Pool Sharks, Angst and Initiations
Disclaimer: Same as before. Sorry this took a while. As of this Friday I won't be able to go near a computer until late July. Expect to see more chapters of Kilo Two Zero then.
~ ~ ~ ~
"Prepare to get your ass beat Shipwreck." Cass Garner shouted.
"In your dreams you Army landlubber." Shipwreck replied.
"Hey, watch it with the army cracks Hector." Cover Girl shouted.
"Sorry Courtney." Shipwreck replied.
"Hey look, a sea dog with a leash." Mark Lazio replied, as he chalked his pool cue.
"Oh shut up Shipwreck and break already." Alpine complained. Alpine, Shipwreck, and Recondo formed the GI Joe Pool Team and Sergeant First Class Cass Garner, Staff Sergeant Mark Lazio, and Sergeant Leroy Hoffman formed the Gamma Pool Team.
This was the kick off of the first ever Pool Shark Tourney held at the Enlisted Club. "Alright, this one's gonna be one sweet shot..." Shipwreck began and made his shot.
"Ah, you got lucky squid." Mark Lazio replied, as he saw Shipwreck sink the number four ball.
"Team GI Joe is solids." Quick Kick announced, "Team Gamma is the stripes."
"Oh my God," Althea whispered in Cover Girl's ear, "Don't tell me that the whole team jumped in on this madness?"
"Yep, they did. Looks like Shipwreck started yet another wild tournament on base." Cover Girl quipped, "Well, a lot of three man teams from the Gamma and Ranger units are playing against a lot of our guys. Bazooka, Ace, and Law are next playing three Rangers."
"Hey, hate to break up the mutiny on the USS Shipwreck, but have you two seen Bilby anywhere?" Grinch asked.
"I think I know where he might be." Cover Girl replied. On the way out she snagged Jose Hedaya.
~ ~ ~ ~
"Why her of all people?" Bilby asked into the vastness of the heavens, "Why did you have me meet her, fall in love with her, and tear her away from me not once but twice? Was this all some sort of cruel joke!? Answer me damn it!"
"Hey you." Came a voice behind him.
"I know it's been hard on you since you lost Akima, but you can't let it affect you like this." Jose replied.
"I just had another attack. I've gone through this before, but it's not any easier. Usually they come unexpectedly. I'll see something, hear something and smell something that reminds me and then I feel warm and tingly all over, as if I can feel her leaning against my side when we'd stay up late watching movies, when the Misfits and the X-men would have fallen asleep. She always would say she wasn't sleepy...Oh God I'm rambling again." Bilby replied.
"Yes you are, but sometimes it's the best way to find out what's bugging you if you just ramble on." Cover Girl replied.
"Anyway, she'd insist, just like a little kid, that she wasn't tired, and the next thing I'd know, she was leaning solidly against my side, sound asleep." Bilby replied.
"I do remember you tucking her in a lot of nights when she did that." Cover Girl replied.
"She meant the world to you, I know." Hedaya added, "We're here for you, but you need to reach out to us and let us help you."
"I still feel that a lot of nights, when I sit up late to watch movies, for the hell of it. I can feel her sleeping against my side, I can even hear her breathe and feel her heart beating, but then I'll put my arm out there and it'll go around nothing but air." Bilby replied, "You don't know how many nights since that I've had to wipe away tears I wasn't allowed to shed after the first time I lost her."
"She used to tell me that even though she'd been through a lot in her life, she really wished that there was something she could do to help you deal with your grief." Cover Girl replied.
"You'd think someone who'd seen her planet destroyed, her family die off, her beloved captured, tortured, and killed by the Heartless, and her new home also destroyed would be cynical and embittered." Bilby replied, "Despite that, she was able to remain hopeful and willing to help others before she'd help herself."
"She was an incredible young woman." Cover Girl said, "She really believed in what cause she served, but freedom has its price."
"I'd give anything for the price to have been me instead of her." Bilby replied.
"Then Akima would be sitting over here on the grassy knoll, and we'd have to comfort her." Cover Girl replied, "She always used to say how she could see right through the courageous, stoic warrior and see the tender, gentle soul inside whenever she talked about you. She said when she was a prisoner of the Heartless, the knowledge that you would fight your way through against any odds just to rescue her was what kept her going."
