A/N:
Here's a fresh new epilogue. And, yes, like the rest of the story, it cannot be considered canon. The original fanfic was dreamed up before the later short novels were readily available in English.
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12°N 113°E
Golf Time Zone, Coordinated Universal Time + 7.
00:01 and 0001G.
Just past midnight.
The sleek and miraculous undersea craft moved swiftly through the waters of the South China sea, looking like a finned behemoth.
There was little turbulence in the wake of the TDD-1. In stark contrast, there was a great deal of turbulence in the aft mess room. The smell of contraband liquor and beer filled the room, as did the raucous and rowdy calls of the sailors and airmen. Platters of grilled beef and squid were spread atop a large stainless steel tabletop.
Seated in a metal chair, Sergeant Sousuke Sagara felt as if he was the one being grilled. The umpteenth cold Orange Crush that he downed didn't make him feel any more chill.
"Come on Sousuke old boy, you can tell us the details." Kurz looked overly eager. An overly eager Kurz Weber was never a good thing. He was like a brick of C4 with a faulty detonator. He wouldn't work when you needed him too, or he could blow up when you weren't ready.
"You don't have to if you don't want to," Melissa said, her eyes telling a truth that her mouth wanted no part of. She belched, and then took a long sip from a tall bottle of beer. "But I know that you want to." She was like a large block of PE-4 with way too many detonators. It did not take much to set her off.
"I-" Sousuke was not about to be pressured, not even by his fellow SRT members. "It is very personal." He and his blue-haired beau had lost their virginity together. Enamored with one another, their sexual liaisons did not end with that memorable night. "As such, I will have to refuse to answer." They were private, not promiscuous.
"How 'bout if I order you to-" Mao said slyly, knowing how dyed-in-the-wool-military the scar-faced soldier was. "-With you knowing that I will shoot Weber in the balls if you don't." She held up a sidearm. It was her trusty Heckler & Koch P8. No one had any idea if it was loaded, and if it was, whether the bullets were rubber or standard issue.
"If you don't tell me-" Kurz sounded very serious. "-I will have to grab Sis's bodacious boobs." His eyes told Sousuke 'don't you dare tell me.'
"OOOPH!" That grunt was a wordless exclamation of intense pain. Kurz leaned back in his chair with so much force that the heavy piece of seaworthy furniture toppled over. His head bounced off the floor, and he lay still.
Melissa had pointed the gun right between the sniper's eyes. When he foolishly fell for the misdirection and raised his hands to grab for the gun, the Sgt. Major brought her beer bottle down like a jackhammer, striking the sweet spot of his groin.
The brown glass bottle was a 22oz bomber, the best size for inflicting reversible testicular injury. A 64oz growler or 32oz mini-growler had too much surface area, and would cause too little damage. A 12oz long neck had too narrow at the base, and might cause permanent problems. Melissa Mao was a top-notch technician of her trade.
"Hey Mao," a wizened old engineer said. "About Weber there. You act like you don't give a fuck about him."
"Bitch-" Melissa began. "-Who's acting?!"
A number of other Mithril members attempted to wheedle Sousuke, paying no heed to the medical condition of the unconscious playboy. When they couldn't convince him with above-board methods, they switched over to trickery, goading him into spilling the beans about his intimate encounters with a certain submarine celebrity, the pert and pretty Kaname Chidori. They had as much success as the twitching Weber or the farting Mao had.
A group of the boat's machinists and engineers tried to coax the stricken Sousuke by buttering him up, praising his suspected sexual strengths.
"We should rename Arbalest," one man said, while balancing his beer bottle on his nose like a trained seal. "How about 'SexBot'!"
"No, it should be MotorBunny," another man asserted, clapping his arms instead of his hands, looking like some pasty white dolphin. "That's the name of a famous powered sex toy."
"You're both wrong," a third man said in garbled fashion, finding it difficult to keep his dentures in his mouth. "Sheesh! SexBot? MotorBunny? Give me a gulldern break." His fake teeth fell out and hit Kurz on the chin, waking him up. "Is souds bees Bigs Mesals-" He put his dentures back in, after a wobbly Kurz dropped them in his outstretched hand. "Big Metal Tripod!" That was a two base hit: a tip of the hat to a naughty trope, and a reference to a sexual position. Tripod could mean a man with lengthy genitalia… looking like he had grown a third leg. The sexual position Tripadam… 'The Tripod'… would have a man catch one of a woman's knees firmly in his hands and stand making love her while her hands explore and caress his body.
"Was that a double entendre?" One sloshed man said, spilling some beer on the table. A double entendre is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, of which one is typically obvious, whereas the other often conveys a message that would be too socially awkward, sexually suggestive, or offensive to state directly. A simple example: 'If I say you have a beautiful body, will you hold it against me?' Or: a man with grapes in his shopping cart looked over at a woman who had the most beautiful peaches.
