'Avert yer eyes, lad! 'Tisn't becoming of a lady t'be ogled'
'Eff off, Granddad, I'm trying…' Perkins snapped miserably.
'This isn't fair – how come Harris is allowed to look?'
'Because it's French handwriting, and only he c'n read it, ye mucky-minded boogers! Look, we'll go and stand outside, and do some prayin' and be Nun-like,' Harper ushered them out of the tent before the situation got beyond salvaging.
It was a given of the script that there had to be at least one instance of gratuitous toplessness per episode (although bare-chested soldiers being flogged didn't count. It had to be toplessness of mass appeal, as opposed to toplessness of appeal to the Sado-Masochistic fetish community). Either Sharpe had to strip to the waist, rubbing his manly chest and dousing it in crystal-cold water, or some other random wench had to unlace her dress-front for the mass delectation of all present.
Evidently, the script-writers have been running low on convincing reasons to get naked, thought Harris, not minding in the slightest.
'Yes?' Sharpe asked, expecting an explanation from the now-topless Marie-Susan. Harris busied himself with a notepad and pen, making close examination of the tattooed-on handwriting.
Marie Susan sighed dramatically, her violet eyes and Rapunzel-length blonde hair coupling with her stunningly attractive face speaking of a 'poor mistreated wench'.
'General Jean-Paul Evilfrog forced me to become his lover, after he killed my husband, shot my grandmother, and kicked my puppy down the stairs (Sharpe reeled back in shock). Such is his arrogance, that he wrote his terrible boasts all over me, and then had them tattooed into my maidenly curves! I escaped, and was finding my way to safety, when a horde of his evil French soldiers sprang out of the bushes and attacked me – no doubt to bring me back to their terrible leader!' Marie-Susan swooned, staring deep into Sharpe's eyes as he took her by the hand.
He would have crushed her to his heroic chest in a manly embrace, but unfortunately Harris was in the way, kneeling and still busy scribbling a translation.
Harris stood up, and presented Sharpe with the notepad with a flourish
'Shall I read it out, Sir?'
'Yes'
'It reads:
'Mwahaahahahaha, this is a note from the great General EvilFrog: General Evilfrog is very nasty and unpleasant and evil, and does all sorts of terrible things like leer at Bosomy Ladies and shoot English 'Rosbif' soldiers, and forget to take his shoes off at the door. Come and stop me – if you think you're hard enough. Mwahahahahaha!
P.S The English are going down!' Harris finished, pale-skin warmed up like a freshly-cooked beetroot, 'Bloody hell, Sir, but it's very hot in here, don't you think?' he swallowed, casting his mind back to the territory to see if they might be crossing any large bodies of icy water on their way to find General Evilfrog.
Sharpe pointed to a small mark in the bottom right-hand corner of the message. It read 'PTO for Directions'.
'Yes,' Marie-Susan sighed, 'Directions to General Evilfrog's secret hideaway are on the back…' she said ruefully, dropping her dress completely and turning round, as Sharpe and Harris attempted to remain utterly businesslike and re-attach their lower jaws.
The sheer loveliness of the comely maiden's curvy figure was so apparent that it was a full twenty seconds of slack-jawed staring later that Harris realised he was holding the jar of ink upside-down, and had just poured it all down Major Sharpe's leg.
Thankfully, Sharpe was too distracted to notice.
-
The march to General Evilfrog's secret hideaway went as per usual, except of course they were all dressed as Nuns.
There had been no doubt that they would go and stop General Evilfrog, of course, because he was so evil that he just had to be stopped, and the 95th Rifles were so heroic and so manly that nobody else who wasn't as heroic and manly as them could have done the job.
The sneaked into a side entrance, blessing the French soldier on guard duty – then whipped their rifles out of their enormous headdresses, and declared World War 0.
Everyone in the immediate area was shot, or trampled on by an extremely worked-up Harris, and everyone else who came near them was also bludgeoned, shot, and otherwise eliminated.