"I really hope that Mindbender is really suffering out there for what he did to both of us." Bilby replied, "He gave me an artificial heaven and tore an innocent young woman away from her family."
"Add that to the list of things we all want Mindbender to answer for." Cover Girl replied.
"I know that if I see him on a mission I'm gonna shoot the no good son of a bitch." Bilby replied, then added, "In the guts so he dies slower."
Little did Bilby know that the man he wished to settle the score with was slowly suffering a fate worse than death. Day by day, the mysterious transformation continued like an inexorable for. Only treatments, many of them highly dangerous and experimental, were keeping him alive.
He also didn't know that every word that he said was being heard by a tiny mechanical bug, a leftover from the attempted COBRA takeover. It had been forgotten, but Mindbender used it to track Akima's progress and very often listened to his victim, as she confided in words to those around her. The bug remained, though the person he altered to appear as Akima was now back at her home.
"Death would be a release from this hell." Mindbender replied, as he threw a full body hooded cloak over his frail, weakened frame. He no longer traipsed about proudly, displaying his shirtless muscular frame tastefully covered by his cape. His visage and body appeared too weakened and ravaged by this hideous transformation. The antennae would now no longer retract whenever he immersed himself in the chemical baths. Increasing its concentration would only be effective to a point. It was already dangerously close to a level where immersion for any length of time would make exposure through skin contact extremely carcinogenic.
Mindbender laughed ironically before it was truncated by a cough that caused a mixture of blood, spittle, and mucus to eject from his mouth. The last thing he had to worry about was a slow death from cancer. The antennae, on the upside, gave him sharper perception of what occurred around him and enabled him to pick up radio traffic within a half mile radius.
Any of his foes and even his allies would find this amusing, the creator of freaks, mutants and monsters was now becoming something that if he had the inclination or time, he might just have created. He watched the bug's transmissions, for all they were worth. There was a corner of the dining area aboard the Valkyrie where Bilby, Hedaya and Cover Girl stood. In it were three pictures, one an older, brown haired and bearded man, the second of a blonde haired man, about twenty years old, and the third was easily recognizable as Akima.
"You just stumbled on our shrine to our fallen shipmates." Stith said from behind them.
"Where's Gune?" Bilby asked, "Doesn't he not let anyone near this?"
"He's too busy enjoying himself at the enlisted club. He's making quite a few dollars, because Shipwreck just won, and everybody bet against his team winning. I gotta admit, of the few things Shipwreck can do right, pool is one of them." Stith replied.
"I recognized Akima, who are the other two?" Cover Girl asked.
"The bearded guy is Joseph Corso, he was the Valkyrie's original captain. He was ex military, a close friend of Dr. Tucker, who invented the Titan. The Titan had the power to create whole planets and that's what the Drej feared when they destroyed Earth. Fifteen years later, Dr. Tucker's son, Cale, the blonde guy, discovered the Titan with Akima and the rest of us. Corso initially betrayed us to the Drej but had a change of heart and with his sacrifice enabled the Titan to create New Earth, or Planet Bob as Cale called it." Stith replied.
Cover Girl and Hedaya listened intently as Stith continued, "Cale and Akima became really close during the search for the Titan and eventually fell in love. A year later the Heartless attacked New Earth. Cale and several citizens went underground, trying to organize a resistance. During a raid in which a traitor betrayed us, Cale was captured."
Stith's expression shifted into the human equivalent of a hard stare and took a pained tone, "Akima wanted to rescue him, but we wouldn't let her, because if she was captured the entire resistance would be effectively destroyed. She was the only one strong enough to lead our resistance. I still remember how it hurt her to see Cale three days later, just seconds before his televised execution. I don't know how long they tortured Cale in those three days, but all I know is that at some point he broke and told them the locations of nearly a dozen other resistance leaders. With ruthless efficiency the Heartless killed every member of those twelve other cells, leaving ours the only one remaining."
Bilby hung his head, "I remember having comforted Akima shortly after we first met. That's why she got along with me the best out of the eight man team, because both of us had seen all that we had loved destroyed by a ruthless and implacable enemy."
Stith left them alone as she went back to retrieve Gune from the enlisted club. Cover Girl looked at her watch, "Bilby, we've got an initiation to go to. Let's go show Grinch what we're made of."
Blby smiled, sadly, "I'm ready to go."