"No!" Another man sucked up that beer. Waste not want not! "It was a dangling modifier!" That was a suggestive quip, not a statement of fact. A dangling modifier is a type of ambiguous grammatical construct whereby a grammatical modifier could be misinterpreted as being associated with a word other than the one intended. For example: 'While driving to work, a car accident was witnessed on the highway'.
"Wrong!" A clean-shaven teetotaler said, after chugging his Bosco. "It's a… A spoonerism." That was a joke. A bad one, implying 'spooning,' both a sexual position and a cuddling technique. A spoonerism is an error in speech in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched between two words in a phrase. For example, the famous 'Kinkering Kongs their Titles Take' that had been intended as 'Conquering Kings their Titles Take'
After the grammar fest, the men and handful of women began chanting "Sagara… Sagara… Sagara… Sagara… Sagara… Sagara… Sagara… Sagara… Sagara… Sagara… Sagara… Sagara…." Well, most of them did. There's always one in the crowd, right? One girl was chanting "Sousuke … Sousuke… Sousuke… Sousuke… Sousuke… Sousuke… Sousuke… Sousuke….' She was trying to get the Man Of The Hour's attention. There was a full shot glass nestled in her ample cleavage.
"So, you can at least give us this much," an off-shift radar operator begged. "Tell us your favorite position Sagara." To get something, he felt he should offer something first. "Mine is Marjara, The Cat."
People started banging both of their fists against the table top, altogether at once, producing a loud booming effect. "They chanted Souske's name again, barely audible over the din. Kurz gave Sousuke a big 'thumb's up' and a jaunty wink. At the same time he tried to goose Mao and missed. She crushed a beer can completely flat on the top of his head. A full can.
"My all time favorite is Dola.," An MP felt compelled to fill the void, seeing that the young SRT member remained silent. "The Swing."
"My favorite is Indranika… Queen of Heaven." That came from the ship's Chaplain, whose trusty Kama Sutra had more dog-eared pages than his bible and prayer books.
"God Bless the KS," a ship's cook called out, oddly enough. Odd, because he was an aethiest. At least, this month. In the past he had been agnostic, a Buddhist, a Spiritualist, and a practicing Catholic.
"We're combat soldiers," a new SRT member began. His name was Marty Montessori, but barely anyone knew that fact. "We should all love Impalement-" He thrust his hand out like he was holding a dagger. "-Also known as Shulachitaka." He coughed and took on the voice he used when he once taught pre-school children. "The woman places one foot on the boy's head and, extending the other, allows herself to be penetrated. This position requires practice, and-"
"We don't want to hear it," a bunch of impatient and rotund rowdies interjected.
"Yes we do," a number of buck-toothed and boney buckaroos rebutted.
"You can guess mine," the boat sanitation worker said. "Congress of a Herd of Cows. You know. When a man enjoys many women altogether." He was a known braggart and bull-shitter.
"Vrikshadhirudhaka, or climbing a tree." That came from a dapper deep-sea diver. "And I mean that literally." He certainly did. Before relocating to England, he had grown up in the Korowai tribe of Papua New Guinea. Their lives have always been spent living in tree houses that soar more than one hundred feet above the ground.
When Sousuke raised his hand, the room went silent swiftly. They thought he was going to play along. In actuality, he was going to ask permission to leave the gathering and visit the boat's head.
Because of the silence, everyone heard what came next.
"Ahem," a voice said.
One Harrier pilot actually pissed himself. The Communications officer next to him came oh so close to dropping a load in his drawers.
There should NOT be an officer standing there!
Lt. Commander Kalinin was ashore. Captain Testarossa should be asleep in her bed. Commander Mardukas never left the bridge during a prolonged sonar run. Well, almost never.
They were all so busted now!
It WAS the Commander. Just how much had he overheard? Would they be thrown into the brig for their irreverent behavior, or stripped of their rank?
"My favorite is The Spin," Mardukas remarked. "The well-learned will refer to it as Paravrittaka. It involves the woman perching backwards over her seated paramour, and then getting spun around 180 degrees, his penis still inside her."
*BANG*
That wasn't a gunshot. That was the sound of Sousuke's chair tipping over this time. It was a great shock, his learning that the Commander was human that way. It was a greater shock having to picture that preference with the older man as the paramour.
Stars danced around his head. They were all shaped like Kaname. Laying there half stunned, he remembered something that he had forgotten to do at Melida before coming aboard.
He wanted to do his best for Kaname, in everything that he did. Sex included. It was his intention to find out if there was anything like a Black Technology version of a French Tickler.
Maybe Tessa would know.
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FINIS