Sharpe led them all heroically, shooting three peasant grannies and a melon-seller in the courtyard of General Evilfrog's secret palace. He reasoned that if they were lurking in such an evil place, they too must be evil, and therefore it was ok to shoot them. He also called out to the other Riflemen to let all the mothers and children escape - and if there were any other women left, to only shoot the ugly ones. Because Sharpe had a very good sense of morals and right and wrong. Even if, on closer inspection, most of them held about as much water as a sieve. Anyway, the important thing was that it looked impressive and made him seem like a very manly hero indeed!
'Hurrah!' shouted all the Riflemen
'Hurrah!' shouted all the mothers and children
'Hurrah!' shouted all the pretty girls
'' ''shouted the 200 or so other innocent peasants, because they were all dead.
'Roight! Let's go find this General Evilfrog – cover Major Sharpe, lads,' Harper grizzled, stomping up a prospective flight of steps like bear with a sore head.
'So! You 'av come to keel me, Majour Sharpe?' came a voice from behind them, as a figure in a black silk cloak simultaneously held a gun to Sharpe's head and twirled his evil moustache.
If there had been a caption on the screen at that moment, it would have read 'uh-oh'.
Sharpe froze, and the Chosen Men stopped in their tracks. By all rights, they should have been fearing for the life if their beloved leader, However, since they knew there were four more episodes at least left in the series, and nobody'd watch it if the ruggedly handsome Sharpe wasn't in them, they took it as a cue to have a breather.
Cooper backed onto the nearest wall and started rolling himself a cigarette, whilst Harris took a book out of his pack and did a bit of light reading. Perkins and Hagman tucked themselves away together in a sunny corner to please any slash fiction shippers with curious tastes.
'Ey! Ey! Are not your men zupposed to be fearing for your life, Majour Sharpe?' General Evilfrog asked Sharpe, confused by the scene unfolding. The pantomime villain did not understand.
'Bastard,' said Sharpe so casually it was almost affectionate, and easily backflipped out of Evilfrog's grasp with a half-notch twist and triple somersault. Upon landing, he followed this up with an axe-kick and the Position of the Dragon, followed closely by a quadruple flying groin-dodge. Harper watched Sharpe appreciatively (now executing a semi-shank cripple-lock with extra crunchy knuckles upon the General). It was like poetry in motion!
After about twenty minutes of the General being beaten to a bloody pulp by Sharpe's dirrrrty street-fighting techniques, Sharpe decided to end the fight.
His Riflemen were so confident of his abilities that three of them had now fallen asleep and were snoozing gently in corners as the two combatants threw crockery, punches and live poultry roundabout.
'Yes, bastard,' said Sharpe heroically, decapitating the evil General, liberating his peasants (except for the ugly ones), saving mankind and sending the Frenchman's head flying three metres to the left, with one single blow of his sword.
'Well done, Sor!' an adoring Harper clapped his appreciation from the sidelines.
'You'll be a wow with the slash fiction shippers too,' Perkins woke up and grinned cheekily at Harper, ' They c'n write about you and Major Sharpe, lying about in the sunshine and leering at each other as you polish your swords…'
'Perceptive little booger, ent yez?' Harpur said good-naturedly, bludgeoning him about the head with his rifle-butt. 'Buttercups and beanbags,' he added, noticing Sharpe was listening.
And with that, they made their way out of General Evilfrog's now not-so-evil secret hideout. The Chosen Men had saved the day once again! They picked up their discarded nun's habits to return to the convent they'd been taken from, because Sharpe was very particular about moral actions like that.
'The Duke of Wellington's camp!' Harper said enthusiastically.
'No he's not, Sarge!' Perkins said defensively, 'I swear! Them pink wellies belonged to his wife, and the only person who does any lisping around here is, well…me. Oh, hang on, you meant it was time to go back to camp, didn't you…?'
They headed back, pausing only to make a quick snack of some rabbits they found on the way. Sharpe glowered at them, Cooper shot them, Harper smiled benignly at them, and Hagman and Perkins were put on cooking duty to make stew of them. Usually, Harris was better at cooking, but he was indisposed for the present, as he'd fallen flat on his face with more than usual gusto and managed to lodge his head down a rabbit hole. Everyone else was busy digging him free.