"If you'd like, you can dedicate your performance during this test to Akima." Hedaya said, seriously.
Bilby's smile became a ghost of his original lopsided grin from a few weeks past, when he thought Akima had returned. "This is for you Akima." Bilby whispered to himself.
~ ~ ~ ~
"So, vhat's vith Bilby?" Kurt asked, "Lately he's been extremely short tempered."
"You mean the incident where he sent all of you to the ground for a set of seventy pushups." Toad replied.
"Ja." Kurt replied, "Just because he lost the love of his life doesn't give him license to be a jerk."
"He has been a little harsh lately. He's been going through quite a bit of corning. I'll go talk to him." Goofy replied.
"That's mourning Goofy." Donald corrected.
Just then another argument sounded, "What do you mean Gambit cheated?" Gambit shouted.
"You hear me." Pietro shouted, "I saw you dealing from the bottom of that deck!"
"Gambit beat you with a royal flush, fair and square. Pay up Quicksilver." Gambit replied.
"I'm not paying a cheat at this table!" Pietro replied.
"That's it, half-brother or not, the gloves are coming OFF!" Rogue shouted.
Gambit started to power up as well. As good as Goofy was at stopping fights he was not superhuman and could only be in one place at one time. "One, I'm too fast to catch, two people are only gonna get scared if you don't say the same thing every time you don't get your way." Pietro replied.
"Leave my chere out of this, Quicksilver!" Gambit shouted and threw a charged cue ball at Pietro.
Pietro ducked and the projectile struck the nearby circuit breaker. The entire room went black.
"Just once, I'd like an evening with you to not be interrupted by an explosion, riot, or similar disaster. Is that so much to ask?" Lance said.
"You mean when Leatherneck and Wetsuit go at it." Said a female voice.
"Kitty?" Lance asked.
"I've been called a lot of things, but Kitty is something new."
"Yipe!" Lance shouted, when he turned on a tiny flashlight attached to his key chain. Framed by the tiny circle of light was Lady Jaye.
"You're not Flint!" Lady Jaye said, surprised.
Across the room, Kitty asked, "Like, what just happened?"
"Allie, since when do you talk like a Valley Girl wannabe?" a strange male voice asked.
Flint knew Lady Jaye was known for having a flaming tongue when pushed too far by his sometimes obnoxious personality, but he didn't think she literally had one. A gust of flame came flying his way and he barely ducked in time. His beret wasn't so lucky, it lay flaming on the table. It provided enough light to show Flint that his quiet evening at the enlisted club with Lady Jaye had just taken a very bizarre turn.
"Where did you come from!?!?" they simultaneously asked each other as the lights turned on.
They may have been deposited speedily across the room from each other, but the lights came back on soon enough to show that a certain speedy mutant was tucking a pair of night vision goggles into his shirt.
"Pietro...." Lance said with an angry hiss.
"Uh oh." Pietro replied, when he saw an equally pissed of Flint, Lady Jaye, and Kitty Pryde coming after him.
Meanwhile, Grinch stood outside with a broad grin as Cover Girl, Bilby, and Hedaya stood outside. "Now, let's see what we shall begin with. Chilli peppers?"
"Check." Leroy Hoffman said, holding a clipboard and a pen.
"Tobasco sauce." Grinch said, going down the list.
"Check."
"Rubber chickens."
"Check."
"Deck of playing cards."
"Sorry, Gambit's using them." Leroy said, laconically as one flew out of the window and exploded into a tree.
"Let me guess, Maximoff pulled this off?" Grinch asked.
"HELLLLLPPPPP!!!!!!!" Pietro shouted, running out of the enlisted club with Flint, Lady Jaye, Lance, and Kitty chasing him.
"There he is! Show him no mercy!!!" Kitty shouted.
Before Grinch could even react Pietro ran into him at near maximum speed, bowling Grinch off his feet and making him land on top of Leroy Hoffman who rolled down a gentle slope, bowling over Cass Garner and Mark Lazio with the shaving cream ballons.
Covered in shaving cream at the bottom of the hill, Grinch said, "Grinch Night 2003, postponed on account of sudden death."
Grinch keeled over and wouldn't wake up for a good six hours. "That was the shortest initiation I've ever been through." Hedaya quipped.
