Yang's Campfire Story
Inspiration: Campfire Stories - Anger Management by mikeburnfire
Anger Management
Yang and Ruby are seen sitting on logs roasting marshmallows over a campfire. Open cans of beers on one side with their hunting rifles on the other side of them. They appear to be much older and in their young adult years.
"So this chief, the one that I had to bring a different beret for and the one the I had to constantly make sure my boots were polished for, that one was the same one that I got sent to Anger Management for because I told him he was a fuckhead and he would be dead and gone before he would get any of the cabinets that I had." Yang said in a casual tone as she stared at her roasting marshmallow.
Ruby chuckled before speaking out and looking at her incredulously. "I'm sorry did you say cabinets? Were you hoarding cabinets as well?" The idea of such a thing was both ridiculous and hilarious.
"No..." The screen pans up to show a description of what Yang was saying in colorful lineart design. She was dressed in military boots, cargo pants, military t-shirt and her dog tag around her neck. Her character's line was yellow(obviously) everyone else's was black. "I had done my on-the-job training, I had gone to my actual unit... and the Army in it's infinite wisdom had decided to send me to a forward support company.
The way a forward support company worked is now, instead of having all this expertise that you can pull from from a whole shop filled with mechanics or a whole shop filled with armorers, you now have one armorer: Private First Class Yang."
A name tag appeared on Yang's uniform labeled "Armorer" as she stands alone under the sign that said "Forward Support Company" to emphasize how alone she was in this.
"You!" Ruby giggled. "You were in charge of everything!"
"... Who has spent three weeks at her on-the-job- training and that's all the experience... I had no idea how to fill out the correct forms. I knew how to fix guns, but I didn't know how to fill out forms. I didn't know how to get things. I didn't know what kind of parts I was gonna order and they basically went: "Figure it out".
Yang is then seen crossing her arms and contemplating on her situations as she only knew how to fix guns and none of the above mentioned tasks.
"So when I got to the company that I was in, IMMEDIATELY, there are units armorers coming to me and saying: "I need this fixed, I need this fixed, I need this fixed. I have 24 M4s that need to be gauged. I have all these things that are broken and I need this fixed."
The scene shows Yang being comically crowded by soldiers telling her what needs to be fixed and Yang is taking notes likes she's a waitress at a fast-food diner.
"And I'm like, "Cool. I don't have any parts, I don't have any gauges, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I'm inside this brick building."
I had to go through every manual for every weapon that was used by the six infantry companies I'm supposed to support. I had to go through every manual, look through every weapon and go: "I'll probably need this part, and I'll probably need this part and I'll probably need this one. I don't think I'll need this one."
Yang on screen looks haggard with stray blonde locks sticking in random directions, tired bagged eyes looking over a weapons manual with stacks of books surrounding her table. The expression on her eyes, while tired, looked extremely annoyed at the position she was placed in.
"I had to guess on all this stuff, so I came up with this massive list and it took me MONTHS. I came up with this massive list of parts that I was gonna need and quantities of things. I ordered all those parts and then the parts got to me in cardboard boxes and plastic envelopes. And I have NO way to organize these parts."
The screen goes back to the sisters in the campfire. Ruby is eating her smore and listening with rapt attention to her sister's story. Yang takes a moment to sip her beer.
"You know I dropped out of college and went into the military, right?" She asked with with Ruby responds with: "Yup."
"I have no idea how to organize a whole parts system. Anytime some's like "Oh Yang's so dumb!" I'm just like... "You have no idea the amount of fucking work I have to do."
The screen then pans up to visualize Yang's story. It shows Yang smoking a cigarette as a consequence of her stress and shows her having trouble sleeping.
"That's one of the reasons I'm so lazy now; it's because I put EVERYTHING into doing this stuff while I was in the military."
"Yikes! You really had to bust your butt doing this." Ruby remarked.
"I had to bust my- Oh my gods. It's one of the reasons I started smoking and having really bad anxiety attacks. I don't have PTSD from fighting in a war. I have PTSD from being at Fort Polk and having to run a forward support company by myself."
The scene now changes to what Yang could have been and it's being in a different uniform and looks to be commanding other soldiers.
"In ANY other unit, the job I was in would have been a warrant officer position. I was in E-3."
"Oh. You weren't even an E-4 yet, you were just and E-3!" Ruby voiced her sympathies.