'Psst, Dan - you know how to cut up these rabbits properly?'
'Aye, that I do'
'How come?'
'I've done it wi' a sheep'
Perkins decided to let that one slide.
-
The Chosen Men made it back just in time to join in Wellington's latest attack against the French.
Not even an hour early or late, mind, just exactly spot-on time. They hurled themselves into the fray, certain that if they made enough ta-ra-ra boom di-ay and noise, then everyone would forget that they were all supposed to have been executed several days ago. Yelling noble battle-yells, them covered themselves in glory…and entrails.
Sharpe gave a furious battle cry.
'Yorkshire pudden!' he hollered throatily, and was immediately shot in the head by the very first French musket.
'Fire! Fire!' he cried, as cannonball after cannonball landed squarely upon his head,
and 13 French dragoons laid into his groin with their huge sabres.
'Who musked-proofed him?' Perkins wailed, one leg dragging behind him where he'd been hit already, 'How come he's so bloody indestructible!'
'Fire! Yorkshire Pudding! Fire!' bawled Sharpe, nearly out of his breeches…whoops, breaches. A hundred Frenchmen instantly gored him right through with their bayonets, and a horse sat on his head for good measure.
Despite all this, Sharpe failed to die.
He also failed to sustain any injuries except those that could be converted to proudly-flashed, manly battle-scars, when shirtless in later episodes. Hurrah! Hurrah for Sharpe! Hurrah for the Chosen Men! Come on, cheer, you little bleeder, damn you!
-
Seeing as it was near the end of the episode, everybody simultaneously decided it was time to bugger off into the surrounding town to spend the evening in the company of some merry but rather plain wenches who each thought they were being terribly original when they said 'My, what big rifles you all have!'.
At least Perkins was happy.
He'd paired off with a very dark-looking girl named Nola (she was a rocker with a nose-ring. She wore a two-way but Ben wasn't quite sure what that meant). Nola totally offended Hagman, the nearest thing anyone had to a father figure, so Perkins was pleased. It was good to be A Teenager and offend people, and take a little time off from saving the world.
High on this victory, Perkins spent some time the following morning, with Nola's help, sculpting a neon pink mohican. It was egg-white-spiked-up a foot high from his forehead to the nape of his neck. He reasoned that if the other soldiers didn't get him for looking stupid, the officers would get him for having non-regulation hair, and if that failed, with a bit of luck, a real punk would beat him to a bloody pulp for copy-catting.
'Oh, lad, tha'oughtn't t'have done that,' Hagman surprised him, mumbling up behind.
'Hah, offensive, is it!'
'No, lad,' Hagman smiled gently, 'tis cos thee can't get thy hat on thine 'ead'.
Major Hogan chose that precise moment to call for everyone to form ranks.
Everyone put their hat on and lined up.
'Oh, shit…!'
-
It was time to pack up camp and go.
'To Cadiz!' shouted Sharpe, waving his sword, a grim smile playing about his manly chops as he realised he'd gotten his words back.
'Hurrah!' shouted everyone, waving their firsts in the air in an equally manly fashion (even the women. Sharpe had this effect on people).
And so our intrepid heroes squared their shoulders and proceeded heroically into the middle distance. The paused on a convenient hilltop to silhouette themselves against the twilight sky, striking meaningful yet carefully in-character poses. Square of jaw and black of eye, they marched into the sunset, except for Harris, who paused to break his flat nose against a handy treestump.
'Dan?' said Cooper quietly, eyeballs swivelling upwards.
'Yus?'
'Why is your voice coming out of the sky?'
THE END
Quality? Tosh? Something else? A minefield of formatting errors (I mean, sorry, but my paragraphing and vital punctuation looked utterly perfect in Word, and yet now has more holes than a swiss cheese. Why is this?) It don't take a minute to leave a wee bit of feedback, Ladies and Gentlemen!