~ ~ ~ ~
To be continued...
Disclaimer: Same as before. Sorry this took a while. As of this Friday I won't be able to go near a computer until late July. Expect to see more chapters of Kilo Two Zero then.
~ ~ ~ ~
"Prepare to get your ass beat Shipwreck." Cass Garner shouted.
"In your dreams you Army landlubber." Shipwreck replied.
"Hey, watch it with the army cracks Hector." Cover Girl shouted.
"Sorry Courtney." Shipwreck replied.
"Hey look, a sea dog with a leash." Mark Lazio replied, as he chalked his pool cue.
"Oh shut up Shipwreck and break already." Alpine complained. Alpine, Shipwreck, and Recondo formed the GI Joe Pool Team and Sergeant First Class Cass Garner, Staff Sergeant Mark Lazio, and Sergeant Leroy Hoffman formed the Gamma Pool Team.
This was the kick off of the first ever Pool Shark Tourney held at the Enlisted Club. "Alright, this one's gonna be one sweet shot..." Shipwreck began and made his shot.
"Ah, you got lucky squid." Mark Lazio replied, as he saw Shipwreck sink the number four ball.
"Team GI Joe is solids." Quick Kick announced, "Team Gamma is the stripes."
"Oh my God," Althea whispered in Cover Girl's ear, "Don't tell me that the whole team jumped in on this madness?"
"Yep, they did. Looks like Shipwreck started yet another wild tournament on base." Cover Girl quipped, "Well, a lot of three man teams from the Gamma and Ranger units are playing against a lot of our guys. Bazooka, Ace, and Law are next playing three Rangers."
"Hey, hate to break up the mutiny on the USS Shipwreck, but have you two seen Bilby anywhere?" Grinch asked.
"I think I know where he might be." Cover Girl replied. On the way out she snagged Jose Hedaya.
~ ~ ~ ~
"Why her of all people?" Bilby asked into the vastness of the heavens, "Why did you have me meet her, fall in love with her, and tear her away from me not once but twice? Was this all some sort of cruel joke!? Answer me damn it!"
"Hey you." Came a voice behind him.
"I know it's been hard on you since you lost Akima, but you can't let it affect you like this." Jose replied.
"I just had another attack. I've gone through this before, but it's not any easier. Usually they come unexpectedly. I'll see something, hear something and smell something that reminds me and then I feel warm and tingly all over, as if I can feel her leaning against my side when we'd stay up late watching movies, when the Misfits and the X-men would have fallen asleep. She always would say she wasn't sleepy...Oh God I'm rambling again." Bilby replied.
"Yes you are, but sometimes it's the best way to find out what's bugging you if you just ramble on." Cover Girl replied.
"Anyway, she'd insist, just like a little kid, that she wasn't tired, and the next thing I'd know, she was leaning solidly against my side, sound asleep." Bilby replied.
"I do remember you tucking her in a lot of nights when she did that." Cover Girl replied.
"She meant the world to you, I know." Hedaya added, "We're here for you, but you need to reach out to us and let us help you."
"I still feel that a lot of nights, when I sit up late to watch movies, for the hell of it. I can feel her sleeping against my side, I can even hear her breathe and feel her heart beating, but then I'll put my arm out there and it'll go around nothing but air." Bilby replied, "You don't know how many nights since that I've had to wipe away tears I wasn't allowed to shed after the first time I lost her."
"She used to tell me that even though she'd been through a lot in her life, she really wished that there was something she could do to help you deal with your grief." Cover Girl replied.
"You'd think someone who'd seen her planet destroyed, her family die off, her beloved captured, tortured, and killed by the Heartless, and her new home also destroyed would be cynical and embittered." Bilby replied, "Despite that, she was able to remain hopeful and willing to help others before she'd help herself."
"She was an incredible young woman." Cover Girl said, "She really believed in what cause she served, but freedom has its price."
"I'd give anything for the price to have been me instead of her." Bilby replied.
"Then Akima would be sitting over here on the grassy knoll, and we'd have to comfort her." Cover Girl replied, "She always used to say how she could see right through the courageous, stoic warrior and see the tender, gentle soul inside whenever she talked about you. She said when she was a prisoner of the Heartless, the knowledge that you would fight your way through against any odds just to rescue her was what kept her going."