"I was an E-3 holding the position of a warrant officer." Yang reaffirmed. "I was like: "Oh, I don't know, I guess I can fix these guns for you, but I mean, really, your supposed to do this paperwork." she said in a meek, wimpy tone before escalating into her normal tone, " and eventually it got to a point where I was just big, bad, angry Yang. Where I was just like:"
The screen then showed one clip of Yang being small and meek and then showed a second clip of Yang being big and pissed off and was saying:
"No! You can go fuck yourself Sergeant! I'm not fixing any of your shit because you don't have the fucking paperwork!"
To which Ruby just laughed at her sister's familiar angry rant.
The scene shows to Yang laying on the floor and staring up at the ceiling surrounded by cardboard boxes and strangely a shovel close to her. Next, the screen shows Yang using said shovel to figuratively dig though the boxes to find said parts at the request of a soldier.
"So... I got all these parts ordered, they sent a bunch of wrong ones, I don't know what the hell I'm doing with all these parts. They're just sitting in cardboard boxes and anytime I need to get a part, I have to dig through cardboard boxes. "Oh you need a new hammer for your M16? Cool, this is gonna take me about two hours to find this one because I don't know where the hell it is in this mess."
Yang is seen holding her head down on the table and arms crossed in front of her and then she looks up tp speak.
"I got so frustrated with having to dig though these cardboard boxes I'm like: "Fine, I need cabinets."
A bubble popped on the left corner of the screen to show Ruby's head to show her inserting herself in the story in red lines. "Did you buy them with your own money?" To which Yang looks up at her and responds. No, I bought them with the funds that was allotted to our unit for that fiscal year."
"Okay!" Ruby's bubbled popped and it was back to just Yang telling her story.
"I ordered these cabinets. Cabinets get sent to the wrong company. "Cool, alright, well I guess I have to go and get these cabinets now." So I go to sign out a 5-ton truck so that I can go and pick up these cabinets."
Scene cuts back to the campfire. "Alright. This sounds way more involved than I thought..."
"I... I feel like I have to tell you all the effort that went into these cabinets so you can understand why I did what I did."
Ruby nods her head. "Okay, once I have the backstory, you refusing to surrender your cabinets might make more sense." she concluded. "That's right."
Screen slides back up to the visual story. To show the interaction between Yang and another person.
"So, I gotta go get a 5-ton to go pick up these cabinets. I go and get a 5-ton. There's no 5-tons available. "What do you mean there's no 5-tons available? There's like 20 of them sitting out there."
"Nope, we don't have a single one that you can drive. Besides, do you even have a permit to drive that?"
Yang: "Of course I do, my shop is on the back of one."
"Why don't you use the truck that your shop is on?"
Yang: "I can't DO that because the shop weights 7 & 1/2 tons and the cabinets don't fit in the door of the shop that's on the back of the truck!"
"Well, we don't have any trucks for you to use."
Yang: Takes a deep inhale from the nose, "FINE!"
"So I WALK a mile down to Bravo because if I drive my car down there and get a truck at Bravo company, then I'm gonna have to drive the truck back and then..." she sighs having to recount THAT bit of the story until Ruby chimes in as a thought bubble.
"You walked down to Bravo company, where the cabinets were delivered because you figured maybe THEY had a truck you could use!"
"Maybe they had a truck I could use. They have a truck."
"Hooray!"
"Thank you! Thank you for being nicer to me than my own company will! Clementine will remember this."
They both laugh at the video game reference.
"I find someone with a forklift to pick up the cabinets and put them in the bed of the truck. I drive the truck back to my motor pool. I bring them outside my office... and we don't have a forklift. Now the cabinets have to come off the truck... I had to get like 20 people to help me pick up these cabinets and put them on the ground outside of my shop.
Now I have to figure out how to get them in my shop. They don't fit in the door."
"HAHA NO!"
"Actually, sorry, let me rephrase that. They fit in the door, but only if I took all of the drawers out to lighten them up somewhat.
"That's better anyway because you're gonna move the cabinets anyway, why not take out the drawers?
"*Sighs* I take out all the drawers, get the cabinets put in my shop. They got nice little drawers in them and I can put little things. Imagine the inside of a tacklebox in these cabinets. You pull the drawer out and they got a bunch of dividers in there and you just put the parts in.
