to kill him," muttered his father, apparently extrapolating on the visual data he was receiving.
"Of course, they shall be treating you like the perfect gentlemen they aren't," JR continued with a caustic glance into the brush behind him.
"Friends' little sisters are off limits unless you intend to marry 'em," agreed a voice from the shadows, it was followed shortly by another young male, carrying a case of beer that the policeman was assiduously not looking at. "And who might you be?" he added with interest upon spotting DG.
"Your funeral," the cop murmured mildly, drawing Missy's attention. The princess hastily dropped the hand she'd been holding but apparently not in time. The eighteen year old let out a sound not unlike the barn cat when Hank had stepped on its tail, spun around on her heel and stomped away. Officer Gulch observed her progress with a look of puzzled concern while DG huffed in frustration and began to follow.
Spencer sighed, "And Maggie had only just got them talking again."
"Hey," JR's friend inquired snidely, "I didn't realize this was a luau, who brought the pig?"
DG abruptly altered course and booted him in the shins, hard. The boy went down cursing.
"I told you it was your funeral," Officer Gulch commented placidly, "but no one seems to listen to friendly warnings anymore. And that, I think, is my cue to leave, if the bear shows up just scream, I'll be around."
"Ah, you're not going to come running in every time you hear a scream are you?" the princess asked in a tone calculated to convey disinterested curiosity. Hank was quite familiar with that tone, so, it would seem, was the cop.
Officer Gulch halted midstride and, with a pained grimace, demanded, "What did you do?"
The eighteen year old smiled innocently, "Oh, you know, this and that, I'd already had pranks to play and old scores to settle, but now I have a friend to cheer up and wrongs to right, too," she added with a scowl at the downed boy.
The policeman dropped his head into his hands, "DG."
"Ever watch 'The Parent Trap'?"
The cop groaned, "Well that explains why your hands are sticky, your parents have got to stop letting you watch TV."
Hank took a memo.
"Oh like that would help," DG noted scornfully, "besides," she sniffed, "those characters were amateurs."
"Monkey see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil; monkey go over there now and get out of the line of fire," Officer Gulch dictated, "Monkey shall endeavour to ignore the screams of frustration, exasperation, surprise or utter bafflement. Kindly use screams of utter terror if it is a bear, or you could to all try to be absolutely silent and truly freak me out."
"Yes, yes," the teenager agreed impatiently, "monkey go shoo now."
The policeman rolled his eyes and started back along the path provided by the deer trail. Hank turned away from the scene below only to find that the old farmer was staring at him intently.
"I know there's a bit of an age gap between 'em," Spencer began hesitantly, presumably continuing the one-sided conversation he'd been having with the tic tok, "but Hank, have you ever considered...I mean...that is...personally I'd get down on bended knees in thanks if I'd've thought Elmer were interested in my daughter. Any father 'round these parts would. Age ain't everything. Do you think...? I mean, you wouldn't get in the way if...," he trailed off hopefully.
The cyborg looked at the farmer, still unable arrange the data of the conversation into a recognizable context. If Spencer considered the policeman good mating material for Missy, why didn't he suggest it to them? The young female seemed sufficiently matured.
The Othersider continued to study the uncomprehending nurture unit's features for a moment, then he sighed, "Never mind, she's young yet and...well, it's none of my business, I just...," he coughed uncomfortably, "I suppose they'll always be our little girls, for all they are about to go take on the world for themselves now."
The father unit blinked and turned to look back at his borrowed offspring. His little girl, off to take on the world, he'd never really computed the scenario in that manner before. For some reason the idea bothered him.
"Alright gentlemen," Officer Gulch said, climbing onto the platform and startling the two fathers, "we've got two bogeys in the woods tonight: one is the possible bear, the other is an imp hell bent on mischief. Our mission, as we have no choice but to accept it, is to monitor the situation and intervene should either attempt physical harm upon the partygoers."
"DG won't try to hurt anyone," Hank asserted positively.
"Won't try, but will probably succeed," muttered Spencer, "if this were 'Friday the 13th', she'd be playing Jason."
"Exaggeration," the cop replied, reclaiming his binoculars, "she has yet to kill anyone."
"Only because her usual victim shows remarkable resilience and stamina."
"Just keep an eye out..."
A strangled yell of surprise and shock ripped through the general sounds of merriment.
"...for the path of the tornado," Officer Gulch sighed.
"That sounded like Bobby Gibbons," the cyborg noted after a quick consult of his voice recognition system.
"I do believe that is his collapsed tent over there," remarked Spencer.
"Yup," the policeman agreed as the teenage boy struggled free of the wreckage, fighting through a web work of strings and cloying debris as he went.
A sudden flash of white caught the watchers' eyes as one of the tents suddenly whipped up into the bows of the surrounding trees. There was a shriek of embarrassment followed immediately by a roar of frustrated anger and two scantily clad teenagers dashed for cover amidst the howling amusement of their fellows.
"You know," Officer Gulch mused, "Kenney may yet forgive DG for that day he tried to babysit her – I do believe that was his granddaughter."
Hank tracked the sound of a sudden crash in time to see a boy disappear into the branches of one of the older trees. "Rigged with proper speed of ascent to get his head clear of the ground before he finishes flipping around," he commented as the boy reappeared a few feet higher, suspended by his ankles.
"Neck's gonna be sore in the morning, though," Spencer observed, "You know, I change my mind," he continued as a pained cry was added to the general din, "she's worse than Jason, what that poor boy ever do to her?"
"Far as I know, he was rude to me," the cop sighed as they watched JR's friend running screaming across the campsite.
"Where'd she get the wasp nest?" the father unit wondered anxiously, "Without hurting herself?"
"Probably the same place she got the honey, the rope and the..."
A long series of crackling bangs shattered the night, scattering another batch of teens.
"...fire crackers," the policeman finished dryly, absently wiping his hands on his pants, "I think it just might be time to interfere," he decided, turning towards the ladder.
"You think," Spencer snorted as, with a loud splash, his son's friend sought refuge in the river, "hate to break it to you Elmer, but you don't seem to have much more luck restraining her activities than anyone else. Hell, the noise has probably scared all wildlife away in a hundred mile radius. Bogey number one is probably gone, long gone, eh Elmer?...Elmer?"
The farmers turned around to find the policeman standing stock still at the edge of the platform, making no attempt to climb down despite the continuing chaos announcing itself from the campsite below.
"I don't want to alarm anyone," Officer Gulch said slowly, "but there appears to be a bear climbing the ladder. A big one."