"I really hope that Mindbender is really suffering out there for what he did to both of us." Bilby replied, "He gave me an artificial heaven and tore an innocent young woman away from her family."
"Add that to the list of things we all want Mindbender to answer for." Cover Girl replied.
"I know that if I see him on a mission I'm gonna shoot the no good son of a bitch." Bilby replied, then added, "In the guts so he dies slower."
Little did Bilby know that the man he wished to settle the score with was slowly suffering a fate worse than death. Day by day, the mysterious transformation continued like an inexorable for. Only treatments, many of them highly dangerous and experimental, were keeping him alive.
He also didn't know that every word that he said was being heard by a tiny mechanical bug, a leftover from the attempted COBRA takeover. It had been forgotten, but Mindbender used it to track Akima's progress and very often listened to his victim, as she confided in words to those around her. The bug remained, though the person he altered to appear as Akima was now back at her home.
"Death would be a release from this hell." Mindbender replied, as he threw a full body hooded cloak over his frail, weakened frame. He no longer traipsed about proudly, displaying his shirtless muscular frame tastefully covered by his cape. His visage and body appeared too weakened and ravaged by this hideous transformation. The antennae would now no longer retract whenever he immersed himself in the chemical baths. Increasing its concentration would only be effective to a point. It was already dangerously close to a level where immersion for any length of time would make exposure through skin contact extremely carcinogenic.
Mindbender laughed ironically before it was truncated by a cough that caused a mixture of blood, spittle, and mucus to eject from his mouth. The last thing he had to worry about was a slow death from cancer. The antennae, on the upside, gave him sharper perception of what occurred around him and enabled him to pick up radio traffic within a half mile radius.
Any of his foes and even his allies would find this amusing, the creator of freaks, mutants and monsters was now becoming something that if he had the inclination or time, he might just have created. He watched the bug's transmissions, for all they were worth. There was a corner of the dining area aboard the Valkyrie where Bilby, Hedaya and Cover Girl stood. In it were three pictures, one an older, brown haired and bearded man, the second of a blonde haired man, about twenty years old, and the third was easily recognizable as Akima.
"You just stumbled on our shrine to our fallen shipmates." Stith said from behind them.
"Where's Gune?" Bilby asked, "Doesn't he not let anyone near this?"
"He's too busy enjoying himself at the enlisted club. He's making quite a few dollars, because Shipwreck just won, and everybody bet against his team winning. I gotta admit, of the few things Shipwreck can do right, pool is one of them." Stith replied.
"I recognized Akima, who are the other two?" Cover Girl asked.
"The bearded guy is Joseph Corso, he was the Valkyrie's original captain. He was ex military, a close friend of Dr. Tucker, who invented the Titan. The Titan had the power to create whole planets and that's what the Drej feared when they destroyed Earth. Fifteen years later, Dr. Tucker's son, Cale, the blonde guy, discovered the Titan with Akima and the rest of us. Corso initially betrayed us to the Drej but had a change of heart and with his sacrifice enabled the Titan to create New Earth, or Planet Bob as Cale called it." Stith replied.
Cover Girl and Hedaya listened intently as Stith continued, "Cale and Akima became really close during the search for the Titan and eventually fell in love. A year later the Heartless attacked New Earth. Cale and several citizens went underground, trying to organize a resistance. During a raid in which a traitor betrayed us, Cale was captured."
Stith's expression shifted into the human equivalent of a hard stare and took a pained tone, "Akima wanted to rescue him, but we wouldn't let her, because if she was captured the entire resistance would be effectively destroyed. She was the only one strong enough to lead our resistance. I still remember how it hurt her to see Cale three days later, just seconds before his televised execution. I don't know how long they tortured Cale in those three days, but all I know is that at some point he broke and told them the locations of nearly a dozen other resistance leaders. With ruthless efficiency the Heartless killed every member of those twelve other cells, leaving ours the only one remaining."
Bilby hung his head, "I remember having comforted Akima shortly after we first met. That's why she got along with me the best out of the eight man team, because both of us had seen all that we had loved destroyed by a ruthless and implacable enemy."
Stith left them alone as she went back to retrieve Gune from the enlisted club. Cover Girl looked at her watch, "Bilby, we've got an initiation to go to. Let's go show Grinch what we're made of."
Blby smiled, sadly, "I'm ready to go."