If I needed a part, I could look at the list that I had made on my own personal computer, on the massive. 300+ page document that listed what the NSN for the part was. What the name for the part was. How many of them I had and what drawer and slot they were in." Yang had finished her long tirade of the entire organization process of the job.
Ruby was amazed and stunned. "Wow... You went so far above and beyond what was expected of you. If you had the chance to go back in time, would you have told yourself not to give so much of an effort? Cause you worked your ass off and never became a sergeant!"
The scene changes to Yang bending down and talking to her 4-year old self who was playing with blocks.
"Yeah, if I could go back in time and talk to past me I would be like, "Look, just don't do anything, brush it off. Maybe if you're lucky they'll send you to a not-forward support company cause they'll think you're unreliable."
Her kid self tilts her head in confusion at the older lady until the older Ruby joins in. "If you keep working this hard, they're gonna find you irreplaceable! They're never gonna promote you, you're stuck! Be lazy!"
Scene cuts back to present day.
"I started doing that towards the end of my military career. I just started being a lazy piece of trash and I didn't care anymore."
"If only you started earlier."
"This is great, I finally have organization for all my parts..."
"Yeah and it only took you four weeks to get this set up."
"Two months actually." she corrected, "And then probably another three weeks after that. Getting all the parts put into all the bins and organized by size and what weapon system they got to. Top drawer for M9 parts, second drawer's for M4 parts and so one and so forth. I finally had my full bench stock list on a computer, everything is available.
Someone can come in and say: "Hey, the spring broke for my M16", and before they've finished the sentence, I can say: "Excellent, I have six of them. Here is your part, sign here, here, and here."
"And everything worked smoothly after that?"
"Like clockwork. I... I can't even tell you how happy I was with this set up." The image showed Yang looking at her workplace like how a parent would look at their child with pride. Even with tears streaming down her face. But they vanished instantly when someone came through the door.
"...And then chief came into my shop and look Lustfully at my cabinets. And his heart, yea it was filled with avarice." "Avarice?" Ruby asked. "Greed." Yang answered.
"Hey, high thpeed, those are nice cabineth."
"Hehe, you're giving him an accent?"
"No, that's just how he talked. He referred to everyone as "high-speed" and he talked with a really bad lisp." Yang continued with the story.
"Them's really nice cabineth."
"Yes they are, Chief, it took me a long time to get them. Remember I out the order in? It took me a long time to finally get these in here."
"Those are really nice cabineth, high-thpeed, I think I'm gonna need'em."
Yang looks confused by this request. "No, Chief, I just ordered these cabinets. I need them, I have all my parts in them."
"High-thpeed, I'm gonna need them cabineth to put Humvee parts in."
Yang continued to look even more perplexed at the reason. "Humvee parts aren't gonna fit in there. The drawers are too small for Humvee parts."
The image showed the sequence of events with Yang, normal sized, speaking to the Chief to a then a bigger fire breathing Yang now shouting at the chief.
"So it ended up devolving from a conversation of: "No Chief, you cannot have these cabinets. I just ordered these, I need them," into "Chief, you can go FUCK yourself and I'm gonna punch you in the GODDAMN face if you don't get the FUCK out of my shop!"
At this point in the story, Ruby decided to chime to give her two cents. "I think maybe we've missed a step or two here?"
"Eventually it resulted in me calling him an idiot and telling him that he would be dead and gone before he would ever lay a fucking finger on any of my cabinets."
"I feel there might be some fallout from that." Ruby chuckled as as bead of sweat trailed down her head.
"And he goes and says, "We'll see about that high-thpeed," and walked out. At which point, I grabbed the pintle mount for a .50 caliber machinegun and threw it through a metal wall locker. I shotputted. A 6 pound chunk of metal. So HARD into a metal cabinet. That it punched a hole through it."
The aftermath of the description changed the scene to the perspective inside the cabinets. Yang is seen huffing and staring directly at the hole she made as if she was staring right at a person.
"So you damaged your own cabinet that you worked so hard to-"
"No, no it was a different cabinet. This was just a metal wall locker."
"Did anyone else see you flip out?" Knowing her sister, she would obviously be pretty vocal.
"Yes. My squad leader came to talk to me and he said, "You should not have done what you just did," and to that I said, "Oh boy, no shit. You fucking think?"
Yang was now staring at her squad leader with a strained smile, her eyes burning red. All the while, Ruby is laughing her ass off. "So you're at the point where you know you screwed up and you're just wondering, "What's happening now?" "
"I had to go talk to the company commander. I got chewed out. And when I came back my cabinets were all gone and all my parts were on the floor in cardboard boxes again so I had to order more cabinets."
Lineart Yang is seen on her hands and knees, head hung low in defeat. Her shop was devoid of her cabinets that she worked so hard to get and all that surrounded her were the cardboard boxes filled with her gun repair parts. All alone in the dark...
Until a ray of sunlight shined down on her from above, to which she looked up at.
"As it turns out, what happened was better than I ever could have imagined. They sent me to Anger Management."
And so the light that shined held the words "Anger Management" with angel wings flapping and keeping it in the air.
"I got to Anger Management. And sitting in Anger Management are all of these officers who are MUCH higher ranking than I am. I'm talking about a staff sergeant, a captain, a lieutenant , a warrant officer, a major, another staff sergeant, and another staff sergeant... and then you get to me. E-4 Yang."
"Oh! You've been promoted?"
"Uh... wait. Was I an E-4 at this time? I can't remember what I was. Anyway, everyone has to talk about why they're here..."
"My name's Sergeant So-and-So and I punch one of my soldiers in the face 'cause he wouldn't stop mouthing off to me." Yang said in a deeper, gruff voice before returning to normal. "Sounds reasonable to me!"
"Reasonable enough for you to be here and not reasonable to punch one of your soldier's in the face?"
"If that's seems reasonable to me, I can totally understand that happening. So everyone is going around and talking about what they did wrong. They get to me and I said: "My name is E-4 Yang. I'm here because I told my chief warrant officer to go fuck himself and thought that he was a massive piece of shit."
"Okay, that's weird. Why is there an E-4 in here?"
Scene shows Yang get a phone call in her pocket and answers it. Her face is neutral and first before it turned into a deadpan stare.
"While in Anger Management, someone from my company calls and ask me why I'm not in my shop fixing weapons. At which point, I didn't even reply. I just snapped my scroll in half. In Anger Management!"
Lineart Yang presents her broken scroll to the other stunned officers before putting it down.
"This." "Put the phone down on the table..." "This is why I'm here."
"I just remember several of these other officers looking at me like, "I understand."
Back to the real world, Yang downs the rest of her beer and sighs in annoyance. "I feel like they said it was Anger Management, but I'm pretty sure it was an "Incompetence of Fort Polk" support group."
Ruby is now doubled over laughing in sheer euphoria at the sheer lunacy of the story.
"I honestly believe that that was where they send people that can't deal with the incompetence at Ft. Polk. They just send them here so they can all talk to each other about how fucked everything was!"
Finally recovering and taking a much needed intake of oxygen, Ruby got back up on the log. "It's good to vent sometimes." she offered before stifling her giggling.
"I ended up going to Anger Management for like 4 or 5 months. I have no proof of this, but I'm wondering if when I had told my chief to go fuck himself if they were like:"
Scene changed to a break room with Yang's chief and other warrant officers.
"We've got to kick her the fuck out of the military."
"And then they went,"
"Wait, if we kick her out, we don't have anybody to fix guns. Shit!"
"And that was the first time you had... Job Security!"
"Yeah. I'm 99% positive that I could've gotten away with pretty much anything while I was in the military because I was the only one they had to fix guns."
Yang was then seen leaning on the wall just outside the breakroom where she heard of her newfound job security.
"You never took advantage of this though?
Yang grew a wide, shark teeth grin at her new ideas she came up with.
"I did. Just in weird ways."
The sisters shared a laugh at the conclusion of her long, entertaining story.
"I thought there'd be a happy ending when started of this story. You made a show of yourself, damaged some machinery and he said, "Woah, okay you can keep them!" and walked away, but no you had to get more cabinets? You had to order a second pair of cabinets?"
"Yeah, I had to order another pair. Thankfully, these actually showed up to my motor pool."
"Well that's good at least!"
"But I still didn't have a forklift to take them off the back of the truck."
"Oh boy, many hands make light work!"
"Yeah. Well on the plus side, when I would go to Anger Management and we would do relaxation techniques and I would get to fall asleep."
"Aw lucky."
"So... so sometimes Anger Management just meant Naptime."
"I'm glad this story had a happy ending after all."
The screen turns dark and ends.