"If you'd like, you can dedicate your performance during this test to Akima." Hedaya said, seriously.
Bilby's smile became a ghost of his original lopsided grin from a few weeks past, when he thought Akima had returned. "This is for you Akima." Bilby whispered to himself.
~ ~ ~ ~
"So, vhat's vith Bilby?" Kurt asked, "Lately he's been extremely short tempered."
"You mean the incident where he sent all of you to the ground for a set of seventy pushups." Toad replied.
"Ja." Kurt replied, "Just because he lost the love of his life doesn't give him license to be a jerk."
"He has been a little harsh lately. He's been going through quite a bit of corning. I'll go talk to him." Goofy replied.
"That's mourning Goofy." Donald corrected.
Just then another argument sounded, "What do you mean Gambit cheated?" Gambit shouted.
"You hear me." Pietro shouted, "I saw you dealing from the bottom of that deck!"
"Gambit beat you with a royal flush, fair and square. Pay up Quicksilver." Gambit replied.
"I'm not paying a cheat at this table!" Pietro replied.
"That's it, half-brother or not, the gloves are coming OFF!" Rogue shouted.
Gambit started to power up as well. As good as Goofy was at stopping fights he was not superhuman and could only be in one place at one time. "One, I'm too fast to catch, two people are only gonna get scared if you don't say the same thing every time you don't get your way." Pietro replied.
"Leave my chere out of this, Quicksilver!" Gambit shouted and threw a charged cue ball at Pietro.
Pietro ducked and the projectile struck the nearby circuit breaker. The entire room went black.
"Just once, I'd like an evening with you to not be interrupted by an explosion, riot, or similar disaster. Is that so much to ask?" Lance said.
"You mean when Leatherneck and Wetsuit go at it." Said a female voice.
"Kitty?" Lance asked.
"I've been called a lot of things, but Kitty is something new."
"Yipe!" Lance shouted, when he turned on a tiny flashlight attached to his key chain. Framed by the tiny circle of light was Lady Jaye.
"You're not Flint!" Lady Jaye said, surprised.
Across the room, Kitty asked, "Like, what just happened?"
"Allie, since when do you talk like a Valley Girl wannabe?" a strange male voice asked.
Flint knew Lady Jaye was known for having a flaming tongue when pushed too far by his sometimes obnoxious personality, but he didn't think she literally had one. A gust of flame came flying his way and he barely ducked in time. His beret wasn't so lucky, it lay flaming on the table. It provided enough light to show Flint that his quiet evening at the enlisted club with Lady Jaye had just taken a very bizarre turn.
"Where did you come from!?!?" they simultaneously asked each other as the lights turned on.
They may have been deposited speedily across the room from each other, but the lights came back on soon enough to show that a certain speedy mutant was tucking a pair of night vision goggles into his shirt.
"Pietro...." Lance said with an angry hiss.
"Uh oh." Pietro replied, when he saw an equally pissed of Flint, Lady Jaye, and Kitty Pryde coming after him.
Meanwhile, Grinch stood outside with a broad grin as Cover Girl, Bilby, and Hedaya stood outside. "Now, let's see what we shall begin with. Chilli peppers?"
"Check." Leroy Hoffman said, holding a clipboard and a pen.
"Tobasco sauce." Grinch said, going down the list.
"Check."
"Rubber chickens."
"Check."
"Deck of playing cards."
"Sorry, Gambit's using them." Leroy said, laconically as one flew out of the window and exploded into a tree.
"Let me guess, Maximoff pulled this off?" Grinch asked.
"HELLLLLPPPPP!!!!!!!" Pietro shouted, running out of the enlisted club with Flint, Lady Jaye, Lance, and Kitty chasing him.
"There he is! Show him no mercy!!!" Kitty shouted.
Before Grinch could even react Pietro ran into him at near maximum speed, bowling Grinch off his feet and making him land on top of Leroy Hoffman who rolled down a gentle slope, bowling over Cass Garner and Mark Lazio with the shaving cream ballons.
Covered in shaving cream at the bottom of the hill, Grinch said, "Grinch Night 2003, postponed on account of sudden death."
Grinch keeled over and wouldn't wake up for a good six hours. "That was the shortest initiation I've ever been through." Hedaya quipped.
~ ~ ~ ~
To be continued...
